The Voice of Reason said:
You appear to be all over the map in your posts. Are you saying that God exists, and the proof is the Bible? I am an Agnostic, and I have to say that your assertion that God is with us in the form of prayer and personal revelation is disquieting, at best.
This is a very old topic, but I'm just coming back to the forums after a long time away and just catching up on these answers to some posts I wrote. Some of them I really wanted to respond to, and I hope the authors are still around.
When discussing a point of religion that pertains to a particular faith, I try to answer on the premise that that faith's doctrine etc are a given. Then I can focus on the point at hand rather than constantly taking everything back to such a big picture that no point can usefully be discussed. The person I was quoting was clearly a Christian (had said they love God and Jesus Christ in their post, etc) and (as I am a Christian) I answered them from our common ground as believers.
If you are an agnostic clearly you don't think as we do, but it is useful to suspend disbelief for the sake of argument. If I choose to comment on a point in a Muslim's post, it serve nothing to respond, "well I'm a Christian, so can you please give me a sound logical argument for every basic premise of your faith before I deign to consider the point you've made." Which is basically what you have done.
I also didn't say that the Bible is evidence that God exists. I said (to a Christian) that the scriptures are one form of guidance from God.
The Voice of Reason said:
I'll take three stabs at this one:
1) He can fix the world with a simple snap of the fingers, if He exists and so chooses.
2) We have clearly demonstrated that we are INcapable of "fixing" the world (in any interpretation that you choose to assign that statement).
3) As a clear sign to the Agnostics and Atheists that we are on the wrong path.
1. IF this life IS a test, what purpose would that serve?
2. We have not demonstrated that we are INCAPABLE of fixing the world, only that we are UNWILLING to fix it.
3. Okay I'm sure this won't sit well with the 'believe and you are saved, don't and go to hell' crowd, but I don't personally believe that what you believe is as important as how you live according to your current understanding of right and wrong. Believers can commit terrible, hypocritical acts, and non-believers can do marvellous good in the world and I don't think God ignores that. (I'm more of the 'faith without works is dead' school of thought.)
The Voice of Reason said:
This goes right back to the Riddle of Epicurus that Deut has posted
http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7655&highlight=Riddle+Epicurus. If God does not see the death, pain and suffering of innocent lives (including children) such as that caused by the Tsunami as a tragedy, why in the world would you call Him God and choose to worship Him?
Because death, pain and suffering caused by natural phenomena are a fact of a mortal life. And because God doesn't remove all pain and suffering doesn't mean he isn't compassionate. Parents go through this all the time - watching their children suffer the normal trials of life and knowing that if they jump in and "fix" everything they will not give that child the chance to learn and develop. Doesn't mean they aren't aching for that child. Just as we can look from the other side of puberty and know that a teenager is going to come through okay with time, God's perspective is wider than ours.
I believe that God sees as tragic the death, suffering and pain caused by human action - rather than the tsunami, those who, in the wake of the tsunami, could have rendered help and chose not to do so. And those who every day choose to hurt, cheat, neglect, exploit other people. If we didn't do that, if we supported each other instead of tearing each other down, if we were fair to each other and people didn't have to already deal with injustice and inhumanity from other people, then the suffering of normal life - the sickness, natural disaster, etc would be so much easier to deal with - even the hardest things in life (eg, death of a child) can be coped with, if you have support, empathy, and the help of those who've been there before you.
If God is the author of 'right' or 'good' then anything God deems right IS right. It could change daily, it could jibe against our every sense of justice, it could (in other words) be completely arbitrary, and it would still be 'right'. This makes no logical sense to me. If right and wrong have no absolutes then (to me) they also have no meaning and provide no impetus to 'do right'. 
