I'm going to answer the most important one first. The rest aren't in order of importance, just the convuluted way my mind got round to them
But anyways, each to his own I say. Don't tell me what religion to have or not have, and I'll be just fine.
Am I trying to evangelise you guys?
YESWhy am I trying to evangelise you guys?
Because God has changed my life, and I honestly believe that if every one of You gave Him the chance, your life would be more meaningful and fulfilled (although certainly no easier).
That said, in real life I try not to be a stuck record (and the fact that I still have my non-Christian friends hopefully means that I'm not too obnoxious), but if you come to a thread about belief I'll do my best to convince you that God is there, and that He wants to get to know you better.
Basically, the problem is that without God, there can be no morality whatsoever, so if you ask why there is evil, you implicitly assume the existence of God, and therefore can't use the question to try to disprove His existence.
Another problem is that that statement is just your belief, not fact, so the question is valid.
I have not seen any successful attempt to define an objective morality without reference to God. The problem is that in a naturalistic universe, the concepts of good and evil are just human inventions. This means that no event is actually good or evil, it is just that we as humans have decided to think of some as good or evil. The argument from evil is
1. If God is all-powerful, He can stop any evil
2. If God is all-good, then He will want to stop any evil
3. Evil exists, therefore one or both of the previous statements is untrue
The problem is that the Naturalist cannot make statement 3, because he doesn't believe that evil exists. It is not possible to close the argument without assuming the existence of an objective moral law. The argument then goes like this:
Atheist: Look, if God is all-good and all-powerful, then why is there so much evil in the world?
Christian: So, you admit that there is evil in the world?
A: There is no such thing as evil, it's just a term that humans made up to describe stuff they don't like.
C: So if there is no evil, then why do you say that God is not all-good and all-powerful?
The Bible was not written by angels, but it was written by people who knew God, such as Matthew and John, who lived in close contact with Jesus for about three years.
Maybe they were inspired by god, but the problem here is that their writings doesn't always match up. If you read matthew 28:1-7 and John 20:1-18, you will see that the two stories of the same event (Mary Magdalena finding Jesus empty tomb) doesn't match.
The two accounts are not verbatim equivalents, but neither do they contradict one another. They both mention some events in common, and each has a few details that the other leaves out. This is in fact exactly the pattern that is found when two eye-witnesses relate an event (in court, for example). If the stories were highly polished, it would be evidence that there had been collaboration, which would cast doubt on the facticity of what is related. I have not yet come across any outright contradictions or factual errors in the Bible (and I have read the thing a few times). But if you want to go into detail on every proposed problem, then we should start another thread.
So why did God inspire four different people to write accounts of Jesus life? He doesn't say, but quite possibly because it's the most important event in history, and so the weight of evidence and the four different points of view are to help us gain a fuller and more reliable understanding of the events.
Like with god, he either exists or he doesn't. Yes, there is also the option of more than one god, but not when you talk about the christian god.
I wouldn't be too sure about that. In the 10 commandments it says that you shouldn't pray to any other god, which implies the existence of other gods. While we can say that this means not praying to imaginary gods, we have - at least to my knowledge - no written proof of this interpretation. And even if we have them, the 10 commandments come directly from god so as long as it doesn't say "well there's a mistake - check the 10 commandments errata and FAQ!" one could argue that it doesn't need to be true only because some christian man wrote into the book - who is he to contradict almighty god after all?
God describes himself in several places in the Old Testament as "the True God", and Jesus clarifies that as "the only True God" in John 17:3. Evidence that the Bible can use the word "god" to speak of idols or even as a plain figure of speech is found in phrases such as "yet they are not gods at all" (Jeremiah 2:11) and "their god is their stomach" (Philippians 3:19).
Its easy to reconcile timelessness and temporality, God simply cannot use knowledge that doesnt exist at any particular time. Knowledge of future events does not exist, it is not knowable, so when God interacts with the timeline at Tn he doesnt (at that time) know what will happen in the timeline at Tn+2 until he has finished interacting.
He can still make prophecy come true by guiding things personally or even by making good predictions based on his knowledge of the present (though it may indeed be innaccurate thanks to quantum indeterminacy).
I have a problem with the idea that knowledge is bound to time. God is not in time; He created space-time. God is able to act in the absence of time (which we cannot) and I think it is perfectly reasonable to extrapolate that He can know in the absence of time. Psalm 139:16 says, "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Assuming that we take the Bible at it's word, this either means that God knows the future or chooses to ordain it to the finest detail so that He is able to record it in advance. From our point of view, they both amount to the same thing: God knows what will happen before it does.
God could not be swayed by prayer, no religion will say you'll get a rocketship if you want one. All that prayer can do is allow the person to open up to God's will and guidance.
Actually, the Bible portrays God as being open to prayer, and even changing His course of action based on the prayers of humans. What it does not say is that You'll get anything you ask for just because you want it.
What stuff has given because of prayer? I thought it was just guidance?
Cheers!
When Jesus was asked about prayer, He gave the formula that we now call the Lord's Prayer. The prayer is essentially a series of requests; for God's will to be done in the earth, for physical needs to be met, for forgiveness, for freedom from temptation and for deliverance from evil events. The book of Acts contains the most spectacular answers to prayer in the Bible, including visions, healings and people being miraculously sprung from prison.
-Pilotseer