Rules is rules...
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Posted on 07/16/2007 4:13:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
Years ago I had a series of debates with the literary scholar Stanley Fish. Our topic was political correctness. I portrayed Fish as the grand deconstructor of Western civilization, and he fired back in There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech, several chapters of which are an answer to my arguments. As I got to know Fish, however, I recognized that although he defended some of the practices being promoted in the name of multiculturalism and diversity, he was not himself a politically correct thinker. We became friends, and in 1992 he and his wife attended my wedding.
Fish has of late been demonstrating his political incorrectness by writing critically of separation of church and state, and also by challenging leading atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christoher Hitchens. Indeed Fish uses his detailed knowledge of Milton as well as his famous skills of literary deconstruction to show the emptiness of the atheist arguments.
In his New York Times blog, Fish takes up the argument advanced by Dawkins and company that belief in God is a kind of evasion. According to this argument, we avoid the responsibilities of this life by putting our hopes in another life. Religion makes us do crazy things.
Fish takes as an example of the Harris-Hitchens-Dawkins critique the behavior of Christian in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Christian becomes aware that he is carrying a huge burden on his back (Original Sin) and he wants to get rid of it. Another fellow named Evangelist tells him to "flee the wrath to come." Evangelist points Christian in the direction of a shining light. But Christian can't clearly see the light. Still, he begins to run in that direction. Bunyan describes his wife and children who "began to cry after him to return, but the man put his fingers in his ears and ran on, crying Life! Life! Eternal Life!"
For Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins, this is precisely the kind of crazy behavior that religion produces. Here is a man abandoning his duties and chasing after something he isn't even sure about. Fish writes, "I have imagined this criticism coming from outside the narrative, but in fact it is right there on the inside." Bunyan not only has Christian's wife and children imploring him to return, he also has Christian's friends struggling to make sense of his actions.
Fish comments, "What this shows is that the objections Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens make to religious thinking are themselves part of religious thinking. Rather than being swept under the rug of a seamless discourse, they are the very motor of that discourse." Citing the atheists' portrait of religion as unquestioning obedienece, Fish writes, "I know of no religious framework that offers such a complacement picture of the life of faith, a life that is always presented as a minefield of difficulties, obstacles and temptations that must be negotiated by a limited creature in the effort to become aligned with the Infinite."
Fish observes that while religious people over the centuries have dug deeply into the questions of life, along come our shallow atheists who present arguments as if they first thought of them, arguments that Christians have long examined with a seriousness and care that is missing in contemporary atheist discourse.
In a follow-up article, Fish deepens his inquiry by looking at the kind of evidence that atheists like Hawkins and Harris present for their “scientific” outlook. Harris, for example, writes that “there will probably come a time when we will achieve a detailed understanding of human happiness and of ethical judgments themselves at the level of the brain.” Fish asks, what is this confidence based on? Not, he notes, on a record of progress. Science today can no more explain ethics or human happiness than it could a thousand years ago.
Still, Harris says that scientific research hasn’t panned out because the research is in the early stage and few of the facts are in. Fish comments, “Of course one conclusion that could be drawn is that the research will not pan out because moral intuitions are not reducible to phyhsical processes. That may be why so few of the facts are in.”
Fish draws on examples from John Milton to make the point is that unbelief, no less than belief, is based on a perspective. If you assume that material reality is all there is, then you are only going to look for material explanations, and any explanations that are not material will be rejected out of hand. Fish’s objection is not so much that this is dogmatism but that it is dogmatism that refuses to recognize itself as such. At least religious people like Milton have long recognized that their core beliefs are derived from faith.
Fish concludes that “the arguments Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens mostly rely on are just not good arguments.” We can expect our unbelieving trio to react with their trademark scorn, but Fish has scored some telling points.
Is your aliveness both in the spacetime universe and transcending it? If not you have a small brane, according to Lisa Randall.
Rules is rules...
What is incompatible about them? They are describing different aspects of our reality and where they intersect they don't disagree. The GUT (grand unified theory) is going to unite them not prove one of them wrong. Again just like E=MCsquared did not disprove F=MA, ∆P*∆M≥ hbar will likewise not be overturned, non commutative math is here to stay, regardless of differences in spacetime.
But God created time and space itself, it does not limit him. You might get somewhere in the argument with the created god of the Mormons who lives around the star Kolob, or with the Scientologists and thier Thetans and Xenu in their spaceships, or somesuch, but the argument makes no sense regarding God the creator of the universe itself.
What evidence do you have that Xenu is not the creator of the universe?
Think about how remarkeable it is to have a God defined in the Bible thirty five hundred years ago that still stands consistent with the ancient text and consistent with modern knowledge!
Do you really think that Noah's Ark and Joshua's stopping the Sun and the Moon is consistent with modern knowledge? ROFLOL
If they did, I am sure I would know about it. They haven't. Some nut case may have made the claim of course, but none have provided evidence. Do you see why it is important to provide evidence?
Says who? What's the sum of the interior angles of a triangle...without assuming it's Euclidian?
This is so unbelievably trite. It sounds like a smart, though fairly uneducated, high school student who just stumbled onto the skeptics ring. I remember such a student trying many of these points out on me the year after high school. She was studying at the feet of a lapsed Presbyterian who taught logic at a local junior college. After I had countered every point and suggested that if her argument was wrong, she had everything to lose. She said, “Yeah, Pascal’s wager.” I asked, “Well?” She replied, “Look, I’m a hedonist and I like the way I’m living.”
I’m ignorant, eh? Well, I guess breezily dismissing me, calling me ignorant, and stating that “The vast scientific acknowledgements from biblical accounts are way too many to start mentioning” without ever bothering to cite any just put me right in my place. Here are SOME of the examples where the Bible contradicts Science, just from the book of Genesis:
Genesis
“God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
God purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey.
“In the beginning” 1:1
When was the universe created?
“In the beginning” 1:1-2
The Gap Theory
The Genesis 1 creation account conflicts with the order of events that are known to science. In Genesis, the earth is created before light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants before any animals. The true order of events was just the opposite. 1:1-2:3
God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day. Yet he didn’t make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day (1:14-19). And how could there be “the evening and the morning” on the first day if there was no sun to mark them? 1:3-5
God spends one-sixth of his entire creative effort (the second day) working on a solid firmament. This strange structure, which God calls heaven, is intended to separate the higher waters from the lower waters. 1:6-8
Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes (1:14-19). 1:11
God lets “the earth bring forth” the plants, rather than creating them directly. Maybe Genesis is not so anti-evolution after all. 1:11
In an apparent endorsement of astrology, God places the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament so that they can be used “for signs”. This, of course, is exactly what astrologers do: read “the signs” in the Zodiac in an effort to predict what will happen on Earth. 1:14
God makes two lights: “the greater light [the sun] to rule the day, and the lesser light [the moon] to rule the night.” But the moon is not a light, but only reflects light from the sun. And why, if God made the moon to “rule the night”, does it spend half of its time moving through the daytime sky? 1:16
“He made the stars also.” God spends a day making light (before making the stars) and separating light from darkness; then, at the end of a hard day’s work, and almost as an afterthought, he makes the trillions of stars. 1:16
“And God set them [the stars] in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.” 1:17
In verse 11, God “let the earth bring forth” the plants. Now he has the earth “bring forth” the animals as well. So maybe the creationists have it all wrong. Maybe God created livings things through the process of evolution. 1:24
God gave humans dominion over every other living thing on earth. 1:26
God commands us to “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over ... every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” 1:28
“I have given you every herb ... and every tree ... for meat.” 1:29
All animals were originally herbivores. Tapeworms, vampire bats, mosquitoes, and barracudas — all were strict vegetarians, as they were created by God. 1:30
“God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” He purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey. 1:31
In Genesis 1 the entire creation takes 6 days, but the universe is at least 12 billion years old, with new stars constantly being formed. 1:31
Humans were not created instantaneously from dust and breath, but evolved over millions of years from simpler life forms. 2:7
After making the animals, God has Adam name them all. The naming of several million species must have kept Adam busy for a while. 2:18-22
God fashions a woman out of one of Adam’s ribs.
Because of this story, it was commonly believed (and sometimes it is still said today) that males have one less rib than females. When Vesalius showed in 1543 that the number of ribs was the same in males and females, it created a storm of controversy. 2:19
God curses the serpent. From now on the serpent will crawl on his belly and eat dust. One wonders how he got around before — by hopping on his tail, perhaps? But snakes don’t eat dust, do they? 3:14
Because Adam listened to Eve, God cursed the ground and causes thorns and thistles to grow. Before this, according to the (false) Genesis story, plants had no natural defenses. The rose had no thorn, cacti were spineless, holly leaves were smooth, and the nettle had no sting. Foxgloves, oleander, and milkweeds were all perfectly safe to eat. 3:17-18
When Lamech was born, nine generations were alive at once. Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, and Lamech were all alive at the time of Lamech’s birth. Adam lived to see his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson. 5:25
“There were giants in the earth in those days.” Well, I suppose it’s good to know that. But why is there no archaeological evidence for the existence of these giants? 6:4
Noah is told to make an ark that is 450 feet long. 6:14-15
Whether by twos or by sevens, Noah takes male and female representatives from each species of “every thing that creepeth upon the earth.” 7:8
God opens the “windows of heaven.” He does this every time it rains. 7:11
All of the animals boarded the ark “in the selfsame day.” 7:13-14
The flood covered the highest mountain tops (Mount Everest?) with fifteen cubits to spare. 7:20
“The windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained.” This happens whenever it stops raining. 8:2
Noah sends a dove out to see if there was any dry land. But the dove returns without finding any. Then, just seven days later, the dove goes out again and returns with an olive leaf. But how could an olive tree survive the flood? And if any seeds happened to survive, they certainly wouldn’t germinate and grow leaves within a seven day period. 8:8-11
When the animals left the ark, what would they have eaten? There would have been no plants after the ground had been submerged for nearly a year. What would the carnivores have eaten? Whatever prey they ate would have gone extinct. And how did the New World primates or the Australian marsupials find their way back after the flood subsided? 8:19
Noah kills the “clean beasts” and burns their dead bodies for God. According to 7:8 this would have caused the extinction of all “clean” animals since only two of each were taken onto the ark. 8:20-21
“Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Although this would have been good advice for the mythical Noah, it is deadly advice for humankind as a whole. Overpopulation is one of our greatest problems, yet there is nothing in the bible to address it. 9:1
According to this verse, all animals fear humans. Although it is true that many do, it is also true that some do not. Sharks and grizzly bears, for example, are generally much less afraid of us than we are of them. 9:2
“Into your hand are they (the animals) delivered.” God gave the animals to humans, and they can do whatever they please with them. This verse has been used by bible believers to justify all kinds of cruelty to animals and environmental destruction. 9:2
God is rightly filled with remorse for having killed his creatures. He even puts the rainbow in the sky to remind himself of his promise to the animals not to do it again. But rainbows are caused by the nature of light, the refractive index of water, and the shape of raindrops. There were rainbows billions of years before humans existed. 9:13
Some creationists believe that this verse refers to continental drift, which, they say, began to occur during the days of Pelag (which means “division”), about 100 or so years after the flood. But many other creationists disagree. 10:25
“The whole earth was of one language.” But this could not be true, since by this time (around 2400 BCE) there were already many languages, each unintelligible to the others. 11:1, 6
God worries that people could build a tower high enough to reach him (them?) in heaven, and that by so doing they will become omnipotent. 11:4-6
According to the Tower of Babel story, the many human languages were created instantaneously by God. But actually the various languages evolved gradually over long periods of time. 11:9
The ridiculously long lives of the patriarchs. 11:10-32
“And they returned to the land of the Philistines.” But the Philistines didn’t arrive in the region of Canaan until around 1200 BCE — 800 years after Abraham’s supposed migration from Ur. 21:32, 26:1, 8, 15, 18
Laban learns “by experience” that God has blessed him for Jacob’s sake. “By experience” means “by divination”, at least that is how most other versions translate this verse. 30:27
Jacob displays his (and God’s) knowledge of biology by having goats copulate while looking at streaked rods. The result is streaked baby goats. 30:37-39
God (or an angel) praises Jacob for his fancy genetic work in Gen.30:37-39. 31:11-12
Joseph and his magic divining cup. 44:5, 44:15
For several hundred more, go to:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/long.html
Please, please, please educate me out of my pathetic ignorance!! Please tell me why the above aren’t Biblical contradictions to Science, if not common sense as well (depending on which of the more than 50 versions of the Bible you are reading – which one is the right one? Isn’t it bigoted and perhaps racist as well to ignore all the other world’s major religions and declaim Christianity the only “true” religion? ). I guess your omniscient God didn’t look ahead and see that we’d screw up his TRUE WORD with our little translation hijinks. Maybe He could’ve done a better job - considering the only thing at stake was the immortal souls of billions of people - that He created his own infinite torture chamber to preside over for eternity - in His infinite mercy. Why did he create flawed beings that He KNEW would fail, then build a torture chamber for them? When He saw WWI & WWII from Heaven, why didn’t He come down and stop it? Could it be because He doesn’t exist? Oh, I’m so sorry!! I didn’t mean to actually USE my mind! THAT’s where I’ve lost my way! I just have to accept that the Bible is God’s One True Word, and accept it on FAITH, even though every piece of not only scientific, but common-sense evidence causes any reasonable person to see the Bible for what it is – a collection of primitive, superstitious fairy-tales.
Not ONE of those verses contradict science except in your tunneled visioned mind. I'll leave you with this and if you're wise you'll take it to heart:
Words means things.
I don’t think anything about God is simple, except for the core which is love. And your view that God created something to get rid of it in a thousand years is in a way correct; he created the law to demonstrate to man and angel that even a simple set of rules cannot provide salvation (man cannot save himself through perfection) but must look to God and enter into a relationship with him. The relationship is the end, the goal, the desired result. A people for God.
As far as not having a sin nature it was tried. Man did not have a sin nature until he chose freely to sin, but turned from God and listened to evil and obeyed evil, not God.
The idea that God is imperfect is not Biblical; it essentially makes the Bible a lie, which makes God not truthful as well! To view God as imperfect puts an awful strain on the universe . . . it’s a complex work to have errors in it . . . I think the magnificence of it argues for perfection and not the reverse.
I really think that Leibniz got short shrift. Voltaire made terrible fun of his ideas in a play, but the idea that God created a world with the absolute minimum of evil required to achieve his goal of a free people in relationship with him is a powerful one for me.
Well, I have to cut and paste on this one:
Question: What is the conflict between quantum mechanics and relativity theory
that I have heard about?
LeGrande, you seem to be saying that the faster than light effect is not yet shown? Regardless it is within the theory and so makes them mutually incompatible at that level.
As far as Xenu being master of the universe . . . ah, hmmmm . . . I’ll go with “Christ said he isn’t.”
Do you deny the possibility of the supernatural? Of a miracle?
Galileo . . . another Christian and a scientist. To quote him: “God is known by nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word.”
I'll reply to this one just because it caught my attention in the past. I believe Newton did his work in optics in part because of this verse. Newton was a believing Christian, and this is a pet theory of mine. You (or the website you cut and paste from) assumes that rainbows appeared prior -- but on what basis? I think Newton was curious as well and actually looked at light to try to figure out what God changed. Did he change the nature of condensation and refraction? The physical laws of the universe and light themselves? Clarity in the atmosphere? It's a curious question, but one that is not contradictory at all to nature -- ONCE you see the possiblity of miracle -- of supernatural action on the part of God. It's his universe, he can do what he wishes within it.
You are joking, right? That’s the most pathetic response I’ve ever seen; it even beats your last one. You didn’t even refute ONE of the items I posted - not ONE!!!!
May I point out a contradiction in your Freeper handle? “sirchtruth” means Search for Truth, right? Why would you need to search for the truth when you have already FOUND ALL OF THE TRUTH in the Bible? What are you searching for? Is your sub-conscious trying to tell you something? Lucky for you, your standards of establishing truth approach non-existence - for your critical thinking and reasoning skills are evidently extremely poor. Not to mention your grammar skills: “Words means things.” Hunh??
Or are you just a troll?
I agree.
Errrr... Greg. Let me begin by stating that it confuses me terribly that God would ever do something that He would feel remorse for - since He is omniscient wouldn’t He realize that He was about to make a mistake? Why would an infinitely merciful being wipe out all life on Earth (Save Noah and the contents of the Ark) with a Flood? Couldn’t He simply will those who displeased Him out of existence, and spare the innocent? Wouldn’t that be more efficent? And merciful? Or couldn’t He have just designed things to work a little better in the 1st place?
Now, as to your question about light - there is absolutely no evidence - though scientists have looked very hard for it, that the speed of light, or, indeed, the nature of light itself has not changed since the 1st moment after the Big Bang - which was approximately 13 billion years ago. Furthermore, using telescopes, we can look at objects that are very near (from several light years away, to those billions of light years away, and the photons coming from each retain the same characteristics. The light coming from the furthest objects is billions of years old, so we can sample photons from near the beginning of time and these show absolutely no differences in characteristics from photons that are produced from a light bulb or any other source today. Again, you simply don’t understand science. There is no evidence that the laws of refraction have changed, either. Clarity in the atmosphere is a large variable dependent on many factors, like solar insolation rates that drive weather systems, dust, humidity, temperature, the local adiabatic lapse rate which results in cloud formation, the temperature-dewpoint spread, etc. As I have pointed out previously, Newton was a brilliant mathematician and theorist. He was however, like any one of us, a flawed creature and some of his theories and beliefs, such as his belief in God and religion, were just plain wrong. If you understand science, there is no reason to call upon any supernatural beliefs in order to explain the Universe or the phenomena which comprise it, including us.
For further reference:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE411.html
Claim CE411:
The speed of light was faster in the past, so objects millions of light-years away are much younger than millions of years.
Source:
Norman, Trevor G. and Barry Setterfield, 1987. The Atomic Constants, Light, and Time. Flinders University of South Australia, School of Mathematical Sciences, Technical Report. http://www.ldolphin.org/setterfield/report
Response:
1. The possibility that the speed of light has not been constant has received much attention from physicists, but they have found no evidence for any change. Many different measurements of the speed of light have been made in the last 180 or so years. The older measurements were not as accurate as the latest ones. Setterfield chose 120 data points from 193 measurements available (see Dolphin n.d. for the data), and the line of best fit for these points shows the speed of light decreasing. If you use the entire data set, though, the line of best fit shows the speed increasing. However, a constant speed of light is well within the experimental error of the data.
2. If Setterfield’s formulation of the changes in physical parameters were true, then there should have been 417 days per year around 1 C.E., and the earth would have melted during the creation week as a result of the extremely rapid radioactive decay (Morton et al. 1983).
3. As an aside, some creationists assert that fundamental laws have not changed (Morris 1974, 18).
References:
1. Dolphin, Lambert, n.d. Table 1: Master Set of 193 Values of c. http://www.ldolphin.org/cdata.txt. See also http://www.ldolphin.org/constc.shtml
2. Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books.
3. Morton, G. R., H. S. Slusher, R. C. Bartman and T. G. Barnes, 1983. Comments on the velocity of light. Creation Research Society Quarterly 20: 63-65.
Further Reading:
Aardsma, Gerald E., 1988a, “Has the speed of light decayed?,” Impact #179, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA.
Aardsma, Gerald E., 1988b, “Has the speed of light decayed recently?,” Creation Research Society Quarterly 25(1): 36f.
awesome post.
Since you mentioned the Biblical Flood - here’s a few more contradictions in that particular fairy tale:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html#CG200
Use the above link, then scroll down to this section:
CH400-CH599: Flood
CH400: Source of Flood
CH401. Flood from vapor canopy.
CH410. Flood from comet.
CH420. Hydroplate theory.
CH430. Runaway subduction.
CH500: The Ark
CH500. Noah’s ark has been found.
CH501. We can expect to find Noah’s ark on Mount Ararat.
CH502.1. Noah’s ark may have been photographed on Ararat in 1949.
CH502.2. ERTS satellite photographed Noah’s ark in 1973.
CH503. Noah’s ark has been found near Dogubayazit, Turkey.
CH503.1. Anchor stones of Noah’s ark have been found.
CH503.2. The Turkish government officially recognized the site of Noah’s ark.
CH504.1. James Bryce found a 4-foot timber high on Ararat.
CH504.2. Navarra retrieved hand-hewn wood from high on Ararat.
CH504.3. Hardwicke Knight found soft wood timbers on Ararat.
CH505.1. Yearam guided three vile scientists to Noah’s ark in 1916.
CH505.2. An 1883 Turkish expedition found Noah’s ark.
CH505.3. Prince Nouri of Baghdad found the ark in 1887.
CH505.4. Hagopian visited the ark with his uncle around 1908.
CH505.5. Russian aviator Roskovitsky photographed the ark.
CH505.6. Resit, a Kurdish farmer, found the ark in 1948.
CH505.7. Local Kurds led Ed Davis to the ark in 1943.
CH505.8. Ed Behling was led to the ark in 1973.
CH508. Chinese treasure ships show Noah’s ark was feasible.
CH510-CH529: Animals on the Ark
CH511. Insects survived on floating vegetation mats.
CH512. All kinds could fit.
CH512.1. Juveniles of large animals were taken aboard.
CH512.2. The average land animal is the size of a sheep.
CH513. Animals hibernated on the ark.
CH514. The crew could feed and care for the animals.
CH514.1. Many animals do not require fresh or live food.
CH520. Pre-Flood animals lived in a uniform climate.
CH521. Animals’ exacting needs could have evolved after the Flood.
CH540-CH599: Effects of the Flood
CH541. Aquatic organisms could have survived the Flood.
CH542. Plants could have survived the Flood.
CH550. The geologic column was deposited by the Flood.
(see also CC364: Seashells on mountains.)
CH560: Fossils were deposited by the Flood.
CH561: Fossil order was determined by the Flood.
CH561.1. Fossils are sorted by ecological zonation.
CH561.2. Fossils are sorted hydrologically.
CH561.3. Fossils are sorted by the ability to escape.
CH561.4. Fossils are sorted by a combination of these factors.
(see also CC361: Fossils form quickly.)
CH570. High mountains were raised during the Flood.
CH580. The Flood shaped the earth’s surface in other ways.
CH581. The Grand Canyon was carved by retreating Flood waters.
CH581.1. Rapid erosion on Mount St. Helens shows Grand Canyon could form suddenly.
CH590. The Flood caused an ice age.
So the implication is that God will not ever create any other living creatures besides US. Because if he did they'd have to be shown what he showed us through allowing us to fall into sin through 'free will'. Evil would have to be introduced to the universe each time a new species of human-like creatures are created...in order that they can learn the lesson of 'God's love'.
The existence of evil in itself nearly disproves a perfect God. God must be struggling with evil because he first made angels that rebelled against him and then he created man that rebelled against him.
I don't think so.
10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; A good understanding have all those who do His commandments. His praise endures forever. (Psalm 111:10)
7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, But fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7).
You're not only going through life with "blinders on"; up to this point in your life you have made a conscience decision to reject Jesus Christ and you have decided, after having been told the truth, to dismiss the only chance you have of reconciling with God and escaping the hell you claim to hate so much.
There a God, you will stand before Him one day, and you will not only give an account of your life, you will be helpless before the Holy God Who gave His Son to spare you the just consequences for your rebellion, the Son Whom you kicked to the curb and the Son Who will be there when you are asked why you rejected Him.
Don't feel bad for me. I am no longer enemies with God, I am no longer living under the judgement and wrath of the One Who punishes sin, and I thank God every day for what He did for me when He didn't have to acknowledge my existence.
Feel bad for yourself. Having never experienced the salvation of God, having never experienced His care, His work in your life, the peace and security and joy that comes only from knowing God and having a relationship with Him, your life will be wasted and, at the end, you will go to a place where God never wanted you to go.
I've been where you are. You've chosen to stay where you are and not give God a chance and not experience what I and millions of others have who have accepted God's gift of eternal life. And until you do choose to know God, then you can't credibily state that I am going through life with blinders on, or with anything around my neck. You just don't know.
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