Posted on 11/24/2008 12:56:31 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Christian leaders rarely do, and they wait until it's no longer a secret to admit to it. And I have known lots and lots of self-righteous Christians who don't admit any moral failure whatsoever, but they sure like to preach to others.
Arasina,
“What constitutes good and what are its origins?”
Exactly! All the science, all the matter, all the formulas and time spans and chaos and “chance”....
None who are atheists or evolutionists can touch the origins of intangibles such as the knowledge of good and evil. None of them can touch the intangible term LOVE and all it includes.
In a world where evolution and atheism is the ‘answer’ for some, they need to forever cease from using terms like these:
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, meekness, hate, good, bad, hope, trust, behave, misbehave, compassion, care....and a host of other terms relative to human behaviors.....that are literally ‘untouchable’!
In a world of evolution, of ‘matter’ and chaos, none of these intangibles can exist. The only term that can exist in evolution that is intangible is “instinct”. But instinct and evolution never taught love, or knowledge of good and evil.
There is no point in history where a molecule divided and suddenly it was able to determine “good” or “bad”. Never did a molecule divide and say “Ooooooo I love that”, or “I hate that”. How utterly ludicrous!
Personally, the evolutionists/atheists’ story is dead in the water right here. And yet our world is full of all these terms - good, bad, love, hate even among our atheists and evolutionists. For an athiest to say they do not believe in God, a Creator God, and yet use language that could not exist with it being given by a Supreme Being, is almost humorous (sic). Same with an evolutionist. Both speak from both sides of their mouths if they use terms like ‘love’. They actually believe ‘instinct’ and evolution taught ‘love’ and the knowledge of good and evil from absolutely nothing. They have to say, ‘It was chaos that gave us Love and knowledge of good and evil’. The buck stops here.
I believe it is time all of you who deny the Creator God to own up to these facts or start living like the instinctive animals you think you evolved from. You cannot have it both ways and you are intelligent enough to know it. You cannot tell your children you ‘love them’ when you cannot begin to conceive of where ‘LOVE’ came into being - other than to say ‘it evolved’. I’ll bet you even claim you know what LOVE ‘feels’ like, and yet you can’t come close to touching it! You can’t see it either, but you KNOW it’s there, don’t you! But you are hellbent on the almighty, “I have to see it to believe it!” Sure you do.......
Oh - LOVE evolved....? The burden of PROOF is on you!
Which leads me to one other point. Nevermind Augustinian quotes. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.”
I did not see Jesus on that cross, yet I am certain....I’m SURE it did happen. I am also CERTAIN he did rise on the third day. I did not see the creation, yet I believe it occured.
(We are in fact here!) (Read Romans 1 - it is loaded.)
Some of you out there are CERTAIN we all crawled up on a beach somewhere and developed a very complex mind and body over time. None of you were there and yet you believe it.
Faith in God, or faith in some form of evolution and/or chaos....both require faith since we did not see these things take place. (Some did see Jesus hang on a cross, and recorded it, while no human ever ‘saw’ evolution, the big bang or any other derivitives of it, yet have their faith in it.)
A reasonable mind knows this to be true. A reasonable mind knows certain intangibles cannot readily be explained away. Knowledge of good and evil came from somewhere and I do not hear the best of the best of writers dissecting the beginnings of LOVE or the knowledge of ‘good and evil’. This subject is in fact avoided by many and yet it is a highly unique feature of humanity itself along with the other intangibles mentioned.
Faith is then required by all humans (instilled in them, actually) - whether we all want to admit it or not. Yes athiests, you do have faith. Your faith is in a statement that says ‘there is no God’. But you cannot PROVE he does NOT exist, so you do in fact place faith in something you cannot see. You do not have the means to PROVE God either way, do you!?
Since faith is required by all, I will stand with many others of long ago.....to suggest that faith be placed somewhere that provides an end with a means! Eternity with the Creator in His home sounds far superior to the alternative of promised fire for those who choose to ignore Him.
The true motivator though, should be “Love”. The unique love given to humankind. Love for the One who died and rose to assure a home in heaven for each of us who choose His Way.
All this to say something very simple: We ALL have faith - Now where are you going to choose to put it?
Someone once said about God, the He uses
“...the simple things to confound the ‘wise’.....”
bump
Only two reasons for men to do the right thing....fear/love of God OR fear/love of fellow man. You choose which is the more compelling of the two.
The main point is that there are waaay too many coincidences in the universe to make me think it was all random. I’ve got a million of ‘em, but those two made me go from “I’d doubt it” to “probably”.
Here - I’ll help your analogy...
What’s really impressive is that when your shooter goes to examine his shots, he finds next to every hole a paint brush and paint with which to paint his bulls-eye.
It is amazing isn’t it?
They do exist, although they are chemical reactions in your brain rather than physical manifestations.
The latter, for sure.
Fellow man has no ability to damn you to eternal suffering; you help your fellow man without promise or fear of postmortem reward or punishment.
You do it because it's the right thing to do, not because some celestial dictator tells you to.
Indeed they might. Some of the human sacrifices in pagan Celtic Britain were willing to be consecrated and have their throats slit, because trhey believed they were rewarded with honors inthe Druid heaven.
As another example, certain Islamic muhajidin argue that using Muslim civilians as shields is not morally offensive because if the shield dies, he or she dies as a martyr (shahid) and attains paradise.
All of the arguments against religion are correct, if you find the appropriate false religion to apply them to. I'm no defender of false religions and false gods. Quite the contrary.
I said this relative to someone being able to touch these things. Atheists, evolutionists and others are so hung up on touching or seeing.....but they can’t see any of these things - yet all these and morality...continue to ‘govern’ the majority of humanity.
Having said that - God (and his son) still governs all, even though it may not appear as such sometimes.
There's nothing wrong with any of those things, and none of them are exclusionary to "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."
Show me one that contradicts the other.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, meekness, hate, good, bad, hope, trust, behave, misbehave, compassion, care.....In a world of evolution, of ‘matter’ and chaos, none of these intangibles can exist.
Again - none of THESE....along with morality can exist for those who think they have to see or touch in order to believe in God.
No; that’s not relevant. The point of the analogy is that it illustrates the confusion about selective sampling; hence, the Texas Sharpshooter who brings a paintbursh and can to paint bulls-eyes around his shots after the fact is the correct analogy.
Non-believers take philosophy very seriously, and are perfectly fine with concepts that they cannot empirically see and touch, they just don't need an invisible authoritarian to make them exist.
Religion was mankind's first crack at philosophy, although a very poor one. That is why so many elements of religion and philosophy are parallel.
Religion is to philosophy what alchemy is to chemistry and what astrology is to astronomy. Its just taking us a little longer to shake than the latter two.
Nonsense. The basic elements of logic were studied long before Christianity existed.
You mean like the way there is an exact integer numbers of days in a year... er, nevermind... perhaps you mean the way there is about the same amount of land north and south of the equator... ah, somebody help me out here....
Obviously, your "coincidences" are examples of cherry-picking: heads I win, tails doesn't count.
Non Sequitur. The fact that someone makes outlandish claims on one subject does not necessarily disqualify that person from being respected on other subjects (though it does give grounds for increased scrutiny and skepticism).
For example: Isaac Newton spent developed a rather bizarre skein of "Biblical prophecies" of the sort commonly found these days in vanity-press crank literature. He spent more time and effort on this pursuit than he did in laying the foundations for modern mathematics and physics. That does not make him any less a genius in the latter fields of endeavor.
Reason is based on Christianity (or, at the least, an uncaused cause that commands we reject superstitious idolatry).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.