why do you believe in God or...

soulsinging wrote:

precisely. on the flipside though, there are a lot of very arrogant atheists who use their belief to build the same condescendingly superior attitude they claim to loathe in religious folk. it goes both ways. it just so happens religious people, by default, are a bit more organized and visible, so they take a lot of heat for it and their abuses get a lot more recognition.

im with you humility though... i think in general it is something far too lacking in people in general. people just take themselves too damned seriously. a humble atheist and a humble christian are both ok in my book, and an arrogant atheist annoys me just as much as an arrogant christian.

i agree 100%.

gue_barium wrote:

Where is my location?

i often wonder if you know the answer to that

chopitdown wrote:

i often wonder if you know the answer to that

Wonder can be a good thing.

chopitdown wrote:

yes it can be. But to use old reliable scapegoat Adolf...I bet he wondered what would happen if he got rid of a whole demographic of people.

No one is saying not to be skeptical of things, but there are times that you make a decision based on information and thinking and different people reach different conclusions.

I live in the present tense. As you believe God does. Try it, you might like it.

dunkman wrote:

oxymorons are 2 words.. silent alarm, jumbo shrimp, smart american, things like that...

so to live a good life you must believe in god, and then and only then will heaven await.... yet the amazonian indians who have no knowledge of god yet live a good life will get into heaven due to having led a good life, but that good life cant exist cos they havent acknowledged god?

this religion stuff is confusing and very rulesy... i have no time for either, in fact i'll bail out on this one now and will content myself with sinful living, shagging, boozing, ignoring charity callers to my door, generally taking the piss out of people less fortunate than me... and if theres a god then i've fucked up and i'm going to hell and if there isnt then i've lived a "good life" and can be content that i had fun whilst bible-bashers were out trying to suppress their thoughts of sinful lust by selling cookies at a stall every summer sunday

You speak of things that are comletely relative. Relative to the guy who likes to steal and get in barfights, yeah, the life i lead is pretty"good". Relative to the guy who molests children, the stealing barfighter also leads a pretty "good" life. Relative to the guy who molests and MURDERS kids,... you get the point, i'm sure. Now, for the sake of discussion, when you relate my life to GOD, suddenly it doesn't look so "good" anymore. So the qustion becomes "what makes a good life?" Where do you draw the line? Wherever you draw it, surely, someone else will draw it differently. So, the question, for those who believe (i understand you don't and i'm fine with that), must be where does GOD draw the line? i don't like to cite scripture here as i know that most here don't care to hear it and are completelyy uninfluenced by it, and this is not a conversation about Christanity (at least the op didn't intend it as such), but here is something Christ had to say on the matter:

21"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder,[a] and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' 22But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brotherwill be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,[c]' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell. (matthew 5)

Now i don't know about you, but though i've never killed anyone, i, to some degree, get angry almost every day, which makes my life, in relation to God, pretty pathetic.
Long story short, your "good life" philosophical argument against a theistic worldview doesn't hold water.

See if 'He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness', where is the problem?

But then again if that is true of everyone, i might be bumping into ian huntly and hitler even if i do make it to heaven. So who actually does end up in hell?

I have sometimes read the bible to try and make more sense of it and have ended up twice as confused.

CorporateWhore wrote:

I thought you lived in wonderland. Oops.

Lol.

gue_barium wrote:

Thanks be to God, wouldn't you say?

nope, i was referring to you (whom is not God)

chopitdown wrote:

nope, i was referring to you (whom is not God)

How do you know that I'm not?

chopitdown wrote:

i'll just go with the odds.

So then, you're saying there's a chance...i read ya.