The evil of jesus death is zoroastrian…?
Was it evil, was it not planned and necessary since before the beginning of time?
The best laid plans have all sorts of contingencies worked out.
And what exactly does “the beginning of time” mean?
When I read Genesis 6, it doesn’t at all sound like that is a contingency that God had worked out ahead of time.
So… if you have some Bible passage from which you have that idea, perhaps we need to take a closer look at it.
The universe did not have a beginning.
That doesn’t work for me at all, it’s not in my beholder’s share. It doesn’t fit my Neanderthal experience of human nature that I bring to the party. For Judas to be knowingly playing a prophetic role would mean transcendental understanding; he’s be thinking in Heptapod.
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Fail. Try again.
I know people who had the opposite experience. They prayed to God and nothing happened. Are these people, now Atheists, justified in their atheism in your opinion?
At night, when my wife would go to sleep, I would crawl out of bed and pray, weeping desperately, hoping that there was something more than the ceiling above me. At times, I had to take the pillow with me, because I was weeping so uncontrollably, I had to hold it to my face to muffle the sounds not to wake up my wife. I begged, screamed and pleaded. I whispered until my lips refused to move anymore. All I asked for was one sign from Jesus, that he was real and I was not making him up in my head. Just one small sign by which I could reliably know it was all real. I promised to give away all my wealth, my life, my finances, my hobbies. I bargained, I begged and cried, and yet, all I heard was silence. I really wanted to believe, in fact, I still do today, but after hearing only silence I secretly admitted to myself that I was an agnostic atheist
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Sometimes I wonder if you and others I’ve heard from who had that experience of wanting to believe but not getting any indication of encouragement are expecting something too explicit and certain. I don’t believe in God as something out there that created the world and gave me a soul. But I am amazed at how the world is held together and renewed with every new discovery with no conscious effort on my part. I also think about how we are able to feel our way into new situations and recognize what in it has importance for us. I often find music transporting and natural beauty too. It just seems to me that there is much in the quality of our experience which is gifted to us - not by a divine gifter, in my opinion - but just by processes only some of which we understand empirically but others retain an element of mystery.
From life experiences I’ve come to believe there is much that intercedes on our behalf. Does it matter if we call that God or the Force or just a mystery?
To the degree the church offers dead certainty and detailed answers it sets people up for disappointment IMO. Perhaps who ever instilled in you the expectation that all would be revealed and the belief that true believers already know much was just wrong. I think our actual epistemic position is such as to permit only a glimmer of something more going on and gratitude for whatever it is which makes beings like us possible. What holds us up is a living truth with more potency than can ever be enumerated as a finite set of objective facts. So I’ve stopped looking for those.
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Wanting to believe in something is the first step to self deception
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OR…
It is the first step to victory and great accomplishments.
Yours is the error often made by those deluded that they can live their life by objective observation alone.
God is certainly in the subjective realm of life. In fact, you can say that I am a classic agnostic when it comes to objective knowledge of God – I don’t think that is possible. Believing in God is more about deciding who you are than about how the world is and it is certainly not about what can be demonstrated about the world.
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I’d say believing in something is unavoidable even if that belief is in a mechanistic world. But I agree that “wanting” is irrelevant. We always already do believe. The question is - in what?
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I want to believe that love wins. That there is hope. That we will achieve global social justice. That we’re worth it. All and every one. I look forward to the next step.
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Con men tend to exploit peoples wishing to believe.
Wanting to believe, let alone deciding to believe,
is death to research.
The easiest person to fool is yourself, after all.
You really want your research to come to something.
Out goes objectivity, in comes error.
It is something to look out for.
So dont discount what i said.
Or concoct something about " objective only "
and attribute it yo me.
You can con yourself into doing great things… or… you con yourself into a grave after a wasted life.
And who decides what is great and what is wasted?
You do.
Although your first assessment might not be the same as your last.
And then your children will toss those in the garbage and make their own.
Do you really believe that holding a belief on faith about something with little empirical repercussions would render someone incapable serious scientific research? I’m sure you are not alone in that bias if you hold it. While I don’t believe in God/gods as popularly conceived, I can’t see how those who do would be hampered if they pursued research.
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Its pretty simple, if you’d ever done research you would understand perfectly.
None of what you said is to the point, true as it may be
Sorry you dont understand what I am saying. Its nothing to do with your response.
As a child, I used to feel I had to be like Samuel. A book that I read implied that if I, too, listened like the boy did, God would speak to me. After long times of waiting and listening, I realized that’s not what God does.
It taught me several things. It didn’t take away my faith–perhaps that’s because my parents encouraged questioning–but it really made me skeptical, if not cynical, of miracles. After all, if God didn’t speak to those who asked him, then why would He intervene in other ways?
I really like Rauser’s point, that there is no simple answer to the problem of evil.
Coming to Terms with the Problem of Evil - Randal Rauser
Thanks.
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Thank you for sharing.
I read much about the Bible and even about theology, but nothing about Jesus the Messiah.
As a new Christian I’m not the best person to ask. People in that situation might consider seeking out an experienced pastor, chaplain, Christian counselor etc. They might also get something out of this podcast episode: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hc2tudHdyaWdodGFueXRoaW5nLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL2ZlZWQueG1s/episode/YXNrbnR3cmlnaHRhbnl0aGluZy5wb2RiZWFuLmNvbS8xNzg1MWUwNC03MzQ4LTNlMGEtYWJlMC0wZTU3Y2M2YzRhMmI?ep=14
But, I would agree with Mark in suggesting you should not demand very obvious signs.
God doesn’t work that way, today. What we believers take as signs and answered prayers, always come in forms that could also be dismissed as coincidence. In fact I think the Bible frowns upon asking for signs. Jesus went around actually performing signs and wonders, but, when people asked for him to do that, he told them off. And in fact he referred to Old Testament scripture that says, if the purpose of asking is to test God, it’s a sin.
I was vaguely aware of this before I said my first tentative prayer. So I did not ask for a sign, even though I was still uncertain. But I did ask, if it was in His will, for success with the day’s hunting, explicitly stating I was not asking for a sign and would never presume to petition Him or test Him. And that day success indeed occurred, which is rare for me. Coincidence?
Over the coming weeks there were other things. I was catching up on a sermon while driving, and right as the pastor said emphatically “Jesus loves you!”, I came up behind a car with a big bright bumper sticker I had never seen before, nor since. It read: “JESUS LOVES YOU”. Sure, might be coincidence.
But, these signs weren’t what brought me to faith. Somehow, during that first prayer, I just all of a sudden knew, and believed.
One more comment. Atheism is also a belief. Wouldn’t this same person expect some kind of evidence or sign of God’s non-existence? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This is why, before I came to faith, I was agnostic.
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Is thinking there’s no bigfoot in the woods or alligator under the bed “a belief”?.
Absence of evidence btw is very often extremely good evidence for absence.
No trace whatever of " bigfoot" has ever been found. Nor of living mammoths.
Pretty good evidence of absence,
Its not just " a belirf".