Beliefs in God

[Jonathan]

>You pray to God, do you not. in Jesus' name.............correct.<
No, I don't, for two reasons: first is that I feel stupid when doing it, because regardless of whether God answers or hears prayers, you can't tell that it has been heard or acted upon; second is that I feel unworthy, because I sin daily, who am I to speak to Him?

>there is one Almighty God............his name is Jehovah.
there is one Mighty god..................he is coming back as king of kings and lord of lords.
when his father sends him, ................he sits at the right hand of God but doesn't know the appointed time................<
So, there's an Almighty God, and to his right sits Jesus the Mighty and created (by way of begotten) god? No: Deu 32:39, Isa 43:10,11, 44:6, and Hsa 13:4.

>when his father sends him, ................he sits at the right hand of God but doesn't know the appointed time<
I can sent forth my hand to accomplish things, but if it were conscious (and it would still be one with me if it were), I may not tell it the time when it will do other things.

>Jesus existed prior to his birth? I don't believe it.<
Why not? He was born of a virgin; healed the blind, lame, and possessed; raised the dead; and was resurrected.

>Here's a question I've posed in the past that usually draws blank stares from the fundamentalists [...]<
That's not hard at all: it was a miracle, and no one has the faintest clue how God did it. Surely though, creating 23 chromosomes out of nowhere is easier than creating the entire physical universe out of nowhere. Also, Mat 19:26, Mar 10:27, Luk 1:37, and Luk 18:27.

EDIT PS Gordon squeezed in; I don't know if Adam had a belly button. Why is it relevant?

[racer270]

hi jonathan,

>You pray to God, do you not. in Jesus' name.............correct.<

No, I don't, for two reasons: first is that I feel stupid when doing it, because regardless of whether God answers or hears prayers, you can't tell that it has been heard or acted upon; second is that I feel unworthy, because I sin daily, who am I to speak to Him?

you have to pray through your "mediator "......jesus...!

read....
1 tim 2:5 , heb. 12:24 , heb 8:6 , 9.15 , and ga 3.19,20
no one is "worthy"......! no one.
gordy

[Jonathan]

>you have to pray through your "mediator "......jesus...! <
I know, I was replying "no" to both parts of your sentence; of course, saying "no" to the first implies "no" to the second.

>no one is "worthy"......! no one.<
Exactly.

[racer270]

this is a real question;.........." did adam have a belie-bouton".....???


he did NOT....have one,
because he detent need one......, he was created by God , from dust......

jesus did have one, from his live berth , from mary....!

[SeaWasp]

So the chicken came before the egg?.. I suppose it would have had to! lol!

[ken_behrendt]

SeaWasp writes:

So the chicken came before the egg?.. I suppose it would have had to!

If one believes in evolution (I do), then actually it was the egg that came first.

On a cosmic level, first there was the Cosmic Egg, a Super Black Hole that "hatches" and gives rise to a local observable universe (after, of course, life evolves in it to observe it).

Then there are vast hydrogen clouds that form proto galaxies. From these, first generation stars then condense and their internal nuclear fusion fires create heavier elements. After these giant first generation stars go super nova and explode, they, too, sort of "hatch" and spew out the heavy elements that will form an orbiting dust cloud around a remnant second generation star at their center. The condensation of the dust via the action of mutual gravitational action then eventually forms planetary bodies that orbit their central sun.

Each molten planet becomes an egg that sort of "hatches" by releasing water and gases to form a biosphere on the surface of the planet's cooling crust.

Next, via the action of ultraviolet radiation, lightning, and hot rock surfaces, atmospheric gases begin to form simple amino acids, proteins, and nucleotides. Slowly over the course of 100's of millions of years, this soup of organic compounds forms simple cells which are complex enough to grow, reproduce, and evolve.

But, each single cell at the start that filled Earth's oceans was, in effect, an EGG! So, in the beginning, the egg must have come first.

Eventually, groups of single cells would begin to stick together and form multicellular organisms. Certain cells in such organisms would become specialized into nerves, muscles, skin, organs, eyes, brains, etc. And, another few billions of years later, I am sitting here typing away and trying to wrap it all up in a neat package.


The problem in accepting the Biblical version of creation is that it requires one to believe in magic. That is, it requires one to believe that one can have effect without cause! God, who did not need to be created Himself, really does not have to do anything to get an effect, He just wills it and it is. As it says in the Bible, with God all things are possible. But, as we learn from Science, only one thing is possible...a universe that operates in strict accordance with a non variable set of principles.

So, I guess it comes down to whether one wants to accept the God "theory" of reality or the Scientific theory of reality. For some the choice is made for them at a very early age and, even when they learn of the scientific view in later life, they will have difficulty accepting it. For others who had no early religious training and try to get into religion at a later age, the transition will be very difficult if they are already familiar with the scientific view of reality.


ken

[Jonathan]

> he did NOT....have one, because he detent need one......, he was created by God , from dust......<
That's probably true, I expected that if I said no, you'd say that I can't be sure: When Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel, the last two would definitely have had belly buttons. The first two would have found that disturbing, since they didn't. So in theory, God could have given them belly buttons so that when their kids had them they wouldn't worry. As unlikely as that is, we can't be sure. Thankfully, it doesn't matter.

>That is, it requires one to believe that one can have effect without cause! God, who did not need to be created Himself, really does not have to do anything to get an effect, He just wills it and it is.<
God's act of willing an event to occur is the cause of that event.

>But, as we learn from Science, only one thing is possible...a universe that operates in strict accordance with a non variable set of principles.<
You don't learn that from science, that 'law' is a form of materialism, a philosophy, which cannot be proven but may be disproven with the assumption that logic works and that a true philosophy is self-consistent. That is off the topic of this thread, but I may address it elsewhere if anyone is interested.

[ovyyus]

The problem in accepting the Biblical version of creation is that it requires one to believe in magic.

That seems to be true Ken. I find it peculiar that those who believe in the magical Biblical version of creation should want to try to explain it all in ways other than, "just shut up and believe in magic".

For some the choice is made for them at a very early age and, even when they learn of the scientific view in later life, they will have difficulty accepting it.

I agree - that explains a lot about belief in general. For many people there is no easy choice, if any at all, after they've been conditioned throughout their formative years. It's called imprinting.

Other conditions for imprinting beyond childhood include severe stress, tragedy, sleep deprivation, starvation, repetition, bio-chemical changes and other powerful personal experiences which may lead someone to the relative security of an imposed belief system as a means to find order within chaos. Cults use these methods to indoctrinate followers. Perhaps I've said too much :|

PS:

...which cannot be proven but may be disproven with the assumption that logic works and that a true philosophy is self-consistent.

A few years ago I read about a professor at some university in England who collected crackpot theories as a hobby. From memory, his favourite was formulated by an extremely smart fruitcake who had tied up a unified theory of everything into a completely self-consistent work. The professor discounted the theory as false based on his own personal feeling that it wasn't true, but could not prove that it wasn't true based on any self-inconsistency of the work. It was quite an interesting story and I'll try to dig it up if someone else doesn't find it first. The point being that it's an incorrect assumption that a philosophy is true just because it is self-consistent.

[winkle]

spontaneous life seems kind of magical to me......on the other hand some take it for a given......either one is unbelievable to whoever will or will not belive it......sorta looks like a contest between magic and God....God seems to be the one with the magic .....hummmmm......reminds me of this....


One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had
come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one
scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.


The scientist walked up to Ggd and said, "God, we've decided that we
no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and
do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."


God listened very patiently to the man. After the scientist was done
talking, God said, "Very well, how about this? Let's say we have a
man-making contest." To which the scientist replied, "Okay, great!"
But God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in
the old days with Adam." The scientist said, "Sure, no problem"
and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.


God looked at him and said, "No, no -- you make your own dirt."

[winkle]

27 When he prepared the heavens I was there; when he decreed a circle upon the face of the watery deep, 28 when he made firm the cloud masses above, when he caused the fountains of the watery deep to be strong,

have you given to these two verses the consideration due them

[winkle]

quote:



**** question*****...... did adam have a " belley-button "....?

i have not seen the answer to that in the scriptures.....i don't know...........do you think God has one........And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness

[AgingYoung]

dna has encoded in it very precise information. dna isn't the information. It is only the means that the information is transferred. It is something like a book*. How can meaningful, precise information form by mutation and natural selection? None of these contain the mechanism of intelligence, a requirement for creating complex information such as that found in the genetic code.

Gene

*more accurately human dna is like 12 sets of The Encyclopedia Britannica or 384 volumes of detailed information.

[ken_behrendt]

Gene...

I remember seeing some disturbing information come out when they finally completed that Human Genome project wherein they derived the complete sequence of nucleotide base pairs found in a human being's 46 chromosomes.

I think they said that something like 20% or 30% of the sequence was either unused repeated strings of base pairs or some other gibberish that would not code usable proteins within the cell.

I then immediately wondered what the creationists out there would make of this information. I mean, if a supreme intelligence (like God) was responsible for producing the nucleotide base pair sequence in human cells, then how could He have incorporated so much junk code?

However, I think that such waste can be rationalized by the concepts of evolutionary biology. Such mistakes are described as due to random breaks and splices of DNA sequences that are then somehow turned off by the cell so that they do not interfere with its normal functioning.


ken

[Michael]

The professor discounted the theory as false based on his own personal feeling that it wasn't true, but could not prove that it wasn't true based on any self-inconsistency of the work. It was quite an interesting story and I'll try to dig it up if someone else doesn't find it first. The point being that it's an incorrect assumption that a philosophy is true just because it is self-consistent.

Any true philospophy will be self consistent though. It doesn't mean that paticular theory is completely correct. It does mean at the least it is partly correct, which is a step in the right direction. If it isn't completely correct then most likely it's parts are really like branches connected to a larger but unrealized (by the theorist) whole.

So, does anyone want to see the true philosophy? We can start by making a list. If you do add to the list and it can be discussed or debated whether that addition is viable. The addition shouldn't be a repeat of a former addition unless it is a better understanding and then should be pointed out why. It shouldn't ignore some of the former additions points either unless it's shown that those points are erroneous.

[Jonathan]

Bill, Michael is somewhat correct in his clarification of what I meant:
(philosophy called A is true)&#8594;(A is self-consistent)
and not vice versa.
Michael, I didn't understand what you suggested in the second part.

>do you think God has one........And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness<
No, God is Spirit. The image we're made in is cognitive, not physical.

Ken, I've not seen the evidence that there is junk DNA, I've just heard it said that it exists; what I don't know is how they can be sure it is junk, maybe it does something only once in a really long while.