[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]TigerTime wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]TigerTime wrote:
[quote]kamui wrote:
TigerTime’s journey remind me of this little story :
[quote]
A terrible storm came into a town and local officials sent out an emergency warning that the riverbanks would soon overflow and flood the nearby homes. They ordered everyone in the town to evacuate immediately.
A faithful Christian man heard the warning and decided to stay, saying to himself, ?I will trust God and if I am in danger, then God will send a divine miracle to save me.?
The neighbors came by his house and said to him, ?We?re leaving and there is room for you in our car, please come with us!? But the man declined. ?I have faith that God will save me.?
As the man stood on his porch watching the water rise up the steps, a man in a canoe paddled by and called to him, ?Hurry and come into my canoe, the waters are rising quickly!? But the man again said, ?No thanks, God will save me.?
The floodwaters rose higher pouring water into his living room and the man had to retreat to the second floor. A police motorboat came by and saw him at the window. ?We will come up and rescue you!? they shouted. But the man refused, waving them off saying, ?Use your time to save someone else! I have faith that God will save me!?
The flood waters rose higher and higher and the man had to climb up to his rooftop.
A helicopter spotted him and dropped a rope ladder. A rescue officer came down the ladder and pleaded with the man, “Grab my hand and I will pull you up!” But the man STILL refused, folding his arms tightly to his body. ?No thank you! God will save me!?
Shortly after, the house broke up and the floodwaters swept the man away and he drowned.
When in Heaven, the man stood before God and asked, ?I put all of my faith in You. Why didn?t You come and save me??
And God said, ?Son, I sent you a warning. I sent you a car. I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat. I sent you a helicopter. What more were you looking for?? [/quote][/quote]
The only thing God has sent me is the bible. Which, even if the book made sense, is a stupid way to go about this.
I know, I know, the bible is a complex book and only APPEARS to be horse shit when looked at incorrectly. You can say the exact same thing about ANYTHING, so you’ll understand if that argument is less than convincing to me. [/quote]
Oh brother. There are thousands of books outside the bible. You’re just being lazy…[/quote]
Like the ones Forlife listed, for example? What exactly is your point here?[/quote]
Sure you could check those books out as well…
My point is simply this. You want God to be obvious to you in a way you’ll get with out you having to lift a finger to do it. On the other hand, billions of people already believe in God and have a relationship with him with out Him having to do anything special for them.
If you want to know there is volumes of information. There is so much material out there that if a single person dedicated his life to studying only that then it would take a thousand life spans to take it all in.
Hell, if you were really into archaeology you could go to the Holy Land and participate in one of many digs. You can go Israel, France, Portugal, Italy, etc. All these places where significant religious events have occurred. You could study numerology and observe historical cycles and how they coinside with Biblical numerology. And that’s just a shred of the academic stuff. You can drive to your local library and check out a pickup truck full of books on faith, faith and reason, faith and science, Religions of the world, etc. You can drive to a number of churches in your area and discuss all your questions with a pastor, I am sure most of them would be happy to speak to you.
Have you done any of that? No.
You saw a movie and a speech, and didn’t “feel” anything, that’s it.
It seems pretty clear you’ve spent more time studying atheist propaganda than you have regarding faith of God.[/quote]
Again with the whole “the information is there and it all makes sense if you really think about it!” to which I will once again respond - you can say the EXACT SAME THING about ANYTHING. No matter how convoluted and ridiculous something looks, if you’re willing to make the mental jumps for it, you can MAKE it make sense.
It’s not about God being obvious to me. He’s not obvious period! It seems rather convenient that when the bible makes absolutely no sense, it’s a metaphor. For what you may ask? Who the fuck knows, it’s so vague and unrelated that you already need the answer to “figure it out”. But when the bible makes sense, it’s literal. The problem here is, no two people agree on which parts are metaphorical and which are literal because God never actually says if he is being literal or metaphorical, that’s just you CHOOSING to interpret it as such so it fits your world view. Are you God’s messenger? Is your interpretation correct while everyone is misreading it?
There was a time when the entire bible was taken literally by nearly everyone. The more man kind learned about the world, the more “metaphorical” the bible became. Will the bible be 99% metaphorical 100 years from now?
