Evidence for God from Science

Zoe is right, Kristoffer. Honestly, what do you have to loose?

What do you have to lose? If God isn't real then nothing will happen.

The doctrine of total depravity doesn't necessitate people having no goodness in them, but that no goodness is perfectly good. Most "goodness" is still polluted with selfish desires or selfish motivations

If it is similar to a "Ethical Formulation of Moral Correction", then I have done that over and over again. Everyone has faults and everyone should be capable of reforming.

jlay wrote:

Zoe is right, Kristoffer. Honestly, what do you have to loose?

jlay, what about the story of Jonah?

14 Therefore they called out to the Lord, “O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.” 15 So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. 16 Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

They did more for Jonah than Jonah had been willing to do for them. When they saw that the cause was hopeless, they asked Jonah's God for His forgiveness for throwing Jonah into the stormy sea. Sometimes unsaved people put believers to shame by their honesty, sympathy, and sacrifice.
They confessed, "For you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you". There's no evidence that they abandoned their gods. When the storm ceased, the men feared God even more and made vows to Him.

Am I wrong? If so, please correct me brother.

3. Total Depravity

When we speak of man's depravity we mean man's natural condition apart from any grace exerted by God to restrain or transform man.

There is no doubt that man could perform more evil acts toward his fellow man than he does. But if he is restrained from performing more evil acts by motives that are not owing to his glad submission to God, then even his "virtue" is evil in the sight of God.

Romans 14:23 says, "Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin." This is a radical indictment of all natural "virtue" that does not flow from a heart humbly relying on God's grace.

The terrible condition of man's heart will never be recognized by people who assess it only in relation to other men. Romans 14:23 makes plain that depravity is our condition in relation to God primarily, and only secondarily in relation to man. Unless we start here we will never grasp the totality of our natural depravity.

Man's depravity is total in at least four senses.

Our rebellion against God is total.

Apart from the grace of God there is no delight in the holiness of God, and there is no glad submission to the sovereign authority of God.

Of course totally depraved men can be very religious and very philanthropic. They can pray and give alms and fast, as Jesus said (Matthew 6:1-18). But their very religion is rebellion against the rights of their Creator, if it does not come from a childlike heart of trust in the free grace of God. Religion is one of the chief ways that man conceals his unwillingness to forsake self-reliance and bank all his hopes on the unmerited mercy of God (Luke 18:9-14; Colossians 2:20-23).

The totality of our rebellion is seen in Romans 3:9-10 and 18. "I have already charged that all men, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written: None is righteous, no not one; no one seeks for God....There is no fear of God before their eyes."

It is a myth that man in his natural state is genuinely seeking God. Men do seek God. But they do not seek him for who he is. They seek him in a pinch as one who might preserve them from death or enhance their worldly enjoyments. Apart from conversion, no one comes to the light of God.

Some do come to the light. But listen to what John 3:20-21 says about them. "Every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God."

Yes there are those who come to the light—namely those whose deeds are the work of God. "Wrought in God" means worked by God. Apart from this gracious work of God all men hate the light of God and will not come to him lest their evil be exposed—this is total rebellion. "No one seeks for God...There is no fear of God before their eyes!"

In his total rebellion everything man does is sin.

In Romans 14:23 Paul says, "Whatever is not from faith is sin." Therefore, if all men are in total rebellion, everything they do is the product of rebellion and cannot be an honor to God, but only part of their sinful rebellion. If a king teaches his subjects how to fight well and then those subjects rebel against their king and use the very skill he taught them to resist him, then even those skills become evil.

Thus man does many things which he can only do because he is created in the image of God and which in the service of God could be praised. But in the service of man's self-justifying rebellion, these very things are sinful.

In Romans 7:18 Paul says, "I know that no good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh." This is a radical confession of the truth that in our rebellion nothing we think or feel is good. It is all part of our rebellion. The fact that Paul qualifies his depravity with the words, "that is, in my flesh," shows that he is willing to affirm the good of anything that the Spirit of God produces in him (Romans 15:18). "Flesh" refers to man in his natural state apart from the work of God's Spirit. So what Paul is saying in Romans 7:18 is that apart from the work of God's Spirit all we think and feel and do is not good.

NOTE: We recognize that the word "good" has a broad range of meanings. We will have to use it in a restricted sense to refer to many actions of fallen people which in relation are in fact not good.

For example we will have to say that it is good that most unbelievers do not kill and that some unbelievers perform acts of benevolence. What we mean when we call such actions good is that they more or less conform to the external pattern of life that God has commanded in Scripture.

However, such outward conformity to the revealed will of God is not righteousness in relation to God. It is not done out of reliance on him or for his glory. He is not trusted for the resources, though he gives them all. Nor is his honor exalted, even though that's his will in all things (1 Corinthians 10:31). Therefore even these "good" acts are part of our rebellion and are not "good" in the sense that really counts in the end—in relation to God.

Man's inability to submit to God and do good is total.

Picking up on the term "flesh" above (man apart from the grace of God) we find Paul declaring it to be totally enslaved to rebellion. Romans 8:7-8 says, "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God."

The "mind of the flesh" is the mind of man apart from the indwelling Spirit of God ("You are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God really dwells in you," Romans 8:9). So natural man has a mindset that does not and cannot submit to God. Man cannot reform himself.

Ephesians 2:1 says that we Christians were all once "dead in trespasses and sins." The point of deadness is that we were incapable of any life with God. Our hearts were like a stone toward God (Ephesians 4:18; Ezekiel 36:26). Our hearts were blind and incapable of seeing the glory of God in Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4-6). We were totally unable to reform ourselves.

Our rebellion is totally deserving of eternal punishment.

Ephesians 2:3 goes on to say that in our deadness we were "children of wrath." That is, we were under God's wrath because of the corruption of our hearts that made us as good as dead before God.

The reality of hell is God's clear indictment of the infiniteness of our guilt. If our corruption were not deserving of an eternal punishment God would be unjust to threaten us with a punishment so severe as eternal torment. But the Scriptures teach that God is just in condemning unbelievers to eternal hell (2 Thessalonians 1:6-9; Matthew 5:29f; 10:28; 13:49f; 18:8f; 25:46; Revelation 14:9-11; 20:10). Therefore, to the extent that hell is a total sentence of condemnation, to that extent must we think of ourselves as totally blameworthy apart from the saving grace of God.

In summary, total depravity means that our rebellion against God is total, everything we do in this rebellion is sin, our inability to submit to God or reform ourselves is total, and we are therefore totally deserving of eternal punishment.

It is hard to exaggerate the importance of admitting our condition to be this bad. If we think of ourselves as basically good or even less than totally at odds with God, our grasp of the work of God in redemption will be defective. But if we humble ourselves under this terrible truth of our total depravity, we will be in a position to see and appreciate the glory and wonder of the work of God discussed in the next four points

zoegirl wrote:Jlay, why wouldn't God hear the prayer of an unbeliever? If He can't then how in the world did any of us come to God?

If God did not hear, or can answer, a prayer of an unbeliever, then no one could be saved...

Luke 18:13, 14

You seem to continue to want to ascribe limitations to God with respect to an unbeliever.

jlay, what about the story of Jonah?

jlay wrote:

If God did not hear, or can answer, a prayer of an unbeliever, then no one could be saved...

Luke 18:13, 14

I am surprised some of you are so shocked by this position, as there are some very bright Christian minds who agree with me.
BW, i fail to see how this passage relates to the point. He certainly believed in God, or he would not have prayed.

A person is not saved by prayer, but by faith in Christ. God has already done all the work to save us before we even exist. I have never read anything in the scripture on salvation that states what you are saying. Prayer is for those with relationship (believers) with God. Once someone prays, "save me," they have already crossed into grace.
Zoe, if you want to defend your advice so be it. My contention is that it is misguided and not scripturally supported. To tell an admitted skeptic, and one who has trended towards antagonism, (IMO) to just experiement with something as sacred as prayer is just not sound.

You seem to continue to want to ascribe limitations to God with respect to an unbeliever.

This couldn't be further from the truth. God has ascribed His limitations in how He deals with us. Just as Christ said, NO ONE comes to the Father, except through me. That is a limitation God has imposed, and we are to honor it. I am just trying to comply. When I say, 'Will God hear,' I certainly am not limiting God. I know God is capable of hearing. That is not what I am stating. It is God who accepts, and God who refuses, according to His perfect will.

jlay, what about the story of Jonah?

"Pick me up and throw me into the sea," he replied, "and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you."
How do you know god heard them? Jonah told them what to do. What Jonah prophesied happened, and the men, BELIEVED. they were converted right there. It even says, they made vows.

All I have time for now.

B. W. wrote: Also, an Atheists prayer:

“If God is real, then God, show me…”

God answers Romans 1:19, 20 but they do not acknowledge the answer received, Romans 1:21…

He wrote in Surprised by Joy: "Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about 'man's search for God.' To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse's search for the cat."

"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.... But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape."

When God drew Lewis' heart to himself, he became conscious of the presence of his own sinfulness. "For the first time I examined myself with a seriously practical purpose," wrote Lewis. "And there I found what appalled me: a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds. My name is legion."

jlay wrote:

sinnerbybirth wrote:jlay, what about the story of Jonah?

"Pick me up and throw me into the sea," he replied, "and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you."
How do you know god heard them? Jonah told them what to do. What Jonah prophesied happened, and the men, BELIEVED. they were converted right there. It even says, they made vows.

All I have time for now.

Kristoffer wrote:

B. W. wrote: Also, an Atheists prayer:

“If God is real, then God, show me…”

God answers Romans 1:19, 20 but they do not acknowledge the answer received, Romans 1:21…

Please do not bunch me in with "they", also i saw that it was mentioned that athiesm is a "world view", it is not naturalism or nihilism, it is just the position of rejecting certain claims, even christians have been called athiest... So why do people who have been called it, find it so offensive for other people to be like that?

I have asked that again and again...I have also tried the other one.

"God, if you are there and think I deserve death...then strike me down" I guess i don't deserve to be striked down :/

The only fear is fear of someone stronger than yourself. But the reason for the fear is because might doesn't make right. people are not good because they can over power you.

I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed:

Hey jlay, I don't know if GOD heard them or not.

how can you start a relationship with anyone, much less GOD, without conversation? I questioned GOD alot.....before I came to know Christ.

Kristoffer wrote:

B. W. wrote:Also, an Atheists prayer: “If God is real, then God, show me…” God answers Romans 1:19, 20 but they do not acknowledge the answer received, Romans 1:21…

Please do not bunch me in with "they", also i saw that it was mentioned that athiesm is a "world view", it is not naturalism or nihilism, it is just the position of rejecting certain claims, even christians have been called athiest... So why do people who have been called it, find it so offensive for other people to be like that?

I have asked that again and again...I have also tried the other one.

"God, if you are there and think I deserve death...then strike me down" I guess i don't deserve to be striked down :/

The only fear is fear of someone stronger than yourself. But the reason for the fear is because might doesn't make right. people are not good because they can over power you.

zoegirl wrote:Of course, one could argue that you being here is a way for HIm to reveal Himself