Disagree, but you're taking the most narrow and threadbare reading of my post possible. Here are the problems I have with your intentionally reading. (1) You are pigeonholing me (and anyone else who claims any sort of sympathy with faith) to believe in a big white dude with a flowing robe and a voice not unlike Charleton Heston (may he RIP.) Quit it. Faith does not equal belief in omniscient all-powerful entity (to everybody.) (2) Faith in "your children and future generations" is not equal at all to a faith that there is a larger purpose that will necessarily escape you. (3) If anything worth doing takes more than one generation, think about how you would live your life, from sun-up to sun-down. For some, particularly a few Jesuits I know, that's the strongest article of their faith. Watching a basketball game, making an extra set of dough for that wide-screen TV: not doing anything for humanity. Ergo -- not in a single day's plans. The faith part is you have to try to live to the standard of #3 without any objective proof at all that this is worth doing. You could just sit, eat and make yourself happy. Objectively, you can justify that more easily, one could argue.
let me state this. I don't have all the answers. I don't give everything to God .. . as some would. I don't think god sits on high choosing which flower dies and which one lives any more than a parent assigns scraped knees to one child and one fall off the monkey bars to another. One can consider God infallable like a child thinks their parent is infallable. It is more about them having more knowledge and wisdom in which to base their opinions on than you. There will come a time when the child will begin to question the infallability of the parent .. . . so it is not surprising when someone says WHY DID GOD DO THIS??? [not that I think God is in that direct a control of every situation] I think RELIGION sometimes makes GOD in to his ridiculous CONTROL FREAK with OCD fretting over everything molecule in the universe. . . I don't think of it like that You eat Right. You exercise. You don't step on broken glass. that is you doing right for yourself. . . but you are also doing right by cell number 54627653 that resides in the left foot under the big toe. .. . it is not direct . . but you are helping to protect it. My personal beliefs. . .and yes they are Personal [Though they are framed on the writings of those that came before me i.e. the Bible etc] My beliefs are probably Closer to the Deist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism Rocket River
According the Bible: God made us and gave us a free will to do what we want. From the beginning, we were given the free will to disobey God. So, He now allows suffering in the world due to our disobedience and allows us to practice the free will he gave us. Suffering allows us to understand that only through Faith in Him, can we find the "peace that goes beyond all understanding." The world is corrupt only due to our sin nature. He tried to clean up the world once with Noah. But, he said that he will not do that again. A lot of religious people tried to force others into their religion--this is not what God wants. If our devotion is not freely given, He does not want it. It’s not that God needs our worship, it's that we can truly be only happy when we worship Him with all our Heart, Mind, and Soul. He wants us to love Him back without coercion. He understands that due to our sin nature, we cannot be perfect. Therefore, he sent his Son to die for our sins. If we believe in Jesus, then we will not be judged by God. You can be of any faith and go to Heaven--the only criteria is that you will be judged by your deeds. However, Jesus’ blood covers our deeds from God's judgment. This theme is all thought-out the Old Testament of the Bible. For example, for those of you that watched the Ten Commandments, the last plague was "death" that came down into Egypt. For all the houses that had a mark on their front door with the blood of a lamb--"death" passed by without entering the house. This is like the Judgment of God. Jesus is the "Blood of the Lamb" that covers our sins. Everyone has to die, but we have a soul which continues on. Jesus tells us not to worry too much about what happens to you body; it’s the soul that you should be really concerned with. This soul can go to heaven to reside with God or be somewhere else apart from God. He does not want to be around those that do not want to be around Him. God gave us the Ten Commandments--which is the foundation of the Law of this country. For those that want an idea of what Heaven is like, read "90 Minutes in Heaven" It is a true life account of a man that was pronounced dead at a car accident. An hour and a half later, he came back to life. Note, most of the book is about his recovery from the accident. http://www.90minutesinheaven.com/ There will be scoffers and I understand their viewpoint. But, as I have said before, this is no more a "bunch of crap" than quantum fluctuations and zero energy creating the known universe. Please feel free to continue and exercise you free will, just as I exercise mine.
I appreciate what you had to say, but I'm not sure I understand you here. Can you explain what you mean?
' still, if god is conceived to be transcendent... and the arranger of all our natural existence... wouldn't that imply a substantial, significant purpose behind it... that shouldn't be trivially isolated to the confines of little spread out corners of the vast universe, rendered so undetectable to one another...? not to mention to the very implication of transcendence--in other words something of meaning--with a would-be inivisible organizer of our creation... is completely incongruent to the rampant nonsense ever inherently present in it's most evolved creatures.... how does transcendence in origin... meaning supreme... not bound to subjective, ordinary limits of perception... significant... beget nonsense in evolution....? nonsense... meaning frivolity... matter of little or no importance... empty of meaning... absurd... it doesn't quite add up... you can't chalk this up to the combined result of "free will" and a hands-off god... otherwise it wouldn't be rampant, constant... it would be here and there... as per a true individual choice...
God expects to understand that we can't do it ourselves (and take credit for it), thus we need a Savior.
i've seen samples--in the feedback section I believe--of people that have done just that... more than once... and were still kept waiting... no slight to the management, he's a busy man... just a relevant observation... now, let's not derail this thread any further...
Okay. If you're saying that your faith is not based on God, but rather some subjective idea in how one should live and such, then okay. I understand where you're coming from. I assumed otherwise because you didn't mention otherwise in this thread specifically about an omnipotent God, If you're talking about faith in general, then I have nothing to add.
First, I should have clarified that I was mainly referring to those that believe in the God of Abraham. Let me start with a simple illustration and I will expand on this later: As you probably know, Abraham is the Father of three religions-- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They all refer to the same God. From the beginning, ever since Sin was introduced into Man from Adam and Eve, God has dictated that a blood sacrifice can only atone for sin. So, you will notice this theme throughout the Old Testament that animals had to be sacrificed as a penance for sin. Also, you will notice that the preferred animal was a lamb--which was considered a very innocent or pure creature by God. What does all this have to do with your question? Bear with me. God cannot, by his divine nature, accept anyone into Heaven that has committed any sins-- that have not been atoned with blood. Now, enters the New Testament: However, He knew that Man's nature was not going to change. However, He loved Man so much that He decided to create a New Contract, aka New Testament, to give us to give us the ultimate "Easy Button" to get us into Heaven--Jesus Christ. Jesus is the ultimate blood sacrifice, since He was God himself and therefore able to live a sinless life on Earth. His blood sacrifice would be enough to atone for any sin Man committed. God decreed that with the New Testament, that the Old Testament is no longer needed or valid---no more animal sacrifices or "extra" stuff have to be done to get into Heaven--aside from believing in Jesus. Now to get to your question: If you are a believer in Judaism or Islam, all you have to do is live a perfect life--by this I mean that you cannot commit any sins--as defined by God. This would mean that you would have to be like Jesus--but Jesus had the Spirit of God in Him and therefore was able to resist all the temptations of sin. We don't have this advantage. Therefore, it does not matter if you believe in Islam or Judaism, since you believe in the same "God of Abraham", if you have never committed a sin in God's eyes, then you don't need the blood sacrifice of a lamb, and by extension Jesus Christ to cover your sins. Basically, you have not broken any of the Ten Commandments which was given to Moses. Now, based on the above, the following is my own extension of Judgment from God: Theoretically, you can be of any faith and as long as you don't commit any sins--which I do not believe is practical by reasons given above-- then when you stand in Judgment before God, you will be found blameless. Therefore, you don't need Jesus blood to cover your sins when you stand in Judgment before God. I realize that this goes against the First Commandment, but if you never have had heard about the God of Abraham and/or Jesus, I do not believe that God immediately casts you into Hell. I realize that seems to goes against some statements in the Bible, however, everything in the Bible have to taken in context. Jesus Christ, with the New Testament, says the most important thing to take out of the whole Bible is that God is Love and the most important trait that we can acquire to be like God it to love our neighbor. If we get nothing else from the Bible, this is all that is required. (Of course, this does not mean that we should not follow Man's Laws while we live on this Earth.)
How can it be a derail when God clearly does not want you to have editing power? He expects you to make new posts for corrections.
Yes, but the moment a Muslim says Jesus PBUH is not God in any way, shape or form, that is a sin. A Muslim must say this. So they will sin. Also, Muslims don't believe Jesus PBUH died on the cross, so at this point, they lie, and that's another sin. There are several things I can list which Muslims have to do simply because they are Muslim, which is a sin according to Christianity. With that in mind, your explanation is essentially that, unless we are able to be perfect, we are going to hell. Which makes your statement so conditional on something that can never happen, so it is effectively meaningless. You are basically saying "You can either be Christian or be as good as God and then you'll get into heaven." Keep in mind that, in Islam sin can be atoned for without blood. I thought this was the case in Chrisitianity too - confession and hail mary's and all that?
