Blackrook
Diamond Member
- Jun 20, 2014
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The only certainty in life is that we are going to die. Some die in the womb, some die at the moment of birth, some die in childhood, some die in young adulthood, some die in middle-age, some die when they are old, but all of us, eventually, die.
And that presents us with a problem.
Because none of us knows, for certain, what happens after that.
Yes, it is true that there are people with near death experiences ("NDE") who tell us they died, wandered around the operating room, met their dead family and friends, and then came back, but there is no certainty in these stories. They could be genuine spiritual experiences, but they could be the by-products of brain death, illusions that a dying brain experiences as it shuts down. I do not know what to believe myself, so I do not put much stock in NDE stories as proof of the afterlife.
We have the Bible, and all its miracle stories, but there are many who don't believe in the Bible, and don't believe in miracles, and think that stories that are more than 2000 years old can't possibly be relevant in the modern world.
For Catholics, we have stories of the saints and the martyrs, and many tales of miracles that have occurred up to the modern age, but finding actual proof of these stories requires us to believe the truthfulness of the witnesses, and there are those who will say it is all just lies told by the Catholic Church to keep the faithful believing.
My personal belief in a God who created the universe is based on a notion that it is more logical to believe in a force that created all we see and experience, than to believe that all we see and experience somehow came into being by itself. The only way to believe there is no God is to believe the universe was always here, but scientists believe the universe was not always here, there was a point before time began when the universe did not exist. This is called the "Big Bang Theory" and I think if one believes in that theory, it becomes pretty inevitable to believe there is a God.
But believing in a God who created the universe does nothing to show that the God revealed in the Bible to Abraham, and revealed to be all-loving and merciful by Christ, is the real God. Observing the way nature works, and the mercilessness with which animals prey on animals, with the way humans treat other humans, and weather and disease kills randomly, it would be easier to believe in a God that does not care about his creation, and is rather indifferent to our suffering.
And I think this believe in an impersonal God is deism, and I think that that kind of God is the only thing we can prove using logic and reason alone.
To believe in the loving and personal God taught to us by Christ, it takes something more: faith.
And what is faith, it's a willingness to believe in something you cannot prove to be true.
And that is the quandry Christians find themselves in when atheists demand proof for God.
We cannot give you proof. If there was proof of God, you would no longer have faith, but faith is what's required to have redemption and forgiveness of sins. Once God proves himself, it is no longer possible to ask forgiveness for anything you've done, because your motives are no longer genuine, all you're doing is surrendering to a superior will. Once you know for certain there is a God, you will be so bent by that knowledge that you will lack free will.
And that is why God does not show himself, at least not in the obvious way that atheists would demand.
And that presents us with a problem.
Because none of us knows, for certain, what happens after that.
Yes, it is true that there are people with near death experiences ("NDE") who tell us they died, wandered around the operating room, met their dead family and friends, and then came back, but there is no certainty in these stories. They could be genuine spiritual experiences, but they could be the by-products of brain death, illusions that a dying brain experiences as it shuts down. I do not know what to believe myself, so I do not put much stock in NDE stories as proof of the afterlife.
We have the Bible, and all its miracle stories, but there are many who don't believe in the Bible, and don't believe in miracles, and think that stories that are more than 2000 years old can't possibly be relevant in the modern world.
For Catholics, we have stories of the saints and the martyrs, and many tales of miracles that have occurred up to the modern age, but finding actual proof of these stories requires us to believe the truthfulness of the witnesses, and there are those who will say it is all just lies told by the Catholic Church to keep the faithful believing.
My personal belief in a God who created the universe is based on a notion that it is more logical to believe in a force that created all we see and experience, than to believe that all we see and experience somehow came into being by itself. The only way to believe there is no God is to believe the universe was always here, but scientists believe the universe was not always here, there was a point before time began when the universe did not exist. This is called the "Big Bang Theory" and I think if one believes in that theory, it becomes pretty inevitable to believe there is a God.
But believing in a God who created the universe does nothing to show that the God revealed in the Bible to Abraham, and revealed to be all-loving and merciful by Christ, is the real God. Observing the way nature works, and the mercilessness with which animals prey on animals, with the way humans treat other humans, and weather and disease kills randomly, it would be easier to believe in a God that does not care about his creation, and is rather indifferent to our suffering.
And I think this believe in an impersonal God is deism, and I think that that kind of God is the only thing we can prove using logic and reason alone.
To believe in the loving and personal God taught to us by Christ, it takes something more: faith.
And what is faith, it's a willingness to believe in something you cannot prove to be true.
And that is the quandry Christians find themselves in when atheists demand proof for God.
We cannot give you proof. If there was proof of God, you would no longer have faith, but faith is what's required to have redemption and forgiveness of sins. Once God proves himself, it is no longer possible to ask forgiveness for anything you've done, because your motives are no longer genuine, all you're doing is surrendering to a superior will. Once you know for certain there is a God, you will be so bent by that knowledge that you will lack free will.
And that is why God does not show himself, at least not in the obvious way that atheists would demand.