Gman wrote:B.W.,
As being a former atheist, you ask good questions...
Here are a few more meant to added to the Post above Gman's posts as follow-up...
Hatsoff and Touchingthecloth,
...The realism you offer is not really realism at all. We all do exist and we all are moral rational thinking beings and this would instead verify the bible's claim about whose / type of image / likeness we were originally fashioned under.
God gave you a gift to morally think and reason. He does not deny this to you or I. He does not steal it away. He grants you the ability to make your own decisions and for this, atheism contends God as unjust!
He provided food to be had and granted to us the wisdom to attain it. He is slow to anger and God did something so tangible that it is before your very eyes but you fail to grasp it.
What is that?
Before Christ came, the ancient pagan world was indeed a barbaric and brutal place. The evidence for this transcends all cultures as clearly cemented in all historical and archeological records.
After the day of Pentecost an amazing thing happened. The ancient world's brutality was slowly beaten back so that we no longer live in that moral barbarity. Have you considered this? If God does not exist — then moral subjectivity would be the rule of today as it once was during ancient times before Christ came. The same kind in which atheism champions!
You can cite me the times when Christianity was hijacked for political gain, such as the Crusades or the Inquisition but I'll cite you the fruit of the barbarity of Mao, Stalin, Che, Castro, etc, all who held fast to the atheistic position of atheistic creative morality. I'll even cite the world's populations from the ancient world 5000 years to now comparing who really killed more and caused more pain.
But what is the point — how can you bring up the Crusades or Inquisition since accord to you, there is No real right -- No real wrong?
How can you make a moral judgment that religion is wrong if no wrongs or rights can exist? How can your position really be true if nothing can be inherently right or wrong — only relative?
How can you ascertain that atheism is the only truth when the fruit of such promotes barbarity on a scale greater than all wars of religion combined? How can any carnage of any war stemming from any political system be morally wrong? How can you make such judgments that any of it is wrong?
How can you base and say that religion,
specifically singling our Christianity, is wrong, a crutch for the stupid minded, and only you are the enlightened right? Do you not use subjective morality to make your case, pose your own objections and arguments? If all morality is truly subjective, then Christianity would not be wrong or right and neither could you. You have no case — you have nothing to defend — no reason to defeat or crush.
However, there is right and wrong because there is an Eternal Moral Lawgiver that exists.
How many times do we put God on trial, mock him, deny him, and say his way is not the only way because I have mine own better way: That my subjective morals are superior to God's. Figuratively we spit upon him, beat him, and scourge him, for allowing evil, not stopping it on our terms, not performing according to our standards for our needs
We chide him in our schools, universities, often we figuratively tell him to perform some miracle for us so we can believe and if not we make other gods, religions, political systems, yes even atheism, to assuage our conscience and justify our needs.
We think through such works as these will absolve us of our responsibility for denying the standards set forth to humanity by the Moral Lawgiver discovered by our own use of inherent conscience designed to lead us back to God.
We interpret God's silence as proof that he does not exist, that He does not care; never realizing that his silence is summed up as slowness to anger (Nahum 1:3). We blame God for every blight and bane. If He were to reveal Himself —
why we put him on trial — crucify him we would.
All this is is an attempt to entrap God to act contrary to himself. Something God will never do. So in slowness and patience and with mercy — God banished Humanity away from himself long ago.
Genesis 3:23 speaks of this occurrence. God did not leave us, nor forsake us. We forsook him and what did God do? He provided the means to return to Him by an act upon a cross.
How can you say you hate something, or love something? Or value anything? If nothing has merit or meaning? Or a mere bunch of chemicals reactions within the brain — never realizing that such reactions were placed there so you can learn the reality of right and wrong?
No, you cannot prove that God does not exist. He proves himself that he does. Only you all need to see it. It is through such empirical seeing, which we Christians call faith, that comes after we realize how many times we had placed God on trial, mocked him, dared him…then come to our senses seeing what we have done and what He has done.
You can laugh, but will God have the last laugh? With absolute certaincy we will all die someday. There are absolutes. Our ideas have consequences in this life, do they not? You can laugh and mock me, put me on trial as a fool but remember my words — when you take your last breath — you'll lose all thought of atheism as being a true reality.
I wish to spare you of this realization and ask the Almighty to reveal Himself to you for His Name's sake — not mine. He has been doing so in both of your lives but pride has made you both blind. How many times do you put God on trial, mock him, chide his existence?
Isn't this what you all have been doing evidenced in your own words on this very thread? How many days will he keep offering you a chance to return to him and actually find him?
What's the real reason you do not believe in God — not the intellectual mumbo jumbo and dribble you all been spouting? Something you can't come to terms with? Maybe an act done against you? What's the real reason? Ever been asked this?
Maybe it is found in this statement:
Atheist doesn't physically deny God any freedoms; rather, Atheist denies God the freedom to condemn themselves in principle.
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