Does God Exist? (5 Viewers)

[Comrade nathan]

For me, this is the major flaw in Christianity. An apparently monothesistic religon has introduced 3 characters representing God.

You would put idiodicy above oppression, oppresion is the greatest flaw in christianity and all other religions.

 

[neo o]

You would put idiodicy above oppression, oppresion is the greatest flaw in christianity and all other religions.

Justify...

 

[Comrade nathan]

Justify...

Justify oppresion is worse then idiodicy?

 

[lengstar]

Idiocy is when you don't know your being oppressed.

 

[Comrade nathan]

I was refering to plain idiocy

 

[neo o]

Justify oppresion is worse then idiodicy?

Justify how oppression is inherant within Christianity

 

[Comrade nathan]

I actually never said it was inherent i said it was its major flaws, although i do think it is naturually inherent with christanity, but that is form a marxist stanpoint so i wont go into it.

It think it is evident how oppressive christanity has been. Middle ages for one. Feudalism thrived on christanity. Anglo saxan's and people from main land europe were oppresed under christanity (the pope) and had their pagan religions taken from them. Its all to evident.

 

[superbird]

The person who said there is evidence for Noah's ark. This is bullshit no evidence has been found. There have been photos that people like to claim show a ark this just biased, the try to make out a shadow is a ark. Maybe you missed the docoumentory awhile ago.

errr no. people did not make out that a shadow was an ark. what documentary did u watch? the one i saw was on the history channel. remnants of the ark were found by numerous trekkers on mr arafat. obviously its probably still inefficient proof of the ark but it can still be argued as evidence

 

[superbird]

For me, this is the major flaw in Christianity. An apparently monothesistic religon has introduced 3 characters representing God.
I cannot believe that God can be associated with as human at all.
(this is, i realise, trekking away from the subject of this thread)
grrr!!!
haha

u obviously have no idea of the christian religion at all. There is only one God composed of three things, not three people - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Christianity did not "introduce" these characters, in fact it has been the very foundation of Christianity since day one.
God is not associated as being human. Jesus is God in flesh to help spread the word. Christians do not associate God as a human-like figure.

 

[superbird]

according to Christians Jesus died on the cross (and later re-appeared)
according to (some?) Christians Jesus is God.
therfore, according to (some) Christians "God" died

for the record jesus died and then rose again on the 3rd day. thus he is not dead.

 

[Kwayera]

Of course, that's assuming that the Bible is a completely accurate historical record.

And, of course, assuming that God and Jesus are actual figures altogether; which is a large assumption indeed.

 

[MoonlightSonata]

errr no. people did not make out that a shadow was an ark. what documentary did u watch? the one i saw was on the history channel. remnants of the ark were found by numerous trekkers on mr arafat. obviously its probably still inefficient proof of the ark but it can still be argued as evidence

Dealing with Noah's Ark claims

Claim:
We can expect to find Noah's Ark on Mt. Ararat.

Response:
1. Mt. Ararat (known locally as Agri Dagi) is very likely the wrong place to look. Genesis says only that the Ark landed on the mountains of Ararat, where Ararat is not a single mountain but a region [2 Kings 19:37, Isa 37:38, Jer. 51:27]. That region, known in Assyrian records as Urartu, is, roughly, bounded on the west by the Euphrates River, on the south by the western Taurus Mountains (northern Iraq), somewhat east of Lake Urmia, and north to include the plain of the Araxes River. "The mountains of Ararat" implies not a single peak, but a mountainous region within this area, such as the Qardu region (northern Kurdistan) west of Lake Urmia. Early reports of the ark place it on several different mountains, including some in the Qardu region. Mt. Ararat is not mentioned as a landing site until the 11th or 12th century. [Bailey 1989, 61-82]


2. No wooden structure, including the Ark, should be expected to survive intact after 4500 years. The weather on Ararat is harsh and changeable; it would have destroyed the Ark if it were exposed. Some people claim that the Ark could have survived in a glacier, protected by the covering ice, but this also is unlikely. First, the ice would have crushed the Ark. Second, glaciers flow, carrying along whatever is inside them. Different parts often flow at different rates, which would deform the Ark. And the Ark started on the ground, so it would have been eroded as the glacier dragged it over the rocks.

----------------------------------------

Claim:
There have been many sightings of Noah's Ark:

- Berosus, c. 275 B.C., reports remains of it in the mountains of the Gordyaeans in Armenia. [p. 15]
- Flavius Josephus mentions remains of the Ark on Baris. [16-17]
- Several writers tell of St. Jacob of Medzpin, who persistently tried to climb Ararat. Angels commanded him to stop trying but brought him a plank from the Ark. [17-21]
- Several accounts through history suggest that Armenians have knowledge of and wood from the Ark. [21-22]
- In 1952, Harold Williams wrote a story told by Haji Yearam in 1916. According to the story, Yearam helped guide three scientists to the Ark in 1856. Upon finding the Ark sticking out of a glacier near the summit, the scientists flew into a rage and tried futilely to destroy it. Then they took an oath to keep the discovery a secret and murder anyone who revealed it. About 1918, Williams saw a newspaper article giving a scientist's deathbed confession, which corroborated Yearam's story. [43-48]
- In 1876, English explorer James Bryce found a four-foot long hand-tooled piece of wood on Ararat at the 13,000 feet level. [51-55]
- In 1883, a Turkish commission surveying Ararat for possible avalanche conditions found part of the Ark protruding 20 or 30 feet from the foot of a glacier. [56-58]
- In 1887, on his third attempt to find the Ark, Prince Nouri of Bhagdad found it on the higher peaks of Ararat. [64-67]
- In 1908 and again in 1910, a local Armenian Georgie Hagopian, then just a boy, visited the Ark with his uncle. The Ark was on the edge of a cliff; its wood was like stone. [69-72]
- In 1916, a story by Vladimir Roskovitsky told how he and other Russian aviators sighted the Ark, nearly intact, grounded on the shore of a lake on Ararat. An expedition reached the Ark about a month later. Photographs and plans were sent to the Czar, but the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czar a few days later, and the evidence was lost. Later testimony revealed that that account was 95% fiction, but other Russian soldiers have told of hearing of an expedition which discovered Noah's Ark in 1917. [76-87]
- Six Turkish soldiers climbed Ararat and saw the Ark in 1916. [90-92]
- A monestary at Echmiazin hosts a piece of wood reputedly from the Ark. [93-97]
While lost on Ararat in 1936, Hardwicke Knight found timbers of dark, soft wood. [98-101]
- Two American pilots saw the Ark several times and once brought a photographer along. The photograph appeared in the Tunisian edition of Stars and Stripes in 1943. Many people remembered the article, but no copies remain. [102-107]
- Donald Liedmann met a Russian Air Force major in 1938 and 1943 who showed him pictures of the Ark. It was mostly buried in a glacier. The photographs have never been released. [109-112]
- In 1948, a Kurdish farmer named Resit reported finding the prow of the Ark about 2/3rds the way up Ararat, protruding from ice. The wood was black and too hard for him to cut off a piece. [115-116]
- A 1949 satellite photograph of the Western Plateau of Mt. Ararat shows an elongated box-like object which could be Noah's Ark. [Morris 2001]
- In 1955, after two unsuccessful searches, Fernand Navarra found hand-hewn wood in the ice at the 13,750 foot level. He retrieved a small sample of the wood. However, even die-hard arkeologists suspect fraud. In 1969, small pieces of wood were found where Navarra directed people to dig. Again, fraud is suspected. [129-134,158-160]
- George Green photographed the Ark from a helicopter in 1953, but his pictures aroused no serious interest, and they are now lost. [135-137]
- The ERTS satellite photographed Noah's Ark in 1973, but the satellite's resolution was insufficient. [203-206]

[Unless noted otherwise, references are to LaHaye and Morris 1976]

Response:
1. The reports of Ark sightings have in common that none have been corroborated. Most have few if any witnesses. Photographs and newspaper articles disappear, sometimes inexplicably, or they are too vague to be meaningful. Physical evidence either is not retrieved, is faked, or comes from recent wood carried up the mountain. They have the appearance of fables, not fact.


2. The reports are inconsistent. The ark has been found in different places on the mountain (and on different mountains, if you include earlier accounts). Its condition varies from almost intact to broken in half to only finding isolated timbers. The character of the wood varies from too hard to cut to falling apart at a touch. Some accounts make it sound like local residents visited the Ark routinely, while other accounts stress the hardships encountered.


3. Noah's Ark is the sort of subject that people would tell stories about. Some people would be motivated by misplaced piety to make up stories. Some have been motivated by money. Others might elaborate a story simply to get attention. Since the ark story is so famous, some people would conclude they have found the ark based on ambiguous evidence. For example, they might misinterpret a blurry photograph or a shape seen through fog, or they might conclude that any wood they find is from the ark, although wood has been carried up Ararat in historical times for building crosses and huts.
- source

 

[Vezzellda]

Say Jesus did exist (which i believe he did) - this doesnt prove that he is God still..argh..someone?!

Ok, many people seem to agree that a historical person called Jesus lived.

but if everything Jesus said and did was true, then Christianity is true, because Jesus claimed to have died and risen from the dead (yes he was definitely dead) and I hope we all agree that this is physically impossible without the help of some higher power than ourselves (and there was definitely no technology back then). Physical death is final, Jesus claims to have risen from the dead and not only that he also predicted that he would.

That seems straightforward: if Jesus existed, and everything that he said was true, then Christianity is true. But the supressed premise there is that Jesus said everything that was recorded of him. And even if Jesus did say everything that might be recorded about him, it does not follow that everything he said was true - I mean I might say a lot of true things but it doesn't follow from that that everything I say is true.. I'm not sure if I am interpretting you correctly here - if I'm not, sorry - perhaps you could rephrase a bit to make it clearer for me

Ok, what I'm meaning is that the death and resurrection is the important issue here. Historical accounts and eye witness accounts need to be looked at to see if this event actually happens. I think Christianity rests on the resurrection of Jesus. If he died, like he had predicted he was going to, and then on the third day he rose again, like he predicted, then he must be the son of God as he claims. Only God has this sort of power over death and life.

 

[Monkey Butler]

numerous trekkers on mr arafat

Somehow I don't think people would be walking around on Yasser Arafat.

 

[superbird]

Somehow I don't think people would be walking around on Yasser Arafat.

LOL didnt realise that typo. but u get the drift

 

[MoonlightSonata]

Ok, what I'm meaning is that the death and resurrection is the important issue here. Historical accounts and eye witness accounts need to be looked at to see if this event actually happens. I think Christianity rests on the resurrection of Jesus. If he died, like he had predicted he was going to, and then on the third day he rose again, like he predicted, then he must be the son of God as he claims. Only God has this sort of power over death and life.

Alrite. There are 3 issues there. Firstly, there is whether or not Jesus died and rose again. There is a lack of evidence of this. Secondly, even if he did (and that is a BIG if), it still doesn't mean that a God did it. If something as supernatural as a god exists, surely we can think up other things to explain it. And EVEN IF it was a God that did it, it doesn't mean Christianity is true: (a) there could be endless reasons why God might have ressurected Jesus, (b) there is no way of knowing the will or the nature of God, hence what Christians believe is true and right cannot be verified.

 

[superbird]

I came across an excellent site for the Christian view of this discussion.

It ends off on these notes. Can you...?

1. Explain the existence of the universe without God to create it. What reasonable explanation is there?
2. Disprove the accuracy of the Bible. Skeptics have tried this for centuries without success.
3. Disprove the unity of the Bible. Again, this has been tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully.
4. Explain the fulfilled prophecies. What explanation can there be, other than the inspiration of God?
5. Disprove the miracles. But even Jesus' enemies in the first century could not do this!
6. Disprove the resurrection. What explanation can you give?

http://www.biblestudylessons.com/cgi-bin/gospel_way/why_believe.php

 

[moseley]

ok superbird

1. the big bang theory has more support than just the fact that the bible says god created the univers
2. the creation of the universe and man according to the bible happened over 7 day. evolution suggestes it happens over several million years
3.the bible can be as unified as it likes it dosent make it true
4. all the phrophices happened thousands of years ago, there is no real evidence to suggest that the phrophices actually occured
5. again there is no proof to suggest miracles happened
6. as above no real proof stating jesus was actually born let along ressurected.

 

[superbird]

Your only real evidence is some theory Darwin made several years ago and even that we dont know is true.
You obviously didn't take the time to look at the site in my thread which is a shame because it answers all your questions.
I'm not going to paste the whole site here, rather below is an extract of the site which suggest evidence of actual prophecies being fulfilled.

B. Examples of Fulfilled Prophecy

Here are just a few of the hundreds of prophecies Jesus fulfilled:
Subject Prophecy Fulfillment
Place of birth: Bethlehem Micah 5:2 Matthew 2:1-6
Lineage: Seed of David Jeremiah 23:5 Acts 13:22,23
Virgin Birth Isaiah 7:14 Matthew 1:18-25
Prophet, priest, and king Deut. 18:17-19; Psalm 110:1-4 Acts 3:20-23; Hebrews 7:17; 8:1
Fore-runner: John Baptist Isaiah 40:3,4 Luke 3:2-5
Triumphal entry Zechariah 9:9 Matthew 21:1-9
Death by crucifixion Psalm 22:16-18; 34:20 John 19:18-37
Died for others' guilt Isaiah 53:4-12 1 Peter 2:21-25
Buried in rich man's tomb Isaiah 53:9 Matthew 27:57-60
Resurrection Psalm 16:10 Acts 2:24-32

Though a man might fulfill one or two of these by coincidence, to fulfill all of them would be impossible except by plan of God.

In addition, the Bible often accurately predicted the future of nations and cities such as Israel (Deut. 28:15-64), Tyre (Ezek. 26:3-14), Nineveh (Zeph. 2:13-15), and Babylon (Isa. 13:19-21; Jer. 51:37-58).

Mere men, writing by their own human wisdom, could never have predicted the future like this, but the Bible writers did so time and again. This witness testifies that God exists and that He spoke through these men. Since Jesus fulfilled these prophecies, He must be the Messiah, the King, the Prophet, and Savior God sent into the world.

 

[superbird]

The subject of miracles....

A. Examples of Miracles

A miracle, according to the Bible, is not just any unusual event, nor would an event be called a miracle just because God caused it. A miracle is an event that would be impossible by natural law, but is brought to pass by the supernatural power of God. Examples are:

Raising the dead (John 11:17-44; Acts 9:36-42).

Walking on water and calming a storm (Matt. 14:22-33; 8:23-27).

Feeding multitudes with a few loaves & fishes and having more food left over than there was at the beginning (Matt. 14:13-21; 15:32-39).

Instantaneously and completely healing all kinds of diseases such as leprosy, blindness, deafness, lameness, withered hands, etc. (John 4:46-54; 5:1-9; 9:1-11,30-38; Acts 3:1-20; 4:22; 14:8-10; 5:12-16; 19:11,12; 9:32-35; Mk. 2:1-12, etc.).
B. The Purpose of Miracles

>>>Read JOHN 5:36. <<<

*16* What did Jesus say His works proved? (a) that the Father sent Him, (b) that He was a skilled magician, (c) that anybody who loves God can receive miracles.

>>>Read ACTS 14:3. <<<

*17* What purpose was served by the miracles done through Paul? (a) they made Paul wealthy, (b) they proved the Lord spoke through Paul, (c) they proved everybody can do miracles, (d) all the preceding.

People need a way to distinguish God's true spokesmen from false ones. This was the purpose of miracles -- they "confirmed the word" (Mark 16:20). If men could do works that could occur only by the power of God, people would know God was working in those men and they would believe the message preached (Heb. 2:3,4; Acts 2:22; John 20:30,31; 4:48; 2 Cor. 12:12).
C. Evidence that Miracles Occurred

Since Jesus and His apostles are not personally in our presence, how can we today reach a verdict whether or not miracles were really performed? We must call the witnesses.

1. The Bible contains testimony from many eyewitnesses to confirm that miracles occurred (John 20:30,31 -- see also the many examples already listed). Remember that the Bible is historically trustworthy.

2. Even the enemies of the gospel testified that Jesus and His apostles did miracles.

>>>Read ACTS 4:16 and JOHN 11:47. <<<

*18* Who realized that Jesus and His apostles did miracles? (a) Jewish leaders and all people in Jerusalem, (b) only Jesus' disciples, (c) only gullible fanatics.

Whether friend or foe, no one who really saw the works of Jesus and His apostles could deny that miracles were done. Their testimony becomes evidence on which we can base our faith (cf. Matt. 12:22-24; Acts 8:5-13; 13:10-13; Ex. 8:17-19; 1 Kings 18:17-39).

Miracles are God's stamp of approval on the teaching of Jesus and the Bible writers. This witness testifies that there is a God who possesses supernatural power. Since Bible writers did miracles, they must have been guided by God's power. And since Jesus did miracles, His claims also must be valid: He was the Son of God.