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How does God work again?

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
this post is an excellent question.

modern christians believe that god is a magician, that will magically alter the worshiper's life. modern christians believe that, if they pray, then god will grant them every wish, like the genie in the lamp.

but that's not how god works.

god made the cosmos, and then he sent jesus christ, to show us the rules of how we should play the game of life.


modern christians do not care about the rules of how we should live our lives, and instead, they pray for miracles, genie in the lamp god.
The quote above was posted in a discussion thread, and I did not want to interrupt that. Still, there is something here that I think really needs to be discussed, and that is what I've highlighted in red. It says, "[G]od made then cosmos, and then he sent [J]esus [C]hrist to show us the rules of how we should play the game of life.

Is this really, given the history of the human race as far as we know it, really likely to be the case, or even close?

Consider the human timeline, first (condensed and paraphrased from Wikipedia Timeline of human prehistory - Wikipedia):
200,000 years ago homo sapiens appears in Africa
170,000 years ago humans are wearing clothes (the Bible makes that about 6,000 years ago)
82,000 years ago the earliest evidence of personal adornment (perforated seashell beads) in Morocco
70,000 years ago the earliest abstract or symbolic art in Blombos Cave, South Africa
50,000 years ago the earliest sewing needle
42,000 years ago paleolithic flutes in Germany
40,000 - 30,000 years ago the first human settlement in Australia
28,500 years ago New Guinea is populated
20,000 years ago the Kebaran culture in the Levant
20,000 years ago, storage and cooking vessels in China
13,000 years ago the first domestication of sheep
12,000 years ago, Jericho is settled

I could go on and on and on. There were whole civilizations -- all over the world, including all of continents except Antarctica -- for more than 10,000 years before Christ came along. There were entire religions in every corner of this planet before, in fact, the Jews had even heard from (or rather invented) Yaweh!

And for reasons that nobody can give even a remotely reasonable explanation for, this god and this Jesus -- presumably all-powerful, chose a little place at the far end of the Mediterranean Sea -- and only there -- to deliver these rules, leaving all other places in the world unenlightened until Christians could dream up missionaries to go tell them the "good news?" And even then, we cannot forget, that the majority of humans in the world right up until today do not believe in the Christian "rules of how we should play the game of life."

I cannot for the life of me understand how anybody could ignore all of that in order to believe that the Christian version is true in any sense. What was god doing all that time, and in all those other places? And why? Anybody got any ideas that take this out of the realm of myth and into the realm of believability?
 

WalterTrull

Godfella
Kind of all depends on your concept of time being correct. Your concept of mind and matter being correct. Your concept of deity being correct. Maybe some wiggle room.
 

syo

Well-Known Member
excellent question. god created the cosmos, and as part of the cosmos he created humans. in mythology, this is narrated as the creation of ''adam'' and ''eve''. god created the first humans who were without sins. we don't know how the first humans were, because they evolved to the sinful us/humans that we are now. so for a huge amount of time humans existed in their evolved form as fallen humans. in antiquity people lived in sin.

but god didn't forget the sinful/fallen humans that habitat the earth. so he made a promise. he would sent his only son on planet earth as a human in order to save humanity.

but, in order to make his Son human, he needed a perfect human. a perfect woman. people were all sinful, how would he find a perfect woman???

and here is were Virgin Mary comes in. Virgin Mary was the purest of the pure. so God decided that she would become the Son's mother. if it wasn't for Virgin Mary, there'd be no christ. God worked with Virgin Mary to save humanity.

so, because of Mary, the Son came as a mere human, and lived as a human perfectly. and christ taught the message of love. and christians ought to spread the word to all earth.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
Kind of all depends on your concept of time being correct. Your concept of mind and matter being correct. Your concept of deity being correct. Maybe some wiggle room.
If you are going to open up the concepts of time, mind, matter and deity -- then I think you have enough wiggle room to create anything from an aardvark to a zyther, and everything else in between. And whatever proves everything surely proves nothing.
 

corynski

Reality First!
Premium Member
The quote above was posted in a discussion thread, and I did not want to interrupt that. Still, there is something here that I think really needs to be discussed, and that is what I've highlighted in red. It says, "[G]od made then cosmos, and then he sent [J]esus [C]hrist to show us the rules of how we should play the game of life.

Is this really, given the history of the human race as far as we know it, really likely to be the case, or even close?

Consider the human timeline, first (condensed and paraphrased from Wikipedia Timeline of human prehistory - Wikipedia):
200,000 years ago homo sapiens appears in Africa
170,000 years ago humans are wearing clothes (the Bible makes that about 6,000 years ago)
82,000 years ago the earliest evidence of personal adornment (perforated seashell beads) in Morocco
70,000 years ago the earliest abstract or symbolic art in Blombos Cave, South Africa
50,000 years ago the earliest sewing needle
42,000 years ago paleolithic flutes in Germany
40,000 - 30,000 years ago the first human settlement in Australia
28,500 years ago New Guinea is populated
20,000 years ago the Kebaran culture in the Levant
20,000 years ago, storage and cooking vessels in China
13,000 years ago the first domestication of sheep
12,000 years ago, Jericho is settled

I could go on and on and on. There were whole civilizations -- all over the world, including all of continents except Antarctica -- for more than 10,000 years before Christ came along. There were entire religions in every corner of this planet before, in fact, the Jews had even heard from (or rather invented) Yaweh!

And for reasons that nobody can give even a remotely reasonable explanation for, this god and this Jesus -- presumably all-powerful, chose a little place at the far end of the Mediterranean Sea -- and only there -- to deliver these rules, leaving all other places in the world unenlightened until Christians could dream up missionaries to go tell them the "good news?" And even then, we cannot forget, that the majority of humans in the world right up until today do not believe in the Christian "rules of how we should play the game of life."

I cannot for the life of me understand how anybody could ignore all of that in order to believe that the Christian version is true in any sense. What was god doing all that time, and in all those other places? And why? Anybody got any ideas that take this out of the realm of myth and into the realm of believability?
You can't? I can..... Humans create gods and goddesses, hundreds and hundreds of them, and then each culture tells its' followers that only their gods are real, that all the others are false. And there were always good and sufficient reasons given by each culture for this behavior, since a deity was the 'glue' that held the group together, and no one outside the group could pretend to be a member. Only in the last few thousand years has science even begun to understand the 'real' world, that of protons and electrons and neutrons, where cause and effect operate. But..... and this is where the rubber meets the road..... the present day rulers and priests have not felt it necessary to tell its citizens the truth about reality, but instead they tell everyone stories in order to control them. The christian myths and 'holy' book are prime examples... they are taught to children instead of reality, as a way to keep those people united as a group. It's all about control.... the wealthy use religions to provide control of a group, through control of its members with religious belief.
Now, as fewer people believe in the absolute truthfulness of religion, and see it more as a palliative, they will believe the realities of science, and look at how that effects the world. And all the feel-good pie-in-the-sky stories of heaven, the reuniting with family in heaven and living happily ever after is a delightful ending, but by the standards of todays knowledge........ it's not reality~
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
While acknowledging there's a lot more going on outside one's immediate sphere of needs and interest in the world, because they rarely impinge on our personal life we often ignore them in favor of our immediate concerns. And I believe this focus works to increase their importance. An importance that in some cases eventually imparts as sense of absolute truth. So once one has established the notion that their concerns embody a paramount truth all else in that particular realm of their life becomes dross. "What I believe is right, and anything that even tends to contradict it is wrong." So evidence and facts, no matter how reasonable they may be, will NEVER be enough to dissuade such a person to reconsider the truth they have concocted for themselves. These evidences and facts are dismissed out of hand---the evidence is irrelevant and the facts aren't really facts at all.

.
.
 

Fool

ALL in all
Premium Member
The quote above was posted in a discussion thread, and I did not want to interrupt that. Still, there is something here that I think really needs to be discussed, and that is what I've highlighted in red. It says, "[G]od made then cosmos, and then he sent [J]esus [C]hrist to show us the rules of how we should play the game of life.

Is this really, given the history of the human race as far as we know it, really likely to be the case, or even close?

Consider the human timeline, first (condensed and paraphrased from Wikipedia Timeline of human prehistory - Wikipedia):
200,000 years ago homo sapiens appears in Africa
170,000 years ago humans are wearing clothes (the Bible makes that about 6,000 years ago)
82,000 years ago the earliest evidence of personal adornment (perforated seashell beads) in Morocco
70,000 years ago the earliest abstract or symbolic art in Blombos Cave, South Africa
50,000 years ago the earliest sewing needle
42,000 years ago paleolithic flutes in Germany
40,000 - 30,000 years ago the first human settlement in Australia
28,500 years ago New Guinea is populated
20,000 years ago the Kebaran culture in the Levant
20,000 years ago, storage and cooking vessels in China
13,000 years ago the first domestication of sheep
12,000 years ago, Jericho is settled

I could go on and on and on. There were whole civilizations -- all over the world, including all of continents except Antarctica -- for more than 10,000 years before Christ came along. There were entire religions in every corner of this planet before, in fact, the Jews had even heard from (or rather invented) Yaweh!

And for reasons that nobody can give even a remotely reasonable explanation for, this god and this Jesus -- presumably all-powerful, chose a little place at the far end of the Mediterranean Sea -- and only there -- to deliver these rules, leaving all other places in the world unenlightened until Christians could dream up missionaries to go tell them the "good news?" And even then, we cannot forget, that the majority of humans in the world right up until today do not believe in the Christian "rules of how we should play the game of life."

I cannot for the life of me understand how anybody could ignore all of that in order to believe that the Christian version is true in any sense. What was god doing all that time, and in all those other places? And why? Anybody got any ideas that take this out of the realm of myth and into the realm of believability?

christ is a state of mind. christ isn't exclusive to a person.

christ is eternal. jesus wasn't.


He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he remains a priest perpetually.

here we see it as impression upon the mind

Revelation 14:1
[ The Lamb and the 144,000 ] Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.


Revelation 22:4
They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
excellent question. god created the cosmos, and as part of the cosmos he created humans. in mythology, this is narrated as the creation of ''adam'' and ''eve''. god created the first humans who were without sins. we don't know how the first humans were, because they evolved to the sinful us/humans that we are now. so for a huge amount of time humans existed in their evolved form as fallen humans. in antiquity people lived in sin.

but god didn't forget the sinful/fallen humans that habitat the earth. so he made a promise. he would sent his only son on planet earth as a human in order to save humanity.

but, in order to make his Son human, he needed a perfect human. a perfect woman. people were all sinful, how would he find a perfect woman???

and here is were Virgin Mary comes in. Virgin Mary was the purest of the pure. so God decided that she would become the Son's mother. if it wasn't for Virgin Mary, there'd be no christ. God worked with Virgin Mary to save humanity.

so, because of Mary, the Son came as a mere human, and lived as a human perfectly. and christ taught the message of love. and christians ought to spread the word to all earth.
I am sorry to have to tell you that I find your post completely unresponsive to my OP. Yes, you are telling me what you believe, but I already knew that. The core message of Christianity is not unfamiliar to me -- though I must say you add a flavour that's unlike any I've seen before.

My post, however, is not about what you believe, but about how you can ignore the immense amount of well-attested data that shows that believe to be untenable. Or perhaps it's not that you ignore it, but don't understand how it completely undermines your belief?
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
christ is a state of mind. christ isn't exclusive to a person.

christ is eternal. jesus wasn't.


He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he remains a priest perpetually.

here we see it as impression upon the mind

Revelation 14:1
[ The Lamb and the 144,000 ] Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.


Revelation 22:4
They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.
Also unresponsive. What you believe is not the question -- the question is why you believe in the face of so much disproof.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
While acknowledging there's a lot more going on outside one's immediate sphere of needs and interest in the world, because they rarely impinge on our personal life we often ignore them in favor of our immediate concerns. And I believe this focus works to increase their importance. An importance that in some cases eventually imparts as sense of absolute truth. So once one has established the notion that their concerns embody a paramount truth all else in that particular realm of their life becomes dross. "What I believe is right, and anything that even tends to contradict it is wrong." So evidence and facts, no matter how reasonable they may be, will NEVER be enough to dissuade such a person to reconsider the truth they have concocted for themselves. These evidences and facts are dismissed out of hand---the evidence is irrelevant and the facts aren't really facts at all..
.
But you do see what you are saying, don't you? That billions of people who claim to be "seeking truth" are actually not doing anything of the kind -- and worse, are quite prepared to reject "truth" if it doesn't serve their real purpose.

As someone who fancies himself a "real seeker after truth," I find that quite astonishing.
 

Drizzt Do'Urden

Deistic Drow Elf
excellent question. god created the cosmos, and as part of the cosmos he created humans. in mythology, this is narrated as the creation of ''adam'' and ''eve''. god created the first humans who were without sins. we don't know how the first humans were, because they evolved to the sinful us/humans that we are now. so for a huge amount of time humans existed in their evolved form as fallen humans. in antiquity people lived in sin.

but god didn't forget the sinful/fallen humans that habitat the earth. so he made a promise. he would sent his only son on planet earth as a human in order to save humanity.

but, in order to make his Son human, he needed a perfect human. a perfect woman. people were all sinful, how would he find a perfect woman???

and here is were Virgin Mary comes in. Virgin Mary was the purest of the pure. so God decided that she would become the Son's mother. if it wasn't for Virgin Mary, there'd be no christ. God worked with Virgin Mary to save humanity.

so, because of Mary, the Son came as a mere human, and lived as a human perfectly. and christ taught the message of love. and christians ought to spread the word to all earth.

The only reason you say that is because you were taught to say it, over and over and over and over in your head until it became real for you.

God gave us reason, not religion.
 

Drizzt Do'Urden

Deistic Drow Elf
You can't? I can..... Humans create gods and goddesses, hundreds and hundreds of them, and then each culture tells its' followers that only their gods are real, that all the others are false. And there were always good and sufficient reasons given by each culture for this behavior, since a deity was the 'glue' that held the group together, and no one outside the group could pretend to be a member. Only in the last few thousand years has science even begun to understand the 'real' world, that of protons and electrons and neutrons, where cause and effect operate. But..... and this is where the rubber meets the road..... the present day rulers and priests have not felt it necessary to tell its citizens the truth about reality, but instead they tell everyone stories in order to control them. The christian myths and 'holy' book are prime examples... they are taught to children instead of reality, as a way to keep those people united as a group. It's all about control.... the wealthy use religions to provide control of a group, through control of its members with religious belief.
Now, as fewer people believe in the absolute truthfulness of religion, and see it more as a palliative, they will believe the realities of science, and look at how that effects the world. And all the feel-good pie-in-the-sky stories of heaven, the reuniting with family in heaven and living happily ever after is a delightful ending, but by the standards of todays knowledge........ it's not reality~

I think it's a little more nuanced that that... Men have seen god evident in nature, some men have merely play acted as if they had conversations with it, or were favored by it, and so here we find ourselves.

All I can say is thank god the god of Abraham is only a figment of people's imaginations...
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
But you do see what you are saying, don't you? That billions of people who claim to be "seeking truth" are actually not doing anything of the kind -- and worse, are quite prepared to reject "truth" if it doesn't serve their real purpose.
If they claim to be seeking the truth I can take them at their word that they're open to evidence, and would therefore not fall under the category of people you say ". . .could ignore all of [the evidence you listed] in order to believe that the Christian version is true in any sense." Those I spoke of are not "seekers," but the "finders."

.
 
Last edited:

syo

Well-Known Member
I am sorry to have to tell you that I find your post completely unresponsive to my OP. Yes, you are telling me what you believe, but I already knew that. The core message of Christianity is not unfamiliar to me -- though I must say you add a flavour that's unlike any I've seen before.

My post, however, is not about what you believe, but about how you can ignore the immense amount of well-attested data that shows that believe to be untenable. Or perhaps it's not that you ignore it, but don't understand how it completely undermines your belief?
i'm off topic...
 

Drizzt Do'Urden

Deistic Drow Elf
isn't it reasonable, what i wrote?

No, not really.

I mean sure, there is some reason in it, but reason comes in many forms both good and bad.

An example of good reasoning is the scientific method, an example of bad reasoning is religion.
 
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