deity

[Kirllan]

I believe in God Almighty because of one very good reason. Jesus Christ.



Jesus Christ rose from the dead around 2000 years ago and according to many Jewish historical records could never find his body either alive or dead and back in that time they took burials very very serious. So for this body to never be found even after 2000 years is a pivotal cornerstone in the revealing that there really is a God who calls himself YHWH or as we translate it today as Yahweh. So you want sure evidence that there is a God, look to the resurrection of Jesus Christ who is alive and at the right hand or God the Father.

Could we not say it was in the interest of his disciples and believers to hide the body?


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For what reason? hiding a body, claiming it to have resurrected, preaching a gospel and getting persecuted and killed for a lie? Would you go through such pain and trouble for a lie? These people paid a huge price for a lie. Constantly having to hide from the law, having brothers and sisters left and right being made into human torches by Nero and thrown into the lions den for Roman entertainment. Do not be callow of such things nor lightly of the sacrifice all Christians have had to make for a 'lie'. My premise stands - Find the body of Jesus Christ and then I will take back my claim. Thanks

 

[Monorail]

I believe in God Almighty because of one very good reason. Jesus Christ.







Jesus Christ rose from the dead around 2000 years ago and according to many Jewish historical records could never find his body either alive or dead and back in that time they took burials very very serious. So for this body to never be found even after 2000 years is a pivotal cornerstone in the revealing that there really is a God who calls himself YHWH or as we translate it today as Yahweh. So you want sure evidence that there is a God, look to the resurrection of Jesus Christ who is alive and at the right hand or God the Father.

Could we not say it was in the interest of his disciples and believers to hide the body?





Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

For what reason? hiding a body, claiming it to have resurrected, preaching a gospel and getting persecuted and killed for a lie? Would you go through such pain and trouble for a lie? These people paid a huge price for a lie. Constantly having to hide from the law, having brothers and sisters left and right being made into human torches by Nero and thrown into the lions den for Roman entertainment. Do not be callow of such things nor lightly of the sacrifice all Christians have had to make for a 'lie'. My premise stands - Find the body of Jesus Christ and then I will take back my claim. Thanks

I'm not sure why the task of finding evidence is placed on the non-believer. Not knowing where the body of Christ is doesn't mean that he's alive. That's a preposterous claim.

I could claim that the disciples are zombies, roaming the earth, unless of course you can provide their bodies.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Lord Disick]

i buhlieve the only higher power is within. There is no great soul in the sky watching us and deciding what is right and wrong. I believe when u ded, u ded. That about it. You're given one life and you control what happens in it and you are the "deity" of your decisions" No one can pass judgment upon you except maybe the cops.

 

[LooseSeal]

I don't believe in a higher power. I was never raised in a really religious household and I guess that God/religion has never been part of my life. I've never had reason to believe in it. I believe that humans believe in higher powers to help rationalize and justify the things we cannot explain - that is why religion is almost a universal thing in countless different cultures. I respect the role that religion/belief in a higher power plays in the lives of people and how it does seem to give a higher meaning to our lives and provide a system of support. I, however, do not need it and do not subscribe to those beliefs - I think I identify more with Camus's philosophy on the absurd. I believe in what I see and what can be rationally explained. I believe that there are still countless things in this world that we don't have an explanation for and we may never find one. Maybe some things don't need a justification.

 

[Monorail]

Personally, even if I wasn't Christian, I'd believe in a higher power.

The chances that things happened the exact way they did to make me here on this earth (look in spoiler for partial list) would have happened are so small.

Spoiler

matter? how did matter form?
how did this matter form DNA?
-- DNA actually, if not for other proteins involved, is unstable.
How did that DNA begin to self replicate?
How did that DNA code the proteins?
How did we go from unicellular to multicellular?

Why are there laws of physics?
What decided the laws of physics?
Why can't we explain the movement in the universe?
etc etc
blahdy blah more stuff here

Nothing happens in a day dude, it could have been (and in fact was) possible that under the right circumstances after millions of days/months/years, inorganic molecules were transformed into organic molecules. Given there isn't enough science out there to prove anything way beyond a reasonable doubt, i am CERTAIN there will be one day. So my answer to the OP is no, i do not believe in a deity and if there was one he/she is certainly cruel.

Why do some suffer more than others?
Why are some prayers unanswered?
What's up with world hunger?

You ask some seriously powerful questions, questions people have struggled with probably since day one and probably always will. So let's talk about them. But before we do, I would like to point out that the idea that "under the right circumstances after millions of days/months/years, inorganic molecules [could have been] transformed into organic molecules" doesn't mean a God doesn't exist who put that into motion. Although I personally don't believe in evolution, I believe the universe started somewhere and could not have been an accident, but must have been started by a higher power. Maybe He got the ball rolling for evolution, maybe He created the earth the way Genesis depicts it in either 6 literal 24-hour days, or 6 periods totaling millions/billions of years, or maybe some other possibility of creation, but whatever the case, He exists, and He made us.

But to get to your questions, I don't think the existence of evil/bad things happening to people disproves the existence of God. The second question is the easiest to answer, I think, and the other two are similar, so I'll start with unanswered prayers. I believe that God knows what we need more than we know what we need. Recently, my friend was rejected by her dream college. That was definitely tough on her. She prayed to get accepted there, and she wasn't. I prayed that she would be accepted there if it was God's will, and I don't believe it was. Perhaps that school would have been bad for her. I don't know, but I know it wasn't the best thing because otherwise God would have allowed it. It's like how little kids wish they could eat nothing but candy, and their parents never let them, because that would be bad. Sometimes we think we know what's best for us, and we don't. Of course, God does allow people to make mistakes and bad things to happen. But the Bible says that those who seek Him with all their hearts will find Him. If we honestly want to follow His plan, sometimes we have to give up our plans. Some prayers have to go unanswered, otherwise it'd be like Bruce Almighty where he just answered "yes" to everyone's prayer requests and it really didn't work.

Moving on to your other questions, you're essentially asking why bad things happen. I propose that it is not God's fault, but man's. The book of Genesis describes the first two humans ever and a choice they are given: they can choose God, or disobey Him and choose sin. They went with the latter. We still have that same choice. Because people have free will, life is necessarily going to suck in at least some ways. We're going to suffer because we live lives filled with mistakes. God's plan was never for that to be the case. We screwed up, and corrupted the earth because of it. If we never sinned, we'd never be living in a world like this. I'm not trying to say that each bad thing is directly correlated with a sin or something karma-y, but that the presence of sin causes bad things to happen. Why does God allow world hunger, the Holocaust, persecution, and countless other tragedies that spread across history? I honestly have no idea. But I know that He didn't cause it, we did. Which tragedies He allows and doesn't allow are beyond my area of comprehension, but I have to trust that all things work together for the good of those who love God, because that's what the Bible says, and I've seen in my own life that God has used my personal tragedies to bring me closer to Him, and to make me better.

Still, we have to wonder why God allows man to do bad things. I believe that ultimately, this is because without free will and the ability to make the wrong choice, we'd never be able to choose God. Forced love isn't love at all. We have to choose God or reject Him, and unfortunately, rejecting God means a sinful world. He doesn't make us suffer. He can free us from suffering forever if we'd only let him.

On a different note, I think the fundamental reasons I believe in God are as follows: this world is too amazing to be an accident and I believe I have a purpose and am not an accident. But the biggest reason can be summed up by this quote from C.S. Lewis: "My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?" What he's saying is that he, like so many of us, saw a world filled with wickedness and injustice, and concluded that God couldn't exist because of it. Then he realized that some kind of standard of right and wrong, justice and injustice, existed inside of Him. That standard of morality, or Moral Law, was put in Him by God, who is our source of morality and goodness. It's like how we all have this idea that murder is a bad thing. Where does this idea come from? Some kind of conscience in us, given to us by God.

Ultimately, I think that the extreme complexities of Creation, the fact that bad things can happen due to free will, and our ability to recognize them as bad don't disprove the idea of God's existence but rather prove it.

This is going to be a hard concept to grasp, but entertain me.

I'm assuming you believe that God is the creator of everything; humans, earth, the universe, the laws of physics, etc.

Taking a look at physics specifically, let's choose a random physics law, say, the law of gravity.

As a believer in a creation, you would say that God is responsible for the law of gravity. This means that God made gravity work the way it does. Larger objects have a stronger gravitational force than smaller objects, etc.

Now entertain this. What if God had made gravity work differently? What if he had made it so that smaller objects posses a larger gravitational force than larger ones? Would it still be the law of gravity? Well, sure it would. We don't know any different. If that's the way it had always been, that's how we would comprehend it. Furthermore, God could totally have done this. He is in no way restricted by his own creation (as far as I can assume), and there are no laws that he has to follow.

Consider now the "law of love." You claim that love cannot be forced, and must be a choice, but why is that? God should not be bound to following through on the "law of love." Could he not have developed love to work without a choice? Of course he could have, he is not restricted to the concept of love that exists, because he "created it," and could have made it any way he pleased.

If God was responsible for the creation of everything, it was a very inefficient idea, and could have been executed a lot differently for the better of man and God.

 

[DapperChandler]

Personally, even if I wasn't Christian, I'd believe in a higher power.

The chances that things happened the exact way they did to make me here on this earth (look in spoiler for partial list) would have happened are so small.

Spoiler

matter? how did matter form?
how did this matter form DNA?
-- DNA actually, if not for other proteins involved, is unstable.
How did that DNA begin to self replicate?
How did that DNA code the proteins?
How did we go from unicellular to multicellular?

Why are there laws of physics?
What decided the laws of physics?
Why can't we explain the movement in the universe?
etc etc
blahdy blah more stuff here

Nothing happens in a day dude, it could have been (and in fact was) possible that under the right circumstances after millions of days/months/years, inorganic molecules were transformed into organic molecules. Given there isn't enough science out there to prove anything way beyond a reasonable doubt, i am CERTAIN there will be one day. So my answer to the OP is no, i do not believe in a deity and if there was one he/she is certainly cruel.

Why do some suffer more than others?
Why are some prayers unanswered?
What's up with world hunger?

You ask some seriously powerful questions, questions people have struggled with probably since day one and probably always will. So let's talk about them. But before we do, I would like to point out that the idea that "under the right circumstances after millions of days/months/years, inorganic molecules [could have been] transformed into organic molecules" doesn't mean a God doesn't exist who put that into motion. Although I personally don't believe in evolution, I believe the universe started somewhere and could not have been an accident, but must have been started by a higher power. Maybe He got the ball rolling for evolution, maybe He created the earth the way Genesis depicts it in either 6 literal 24-hour days, or 6 periods totaling millions/billions of years, or maybe some other possibility of creation, but whatever the case, He exists, and He made us.

But to get to your questions, I don't think the existence of evil/bad things happening to people disproves the existence of God. The second question is the easiest to answer, I think, and the other two are similar, so I'll start with unanswered prayers. I believe that God knows what we need more than we know what we need. Recently, my friend was rejected by her dream college. That was definitely tough on her. She prayed to get accepted there, and she wasn't. I prayed that she would be accepted there if it was God's will, and I don't believe it was. Perhaps that school would have been bad for her. I don't know, but I know it wasn't the best thing because otherwise God would have allowed it. It's like how little kids wish they could eat nothing but candy, and their parents never let them, because that would be bad. Sometimes we think we know what's best for us, and we don't. Of course, God does allow people to make mistakes and bad things to happen. But the Bible says that those who seek Him with all their hearts will find Him. If we honestly want to follow His plan, sometimes we have to give up our plans. Some prayers have to go unanswered, otherwise it'd be like Bruce Almighty where he just answered "yes" to everyone's prayer requests and it really didn't work.

Moving on to your other questions, you're essentially asking why bad things happen. I propose that it is not God's fault, but man's. The book of Genesis describes the first two humans ever and a choice they are given: they can choose God, or disobey Him and choose sin. They went with the latter. We still have that same choice. Because people have free will, life is necessarily going to suck in at least some ways. We're going to suffer because we live lives filled with mistakes. God's plan was never for that to be the case. We screwed up, and corrupted the earth because of it. If we never sinned, we'd never be living in a world like this. I'm not trying to say that each bad thing is directly correlated with a sin or something karma-y, but that the presence of sin causes bad things to happen. Why does God allow world hunger, the Holocaust, persecution, and countless other tragedies that spread across history? I honestly have no idea. But I know that He didn't cause it, we did. Which tragedies He allows and doesn't allow are beyond my area of comprehension, but I have to trust that all things work together for the good of those who love God, because that's what the Bible says, and I've seen in my own life that God has used my personal tragedies to bring me closer to Him, and to make me better.

Still, we have to wonder why God allows man to do bad things. I believe that ultimately, this is because without free will and the ability to make the wrong choice, we'd never be able to choose God. Forced love isn't love at all. We have to choose God or reject Him, and unfortunately, rejecting God means a sinful world. He doesn't make us suffer. He can free us from suffering forever if we'd only let him.

On a different note, I think the fundamental reasons I believe in God are as follows: this world is too amazing to be an accident and I believe I have a purpose and am not an accident. But the biggest reason can be summed up by this quote from C.S. Lewis: "My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?" What he's saying is that he, like so many of us, saw a world filled with wickedness and injustice, and concluded that God couldn't exist because of it. Then he realized that some kind of standard of right and wrong, justice and injustice, existed inside of Him. That standard of morality, or Moral Law, was put in Him by God, who is our source of morality and goodness. It's like how we all have this idea that murder is a bad thing. Where does this idea come from? Some kind of conscience in us, given to us by God.

Ultimately, I think that the extreme complexities of Creation, the fact that bad things can happen due to free will, and our ability to recognize them as bad don't disprove the idea of God's existence but rather prove it.

This is going to be a hard concept to grasp, but entertain me.

I'm assuming you believe that God is the creator of everything; humans, earth, the universe, the laws of physics, etc.

Taking a look at physics specifically, let's choose a random physics law, say, the law of gravity.

As a believer in a creation, you would say that God is responsible for the law of gravity. This means that God made gravity work the way it does. Larger objects have a stronger gravitational force than smaller objects, etc.

Now entertain this. What if God had made gravity work differently? What if he had made it so that smaller objects posses a larger gravitational force than larger ones? Would it still be the law of gravity? Well, sure it would. We don't know any different. If that's the way it had always been, that's how we would comprehend it. Furthermore, God could totally have done this. He is in no way restricted by his own creation (as far as I can assume), and there are no laws that he has to follow.

Consider now the "law of love." You claim that love cannot be forced, and must be a choice, but why is that? God should not be bound to following through on the "law of love." Could he not have developed love to work without a choice? Of course he could have, he is not restricted to the concept of love that exists, because he "created it," and could have made it any way he pleased.

If God was responsible for the creation of everything, it was a very inefficient idea, and could have been executed a lot differently for the better of man and God.

Essentially, you're asking that, if love requires a choice and therefore allows for rejection, and rejection of God causes bad things, why did God make love do that? Great point, but I think there a couple of reasons we can discuss.

The first pertains to the nature of God. The Bible says that God is love and that He loves us. God doesn't have to love us. He's not bound by any outside rules, He just does. He loves us unconditionally because we are His creation and He chose to make us and love us. So, because the love man has for God and others parallels the love of God, who loved us first as the Bible states, then our love is also a choice.

The second relates to the purpose of man. Looking back to the Creation, man was made with a purpose. That purpose wasn't to do good things, or live good lives, but to love and glorify God. If we were created for any other reason, then we could definitely live without free will, and therefore without sin, devastation, and everything else that results from the ability to make choices. But that would mean not being able to love God. It isn't a matter of God saying, "Ok, I'm designing this love thing now and I better make sure horrible things happen to humanity, so I won't make the people robots who are forced to love me." Because God loves us, He allows us the ability to choose to love Him. Forced love isn't love at all.

I wouldn't want to worship a god who doesn't allow me to have free will, but I can worship a God who allows bad things to happen on earth, because I know that the fact that I can reject God means I can accept Him. I know that He is ultimately sovereign, so He's always in control, always looking out for me, and always going to save me and anyone who wants Him to in the end because He loves us so, so much.

 

[Monorail]

Personally, even if I wasn't Christian, I'd believe in a higher power.



The chances that things happened the exact way they did to make me here on this earth (look in spoiler for partial list) would have happened are so small.

Spoiler

matter? how did matter form?

how did this matter form DNA?

-- DNA actually, if not for other proteins involved, is unstable.

How did that DNA begin to self replicate?

How did that DNA code the proteins?

How did we go from unicellular to multicellular?



Why are there laws of physics?

What decided the laws of physics?

Why can't we explain the movement in the universe?

etc etc

blahdy blah more stuff here

Nothing happens in a day dude, it could have been (and in fact was) possible that under the right circumstances after millions of days/months/years, inorganic molecules were transformed into organic molecules. Given there isn't enough science out there to prove anything way beyond a reasonable doubt, i am CERTAIN there will be one day. So my answer to the OP is no, i do not believe in a deity and if there was one he/she is certainly cruel.



Why do some suffer more than others?

Why are some prayers unanswered?

What's up with world hunger?

You ask some seriously powerful questions, questions people have struggled with probably since day one and probably always will. So let's talk about them. But before we do, I would like to point out that the idea that "under the right circumstances after millions of days/months/years, inorganic molecules [could have been] transformed into organic molecules" doesn't mean a God doesn't exist who put that into motion. Although I personally don't believe in evolution, I believe the universe started somewhere and could not have been an accident, but must have been started by a higher power. Maybe He got the ball rolling for evolution, maybe He created the earth the way Genesis depicts it in either 6 literal 24-hour days, or 6 periods totaling millions/billions of years, or maybe some other possibility of creation, but whatever the case, He exists, and He made us.



But to get to your questions, I don't think the existence of evil/bad things happening to people disproves the existence of God. The second question is the easiest to answer, I think, and the other two are similar, so I'll start with unanswered prayers. I believe that God knows what we need more than we know what we need. Recently, my friend was rejected by her dream college. That was definitely tough on her. She prayed to get accepted there, and she wasn't. I prayed that she would be accepted there if it was God's will, and I don't believe it was. Perhaps that school would have been bad for her. I don't know, but I know it wasn't the best thing because otherwise God would have allowed it. It's like how little kids wish they could eat nothing but candy, and their parents never let them, because that would be bad. Sometimes we think we know what's best for us, and we don't. Of course, God does allow people to make mistakes and bad things to happen. But the Bible says that those who seek Him with all their hearts will find Him. If we honestly want to follow His plan, sometimes we have to give up our plans. Some prayers have to go unanswered, otherwise it'd be like Bruce Almighty where he just answered "yes" to everyone's prayer requests and it really didn't work.



Moving on to your other questions, you're essentially asking why bad things happen. I propose that it is not God's fault, but man's. The book of Genesis describes the first two humans ever and a choice they are given: they can choose God, or disobey Him and choose sin. They went with the latter. We still have that same choice. Because people have free will, life is necessarily going to suck in at least some ways. We're going to suffer because we live lives filled with mistakes. God's plan was never for that to be the case. We screwed up, and corrupted the earth because of it. If we never sinned, we'd never be living in a world like this. I'm not trying to say that each bad thing is directly correlated with a sin or something karma-y, but that the presence of sin causes bad things to happen. Why does God allow world hunger, the Holocaust, persecution, and countless other tragedies that spread across history? I honestly have no idea. But I know that He didn't cause it, we did. Which tragedies He allows and doesn't allow are beyond my area of comprehension, but I have to trust that all things work together for the good of those who love God, because that's what the Bible says, and I've seen in my own life that God has used my personal tragedies to bring me closer to Him, and to make me better.



Still, we have to wonder why God allows man to do bad things. I believe that ultimately, this is because without free will and the ability to make the wrong choice, we'd never be able to choose God. Forced love isn't love at all. We have to choose God or reject Him, and unfortunately, rejecting God means a sinful world. He doesn't make us suffer. He can free us from suffering forever if we'd only let him.



On a different note, I think the fundamental reasons I believe in God are as follows: this world is too amazing to be an accident and I believe I have a purpose and am not an accident. But the biggest reason can be summed up by this quote from C.S. Lewis: "My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?" What he's saying is that he, like so many of us, saw a world filled with wickedness and injustice, and concluded that God couldn't exist because of it. Then he realized that some kind of standard of right and wrong, justice and injustice, existed inside of Him. That standard of morality, or Moral Law, was put in Him by God, who is our source of morality and goodness. It's like how we all have this idea that murder is a bad thing. Where does this idea come from? Some kind of conscience in us, given to us by God.



Ultimately, I think that the extreme complexities of Creation, the fact that bad things can happen due to free will, and our ability to recognize them as bad don't disprove the idea of God's existence but rather prove it.

This is going to be a hard concept to grasp, but entertain me.



I'm assuming you believe that God is the creator of everything; humans, earth, the universe, the laws of physics, etc.



Taking a look at physics specifically, let's choose a random physics law, say, the law of gravity.



As a believer in a creation, you would say that God is responsible for the law of gravity. This means that God made gravity work the way it does. Larger objects have a stronger gravitational force than smaller objects, etc.



Now entertain this. What if God had made gravity work differently? What if he had made it so that smaller objects posses a larger gravitational force than larger ones? Would it still be the law of gravity? Well, sure it would. We don't know any different. If that's the way it had always been, that's how we would comprehend it. Furthermore, God could totally have done this. He is in no way restricted by his own creation (as far as I can assume), and there are no laws that he has to follow.



Consider now the "law of love." You claim that love cannot be forced, and must be a choice, but why is that? God should not be bound to following through on the "law of love." Could he not have developed love to work without a choice? Of course he could have, he is not restricted to the concept of love that exists, because he "created it," and could have made it any way he pleased.



If God was responsible for the creation of everything, it was a very inefficient idea, and could have been executed a lot differently for the better of man and God.

Essentially, you're asking that, if love requires a choice and therefore allows for rejection, and rejection of God causes bad things, why did God make love do that? Great point, but I think there a couple of reasons we can discuss.



The first pertains to the nature of God. The Bible says that God is love and that He loves us. God doesn't have to love us. He's not bound by any outside rules, He just does. He loves us unconditionally because we are His creation and He chose to make us and love us. So, because the love man has for God and others parallels the love of God, who loved us first as the Bible states, then our love is also a choice.



The second relates to the purpose of man. Looking back to the Creation, man was made with a purpose. That purpose wasn't to do good things, or live good lives, but to love and glorify God. If we were created for any other reason, then we could definitely live without free will, and therefore without sin, devastation, and everything else that results from the ability to make choices. But that would mean not being able to love God. It isn't a matter of God saying, "Ok, I'm designing this love thing now and I better make sure horrible things happen to humanity, so I won't make the people robots who are forced to love me." Because God loves us, He allows us the ability to choose to love Him. Forced love isn't love at all.



I wouldn't want to worship a god who doesn't allow me to have free will, but I can worship a God who allows bad things to happen on earth, because I know that the fact that I can reject God means I can accept Him. I know that He is ultimately sovereign, so He's always in control, always looking out for me, and always going to save me and anyone who wants Him to in the end because He loves us so, so much.

I'm sorry, but that wasn't really my point.

You implied that a choice is required to constitute love, I.e. A choice between "good" and "evil" is required to make a love for God "legitimate." You said that love required a choice, and that forced love is not really love.

Basically, what I'm saying is you justify an existence of evil by saying that it is required to make a love for God legitimate. That a love for God requires a choice.

I'm saying that this "need for a choice," ONLY exists because, if God is creator, he made it that way. Evil doesn't have to exist, but it does because God requires it to.

 

[Monorail]

Personally, even if I wasn't Christian, I'd believe in a higher power.







The chances that things happened the exact way they did to make me here on this earth (look in spoiler for partial list) would have happened are so small.

Spoiler

matter? how did matter form?



how did this matter form DNA?



-- DNA actually, if not for other proteins involved, is unstable.



How did that DNA begin to self replicate?



How did that DNA code the proteins?



How did we go from unicellular to multicellular?







Why are there laws of physics?



What decided the laws of physics?



Why can't we explain the movement in the universe?



etc etc



blahdy blah more stuff here

Nothing happens in a day dude, it could have been (and in fact was) possible that under the right circumstances after millions of days/months/years, inorganic molecules were transformed into organic molecules. Given there isn't enough science out there to prove anything way beyond a reasonable doubt, i am CERTAIN there will be one day. So my answer to the OP is no, i do not believe in a deity and if there was one he/she is certainly cruel.







Why do some suffer more than others?



Why are some prayers unanswered?



What's up with world hunger?

You ask some seriously powerful questions, questions people have struggled with probably since day one and probably always will. So let's talk about them. But before we do, I would like to point out that the idea that "under the right circumstances after millions of days/months/years, inorganic molecules [could have been] transformed into organic molecules" doesn't mean a God doesn't exist who put that into motion. Although I personally don't believe in evolution, I believe the universe started somewhere and could not have been an accident, but must have been started by a higher power. Maybe He got the ball rolling for evolution, maybe He created the earth the way Genesis depicts it in either 6 literal 24-hour days, or 6 periods totaling millions/billions of years, or maybe some other possibility of creation, but whatever the case, He exists, and He made us.







But to get to your questions, I don't think the existence of evil/bad things happening to people disproves the existence of God. The second question is the easiest to answer, I think, and the other two are similar, so I'll start with unanswered prayers. I believe that God knows what we need more than we know what we need. Recently, my friend was rejected by her dream college. That was definitely tough on her. She prayed to get accepted there, and she wasn't. I prayed that she would be accepted there if it was God's will, and I don't believe it was. Perhaps that school would have been bad for her. I don't know, but I know it wasn't the best thing because otherwise God would have allowed it. It's like how little kids wish they could eat nothing but candy, and their parents never let them, because that would be bad. Sometimes we think we know what's best for us, and we don't. Of course, God does allow people to make mistakes and bad things to happen. But the Bible says that those who seek Him with all their hearts will find Him. If we honestly want to follow His plan, sometimes we have to give up our plans. Some prayers have to go unanswered, otherwise it'd be like Bruce Almighty where he just answered "yes" to everyone's prayer requests and it really didn't work.







Moving on to your other questions, you're essentially asking why bad things happen. I propose that it is not God's fault, but man's. The book of Genesis describes the first two humans ever and a choice they are given: they can choose God, or disobey Him and choose sin. They went with the latter. We still have that same choice. Because people have free will, life is necessarily going to suck in at least some ways. We're going to suffer because we live lives filled with mistakes. God's plan was never for that to be the case. We screwed up, and corrupted the earth because of it. If we never sinned, we'd never be living in a world like this. I'm not trying to say that each bad thing is directly correlated with a sin or something karma-y, but that the presence of sin causes bad things to happen. Why does God allow world hunger, the Holocaust, persecution, and countless other tragedies that spread across history? I honestly have no idea. But I know that He didn't cause it, we did. Which tragedies He allows and doesn't allow are beyond my area of comprehension, but I have to trust that all things work together for the good of those who love God, because that's what the Bible says, and I've seen in my own life that God has used my personal tragedies to bring me closer to Him, and to make me better.







Still, we have to wonder why God allows man to do bad things. I believe that ultimately, this is because without free will and the ability to make the wrong choice, we'd never be able to choose God. Forced love isn't love at all. We have to choose God or reject Him, and unfortunately, rejecting God means a sinful world. He doesn't make us suffer. He can free us from suffering forever if we'd only let him.







On a different note, I think the fundamental reasons I believe in God are as follows: this world is too amazing to be an accident and I believe I have a purpose and am not an accident. But the biggest reason can be summed up by this quote from C.S. Lewis: "My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?" What he's saying is that he, like so many of us, saw a world filled with wickedness and injustice, and concluded that God couldn't exist because of it. Then he realized that some kind of standard of right and wrong, justice and injustice, existed inside of Him. That standard of morality, or Moral Law, was put in Him by God, who is our source of morality and goodness. It's like how we all have this idea that murder is a bad thing. Where does this idea come from? Some kind of conscience in us, given to us by God.







Ultimately, I think that the extreme complexities of Creation, the fact that bad things can happen due to free will, and our ability to recognize them as bad don't disprove the idea of God's existence but rather prove it.

This is going to be a hard concept to grasp, but entertain me.







I'm assuming you believe that God is the creator of everything; humans, earth, the universe, the laws of physics, etc.







Taking a look at physics specifically, let's choose a random physics law, say, the law of gravity.







As a believer in a creation, you would say that God is responsible for the law of gravity. This means that God made gravity work the way it does. Larger objects have a stronger gravitational force than smaller objects, etc.







Now entertain this. What if God had made gravity work differently? What if he had made it so that smaller objects posses a larger gravitational force than larger ones? Would it still be the law of gravity? Well, sure it would. We don't know any different. If that's the way it had always been, that's how we would comprehend it. Furthermore, God could totally have done this. He is in no way restricted by his own creation (as far as I can assume), and there are no laws that he has to follow.







Consider now the "law of love." You claim that love cannot be forced, and must be a choice, but why is that? God should not be bound to following through on the "law of love." Could he not have developed love to work without a choice? Of course he could have, he is not restricted to the concept of love that exists, because he "created it," and could have made it any way he pleased.







If God was responsible for the creation of everything, it was a very inefficient idea, and could have been executed a lot differently for the better of man and God.

Essentially, you're asking that, if love requires a choice and therefore allows for rejection, and rejection of God causes bad things, why did God make love do that? Great point, but I think there a couple of reasons we can discuss.







The first pertains to the nature of God. The Bible says that God is love and that He loves us. God doesn't have to love us. He's not bound by any outside rules, He just does. He loves us unconditionally because we are His creation and He chose to make us and love us. So, because the love man has for God and others parallels the love of God, who loved us first as the Bible states, then our love is also a choice.







The second relates to the purpose of man. Looking back to the Creation, man was made with a purpose. That purpose wasn't to do good things, or live good lives, but to love and glorify God. If we were created for any other reason, then we could definitely live without free will, and therefore without sin, devastation, and everything else that results from the ability to make choices. But that would mean not being able to love God. It isn't a matter of God saying, "Ok, I'm designing this love thing now and I better make sure horrible things happen to humanity, so I won't make the people robots who are forced to love me." Because God loves us, He allows us the ability to choose to love Him. Forced love isn't love at all.







I wouldn't want to worship a god who doesn't allow me to have free will, but I can worship a God who allows bad things to happen on earth, because I know that the fact that I can reject God means I can accept Him. I know that He is ultimately sovereign, so He's always in control, always looking out for me, and always going to save me and anyone who wants Him to in the end because He loves us so, so much.

I'm sorry, but that wasn't really my point.



You implied that a choice is required to constitute love, I.e. A choice between "good" and "evil" is required to make a love for God "legitimate." You said that love required a choice, and that forced love is not really love.



Basically, what I'm saying is you justify an existence of evil by saying that it is required to make a love for God legitimate. That a love for God requires a choice.



I'm saying that this "need for a choice," ONLY exists because, if God is creator, he made it that way. Evil doesn't have to exist, but it does because God requires it to.

Okay, I think I get what you're saying. I don't mean to say that evil must necessarily exist in order for love to exist. I don't think God requires evil to exist either. I think that in order for man to love God, he must have the ability to reject God. That's where evil comes in. God didn't make it. Evil comes from a rejection of Him. It is the opposite of Him. He allowed us to choose it because He loves us, and He also warns us about the dangers of sin, so the results are definitely our fault. He also saves us from them, showing again that He loves us.

So you're saying God didn't create sin?

 

[karkat]

nah i wasnt raised in a religious household so religion has had like zero influence in my life
people go on and on and on about it and its like eh
im glad u can find happiness in spiritually but thats just now whats up with me

 

[Chicknoodle]

yo can you not long chain quote me anymore? lol i keep getting notifications. thx

 

[Monorail]

yo can you not long chain quote me anymore? lol i keep getting notifications. thx

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