Posted on 11/04/2001 10:27:45 AM PST by Sungirl
Something special I read which has made me feel more confident about my efforts at faith, was the statement that the "curiosity" about God is a pesonal invitation to get to know Him and bring him into your life. That should make your friend feel very good; she has been given a personal invitation from God Himself. :) Don't worry Sungirl, you'll do and say the right things.
It is amazing how quickly people are to draw conclusions about things based on a minimal amount of information. My feeling is, that no matter how smart we think that we are and no matter how much we know about the origins of life and the universe, we remain enormously ignorant.
The complexity of life itself, the laws that govern the universe and the amazing way in which this earth, a living planet, provides everything that life needs to sustain it, points to intelligent design.
Through my own personal struggle with faith, I have learned that there is a dilemma that one comes against when considering faith in God. Once a person accepts that there is a God, one enters into the realm of absolutes and this realm can be frightening because if there is an absolute God who gave mankind absolute laws in which to live by, then this means that one day this God is going to administer absolute judgement on me. At this point, the message of salvation through Christ may be attractive but it is also tempting to back away at this point, and look for some other way to make sense of it all.
Here is a web site that may be helpful to you and your friend. It has some really good articles that use science to support God.
May God Be With You.
"Near-death experiences" are a very poor case, since we've known how to artificially induce them for decades (without harming or killing a person of course). It is a fairly well understood neurophysiological effect and has no relationship to anything supernatural.
That's often a good start. The Old-Man-With-A-Beard in the sky as we thought and were taught as children doesn't exist. We agree.
A good beginning definition, at least it has been useful to me, is to define God as "the creative process of the universe."
I emphasize this is a beginning, incomplete, definition. But it can start the discussion in a good and useful direction.
What is so important is when our body dies our spirit/soul continues to exist and it must go either of two places - heaven or hell. Hell was made by God for satan and his angels not for us humans. But then sin came into our lives by Adam's fall and, thus, if man lives in sin when his body dies his spirit/soul is relegated to hell with satan and his (demonic) angels.
All the above, however, is based on faith. To believe in God's Word, to believe that we are spirit beings, etc. requires faith. If one is not willing to believe and have faith that all this is true, then we are lost from the beginning. And all we have left to believe in is evolution - in a THEORY.
Because we have free wills, Jesus asks us to invite Him to be a part of our life; he will not force Himself onto us. In doing so the Holy Spirit comes into our (spirit) being and makes us a new creation.
Or the beautiful little Cerambicidae beetles (Long Horned Beetles)that mimic wasps right down to the flickering of wings and antennae and the herky jerky movement of a wasp.
Or the little Wrens that fly back here every spring from South America to nest in the birdhouse above the compost pile.
Or Lake Michigan near my house that gives me a new look every time I drive by it.
These are not accidents.
But if the "being in the sky God" is what she doesn't believe in, congratulate her, so far, she's in agreement with most theologians.
This is only true in cases where the terms haven't been well-defined. The fact is, things such as "beautiful" and "love" ARE becoming well-defined as technology improves because we can extract coherent definitions from the environment even though people have a hard time describing them. The results have been very good. Mathematics has long held that it was possible to derive process definition in theory, even if people can't describe the process, based on the results. Now that fact and capability is catching up with the theory, this is turning out to be as true as many theorists believed. I find it intriguing that computers are able to create real and useful definitions for things that humans have poor facilities for expressing.
I'm not going to argue semantics or quote chapter and verse here. For me though, the mere fact that your friend is capable of asking such a question is proof to me that God exists. Holding my newborn daughter in my arms was proof that God exists. Seeing the sun rise, and watching as the geese wing their way south, that is proof that God exists.
Someone already pointed out that if there was simple proof, then faith would be easy, and our freewill compromised. I can't argue with that, and I won't. It's not easy to have faith...faith that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and all else that God is. That is the challenge of faith, to believe and love God and his son Jesus Christ, no matter what happens. To have faith that He has a plan for you, no matter how bad things seem to appear. That is one of the challenges of faith.
My world seemed so much darker when I believed that there was nothing after this life. That death was the end of it all. What good was living then at that point? What would you accomplish? What good was all the pain and suffering? That life would end and the lights would go out and I would simply cease to exist except as a fading memory for a few people. But my belief and faith in God, and the saving power of Christ has changed that. There is a purpose to my life, and a plan that I cannot see, but that I have faith in.
So many people have offered excellent book titles for your friend to read. I'd suggest Matthew or Mark.
Proof of evolution? There isn't any. For every alleged "proof" that the creation worshipers provide, there is also a proof that the Creator worshipers can provide. Always ends up in a battle on the flesh-level and leads nobody to an understanding or relationship with God.
Look around. Notice how everything is in perfect balance. If the earth were rotating just three miles per hour faster than it is, all the balance on the planet would be unfit for life. If there wasn't the tilt to the earth's axis, the planet would be uninhabitable. If the earth's orbit around the sunwere three miles per hour faster than it is, it would spin off into icy space and if it were three miles per hour slower, it would crash into the sun. If we didn't have the moon, to create our tides, the oceans would choke, as the tides clean the ocean and enhance the O2 production.
Everywhere you look you see intelligent design. 15,000 different chemicle processes occur in a human cell each minute. Each one is essential for life. The statistical probability of life occurring from nonliving matter exceeds the possibility of the event ever happening by chance.
The first and second laws of thermodynamics show that evolution cannot happen. The universe is decaying, not moving toward more order, yet the evo-theory wants you to believe that theses two laws of physics apply to all of the universe except their pet theory of evolution. It is almost like me saying that the law of gravity applies to every object in the universe, except me...that's why I can fly and nobody else can. Ridiculous! You'd rightly think me to be nutty if I said such a thing, because we both know that the law of gravity is universal and I am not exempt from it. So too, are the first and second laws of thermodynamics also universal in their application. The evolutionists have consistantly had to elongate the time period of the evolutionary processes to accomidate their fanciful theory, for as science has observed more and more of the universe, their theory seems to crumble...then they say...."oh...I guess it just took longer than we originally thought". Don't believe me? Look back at the various theories for the age of the earth. You'll find that as the years went by, the evos had to add more and more years to their dating, to accomidate the statistical improbabilities.
Last point. Geochronometers. These are earth signs (time clocks) that help us date the earth. For instance...at the current rate of decay in the size of the sun (entropy...2nd law of thermodynamics), just 500,000 years ago, the sun's size would have been so large that every living thing on this planet would have been incinerated. Look at the moon; by it's orbital decay rate, just 50,000 years ago, the moon's proximatey would have been so close that the tidal fluctuations alone would have flooded great areas of the planet and the gravitational pull would have created eathquakes that would have torn the earth up so badly that earthquakes would be relentless, with daily volcanic eruptions. A place unsuitable for life. Yet the evos want us to believe that the cosmos are (in my best Carl Sagan voice) "billions and billions of years old".
Creationists begin with a Creator who created everything for a purpose. It makes sense and the creation itself testifies to this truth.
The evolutionists on the other hand wish for you to believe that nothing created everything, out of nothing and for no purpose and by some radom chance, everthing worked out perfectly. Talk about a supernatural event!
All the words won't convince anyone. Just look around. When you pick up an arrowhead from the stream, you can see how it has intellegent design as opposed to random rocks that have been beaten around by the river. You can clearly see the hand of its creator by observation. Now look at the universe. Do you see purpose? Do you see intellegent design? Do you see th balance in the universe?
Psalm 19:1 says; "The heavens declare the glory of God and the earth, His handiwork (in original Hebrew, "His fingerwork"). Roman's chapter 1 says that everyone already knows that God exists, because the creation proves it and proves that the creation is not Him, but was created by Him and that there is no excuse for supressing the truth. Those that do supress this truth worship the creation rather than the creator.
This thread is going to invite some nasty and ungodly debate, as these crevo threads always do. The bottom line is that since the origin of life and higher life forms are neither observable, testable, reproducable, or falsifiyable, it cannot be proven by traditional scientific observational techniques, regardless of the nonsense that will be posted here. You either believe in evolution by faith, or you believe in creation by faith. Look around and let your senses, logic and your heart tell you what you learn from observing the universe.
Proof of God? Look into your heart. Do you see a level of morality? In order for you to have a moral standard, you have to have received it form a moral law giver. Wanna take a guess Who that law giver is? He said that He created us in His image. Animals have no such moral law. He has already written in your heart that He exists; all you have to do is look. Now, do you want a clearer picture of Him manifested? Please read the gospel of John. Before you do, pray a simple prayer, something like this..."God, if you really do exist, then I want to know about you and to know you personally. Please help me to understand what I am about to read, so that I can understand". If your desire is sincere, He'll answer your prayer. Promise.
His best wishes to you.
Your friend.
baa
I hope not, as the Five Proofs are flawed. In this case, the flaws boil down to slippery semantics more than anything, but a person with some abilities in critical debate will identify them rather quickly dispatch the "Proofs" in short order.
Some classic ones, such as Pascal's Wager, tend to have much more subtle flaws, as the flaws are mathematical in nature and require some working knowledge of that subject to disprove (which most people don't have). Some of the proofs of this type really are relatively clever and fascinating curiosities.
Before any meaningfull discussion of "God" can begin, we must work out what "God" is. Here are some questions to start with:
1) Is this being a physical entity, or is it defined as "spirit"?
2) What are the attributes of this being? (Love, Wrath, Hate, Compassion, Omnipotence, etc.) Are these attributes consistent with all accounts of "God", as in the bible, the writings of St. Augustine, C.S. Lewis, etc.
3) If there are conficting accounts of these attributes, can they be reasonably explained?
Just some ideas to kick around. Enjoy/flame as you please.
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