GOD EXISTS

Caliban wrote:IMO, The real problem with "Holy Texts" is highlighted by the fact that they were written by humans, who in all probability had their own agendas in mind. Not to mention that they've been translated,re translated,re re translated etc. so many times from the languages originally used that some, if not most, of their original context has been lost.

Then there's the fact that they are all subject to interpretation by those who read them and tend to believe what is written unequivocally.
snip
Just my two bits....

King James Bible
Exodus 3:14
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

Revelation 22:13
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

John 1 King James Version (KJV)

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 The same was in the beginning with God.

3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

cthia wrote:Those who do not believe in GOD, help me to understand this one thing. Accompany me on a little journey. Under the support umbrella of my beliefs, I can play professor, procure a gedanken (thought experiment) and logically trace my existence back to a
void.

You and I arrive at this void.
Let us examine it and compare the data that we've found...

void
noun
1.
a completely empty space.
"the black void of space"
synonyms: vacuum, emptiness, nothingness, nullity, blankness, vacuity.

2.
(in bridge and whist) a suit in which a player is dealt no cards.

The backroad ends here, and we seemingly cannot continue on. We see absolutely no thing. Absolute nothingness. There are no gasses. There are no atoms. No photons of light. There are absolutely no building blocks for any thing. Let alone life.

One or both of us are lost. I come up with a plan. We can just hitch a ride back forward when it all re-begins. We both hold up our thumbs to hitch a ride. That which can carry you back has to spring from this nothingness. This void. Without assistance from a person or thing. That's going to be a hell of a magic trick from where I'm standing. Can you explain your beliefs to me from here?

Beyond that void my beliefs supply an answer. This answer is supplied within the Bible, which I believe contains the written WORD OF GOD. The Bible claims this to be true.

Mankind knows the concept of 0 and 1. It is among the first things learned as a child.

"Mom, I want one! But Susie has one. I don't have any."

"I'm first in line. You all get behind me and wait your turn."

And a child will grill you to death.
["Where'd that come from?" "Well where did that come from?" "Well who put it there?"]

When a child looks up into the heavens she always begins with a "Where" did all the stars come from? Even we, as a child, in our limited time on Earth, intuitively understand that the Sun, the Moon and the stars didn't just place themselves there.

A more poignant piece of child logic. "Where did the baby come from mommy?" "Well how did it get there?" Skirt around the truth all we want, but the child will continue until she gets a logical answer that she can wrap her mind around. And that will default, always, to a "Who put it there?"

The kid in all of us begs for that same closure. ' "What," put the universe there?" ' will always give way to "Who" put the universe there. Because it is intuitive that in the beginning there was nothing. An not even entropy will give us something, out of nothing.

A Christian's Bible [claims] to know [Who] is responsible. That same source of a wealth of information supplies an introduction by the Supreme being himself [claiming] to be our Creator.

King James Bible
Exodus 3:14
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

Revelation 22:13
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

Now I don't know anyone else claiming to be GOD, or to know how it all began. Do you?

All I am saying is that there is someone taking the rap for it all. He tells us a little about himself. He claims to know us all and not only introduces us to his only begotten Son, but he sacrifices his Son, for us. No other owner's and user's manual of the universe exists. But we have one. Why not consider it, until you can find another. If you don't already have one job, you don't refuse an honest way to make a living until you've got another. And not just another prospect, because prospects have this funny way of not panning out.

Bracket for a moment that people use good for bad. That is just people. Our fight is with the evil within people. We fight with powers and principalities. Bracket the fact that the Bible has been translated and retranslated much. The gist of it still remains. There is a Supreme Being.

Herein lies an explanation. It makes logical sense even if you say it doesn't make believable sense. Christians are supposed to be playing with an incomplete deck. But at least our beliefs deal us in and our beliefs provide an explanation of creation and a "Who."

John 1 King James Version (KJV)

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 The same was in the beginning with God.

3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

Considering the second meaning of void
2. ... in which a player is dealt no cards.
There exists NO chance to even play.


Non believers say there is no God, but they will not posit how the first electron appeared out of nothing.

Unless you believe that all matter always existed.

If so, then your beliefs echo existentialism.
We're trying to get to the root of things — of creation — and the root word of existentialist is exist. Matter always existing sounds familiarly to me, like infinite being.

Cause and effect.
If
In The Beginning there was nothing to be effected and you say there was no one to cause it too?

Then
It seems we are dead in space with less than a snowball's chance in H-E-double hockey sticks or a prayer if you are correct.

Wait! There are no snowballs either. Just ether.

cthia wrote:Those who do not believe in GOD, help me to understand this one thing. Accompany me on a little journey. Under the support umbrella of my beliefs, I can play professor, procure a gedanken (thought experiment) and logically trace my existence back to a
void.

You and I arrive at this void.
Let us examine it and compare the data that we've found...

void
noun
1.
a completely empty space.
"the black void of space"
synonyms: vacuum, emptiness, nothingness, nullity, blankness, vacuity.

2.
(in bridge and whist) a suit in which a player is dealt no cards.

The backroad ends here, and we seemingly cannot continue on. We see absolutely no thing. Absolute nothingness. There are no gasses. There are no atoms. No photons of light. There are absolutely no building blocks for any thing. Let alone life.

One or both of us are lost. I come up with a plan. We can just hitch a ride back forward when it all re-begins. We both hold up our thumbs to hitch a ride. That which can carry you back has to spring from this nothingness. This void. Without assistance from a person or thing. That's going to be a hell of a magic trick from where I'm standing. Can you explain your beliefs to me from here?

Beyond that void my beliefs supply an answer. This answer is supplied within the Bible, which I believe contains the written WORD OF GOD. The Bible claims this to be true.

Mankind knows the concept of 0 and 1. It is among the first things learned as a child.

"Mom, I want one! But Susie has one. I don't have any."

"I'm first in line. You all get behind me and wait your turn."

And a child will grill you to death.
["Where'd that come from?" "Well where did that come from?" "Well who put it there?"]

When a child looks up into the heavens she always begins with a "Where" did all the stars come from? Even we, as a child, in our limited time on Earth, intuitively understand that the Sun, the Moon and the stars didn't just place themselves there.

A more poignant piece of child logic. "Where did the baby come from mommy?" "Well how did it get there?" Skirt around the truth all we want, but the child will continue until she gets a logical answer that she can wrap her mind around. And that will default, always, to a "Who put it there?"

The kid in all of us begs for that same closure. ' "What," put the universe there?" ' will always give way to "Who" put the universe there. Because it is intuitive that in the beginning there was nothing. An not even entropy will give us something, out of nothing.

A Christian's Bible [claims] to know [Who] is responsible. That same source of a wealth of information supplies an introduction by the Supreme being himself [claiming] to be our Creator.

King James Bible
Exodus 3:14
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

Revelation 22:13
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

Now I don't know anyone else claiming to be GOD, or to know how it all began. Do you?

All I am saying is that there is someone taking the rap for it all. He tells us a little about himself. He claims to know us all and not only introduces us to his only begotten Son, but he sacrifices his Son, for us. No other owner's and user's manual of the universe exists. But we have one. Why not consider it, until you can find another. If you don't already have one job, you don't refuse an honest way to make a living until you've got another. And not just another prospect, because prospects have this funny way of not panning out.

Bracket for a moment that people use good for bad. That is just people. Our fight is with the evil within people. We fight with powers and principalities. Bracket the fact that the Bible has been translated and retranslated much. The gist of it still remains. There is a Supreme Being.

Herein lies an explanation. It makes logical sense even if you say it doesn't make believable sense. Christians are supposed to be playing with an incomplete deck. But at least our beliefs deal us in and our beliefs provide an explanation of creation and a "Who."

John 1 King James Version (KJV)

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 The same was in the beginning with God.

3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

Considering the second meaning of void
2. ... in which a player is dealt no cards.
There exists NO chance to even play.


Non believers say there is no God, but they will not posit how the first electron appeared out of nothing.

Unless you believe that all matter always existed.

If so, then your beliefs echo existentialism.
We're trying to get to the root of things — of creation — and the root word of existentialist is exist. Matter always existing sounds familiarly to me, like infinite being.

Cause and effect.
If
In The Beginning there was nothing to be effected and you say there was no one to cause it too?

Then
It seems we are dead in space with less than a snowball's chance in H-E-double hockey sticks or a prayer if you are correct.

Wait! There are no snowballs either. Just ether.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Just pushes the problem back one level. Where did God come from? and, if as Robert Heinlein did in Job:A Comedy of Justice, you posit a supreme being to God, where did that supreme being come from, etc. People have posited that the unlikely hood of life is proof of God. Most of these do not understand that unlikely does NOT mean impossible, and that with sufficient tries even a very unlikely event WILL occur. As an example, assume an event has only a .001 change of occurring one tenth of one percent. If you run it just 100 times, what is the chance that the event occurred at least once during the 100 runs. it is not 10% as most people think. The actual number is about 99.5% chance that the event occured. If the probability is 1 in a billion, but you are talking trillions and quadrillions of runs, the probability of success is so close to one as to make no difference. The existence of God is not something that can be proved. It must be taken on faith, and faith alone.

How did God get here?
Richard Dawkins, among other atheists, thinks he has the ultimate proof that God doesn't exist. If God created a complex universe, wouldn't it take an even more complex entity to have created God? However, such logic assumes that time has always existed, rather than being merely a construct of this universe.

Rich Deem
Who created God? It is an age-old question that has plagued all those who like to think about the big questions. Having grown up as an agnostic non-Christian, it provided me with a potential reason why there might not be any god. Various religions tend to solve the problem in different ways. The LDS church (Mormonism) says that the God (Elohim) to whom we are accountable had a father god, then grew up on a planet as a man, and progressed to become a god himself. Many other religions have claimed that gods beget other gods. Of course the problem with this idea is how did the first god get here? This problem of infinite regression invalidates such religions. Christianity claims that God has always existed. Is this idea even possible? Does science address such issues?

Christianity's answer
Christianity answers the question of who made God in the very first verse of the very first book, Genesis:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1)

This verse tells us that God was acting before time when He created the universe. Many other verses from the New Testament tell us that God was acting before time began, and so, He created time, along with the other dimensions of our universe:

No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. (1 Corinthians 2:7)
This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time (2 Timothy 1:9)
The hope of eternal life, which God... promised before the beginning of time (Titus 1:2)
To the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude 1:25)
7 Truths that Changed the World: Discovering Christianity's Most Dangerous IdeasThe idea that God created time, along with the physical universe, is not just some wacky modern Christian interpretation of the Bible. Justin Martyr, a second century Christian apologist, in his Hortatory Address to the Greeks, said that Plato got the idea that time was created along with the universe from Moses:

"And from what source did Plato draw the information that time was created along with the heavens? For he wrote thus: 'Time, accordingly, was created along with the heavens; in order that, coming into being together, they might also be together dissolved, if ever their dissolution should take place.' Had he not learned this from the divine history of Moses?"1

God exists in timeless eternity
How does God acting before time began get around the problem of God's creation? There are two possible interpretations of these verses. One is that God exists outside of time. Since we live in a universe of cause and effect, we naturally assume that this is the only way in which any kind of existence can function. However, the premise is false. Without the dimension of time, there is no cause and effect, and all things that could exist in such a realm would have no need of being caused, but would have always existed. Therefore, God has no need of being created, but, in fact, created the time dimension of our universe specifically for a reason - so that cause and effect would exist for us. However, since God created time, cause and effect would never apply to His existence.Beyond the Cosmos: What Recent Discoveries in Astrophysics Reveal about the Glory and Love of God

God exists in multiple dimensions of time
The second interpretation is that God exists in more than one dimension of time. Things that exist in one dimension of time are restricted to time's arrow and are confined to cause and effect. However, two dimensions of time form a plane of time, which has no beginning and no end and is not restricted to any single direction. A being that exists in at least two dimensions of time can travel anywhere in time and yet never had a beginning, since a plane of time has no starting point. Either interpretation leads one to the conclusion that God has no need of having been created.

Why can't the universe be eternal?
The idea that God can be eternal leads us to the idea that maybe the universe is eternal, and, therefore, God doesn't need to exist at all. Actually, this was the prevalent belief of atheists before the observational data of the 20th century strongly refuted the idea that the universe was eternal. This fact presented a big dilemma for atheists, since a non-eternal universe implied that it must have been caused. Maybe Genesis 1:1 was correct! Not to be dismayed by the facts, atheists have invented some metaphysical "science" that attempts to explain away the existence of God. Hence, most atheistic cosmologists believe that we see only the visible part of a much larger "multiverse" that randomly spews out universes with different physical parameters.2 Since there is no evidence supporting this idea (nor can there be, according to the laws of the universe), it is really just a substitute "god" for atheists. And, since this "god" is non-intelligent by definition, it requires a complex hypothesis, which would be ruled out if we use Occam's razor, which states that one should use the simplest logical explanation for any phenomenon. Purposeful intelligent design of the universe makes much more sense, especially based upon what we know about the design of the universe.Without a Doubt: Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions

What does science say about time?
When Stephen Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose extended the equations for general relativity to include space and time, the results showed that time has a beginning - at the moment of creation (i.e., the Big Bang).3 In fact, if you examine university websites, you will find that many professors make such a claim - that the universe had a beginning and that this beginning marked the beginning of time (see The Universe is Not Eternal, But Had A Beginning). Such assertions support the Bible's claim that time began at the creation of the universe.

Conclusion Top of page
God has no need to have been created, since He exists either outside time (where cause and effect do not operate) or within multiple dimensions of time (such that there is no beginning of God's plane of time). Hence God is eternal, having never been created. Although it is possible that the universe itself is eternal, eliminating the need for its creation, observational evidence contradicts this hypothesis, since the universe began to exist a finite ~13.8 billion years ago. The only possible escape for the atheist is the invention of a kind of super universe, which can never be confirmed experimentally (hence it is metaphysical in nature, and not scientific).
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetic ... d_god.html

How did God come into being, existence?
by Matt Slick

God did not come into existence. He has always been in existence. The Bible says that He has always existed: " . . . even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God" (Psalm 90:2); and, "Your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting" (Psalm 93:2). Quite simply, God has no beginning and no end. So, when we ask how did God come into being, the answer is that he did not. He always was.

But let's explore this little further. If God did come into being, then we would have to ask what it was that brought him into existence. Whatever that was, it would have to be greater than God, and the question would go back yet another step because we would have to ask what brought that into existence, and so on and so on. There would never be a beginning. Think about it this way with a thought experiment . . .

Let's say there is an infinitely long line of dominoes where one domino is falling into the next and so on. This represents one thing causing another thing to happen. The question we need to ask is, "Can the dominoes have been falling one after another forever?" The answer is no.

If we were to travel back along the line of dominoes looking for where it all began, we would never be able to get to the first one. That's because with an infinitely long line of dominoes where each one has been falling one after another forever, we would never be able to get to the first domino because there would not be a first domino that started it all. But the problem is that if there is no first domino that started each one falling, there can't be a second domino that is falling nor a third nor a fourth, and so on. It just does not make sense.

So it is best to accept the idea that God has always been--just as the Bible says.
http://carm.org/god-come-into-existence

fallsfromtrees wrote:

cthia wrote:Does God exist in your world?

Perhaps it is time for the moderator to create a religion sub forum to match the politics subforum, and move this discussion there.

For you Fortran programmers out there: God is Real, unless declared integer

Caliban wrote:
"A mind is much like a door; It tends to work better when it can be opened."

( Don't remember the origin of this quote, just the item itself)

fallsfromtrees wrote:

cthia wrote:Does God exist in your world?

Perhaps it is time for the moderator to create a religion sub forum to match the politics subforum, and move this discussion there.

For you Fortran programmers out there: God is Real, unless declared integer

biochem wrote:Or he could rename politics to "politics and religion". I agree it should be moved out of the main forum.

If we kick GOD out of our public schools, who do you think will feel welcomed?

cthia wrote:Everybody wants to move religion. Or discussions about religion. The Pilgrims fled England and religious persecution in search of lands in which they could worship as they please.

America's success leads it to forget its roots. A land of religious freedom. As a result, we have taken (moved) religion out of the public schools.

Now our public schools have become a warzone!