[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

So what meaning does my (and similarly, your) life have, that would be stripped away by the simple act of meeting a god?

presently you have an out. You can say that God is a myth, and therefore the things that have been communicated to us (the character of God, that we are expected to emulate) are simply made up, therefore you do not have to follow the things He has taught us.

But if you dig down deep, and the things that one religion or another speaks to you, matches your inner nature, and you decide "this is the way I will live" even though you dont have absolute proof that you will be rewarded in the end

then that accounts for something - that says something about your own nature and character, that you will do the right thing simply because you believe it is the right thing

but if God steps in, and confronts you in person, before you make that personal decision, then anything you do after that is out of fear, or out of barganing. That is what you lose if God appears to everyone.

You say 'show me God first, then maybe I will do what He wants'. Christianity says, do the things God desires from you, and God will reveal Himself to you, only to you, in His own way.

That god, presumably being omnipotent, would have the power to make me do what I was told, but unless he did so, freedom, free will, and my own actions would not be affected. You seem to expect that I would be compelled to do this god's bidding, just because I was aware that he was a god—this is nonsensical.

no, its human nature. If you are faced with an overwhelming force you will act in a certain way out of fear. Do you drive a car? do you ever exceed the speed limit? if you see a patrol car, do you keep right on speeding or do you slow down until you think no one is clocking you?

Are we making the appeal to popularity again? Remember that correlation is not equivalent to causation.

would you say that to a scientist? if 90% of the scientist on earth are able to repeat an experiment and get the same results would you say that means nothing, and plea a logical fallicy? God is not governed by the laws of science. God is a being, an intelligent independant being. You cannot conjure Him up by saying the right words, or by faking a prayer of repentace. God interacts with whom He chooses, in His way. The fact that 90% of humanity believes there is a God of some sort means that by a wide margin, most people have personally gathered enough evidence to sway their opinion. I have not asserted that you should believe because everyone else does, I am saying that based on the testimony of millions of people something supernatural is interacting with humanity.

Neither you, nor Thomas Aquinas can have it both ways; you either believe God is omnipotent, or do not. (This is the cop-out that I footnoted earlier.) To satisfy Christian dogma, it is necessary that God be omnipotent (or else the dogma would be wrong...imagine that), and yet, you propose that there is a power which God does not possess. He would therefore not be omnipotent. You instead propose that God is very powerful—that's fine, and well supported in other mythologies, but it isn't a traditional Christian idea. It might be possible to skirt this issue by saying that God chooses to disregard certain information, (which he, through omnipotence, would be able to access) and this creates a condition of free will. But that would mean that God could change his mind, and snap his fingers (or twirl a wand, or click his ruby-slippered heels, or whatever he does to make stuff happen) and make free will vanish. Do you consider the spontaneous elimination of free will to be a real threat to your personal freedom?

now you are playing word games. omnipotent means 'all powerfull' and you inteject the power to know the future and the power to change His own character. The future does not exist. We have no scientific evidence that time flows both ways - only theories. Being all powerfull or all knowing does not include knowing something that does not (yet) exist.

Other religions assert that God is whimsickle, that His character and nature changes with His mood. Christainity teaches there are three things God cannot do:

1. He cannot change. God is holy and perfect. If He changed in any way, He would no longer be holy, or perfect. This means He does not take back His word, He does not take away what He has given to us, and that includes our freewill.

2. God cannot learn, because He already knows everything. I have already stated I dont think God knows what we will do as individuals, but He does know all the possibilities, so there is nothing we can do to surprize, or teach God.

3. God cannot change the past - to do so would negate our freewill (boy freewill keeps coming up a lot! :^)

Aren't you forgetting something? The fact that we can easily show that IRS exists (what's written on the tax form—"IRS", and a number which you can call to ask "does the IRS exist"); there is no such contact information on God's purported work, no direct line to the divine.

there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people who dont believe the IRS has the authority to collect income taxes (for various reasons) and they dont pay taxes. Part of the nature of the IRS is its authority - the fact that they dont believe that authority has been granted doesnt exempt them from taxes.

Christianity and other religions do say that we have a direct open line to God. And you have the personal experiences of millions of people as I pointed out before - ask someone why they believe in God? did they have a personal experience? a miracle in their life? An undeniable awareness of Gods presence?

The whole point is that you expect us to presuppose the existence of God, and use that as the justification for the things you advocate (most prominently, belief in God). This is a circular argument.

I have not asked anyone to presume, assume or presuppose anything - in fact, the opposite - I pointed out that each person must undertake their own spiritual search and find their own answers. That is not circular reasoning.

I can say one thing, you will not find God, or disprove God with an equation or logic or an experiment in a lab. We are emotional creatures - we are not Vulcans - many of the things we do in our lives we do because there is an emotion attached to that endevour.

If we are children of God, then God would not be a logical being either, His primary motive would be emotional as well.

God may be all-powerfull as we choose to define those words, but we can still bring Him happiness, and we can cause Him pain and sorrow. Thats where the connection is.