[SonoranBob]

Originally Posted by NightSpirit

Either He was God's son or He was a fake and a liar. If His resurrection from the dead and ascension was a lie or a fairy tale of men then why is that we should we forgive our neighbors or do unto others as we would have them do unto us, considered true?

This is derived from a talk given by Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ back in, I believe, the early 1970's. The heady days of Explo '72 and such. You know, the Christian Woodstock where it was predicted that world salvation was just around the corner. Kind of entertaining, viewed from WAY around the corner. My late wife attended Explo '72 and got all fired up and then went home to begin her agonizing 35 year downward health spiral and ended up dying without ever having witnessed the Second Coming.

But I digress. Bright's argument has been a touchstone of popular Christian apologetics ever since. Something closer to the original wording is, "If Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, He could not be merely a 'great moral teacher'. Either He was what He claimed or He was a liar or a madman on a level with someone who claims to be a poached egg."

This is provocative and used to sway me, but I eventually realized that the same argument could be applied to me if I claimed to be the Son of God. Especially twenty centuries poshumously when the facts of my life are muddled and evidence of my peccadilloes may have been suppressed.

All this argument really did was play on the guilt feelings of people who already assumed at some level that there really is a god and Jesus was probably god. It forced them off their apathetic touches and got them off the fence. Great for firing up the "almost persuaded" but this is not a compelling argument for someone with honest doubt or rational skepticism.

Just in case you think it is ;-)

Originally Posted by NightSpirit

People around here are still thinking they can prove God exist or that to be God, He must first be understood by their puny human minds, when nothing else about this world or creation has been proven or seen by most people.

I don't think it's asking too much for God to satisfy the minds he created us with and presumably expects us to use. There is nothing inherently evil about the intellect. Why must we always check it at the door when the topic turns to god? There are a lot of Christian intellectuals who feel the same way, even if I can't agree with all of their reasoning. CS Lewis was an excellent example.

Originally Posted by NightSpirit

A God that I can reason out or that bows to me?

I don't see any requirement for god to be incomprehensible in order for him to be god. He certainly can CHOOSE to be incomprehensible, and appears to have done so. But it hardly seems necessary.

As for a god who bows to us, I have to agree that is no god at all, not in the sense you mean it. It's an attempt to redefine god as our higher self or mankind's collective consciousness, or things along those lines. This is suspiciously convenient. Although I don't reject it out of hand either.

It's appealing to have a beneficent, loving god who watches over us. Alas, that is also suspiciously convenient, not to mention, contrary to much if not most of human experience.

Originally Posted by NightSpirit

I'm still trying to figure out what electricity was created from and why ... [etc] But then our search and longing for God is not the way He made us but a weakness from the fear of death or societal chaos?

I do not buy that the ubiquity of people's desire for god (a ubiquity that is, by the way, becoming less so in the past 150 years or so) is evidence for god. It's evidence for people's need to make sense of life (that pesky intellect again) and evidence for a shared objective reality that people tend to make similar conclusions from, have similar disappointments and hurts and triumphs, etc. I think your own desire to be comforted by god has persuaded you that simply because you participate in a widely shared illusion, that it must be true.

A billion people saying something is so doesn't make it so. It might give us pause to consider what they are saying, but it hardly constitutes proof.

Originally Posted by NightSpirit

Man has never created anything out of nothing, only manipulated what was already here. And then to say God doesn't exist because we as pitiful men, don't have "proof?" Or that God was the first cause and everything else was random, that we evolved to be better than God because we care about each other and He doesn't care? Weird.

This adds heat but not light to the discussion. As a Christian you should know better than to denigrate people who have an honest disagreement with you as "weird". You are not having a private conversation with one of your homies here. We can all read it. And contrary to popular misconception, attempted shaming is not an effective technique of persuasion.

As you know from other discussions we've had, I am not one of those who is willing to say that god doesn't exist. I have been forced to re-evaluate my concept of god and the claims of the church and have pretty much walked away from it all and felt I had to do so to preserve my own sanity. However, I can certainly understand people seeing no point in god. Most of us, if we're honest about it, lead lives regardless of our beliefs that are no different than you'd expect them to be if god weren't in the picture.

Originally Posted by NightSpirit

I first had faith and then I received proof and that happens over and over in my life. "Those that come to God must believe that He is and that He is the rewarder of those that diligently seek Him", that He exists and that He cares. Why is that so difficult for smart people? Because they are smarter than God, if He exists at all?

It's difficult because not everyone receives satisfactory proof, as you say you have. You cannot generalize from your experience to mine or anyone else's. You cannot say that because you have your inner witness or signs or whatever that anyone who does not is just arrogant or blocking for some other reason.

Another source of difficulty is that truth you're probably not willing to receive, which is that some of us have in fact believed that "He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him". We've sought him, and found little evidence for his existence and evidence that he actually doesn't care. This is difficult for smart and dumb people alike.

Originally Posted by NightSpirit

Okay that's me. And yes, I need some more accountability in my life but I'm not sure it will fly around here because our belief system has the condition of belief and humility to God and that, logically speaking, must be false according to the smart people belief system.

Do not create a false dichotomy here. I know there are some who are arrogant here, regarding their intellect (real or imagined). But there are also people of good conscience here who have honest questions or problems with your particular version of belief in god. Do you disrespect them so much you are just going to blow them off and dismiss them all as stiff-necked evildoers?

You have an intellect too. You took an initial leap of faith and it was rewarded, apparently, by "proofs". Were you wrong to need those proofs? I don't think so. And I'm genuinely happy for you that you got them. It is not so for all of us.

I took an initial and very credible leap of faith too, and it has not only not been rewarded with proofs but it has been discouraged with huge life events that I have an understandable tendency to interpret as careless kicks in the groin for no good reason. I am slowly figuring out what actually happened and what actually needs to be done about it and let me tell you, it has very little to do with standard Christian dogma, which in fact, I blame for most of the suffering I've experienced in life.

So ease up. You don't have it nearly as sewed up as you'd like to think.

Best,

--Bob