In their book Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking, Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander remind us that the way we view the.
Table of contents
- Why should we believe the Bible?
- What Should We Believe? | For The Church
- Read the bible first!
- Yes, We All Should
But, to keep our mouths shut and watch people follow a false spirit is to watch them die without Christ.
Why should we believe the Bible?
It is like refusing to give oxygen to a diver in the depths of the sea or denying medicine to a sick child. No one is fine without Christ. Another example, the prosperity gospel: My guess is most reading this will deny the prosperity gospel as right doctrine, but do we functionally live as if it is? In other words, are you saying God is not some magical ATM dispensing healthy hearts, large paychecks, and buckets of smiles, yet living as if he is? When things go wrong, do you grow anxious, frustrated, and angry, accusing God of not being good?
I think we are tempted to believe at least a version of the prosperity gospel more than we realize, especially in America. For both of us. Not sure how I feel about this. I agree that there should be less negativity associated with changing your mind. However, the examples you chose marriage, and the quote regarding racism and the way you went about it just did not work for me. I think you could have chosen to present the exact same point in a completely different way and it would have reached farther.
I think our beliefs are grounded less in our logic or quasi-objectivity and more so our lives and experiences. We kind of live out the moral of the story that is our lives. But most people, I think, change their beliefs over time. Ah, this was a great post. Could not agree with you more.
Similar sentiments from Scott Simon when Hitchens died, part of which has become my personal credo:. No one here wants that. The only thing I truly know for sure is that change is constant and inevitable; that would imply that I should never state that I know anything for sure! I think it is important to remember that people generally believe they are on the right side of whatever discussion about beliefs they are having.
The world looks very different from various camps and even if on the surface it might seem like two parties are talking about the same thing, say, that mountain over there, from their perspectives that mountain probably looks very different. It is actually very, very difficult to get people to sincerely question what they believe in. In my experience, most people just feign open-mindedness even to themselves while waiting for a rhetorical or logical slip up by the other party. Even this article, for example, falls victim to sham open-mindedness. Can we really lump together radical fundies, nazis, the tea party, birthers, and the kkk all in the same sentence?
Science, cause and effect relationships, and even reason itself are puny adversaries when Heaven and hell hang in the balance. Resist the temptation to anachronistically impose your morality on them—they were as much the product of the times and prevailing culture as you are of yours. Regardless of your thoughts about the merits of the Tea Party platform or the legitimacy of the Birthers suspicions, have you ever stopped to ask yourself this one crucially important question: My own closed-minded hunch is probably not.
Without any evidence at all, my inclination would be to dismiss you as merely parroting the prevailing attitudes of whatever has been bouncing around the echo chamber of the blogs you read. How we could have started somewhere on the ladder of wisdom, climbed up a rung or two to a new vantange point, and yet still remain oblivious to the MANY rungs still above us is a mystery to me.
Yet the overwhelming evidence is that is exactly what happens. Even cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists, who we would think should be much more aware of the myriad of mental shortcuts and biases we are all subject to, find that they typically fare no better when subject to the very same decision making tests that they designed to point out bias.
None of us are really open minded. Just once wouldn't you love for someone to simply show you the evidence for God's existence?
What Should We Believe? | For The Church
No statements of, "You just have to believe. But first consider this. When it comes to the possibility of God's existence, the Bible says that there are people who have seen sufficient evidence, but they have suppressed the truth about God. Here then, are some reasons to consider 1 The complexity of our planet points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it today.
He is constantly initiating and seeking for us to come to him. This is your decision, no coercion here. But if you want to be forgiven by God and come into a relationship with him, you can do so right now by asking him to forgive you and come into your life. Jesus said, "Behold, I stand at the door [of your heart] and knock. He who hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him [or her]. You know my life and that I need to be forgiven.
I ask you to forgive me right now and come into my life. I want to know you in a real way. Come into my life now.
Read the bible first!
Thank you that you wanted a relationship with me. Referring to all those who believe in him, Jesus Christ said of us, "I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. There is a God how do you explain how were made in all the little details that makes us Yes there is bad in the world but god didn't put a gun in the persons hand or tell them to do bad things it was there choice.
You decide whether your good or bad not God. I respect if you disagree with me, and so does God and heaven, BUT this exists, even though MY point of view is unique from others. And I'm only a year-old girl Here is what I believe: This is only MY opinion. One thing's for sure, IF you'll make it into Heaven by being a good person, then God is with you and you'll be able to remember your life. And the world will not end.
Can you see your brain? I have s of reason to believe.. Believe in HIM and you won't have much to complain. I believe in the verse John 3: For God did not come to condemn the world but to save it! I'm 15 and I believe in God and I will always love God! Why do we need to go to Heaven? I like resting in peace other than going to Heaven and getting bored. He sends people who don't believe in him to Hell like they did something bad by not believing in him.
He should erase pain, not create it. There is no evidence that he is real. All these stories about God sound fake. When you do something, you have a bigger chance of doing it wrong than doing it right. If you look at the signs around us we can begin to believe god does not exist. I don't see how a higher being would allow some things currently happening to good people to happen. We see a lot of honest hard working people getting taken on a daily basis. We see innocent young kids getting horrific diseases and yet you see bad people getting away with scams and rip offs all the time with no ramifications.
You can't tell me someone has to suffer through he'll on earth just to be saved. This is a personal thing.
Some people see good reason to believe in God and some people don't. We should all stop judging each other. There are good people who are religious and good people who are not. There are bad people who are religious and bad people who are not. We live in a society where the universes questions have been answered or are waiting to be answered by our incredible minds. Why would you believe in a god when there are much better answers for our big questions? I believe that people should always have the right to believe what they believe but i think it is silly that god is still the answer for some of us.
Yes, We All Should
There is no evidence for God. To accept something without evidence is frankly stupid, and to accept something simply because there's no evidence against it is also stupid. There's as much evidence against God as there is against the Tooth Fairy, and yet one of them is superstition and the other is religion. Strange, is it not? In the words of James Madison, "One day, Jesus and the Virgin Mary will be regarded just the same as Minerva in the brain of Jupiter", and such is the nature of all religion, and such is the nature of all gods.