Any other childfree people here?

[The_X_Marker]

So what you're saying is, is that Jesus was a liar?

Bible quotes:

Spoiler Alert!

In Matthew 7:7, Jesus says that if you ask for something, you will receive it.
"Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!"

The message is reiterated in Matthew 7:20-21, with the mustard grain example.

Jesus gets really straight forward in Mark 11:24 "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."

In John chapter 14, Jesus tells everybody that prayer is easy and works easy: "12 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; 14 if you ask anything in my name, I will do it."

James 5:15-16 talks about prayer for divine medical help, Luke 1:37 says "For with God nothing will be impossible."

Those are pretty definitive quotes. They don't say anything about the plan of a god, they say that the god will answer your prayer, no matter how big or small your belief is. Since Jesus is God, though, he should be perfect, and love us perfectly, but he is still clearly lying to us in these passages. Why would a perfect god lie, especially when he divinely inspires others to write his book about how much he loves us?

So, the most obvious assertion is that your god does not answer prayer, and any prayer answered is not actually answered, but coincidence. From there, we can get into how God has a plan.

If God has a plan, then he planned for every single abortion, murder, genocide, etc, and it is his will for these things to happen. God is solely responsible for everything, as it is his plan, and being all powerful and all knowing, he knows exactly will happen every day. God is responsible for every abortion that will happen today and the 27,000 children that will die of starvation. How is it in gods plans to cure one persons cancer, but not give another person their limbs back? Seems like god has favoritism over certain ailments. If god has a plan, then prayer is useless, the plan is in motion and programmed, and according to the bible, since god is perfect, so is his plan, so prayer shouldn't change that plan. If prayer changed that plan, then the plan was imperfect, meaning that god is imperfect.

This plan also takes away our free will, if there is one. No matter what, we will act in that plan, because as said, the plan is made by a perfect and infallible being. God knows who is going to heaven and hell, in this plan, all we do is act it out.

We have two contradictions here: Prayer always works, no matter what, as what Jesus said himself, and God has a plan, and doesn't answer all prayers. Either one, or both of those statements is false.

Now, another question: Can people understand the will of God?

[Aldin]

TXM,

It doesn't say "ask for anything using my name" it says "ask for anything IN my name". Huge difference. That's exactly what I was saying, when our requests line up with the things which God desires done in His name, they happen.

Prayer is communication within a relationship. Like any other communication in a relationship, it is primarily about sharing experience, getting to know one another, and building the relationship. Sometimes we make requests of someone with which we have a relationship. If we ask for them to do something they want to do, they do it, right? When we ask them to do stuff they don't want to do, it becomes a more complex situation, but if we ask 'em for stupid stuff, we can expect to have it rejected out of hand.

~Aldin, communicatively

[Anonymous]

The thing is, X, that in the Bible there are plenty of times where God does not answer prayer for various reasons.

For example, Jesus refuses to perform miracles when those asking him to perform a miracle are doing so as a means of testing his claim to divinity.

In Matthew 4, Jesus refuses to prove himself to the Jewish religious establishment by throwing himself from the highest point of the temple in order to prove that he is the Messiah. This is after Satan challenges him to do so. He refuses because God is not to be tested.

Matthew 4: 5-7

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
 and they will lift you up in their hands,
 so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

We see a similar situation where Jesus refuses to respond to testing later in Matthew 12:38-42

“Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, ‘Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.’
He answered, ‘A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.


We also see that the faith of the one asking is also important. In Matthew 15, Jesus did not do many miracles in his hometown because of their lack of faith and skepticism of his power.

Matthew 15: 53-58
When Jesus had finished these parables, he moved on from there. 54 Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they took offense at him.
But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.” And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.


James 1: 6-8 also talks about the need for faith and how doubt can get in the way.

James 1: 6-8
But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.


Lastly, in James 4 we see that God does not answer certain prayers because we as humans often ask with wrong and selfish motives.

James 4: 1-3
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.


Those are a few reasons why God does not always answer prayers the way that we want. But we can trust that God will take care of those who believe in him.


Romans 8:28 says:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

God allows evil and suffering to occur because he allows free will. In the end, though, God can turn even the evil actions of individuals into good.
One of my favorite examples of this is the story of Joseph. In this story, Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers, but in the end God uses Joseph to save his family and the Egyptian people from a famine. At the end, Joseph forgives his brothers and says, in Genesis 50:19, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

God allows evil and suffering to exist in this world. I don’t always know why certain things happen or why the world is the way it is, but I know that God can make good things even out of the evil and suffering that he allows to occur. In the end, I don’t see the whole picture, and God does. I trust the God I know and love, who has never failed me, and never will.

[The_X_Marker]

Jesus gets really straight forward in Mark 11:24 "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."

James 5:15-16 talks about prayer for divine medical help, Luke 1:37 says "For with God nothing will be impossible."

What about those? They are pretty basic and say that God will answer prayers, no questions asked, and with God, nothing is impossible. There is literally no other logical way to see those quotes than as they are, they're that basic. So why would Jesus, who is both God and son of God, not answer prayers? He clearly says that he will, and then also says that he wont in the examples that Anonymous gave us. See a contradiction, there?

Now under the assumption that God has a plan:

God is all knowing, and made a plan that people can change with prayer? So the plan is not perfect, thus fallible, thus God is fallible, thus the bible itself is fallible. Or, the prayer does not change the plan, and what would happen would, even if you didn't pray, so prayer does nothing.

Aldin, I also am confused by your comparison of God to humans. Seems a bit off.

Originally Posted by Aldin

When we ask them to do stuff they don't want to do, it becomes a more complex situation, but if we ask 'em for stupid stuff, we can expect to have it rejected out of hand.

My mom lost her car keys. She prayed that she would find them. They were in our drying machine, she forgot them in her pocket. She attributed this to God answering her prayer. Is that something that you would consider stupid, or is that more important than the people praying for cures to disease, famine, war, etc?

I want to make you all certain, I am not making a case whether God exists or not, we may never know, I am making a case that if a God exists, they are not exactly what you may picture them as.

[Lazy Orang]

I thought I'd have time to post tonight, but I was wrong - I shall probably post tomorrow. I will just say though that I agree entirely with The X Marker's points.

[Aldin]

TXM,

Purpose is key here. The "therefore" means that it follows from the previous statement which was Jesus saying that the disciples should have faith in God and if they tell a mountain to jump into the sea, fully believing, then it would. But what should they have faith in God to do? The things God wills to do.

It wouldn't make any sense for me to have faith in God that He would completely destroy the world with a flood. He's promised straight up He won't do that again. So no matter how much I might pray for a global flood, believing it would happen, it couldn't come from faith in God.

Like I said, it's about building a relationship, not pushing buttons on a vending machine.

A stupid request would be something that I know would be in violation of God's principles or for something that I know would be unhealthy. Asking for help in finding keys is neither of those things, though it would fall under the "complex" part of my earlier answer.

I don't believe that everyone that has prayed for help in finding their keys has found their keys. I do believe that in every case where a Christian has prayed to God asking for help in finding their keys that God responded in a way that was designed to give them the best ultimate outcome from their current situation. Usually with them finding their keys

~Aldin, waving at LazyO

[Anonymous]

Originally Posted by The_X_Marker

What about those? They are pretty basic and say that God will answer prayers, no questions asked, and with God, nothing is impossible. There is literally no other logical way to see those quotes than as they are, they're that basic. So why would Jesus, who is both God and son of God, not answer prayers? He clearly says that he will, and then also says that he wont in the examples that Anonymous gave us. See a contradiction, there?

Now under the assumption that God has a plan:

God is all knowing, and made a plan that people can change with prayer? So the plan is not perfect, thus fallible, thus God is fallible, thus the bible itself is fallible. Or, the prayer does not change the plan, and what would happen would, even if you didn't pray, so prayer does nothing.

Aldin, I also am confused by your comparison of God to humans. Seems a bit off.

My mom lost her car keys. She prayed that she would find them. They were in our drying machine, she forgot them in her pocket. She attributed this to God answering her prayer. Is that something that you would consider stupid, or is that more important than the people praying for cures to disease, famine, war, etc?

I want to make you all certain, I am not making a case whether God exists or not, we may never know, I am making a case that if a God exists, they are not exactly what you may picture them as.

Italic emphases in the verses are mine.

I think if we look at each of the passages you raise, there is an important emphasis on faith which dovetails with the passage from James regarding doubt being an impediment to answered prayer.

For example, in the first passage you cite, Mark 11: 22-24 says:

“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

In this passage, not doubting is an integral component of the sort of faith Jesus is talking about.

Now if we look at the James 5 healing passage you cited it says in verse 15:

"And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven."

Now, when reading Scripture, you need to look at the context. Earlier in this same letter, James writes that those who doubt should not expect God to answer their prayers, and that oftentimes we ask with wrong motives when we pray, which is another reason why God doesn't answer the way we want, so it's clear that James considers prayers "offered in faith" to be devoid of doubts and to be the result of proper motivations.

Luke 1:37 actually says "For no word from God will ever fail.”
I might be mistaken, but I think you may have meant to be quoting Matthew 19:26? "Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

If that's what you meant to be quoting, it is true that with God all things are possible, but that doesn't mean he has to do everything we ask, especially if we ask with doubt or for wrong motives or to test God.

Regarding God's plan and prayer, I think the two can be reconciled. God would know ahead of time what I would pray for and would thus incorporate both my prayer and the answer to prayer in his plan. I don't think answered prayer necessarily entails a change in God's plan.

[White Knight]

Originally Posted by Crixus33

Hmm, I find a lot of White Knights points interesting, still a firm believer in evolution and old Earth though. White Knight, what do you think of the idea of evolution and the Big Bang being how God created us and the universe?

Biblical Reasons
Evolution and an old Earth put death and suffering and parasites and disease and thorns before The Fall. Those things would have been a part of God's "very good" creation.

But Genesis 3 says that sin first came into the world through Eve, and the punishment for that sin was physical death. God also cursed the ground and it produced thorns (which are found in the fossil record). And Romans 8 says that all of creation was "subject to frustration" and is in a "bondage to decay". The effects of the Curse affected the entire world. In addition, Genesis 1:30 makes it clear that animals were all vegetarians before the Fall.

All of these things conflict with evolution and an old earth.

Scientific Reasons
But I've found that we can accept the plain reading of Genesis, with an earth about 6000 years old, and it fits with the scientific data as long as you reinterpret that data by taking off the long-ages/uniformitarianism glasses.

What do we see in the fossil record? Billions and billions of dead things buried in mud hundreds of feet thick. Exactly what we would expect to find if the earth had been completely covered in water and then that water had, within 6 months, drained from the land as continents collided and mountains formed. We see continuous layers of mud (hardened to rock) that cover half the continental United States, with the characteristics of being laid down in underwater mud flows.

I went to Mount St. Helens in 1998 (18 years after it erupted) and was startled by how identical the features looked to the Grand Canyon. The mud layers (some 25 feet thick) were laid down in less than a day, in most cases, yet they displayed fine strata that gave it the appearance of slow deposition over scores of years. Canyons cut into the mud in subsequent mudflows took less than a day also--leaving behind only a tiny river at the bottom (a river that, by itself, would have taken thousands or millions of years to carve the same canyon). If the mud layers and canyons at Mount St. Helens could have formed in such a short period of time, why couldn't the Grand Canyon also, especially with all the water available from the Flood?

In terms of organisms, we see variation within a created kinds (various types of dogs descended from an original wolf pair, various types of horses, etc...). In the fossil record, we see fully-formed creatures--creatures possibly with a mosaic of body parts, but body parts that are all complex and fully functional. We see a feather. Or we see a scale. We don't see a half-formed feather. In engineering terms, since I understand engineering well, we see a fully-functional mousetrap, not one or two pieces of a non-functional mousetrap. A whole theory (Punctuated Equilibrium) was proposed to try to explain the lack of transitional forms.

There are more scientific reasons I could give (and Biblical too, if we consider the Table of Nations and Tower of Babel in Genesis 10 and 11, along with the verses such as from Jesus saying that "at the beginning of creation, God made them male and female"). Needless to say, I'm convinced the evidence fits as well, if not better, with a recent creation.

So between the Biblical reasons, and what we see in science, I think a plain acceptance of Genesis makes so much more sense than trying to use all sorts of gymnastics to make the Bible fit with an interpretation of the evidence that starts off biased in the first place by assuming there is no God.

Originally Posted by The_X_Marker

Yet you fail to produce any of the evidence yourself. Show me the scientific papers, and I'll show you why those things are possible. You can also keep off the personal attacks, especially when you don't know how extensively I've actually looked at all of the evidence.

I'm sorry about the personal attacks. You basically said there "was no evidence", and I know that is not true, especially since I have at least 2 books on my bookshelf that focus specifically on the evidence for the Resurrection.

There isn't enough time or space for me to discuss all the evidence here. I could list books, or websites for you, or we could take this offline and discuss the evidence one topic at a time (the Resurrection, prophecy, the accuracy of the Bible, Creation Science, etc...)

Originally Posted by The_X_Marker

We can do a simple test. Pray that I'll believe in your god by 6pm today, (1/27). Since you have sought for your god with both the tiniest grain of faith and your heart, it should all work out, right? Everything is possible through god, that is what Matthew said.

While there are two thoughts on this, I'm much closer to what is called Armenian in my beliefs. Basically, I believe that one thing God REFUSES to do is force a person to love Him. You can lead a horse to water, and you can even salt it's oats, but you can't force it to drink. God will try to woo a person's heart, He'll reveal enough of His love and patience and goodness to a person for that person to make a clear decision, but He won't force that person to love and accept Him.

So praying that prayer would be against God's will and I won't do it. You have to come to Him on your own, in your own time.

The smallpox vaccine was finalized in the 1950's. Smallpox ravaged people until then. Why did god wait so long to get it out there? For a few thousand years, people suffered, and your god would watch. Is that love?

As I said before, God doesn't have people suffer any worse than Jesus did when Jesus died. So it's not like He's forcing us to go through something He wasn't willing to go through.

But, like Lazy O, you are looking at this from THIS LIFE only. Parents are sad to spank their kids, but it's over quickly, the pain for the kids goes away, and the kids learn right and wrong. Touching a hot stove will burn you, but you quickly learn not to do that. 100,000,000,000 years into eternity, we won't be sad about the way we died, and we won't feel that pain anymore, but we'll have learned the lesson that sin leads to death and pain and we won't sin anymore.

Originally Posted by The_X_Marker

So what you're saying is, is that Jesus was a liar?

In Matthew 7:7, Jesus says that if you ask for something, you will receive it.
"Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened."

Aldin and Anonymous did a good job of explaining about the nature of prayer and God's will, but I'll add a little different perspective.

One of the first rules I use when trying to understand the Bible is to start by giving the writer the benefit of the doubt. That including assuming that the writer understands the subject and culture better than I do and when he says two things that seem contradictory I am probably misinterpreting what he means.

Luke 11:9 repeats your verses "ask and it will be given us." But in Luke 18:1-6, Jesus tells us that sometimes we have to "pray and not give up", because sometimes it will take many prayers for the answer to come. Luke 9:37-43 talks about a boy having seizures who was brought to the disciples but they couldn't heal him. Jesus healed the boy quickly, and Mark records that Jesus linked this to their lack of intense prayer. Finally, in Luke 22:39-46, Jesus prayed that, if possible, he could avoid being killed. But he ended His prayers saying: "yet not my will, but yours be done."

Taken collectively, then, the verses clarify that Luke 11:9 (and Matthew 7:7) does not mean prayer is like a genie-in-a-bottle for all Christians. There are conditions to the prayers: time, earnestness, and God's will.

Why Doesn't God just Show Himself and Do Miracles?
On several posts, you keep returning to the fact that God seems to be hiding Himself from us, when He could make things so much easier if He just showed up and performed all sorts of wonders.

I didn't want to get into end times, but I think this is important. Revelation 20 clearly says that the Messiah, Jesus, will return to this earth and rule from Jerusalem for 1000 years. The old testament prophets often spoke of this time, when Israel would be restored and all nations would be at peace under the rule of the Messiah. There will be perfect peace and no wars. People will live much longer (a man who dies at 100 will be considered cursed).

One of the verses about this time is Isaiah 65:24,
"Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear."

God will answer prayers before people even finish saying them. They will see miracles. Jesus will live among them, and they'll be able to see and talk to Him. Christians who have died will be resurrected and will rule with Jesus for the 1000 years.

And what will the result be? Revelation 20:7-9
"When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them."

Multitudes of people, born during those 1000 years and having lived with Jesus in peace and seen miracles, will rebel and attempt to overthrow God. That's FAR from your suggestion that if God showed Himself to us that more people would accept Him.

I think that 1000 years is NECESSARY to counter such skeptics as yourself. At the Great White Throne Judgement, no one will be able to tell God that if He had only appeared to them they would have believed and followed Him. All God would have to do is point to the multitudes that saw and knew Him and had answers to their prayers and yet still turned against Him.

[Tornado]

OK, for true believers of the Bible, a couple questions.

If a Caucasian couple have a child, could it be Asian?

What color/race were Adam and Eve?
If we are all descended from A&E should we all not be the same race?
At what speed does evolution run? When did all the different races come to be?

Why did God only appear in one part of the world?
Would it not have been easier for an all powerful being to make their presence felt everywhere at once?

If the only way to salvation is through acceptance of Jesus Christ, why condemn generation after generation of God's own creations to eternal torment simply because they have no knowledge of the existence of Jesus?

[caps]

Originally Posted by Tornado

OK, for true believers of the Bible, a couple questions.

I'll throw my answers into the pot.

Originally Posted by Tornado

If a Caucasian couple have a child, could it be Asian?

Not only do I not know how to answer this question, I don't understand what you're getting at with it. If they have recent enough Asian ancestry, maybe so--kind of like how two "light" people can have a "dark" baby (or vice versa) if they have "dark" ancestry not too far up the tree. But I don't really understand the ins and outs of Genetics.

Originally Posted by Tornado

What color/race were Adam and Eve?

Honestly, I have no idea. I would guess they were darker skinned than Caucasians but lighter skinned than Africans.

Originally Posted by Tornado

If we are all descended from A&E should we all not be the same race?

Not if Natural Selection weeded people out who had physical characteristics that made it difficult to live in a given region before the age of medicine. I also suspect the Genesis account leaves some stuff out, since some of Adam and Eve's descendants are mentioned as marrying other people who were not mentioned beforehand.

Originally Posted by Tornado

At what speed does evolution run? When did all the different races come to be?

These questions are beyond me.

Originally Posted by Tornado

Why did God only appear in one part of the world?
Would it not have been easier for an all powerful being to make their presence felt everywhere at once?

Not sure what you mean by this either.

Originally Posted by Tornado

If the only way to salvation is through acceptance of Jesus Christ, why condemn generation after generation of God's own creations to eternal torment simply because they have no knowledge of the existence of Jesus?

I don't know that I have the answer for this one either.

[Tornado]

Thanks cap. Not a lot of answers there though.

[The_X_Marker]

Originally Posted by Aldin

A stupid request would be something that I know would be in violation of God's principles or for something that I know would be unhealthy. Asking for help in finding keys is neither of those things, though it would fall under the "complex" part of my earlier answer.

I don't believe that everyone that has prayed for help in finding their keys has found their keys. I do believe that in every case where a Christian has prayed to God asking for help in finding their keys that God responded in a way that was designed to give them the best ultimate outcome from their current situation. Usually with them finding their keys

Something unhealthy for one person, can be healthy for another. Let's take two devout worshippers, one who is a normal farmer, and one with aquagenic urticaria. The first prays for rain, because it will help water his crops, keeping his family alive. The second prays for sun, because the rain can cause them severe pain and they would like to enjoy nature. One will win over the other.

Another example of the same vein is someone who prays for a sunny day, and someone with severe photodermatitis hopes that it's cloudy. The health benefits of the Sun are well documented, as are the health benefits of being outside, rather than indoors. The sun is generally healthy for life on earth, save those people (1 in 5 people have photodermatitis, with a number of those leading to severe complications). Again, one prayer will win out over the other.

It seems that in both examples, one person praying for what could be healthy for them is unhealthy for someone else.

I would think that the lack of prayer would make little to no difference in finding the same keys. We can take it a step further, too. My mom finds her keys, and she goes off to work. She prays that she won't get in an accident, and she does not. She prays on the way home that she wont get into an accident and she does not. Now, the next day, she doesn't pray either way. The result is the same. Did her prayer work, or is prayer very similar to just letting the natural flow of the earth happen?

What if I, someone who doesn't believe in a God, prays that I wont get in an accident? If I don't get in an accident, then did God answer my prayer, despite me doubting its existence? Wouldn't that go against what was said?

Originally Posted by Anonymous

I think if we look at each of the passages you raise, there is an important emphasis on faith which dovetails with the passage from James regarding doubt being an impediment to answered prayer.

For example, in the first passage you cite, Mark 11: 22-24 says:

“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

So the most devout of believers, with no doubt in their mind, can pray that the mountain will move, and it'll move? Or does prayer mean that you doubt the plan of God?

Originally Posted by Anonymous

Luke 1:37 actually says "For no word from God will ever fail.”
I might be mistaken, but I think you may have meant to be quoting Matthew 19:26? "Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Good catch, there. I have two physical bibles (oh wow, paper books!) and a tablet bible open as I raise points, here, so I was bound to misquote

What if you didn't doubt, and were genuinely not testing God? Would all things be possible then? How do you define what testing God is?

Originally Posted by Anonymous

Regarding God's plan and prayer, I think the two can be reconciled. God would know ahead of time what I would pray for and would thus incorporate both my prayer and the answer to prayer in his plan. I don't think answered prayer necessarily entails a change in God's plan.

Now why do people fight against God's plan, if the event is part of his plan? Is people fighting against his plan part of his plan too? What about devout believers fighting against abortion? Is it in god plan for his most devout worshippers to fight against his plan? That seems really off, to me.

Originally Posted by White Knight

Biblical Reasons
Evolution and an old Earth put death and suffering and parasites and disease and thorns before The Fall. Those things would have been a part of God's "very good" creation.

But Genesis 3 says that sin first came into the world through Eve, and the punishment for that sin was physical death. God also cursed the ground and it produced thorns (which are found in the fossil record). And Romans 8 says that all of creation was "subject to frustration" and is in a "bondage to decay". The effects of the Curse affected the entire world. In addition, Genesis 1:30 makes it clear that animals were all vegetarians before the Fall.

All of these things conflict with evolution and an old earth.

The bible tends to conflict with science. The fossil record shows many animals that ate meat, just looking at an animal can tell you what it should eat. I doubt that the nutritional needs of a lion changed because Eve ate the wrong fruit.

Originally Posted by White Knight

Scientific Reasons
What do we see in the fossil record? Billions and billions of dead things buried in mud hundreds of feet thick. Exactly what we would expect to find if the earth had been completely covered in water and then that water had, within 6 months, drained from the land as continents collided and mountains formed. We see continuous layers of mud (hardened to rock) that cover half the continental United States, with the characteristics of being laid down in underwater mud flows.

Billions of dead things fossilized (which takes ages) miles thick, in layers pertaining to a period of time when they lived. The more primitive beings are buried further down, while more evolved beings are higher up in the fossil record. There is no evidence of a great flood, at least none that natural science can find, but there is certainly evidence of the layer of Uranium that denotes when the impact meteor helped wipe out many dinosaurs.

Originally Posted by White Knight

I went to Mount St. Helens in 1998 (18 years after it erupted) and was startled by how identical the features looked to the Grand Canyon. The mud layers (some 25 feet thick) were laid down in less than a day, in most cases, yet they displayed fine strata that gave it the appearance of slow deposition over scores of years. Canyons cut into the mud in subsequent mudflows took less than a day also--leaving behind only a tiny river at the bottom (a river that, by itself, would have taken thousands or millions of years to carve the same canyon). If the mud layers and canyons at Mount St. Helens could have formed in such a short period of time, why couldn't the Grand Canyon also, especially with all the water available from the Flood?

This can be explained by particle density, and you can perform the same experiment yourself. Take some water, salt, brown sugar, dirt, and metal powder (be careful with the last one). Mix it all and let it sit. See what goes to the bottom, and how it'll form striations based on density. You'll get some mix up, but water isn't as good as air at sorting. In a pyroclastic flow, as was the case for Mt St Helen, the density of particles has an even greater affect on how they land.

The striations in the Grand Canyon were formed by layers of sediment build up and compaction. Layers above can be more dense than layers below, it isn't caused by water neatly stacking it, because density in water plays a big part in how things fall under water.

That little river was most likely caused by earthquakes from the eruption breaking the ground, and allowing water from the nearby glaciers to flow through it. Otherwise, every time I dig a hole and pour water in it, I can say that I have the same power that God does.

Originally Posted by White Knight

In terms of organisms, we see variation within a created kinds (various types of dogs descended from an original wolf pair, various types of horses, etc...). In the fossil record, we see fully-formed creatures--creatures possibly with a mosaic of body parts, but body parts that are all complex and fully functional. We see a feather. Or we see a scale. We don't see a half-formed feather. In engineering terms, since I understand engineering well, we see a fully-functional mousetrap, not one or two pieces of a non-functional mousetrap. A whole theory (Punctuated Equilibrium) was proposed to try to explain the lack of transitional forms.

Taeblewalker already covered the abundance of transitional forms a few pages back.

Originally Posted by White Knight

So between the Biblical reasons, and what we see in science, I think a plain acceptance of Genesis makes so much more sense than trying to use all sorts of gymnastics to make the Bible fit with an interpretation of the evidence that starts off biased in the first place by assuming there is no God.

What you see in creation science, not natural sciences. Also, science rarely assumes that there is no god, it sets a premise and goes out to prove it. God or not, science happens.

Originally Posted by White Knight

There isn't enough time or space for me to discuss all the evidence here. I could list books, or websites for you, or we could take this offline and discuss the evidence one topic at a time (the Resurrection, prophecy, the accuracy of the Bible, Creation Science, etc...)

Just a few scholarly articles, which are peer reviewed, and validated by either scientific or government institutions will do.

Originally Posted by White Knight

As I said before, God doesn't have people suffer any worse than Jesus did when Jesus died. So it's not like He's forcing us to go through something He wasn't willing to go through.

Did Jesus ever get sick? Like a stuffy nose, or the common cold?

Originally Posted by White Knight

But, like Lazy O, you are looking at this from THIS LIFE only. Parents are sad to spank their kids, but it's over quickly, the pain for the kids goes away, and the kids learn right and wrong. Touching a hot stove will burn you, but you quickly learn not to do that. 100,000,000,000 years into eternity, we won't be sad about the way we died, and we won't feel that pain anymore, but we'll have learned the lesson that sin leads to death and pain and we won't sin anymore.

You can't say with 100% totality that you know what will happen when you die. Maybe the Norse gods are the real gods. After all, Odin promised to rid the world of ice giants. I see no ice giants, so there's substantial proof that Odin is the head hancho.

Originally Posted by White Knight

One of the first rules I use when trying to understand the Bible is to start by giving the writer the benefit of the doubt. That including assuming that the writer understands the subject and culture better than I do and when he says two things that seem contradictory I am probably misinterpreting what he means.

So, the bible isn't perfect then? If it was, we wouldn't find contradictions, it would be written in a way that is clear as crystal for every reader, wouldn't it?

Originally Posted by White Knight

And what will the result be? Revelation 20:7-9
"When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them."

Multitudes of people, born during those 1000 years and having lived with Jesus in peace and seen miracles, will rebel and attempt to overthrow God. That's FAR from your suggestion that if God showed Himself to us that more people would accept Him.

I think that 1000 years is NECESSARY to counter such skeptics as yourself. At the Great White Throne Judgement, no one will be able to tell God that if He had only appeared to them they would have believed and followed Him. All God would have to do is point to the multitudes that saw and knew Him and had answers to their prayers and yet still turned against Him.

So, the bible conveniently states that God won't come is because people won't believe that it is god. If I saw god, I would definitely believe in him at that very second, especially if he proved it was him. I already addressed this, but most, if not all of the prayers that I've seen are very similar to things that would happen anyway, without prayer. Hard to discern which is which there, isn't it?