crochet1949 wrote:Audie -- can we clarify for a moment -- your question -- 'would you be part of a faith that required you to believe something that is just nonsense?" As RickD. has commented -- for You it is the global flood.
The "global flood" is a prime example of nonsense. IF it were to be-which it is not by any means-an integral and essential part of Christianity, that is a deal killer right there.
So -- should a person be part of a 'faith' religious belief system -- that 'requires' you to believe in something that you think is just nonsense. Well -- there Are religious belief systems existing that do exactly that.
Always have been
In This country we still have some degree of religious freedom
.
Including the choice to be expelled from the church
Maybe we could define 'faith'.
It is well defined. My objection was to playing equivocation games with the word.
And, you can't fathom Why anyone would believe in a global flood Period.
No, that is not it at all. It is very easy to understand.
Until the early 19th century, the belief was universal among the learned and the peasant alike.
And to say 'because God's Word tells us it happened' is pretty much useless to you.
It is useless to just say that, yes. IF all were all alike inspired to see the same interpretation, and, that interpretation coincided with observable fact, well,
who could not be convinced?
In fact, the opposite is the case.
God has given you a wonderful mind --you just earned a law degree.
You too
Unfortunately you don't allow for the existence of God.
Two unfortunates here. You are not using your wonderful mind, and, you are assuming something about me that simply is not so.
Because you don't see Him as being / acting Logically.
Uh, no, it is the opposite, really. I can see a possible existence for a god, but not one who, say, demands human sacrifice ala Aztec religion, nor one who
says he did something that didnt happen. But then, that is the word of man,
interpreted willy nilly by man.
I find myself feeling sorry for people who are so 'scientifically minded they can't see God'.
There may be such people; I am not one of them. It is not either / or in any case.
I think it is too bad for people who close themselves off from so many of the spectacular realities around them by choosing to only accept the -what Einstein called them- rather childish superstitions found in and literally interpreted from the bible.
The book called God's Word / Bible Does tell us that at some point in the future -- everyone Will acknowledge God's existence.
There are a lot of religions.
And then there is the reasoning -- my believing In God doesn't make Him exist any more than Not believing in Him makes Him Not exist. But -- it Can't be both ways. Either He does or He Doesn't.
There are yet more possibilities. Some other deity, or deities; and the one in the book may well exist, and we may well know next to nothing about him, and what we think we know is mostly wrong.
And since we Do have a book that begins with 'In the beginning God..... created....." I'd put my money in the concept that He Does
Which is fine. I know a lot of people who see it that way, and I've no trouble respecting their views.
I dont agree with the idea that one must never check his interpretation against any outside source, and cling to it regardless of any outside source contradiction.
I dont get the "park brain at door" attitude, as so well exemplified by the
noted paleontologist Dr. K. Wise, who in a staggering declaration of total intellectual dishonesty declared that if all the evidence in the universe turned against yec, he'd still be a yec. "as that is what the bible (get this) SEEMS to say!".
(emphasis added)