# Notable Apologist Quotes



## SemperFiDawg

Thought it would be a great idea to have a place to post your favorite Apologist quotes.  If a context is needed please post it prior to the quote.


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## SemperFiDawg

If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshiped. --Evelyn Underhill


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## SemperFiDawg

I always admired atheists. I think it takes a lot of faith. - Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider


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## SemperFiDawg

"The worst moment for the atheist is when he feels thankful and has no one to thank." - Dante Gabriel Rossetti


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## SemperFiDawg

How else can you fight God but to pretend He doesn't exist?" - Chris Bowyer


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## SemperFiDawg

"If there were no God, there would be no Atheists." - GK Chesterton

I love me some G.K. Chesterton


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## SemperFiDawg

"An atheist is one who hopes the Lord will do nothing to disturb his disbelief." Franklin Jones


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## SemperFiDawg

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. --Francis Bacon


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## SemperFiDawg

To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, "I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge" --Ravi Zacharias


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## SemperFiDawg

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.--C.S. Lewis

A better mind never existed among man.


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## SemperFiDawg

Without God man has no reference point to define himself. 20th century philosophy manifests the chaos of man seeking to understand himself as a creature with dignity while having no reference point for that dignity. --R. C. Sproul


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## SemperFiDawg

Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself. --Madeleine L'Engle


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## SemperFiDawg

We think having faith means being convinced God exists in the same way we are convinced a chair exists. People who cannot be completely convinced of God?s existence think faith is impossible for them. Not so. People who doubt can have great faith because faith is something you do, not something you think. In fact, the greater your doubt the more heroic your faith. --Unknown


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## SemperFiDawg

God is not discoverable or demonstrable by purely scientific means, unfortunately for the scientifically minded. But that really proves nothing. It simply means that the wrong instruments are being used for the job. - J.B. Phillips


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## SemperFiDawg

A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol. --Deitrich Bonhoeffer


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## SemperFiDawg

In some awful, strange, paradoxical way, atheists tend to take religion more seriously than the practitioners. --Jonathon Miller


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## SemperFiDawg

It amazes me to find an intelligent person who fights against something which he does not at all believe exists. --Mohandas Gandhi


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## SemperFiDawg

Atheists express their rage against God although in their view He does not exist. --C. S. Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

There's something in every atheist, itching to believe, and something in every believer, itching to doubt. --Mignon McLaughlin


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## SemperFiDawg

Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God. -- Tom Stoppard


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## SemperFiDawg

If atheism spread, it would become a religion as intolerable as the ancient ones. --Gustave le Bon


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## SemperFiDawg

You think you are too intelligent to believe in God. I am not like you. --Napoleon Bonaparte


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## SemperFiDawg

By night, an atheist half-believes in God. ?Edward Young


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## SemperFiDawg

If there be a God and one has never sought him, it will be small consolation to remember that one could not get proof of his existence. ?George MacDonald


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## SemperFiDawg

Humanism or atheism is a wonderful philosophy of life as long as you are big, strong, and between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. But watch out if you are in a lifeboat and there are others who are younger, bigger, or smarter. --William Murray


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## SemperFiDawg

Still, even the most admirable of atheists is nothing more than a moral parasite, living his life based on borrowed ethics. This is why, when pressed, the atheist will often attempt to hide his lack of conviction in his own beliefs behind some poorly formulated utilitarianism, or argue that he acts out of altruistic self-interest. But this is only post-facto rationalization, not reason or rational behavior. -Vox Day


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## SemperFiDawg

A disbelief in God does not result in a belief in nothing; disbelief in God usually results in a belief in anything.?unknown


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## SemperFiDawg

I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.--Abraham Lincoln


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## SemperFiDawg

A creature revolting against a creator is revolting against the source of his own powers--including even his power to revolt...It is like the scent of a flower trying to destroy the flower. --C.S. Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

Secrets of the incomprehensible wisdom of God, unknown to any besides Himself! Man, sprung up only of a few days, wants to penetrate, and to set bounds to it. Who is it that hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counselor? --Jeanne Guyon


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## SemperFiDawg

According to the teaching of our Lord, what is wrong with the world is precisely that it does not believe in God. Yet it is clear that the unbelief which he so bitterly deplored was not an intellectual persuasion of God?s non-existence. Those whom he rebuked for their lack of faith were not men who denied God with the top of their minds, but men who, while apparently incapable of doubting him with the top of their minds, lived as though he did not exist. --John Baillie


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## SemperFiDawg

The real attitude of sin in the heart towards God is that of being without God; it is pride, the worship of myself, that is the great atheistic fact in human life. ?Oswald Chambers


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## SemperFiDawg

The turning point in our lives is when we stop seeking the God we want and start seeking the God who is. --- Patrick Morley


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## SemperFiDawg

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, I hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. --Thomas Nagel


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## SemperFiDawg

We may seek God by our intellect, but we only can find him with our heart. ?Cotvos


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## SemperFiDawg

I believe in God as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. --C. S. Lewis

One of my favorites


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## SemperFiDawg

"Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God." - Heywood Broun


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## SemperFiDawg

"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning..." - C.S. Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

"It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed. For the duel is deadly; and any agnostic who wishes to be anything more than a Nihilist must sympathize with one version of nature or the other." - GK Chesterton


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## SemperFiDawg

"The atheist has no hope." - J.F. Clarke


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## SemperFiDawg

"I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays." - Henny Youngman


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## gemcgrew

"Those therefore, are more deserving of being termed atheists who acknowledge a God and walk as if there were none, than those (if there can be any such) that deny God, and walk as if there were one." - Stephen Charnock


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## SemperFiDawg

“Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” –G.K. Chesterton


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## SemperFiDawg

From an Agnostic Astronomer Regarding a Designer


“If the universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in.” –Robert Jastrow, agnostic astronomer, author of God and the Astronomers


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## SemperFiDawg

From a Nobel Prize winning Skeptic

“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.” –Francis Crick, biochemist and spiritual skeptic, shared the Nobel Prize for discovering the molecular structure of DNA


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## SemperFiDawg

From Paul Davies, physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist

“There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the universe....The impression of design is overwhelming.” – Paul Davies, an internationally known British astrophysicist and author


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## SemperFiDawg

“When you realize that the laws of nature must be incredibly finely tuned to produce the universe we see, that conspires to plant the idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a purpose behind it.” – John Polkinghorne KBE, FRS, theoretical physicist


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## SemperFiDawg

“It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science, it is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.” – Allan Sandage. Allan Rex Sandage was an American astronomer. He was Staff Member Emeritus with the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena.


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## SemperFiDawg

“Many have a feeling that somehow intelligence must have been involved in the laws of the universe....I strongly sense the presence and actions of a creative being far beyond myself and yet always personal and close by.” – Charles Townes Nobel Prize winning physicist


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## SemperFiDawg

“There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming.” –Paul Davies


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## SemperFiDawg

“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.” –Fred Hoyle. Sir Fred Hoyle FRS was an English astronomer noted primarily for his contribution to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis.


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## SemperFiDawg

“Discoveries of the last half of the 20th century have brought the scientific community to the realization that our universe and our planet in the universe are so remarkably unique that it is almost impossible to imagine how this could have happened accidentally, causing many agnostic scientists to concede that indeed some intelligent creative force may be required to account for it.” –Dr. Walter Bradley, Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A & M University, as quoted by Jimmy Williams in “Does God Exist."


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## SemperFiDawg

“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.” –C. S. Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

“A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.” –John Calvin


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## SemperFiDawg

“If the Bible is not the Word of God and inspired, the whole of Christendom for 1800 years has been under an immense delusion; half the human race has been cheated and deceived, and churches are monuments of folly. If the Bible is the Word of God and inspired, all who refuse to believe it are in fearful danger; they are living on the brink of eternal misery. No man, in his sober senses, can fail to see that the whole subject demands most serious attention.”


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## SemperFiDawg

“Can you imagine being an ambassador for your country and neglecting to prepare yourself for the common questions that people ask about your homeland? That would be irresponsible. You’d be without a job very quickly. God tells us that we are His ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:20). Seeing that that is the case, I think it is important that every Christian consider the following question: Am I ready to answer the common questions people ask about God? Am I ready to explain to someone why I believe the Bible is trustworthy? 1 Peter 3:15 says that we are to be ready to give a defense of our faith. Are you ready? Sadly, many Christians watch more TV in a week than they’ll spend in a year preparing themselves to answer questions about God and the Bible. Don’t leave defending the faith to your pastor. The church needs an army of saints who are able to articulate the truth persuasively and graciously. We are all called to “contend earnestly for the faith” (Jude 3). ” –Charlie Campbell


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## SemperFiDawg

“If the truth offends, then let it offend. People have been living their whole lives in offense to God; let them be offended for a while.” –John MacArthur, Found: God’s Will, p. 52.


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## SemperFiDawg

“To be ignorant and simple now-not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground-would be to throw down our weapons and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.” –C. S. Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

“Christianity is...rarely understood by those outside its bounds. In fact, this is probably one of the greatest tasks confronting the apologist–to rescue Christianity from misunderstandings.” 
–Alister E. McGrath


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## SemperFiDawg

“There was a time when only specialized Christian missionaries needed to be able to defend the gospel of Jesus Christ against the attacks of Islam. Today every Christian has an opportunity and obligation to present the gospel effectively and in Christian love to the Muslims who have permeated our Western society. When your neighbor, your mechanic, your favorite basketball player, your employer or employee, or even your children's friends could very well be Muslims, the need for proper understanding and an effective Christian witness is abundantly clear.”   Josh McDowell


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## SemperFiDawg

For my own part, I believe that in dealing with skeptics, and unbelievers, and enemies of the Bible, Christians are too apt to stand only on the defensive. They are too often content with answering this or that little objection, or discussing this or that little difficulty, which is picked out of Scripture and thrown in their teeth. I believe we ought to act on the aggressive far more than we do, and to press home on the adversaries of [Biblical] inspiration the enormous difficulties of their own position.” –J.C. Ryle (1816-1900)


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## SemperFiDawg

“As vital as it is for us to enlist in the Truth War and do battle for our faith, it is even more important to remember why we are fighting—not merely for the thrill of vanquishing some foe or winning some argument, but out of a genuine love for Christ, who is the living, breathing embodiment of all that we hold true and worth fighting for.” –John MacArthur, The Truth War, p. xxvi-xxvii


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## SemperFiDawg

“Christianity today is in conflict; in conflict against the secular world; in conflict with world religions—which are hostile to us—in conflict against the Kingdom of the Cults—and the Occult; in conflict against corrupt theology in our theological seminaries—and oftentimes in our pulpits; in conflict against all forms of evil surrounding us on all sides. And it is a foolish person indeed, who does not recognize that the Church was born in conflict; lives in conflict, and will triumph in conflict. We have been called to be soldiers of the cross. And if we’re going to be soldiers of the cross that means that we have to be attired to fight. That’s why Paul could say here in 2 Timothy, chapter 4 — I have fought the good fight [v. 7]. He did not say, “I have taken the long vacation.” I have fought the good fight, I finished the course, I kept the faith. But the problem we are facing today in Christianity—and one of the reasons why we are in crisis—is this: A large section of the Christian Church simply will not come into conflict with the world. And that, is one of our greatest drawbacks.” –Walter Martin


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## SemperFiDawg

“It is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer.” –G.K. Chesterton, as quoted in The Christian Research Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2009, p. 44.


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## SemperFiDawg

On Archaeology


“It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.” –Nelson Glueck


Nelson Glueck was an American rabbi, academic and archaeologist. He served as president of Hebrew Union College from 1947 until his death, and his pioneering work in biblical archaeology resulted in the discovery of 1,500 ancient sites.


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## SemperFiDawg

Archaeological work has unquestionably strengthened confidence in the reliability of the Scriptural record. More than one archaeologist has found his respect for the Bible increased by the experience of excavation in Palestine.” –Millar Burrows, former Yale University professor


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## SemperFiDawg

More Archaeology

Where the data of the Gospels can be tested, they consistently have proven to be remarkably accurate, especially in John. Archaeologists have unearthed the five porticoes of the pool of Bethesda by the Sheep Gate (John 5:2), the pool of Siloam (9:1-7), Jacob's well at Sychar (4:5), the "Pavement" (Gabbatha) where Pilate tried Jesus (19:13), and Solomon's porch in the temple precincts (10:22-23). As recently as 1961 an inscription was discovered in Caesarea, providing for the first time extrabiblical corroboration of Pilate as Judea's prefect during the time of Christ. Since the, discovery of an ossuary (bone-box) of a crucified man named Johanan from first-century Palestine confirms that nails were driven in his ankles, as in Christ's; previously some skeptics thought that that Romans used only ropes to affix the legs of condemned men to their crosses....In 1990, the burial grounds of Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest, and his family were uncovered in Jerusalem. These and numerous other details create a favorable impression of the Gospels' trustworthiness in the areas in which they can be tested.” –Craig L. Blomberg.  New Testament Scholar


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## SemperFiDawg

And more

“It is not too much to say that it was the rise of the science of archeology that broke the deadlock between historians and the orthodox Christian. Little by little, one city after another, one civilization after another, one culture after another, whose memories were enshrined only in the Bible, were restored to their proper place in ancient history by the studies of archeologists…The over-all result is indisputable. Forgotten cities have been found, the handiwork of vanished peoples has reappeared, contemporary records of Biblical events have been unearthed and the uniqueness of biblical revelation has been emphasized by contrast and comparison to the newly understood religions of ancient peoples. Nowhere has archaeological discovery refuted the Bible as history.” –John Elder, archaeologist (Quoted in Don Stewart, The Ten Wonders of the Bible, 1990, p. 58)


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## SemperFiDawg

“While many have doubted the accuracy of the Bible, time and continued research have consistently demonstrated that the Word of God is better informed than its critics. In fact, while thousands of finds from the ancient world support in broad outline and often in detail the biblical picture, not one incontrovertible find has ever contradicted the Bible.” –Norman Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics


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## SemperFiDawg

“Science itself is steadily nailing the lid on atheism's coffin.” –Lee Strobel


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## SemperFiDawg

“I am persuaded that men think there is no God because they wish there were none. They find it hard to believe in God, and to go on in sin, so they try to get an easy conscience by denying his existence.” –Charles Spurgeon


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## SemperFiDawg

“Everyone worships–even an atheist. He worships himself. When men reject God they worship false gods. That, of course, is what God forbids in the first commandment.” –John MacArthur


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## SemperFiDawg

"The chief reason people do not know God is not because He hides from them but because they hide from Him." –John Stott


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## SemperFiDawg

“Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life. But now, we are witnessing a transformation, a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.” –Czeslaw Milosz, "Discreet Charm of Nihilism" (The New York Review of Books, November 19, 1998)


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## SemperFiDawg

On the mistaken assumption that science and religion are incompatible:

"If it were true that Christianity and science were incompatible, there would be no Christians who were respected scientists. If fact, about forty percent of professional natural scientists are practicing Christians, and many others are theists of other kinds. Fewer than thirty percent are atheists." –Jeffrey Burton Russell, Ph.D., professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Exposing Myths About Christianity, IVP Books (2012), p. 147.


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## SemperFiDawg

Nothing, absolutely nothing, has a more direct bearing on the moral choices made by individuals or the purposes pursued by society than belief or disbelief in God." – Ravi Zacharias, The Real Face of Atheism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004), p. 21.


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## SemperFiDawg

“Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system. I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance." 
–Sir Isaac Newton, http://www.blueletterbible.org/commentaries/comm_author.cfm?AuthorID=11


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## SemperFiDawg

“A proponent of the big bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the matter of the universe came from nothing and by nothing.” –Anthony Kenny


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## SemperFiDawg

“I myself find it hard to accept the notion of self-creation from nothing, even given unrestricted chance.” –J. L. Mackie


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## SemperFiDawg

“Therefore, when a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis really fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God.” –William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, p. 35-36.


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## SemperFiDawg

“One by one the great prophets of materialism have been shown to be false prophets and have fallen aside. Marx and Freud have lost their scientific standing. Now Darwin is on the block. Some of us saw a clip of Richard Dawkins being interviewed on public television about his reaction to Michael Behe’s book. You can see how insecure that man is behind his bluster, and how much he has to rely on not having Mike Behe on the program with him, or even a lesser figure like Phil Johnson. Darwinists have to rely on confining their critics in a stereotype. They have learned to keep their own philosophy on the stage with no rivals allowed, and now they have to rely almost exclusively on that cultural power.” –Phillip E. Johnson in an article, “How to Sink a Battleship: A call to separate materialist philosophy from empirical science.”


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## SemperFiDawg

“To be an atheist you must have infinite knowledge in order to know absolutely that there is no God. But to have infinite knowledge, you would have to be God yourself. It's hard to be God yourself and an atheist at the same time! The Bible says in Psalm 14:1, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is not God.’” –Ron Carlson and Ed Decker, Fast Facts on False Teachings, p. 17.


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## SemperFiDawg

“Some say Christianity is just a crutch. But let's turn the question on its edge for a moment. Is atheism an emotional crutch, wishful thinking? The ax cuts both ways. Perhaps atheists are rejecting God because they've had a bad relationship with their father. Instead of inventing God, have atheists invented non-God? Have they invented atheism to escape some of the frightening implications of God's existence? Think about it.” –Greg Koukl


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## SemperFiDawg

“After more than two centuries of facing the heaviest scientific guns that could be brought to bear, the Bible has survived—and is perhaps the better for the siege. Even on the critics' own terms—historical fact—the Scriptures seem more acceptable now than they did when the rationalists began the attack.” –TIME Magazine, December 30, 1974.


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## SemperFiDawg

There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane [secular] history.” 
–Sir Isaac Newton


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## SemperFiDawg

“I must say, that having for many years made the evidences of Christianity the subject of close study, the result has been a firm and increasing conviction of the authenticity and plenary [complete] inspiration of the Bible. It is indeed the Word of God.” –Simon Greenleaf, (1783-1853), Founder of Harvard Law School


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## SemperFiDawg

“Today there survives more than 25,0000 partial and complete, ancient handwritten manuscript copies of the New Testament. These hand written manuscripts have allowed scholars and textual critics to go back and verify that the Bible we have in our possession today is the same Bible that the early church possessed 2,000 years ago.” –Charlie Campbell


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## SemperFiDawg

“I am glad there are things in the Bible I do not understand. If I could take that book up and read it as I would any other book, I might think I could write a book like that.” –Dwight L. Moody


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## SemperFiDawg

“The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning. And if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt.” – F.F. Bruce


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## SemperFiDawg

Many people are being persuaded that they cannot be considered intelligent or well educated if they insist on the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the Book. Let me say to you that truth has always lived with the minority; what the majority says at a given moment is usually wrong. The crowd one day cried, “Crucify him,” and the whole world united to murder the Son of God, because in their ignorance they knew Him not.” –Alan Redpath, Victorious Christian Service: Studies in the Book of Nehemiah, p. 113.


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## SemperFiDawg

“There are dozens of writings outside of the Bible that verify the historical accuracy of many of the names of people, places, and events mentioned in the Bible. In fact, external sources verify that at least eighty persons mentioned in the Bible were actual historical figures. Fifty people from the Old Testament, and thirty people from the New Testament.” –Charlie Campbell


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## SemperFiDawg

“I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.” –Sir Isaac Newton


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## SemperFiDawg

“The Bible's historical accuracy is a reminder that while “the heavens declare the glory of God,” there’s also plenty of evidence among the rubble and ruins.” –Charles Colson


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## SemperFiDawg

“All I am in private life is a literary critic and historian, that's my job...And I'm prepared to say on that basis if anyone thinks the Gospels are either legends or novels, then that person is simply showing his incompetence as a literary critic. I've read a great many novels and I know a fair amount about the legends that grew up among early people, and I know perfectly well the Gospels are not that kind of stuff.” –C. S. Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

“To talk of comparing the Bible with other "sacred books" so called, such as the Koran...or the book of Mormon, is positively absurd. You might as well compare the sun with a rushlight, or Skiddaw with a molehill, or St. Paul's with an Irish hovel, or the Portland vase with a garden pot, or the Kohinoor diamond with a bit of glass. God seems to have allowed the existence of these pretended revelations, in order to prove the immeasurable superiority of His own Word.” 
–J.C. Ryle (1816-1900)


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## SemperFiDawg

was brought up to believe that the Bible was the Word of God. In early life I accepted it as such upon the authority of my parents, and never gave the question any serious thought. But later in life my faith in the Bible was utterly shattered through the influence of the writings of a very celebrated, scholarly and brilliant skeptic. I found myself face to face with the question, Why do you believe the Bible is the Word of God? I had no satisfactory answer. I determined to go to the bottom of this question. If satisfactory proof could not be found that the Bible was God’s Word I would give the whole thing up, cost what it might. If satisfactory proof could be found that the Bible was God’s Word I would take my stand upon it, cost what it might. I doubtless had many friends who could have answered the question satisfactorily, but I was unwilling to confide to them the struggle that was going on in my own heart; so I sought help from God and from books, and after much painful study and thought came out of the darkness of skepticism into the broad daylight of faith and certainty that the Bible from beginning to end is God’s Word.” –R. A. Torrey


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## drippin' rock

95 out of 96 posts are by the same person. That's got to be some kind of record.


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## 660griz

The earth is flat, and anyone who disputes this claim is an atheist who deserves to be punished. [Muslim religious edict, 1993 Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz Supreme religious authority, Saudi Arabia]


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## 660griz

O believers, do not treat your fathers and brothers as your friends, if they prefer unbelief to belief, whosoever of you takes them for friends, they are evil-doers. [Koran, Repentance: 20]


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## 660griz

Ask a deeply religious Christian if he'd rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don't seem so bad lately. 
Scott Adams (1957 - ), The Dilbert Blog: Atheists: The New Gays, 11-19-06


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## 660griz

“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.” –C. S. Lewis


----------



## SemperFiDawg

660griz said:


> “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.” –C. S. Lewis



I already posted that one, but glad you like it enough to post it again.  C.S. Lewis was one beautiful mind.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“There are six women with that name “Mary” in the pages of the New Testament. There are so many Mary's in the New Testament, it can be challenging keeping them all straight. By the way, this is another somewhat odd indicator that the authors of the New Testament were not making up a fictional story. Who in their right mind, if they were writing a work of fiction, would use the same first name for six different characters? That would be ludicrous. No one would do that. The disciples, because they were writing a non-fictional historical account, recorded the way things really were. They were dealing with cold, honest facts. So they said, ‘There are six Mary's, and so that is what we're going to call them. “Mary.”’  Confusing? Somewhat. True? Yes.” –Charlie Campbell, in response to the The Jesus Family Tomb.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"Men do not reject the Bible because it contradicts itself, but because it contradicts them.” 
–E. Paul Hovey


----------



## SemperFiDawg

On alleged scriptural errors and contradictions.

“I have said many times that if you want to look very wise in the world’s eyes and are willing to risk looking foolish years from now, you can make a reputation for yourself by pointing out the “errors” in the Bible. There are always facts we do not know and things we fail to understand, so it will always be possible to point to certain items and say that they are errors. But these things tend to become explained. As time passes and the data from archaeology, historical investigations, numismatics, and other disciplines accumulate, these alleged “errors” tend to explode in the faces of those who propound them, and the position of these who have taken their stand upon the historical accuracy and inerrancy of this book is vindicated. The Bible is seen to be more reliable, not less reliable, as time passes.” –James Montgomery Boice, Daniel: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2003), 60.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

On alleged scriptural errors and contradictions:

“While many have doubted the accuracy of the Bible, time and continued research have consistently demonstrated that the Word of God is better informed than its critics. In fact, while thousands of finds from the ancient world support in broad outline and often in detail the biblical picture, not one incontrovertible find has ever contradicted the Bible.” –Norman Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics


----------



## SemperFiDawg

On alleged scriptural errors and contradictions:


“In my experience when critics raise these objections, they invariably violate one of seventeen principles for interpreting the Scriptures....For example, assuming the unexplained is unexplainable....failing to understand the context of the passage....assuming a partial report is a false report...neglecting to interpret difficult passages in light of clear ones; basing a teaching on an obscure passage; forgetting that the Bible uses nontechnical, everyday language; failing to remember the Bible uses different literary devices...” –Norman Geisler


----------



## 660griz

SemperFiDawg said:


> C.S. Lewis was one beautiful mind.



He did have a knack for fantasy. I did like _The Chronicles of Narnia_.
I could see how religion fits right in.


----------



## bullethead

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friend...notable-christian-apologist-shares-her-story/


----------



## TripleXBullies

Good read BH


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“There exists no document from the ancient world witnessed by so excellent a set of textual and historical testimonies, and offering so superb an array of historical data on which the intelligent decision may be made. An honest [person] cannot dismiss a source of this kind. Skepticism regarding the historical credentials of Christianity is based upon an irrational bias.” –Dr. Clark Pinnock, Skeptics Who Demanded a Verdict, Josh McDowell, p. 84


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## SemperFiDawg

BIBLE, FULFILLED PROPHECIES

“The Old Testament contains over 300 references to the Messiah that were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Computations using the science of probability on just 8 of these prophecies show the chance that someone could have fulfilled all 8 prophecies is 10 (to the 17th power), or 1 in 100 quadrillion.” –Fritz Ridenour, So What’s the Difference?, p. 28.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

BIBLE, MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE FOR

“There is more than sufficient evidence to establish the fact that the Old Testament we have today is an accurate copy of the original. The Jewish men who copied the scriptures knew exactly how many letters where in every line of every book and how many times each word occurred in each book. This enabled them to check for errors. The first century Roman historian, Flavius Josephus, who was also a Jew, stated:  “We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own Scriptures. For although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable; and it is an instinct with every Jew, from the day of his birth, to regard them as the decrees of God, to abide by them, and, if need be, cheerfully to die for them” (Against Apion, Book I, sec., 8, p. 158). –Charlie Campbell


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Noted Historian and Skeptic on the person of Jesus:


“The simple record of these three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the discourses of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.” 
–William Lecky, one of Great Britain’s most noted historians and a dedicated opponent of organized Christianity writing about Jesus’ ministry, Skeptics Who Demanded a Verdict, Josh McDowell, p. 87


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## SemperFiDawg

660griz said:


> He did have a knack for fantasy. I did like _The Chronicles of Narnia_.
> I could see how religion fits right in.



You should read Mere Christianity.  Lewis actually was an Athiest or Agnostic and  his Mere Christianity is a Classic.


----------



## 660griz

SemperFiDawg said:


> On alleged scriptural errors and contradictions:
> 
> “While many have doubted the accuracy of the Bible, time and continued research have consistently demonstrated that the Word of God is better informed than its critics. In fact, while thousands of finds from the ancient world support in broad outline and often in detail the biblical picture, not one incontrovertible find has ever contradicted the Bible.” –Norman Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics



So...what he is saying about the contradictions in the bible is "So what" A defense for contradictions in a book is that nothing contradicts the book? 
Doesn't make sense.


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## 660griz

SemperFiDawg said:


> You should read Mere Christianity.  Lewis actually was an Athiest or Agnostic and  his Mere Christianity is a Classic.



These days, I try to stick with non-fiction.


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## SemperFiDawg

660griz said:


> These days, I try to stick with non-fiction.



Don't be skered brother.


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## SemperFiDawg

Does the change in people's lives for the better not count as evidence that Jesus is exactly who he said he was.....God incarnate?


“My father’s life was changed right before my eyes [when he trusted Christ]. It was like someone reached down and switched on a light inside him. He touched alcohol only once after that. He got the drink only as far as his lips and that was it—after forty years of drinking! He didn’t need it any more. Fourteen months later, he died form complications of his alcoholism. But in that fourteen-month period over a hundred people in the area around my tiny hometown committed their lives to Jesus Christ because of the change they saw in the town drunk, my dad.” 
–Josh McDowell, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict, xxvii.


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## SemperFiDawg

“It's ironic that Isaac Newton, discoverer of the laws of motion that were later used by others to attempt to contradict parts of the Bible, was one of its greatest defenders. He wrote several papers supporting the accuracy of the text and spoke out against the Biblical critics of his day.” –Ralph O. Muncaster, The Bible: Scientific Insights, p. 20.


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## SemperFiDawg

“A well-known scientist, a very decorated scientist named Herbert Spencer died in 1903. In his scientific career he had become noted for one great discovery, it was a categorical contribution that he made. He discovered that all reality, all reality, all that exists in the universe can be contained in five categories: time, force, action, space and matter. Herbert Spencer said everything that exists, exists in one of those categories: time, force, action, space and matter. Nothing exists outside of those categories. That was a very astute discovery and didn't come until the nineteenth century. Now think about that. Spencer even listed them in that order: time, force, action, space and matter. That is a logical sequence. And then with that in your mind, listen to Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning [that's time], God [that's force] created [that's action] the heavens [that's space] and the earth [that's matter].” In the first verse of the Bible God said plainly what man didn't catalog until the nineteenth century. Everything that could be said about everything that exists is said in that first verse.” –John MacArthur


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## SemperFiDawg

Noted Agnostic on where science finds itself today, specifically regarding the Origin of the Universe.

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” –Robert Jastrow, a confirmed agnostic, and founder of NASA's Goddard institute for Space Studies


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Our Lord [Jesus] used historical incidents in the Old Testament in a manner that showed His total confidence in their factual historicity. He acknowledged that Adam and Eve were created by God, that they were two living human beings, not merely symbols of man and woman (Matt. 19:3-5; Mark 10:6-8)...He verified events connected with the flood of Noah’s day (Matt. 24:38-39, Luke 17:26-27)...He authenticated God's destruction of Sodom and the historicity of Lot and his wife (Matt. 10:15; Luke 17:28-29). He accepted as true the story of Jonah and the great fish (Matt. 12:40)...Christ did not merely allude to these stories, but authenticated the events in them as factual history to be completely trusted. These events include many of the controversial passages of the Old Testament, such as Creation, the Flood, and major miracles including Jonah and the fish. Obviously, our Lord felt He had a reliable Bible, historically true, with every word trustworthy.” –Charles Ryrie, Basic Theology, p. 99.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Jesus accepted the plenary [i.e., complete, extending to all its parts] inspiration of the Bible; when first approached by the devil to turn stones into bread, our Lord replied that man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4 quoting Deut. 8:3). He did not say, “some words” but “every word.” If Scripture is breathed out from God (2 Tim. 3:16), then Scripture must be included in what sustains man, not only parts of Scripture but all


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## SemperFiDawg

“The Holy Spirit sets His seal in the soul of every believer to the Divine authority of the Bible. It is possible to get to a place where we need no argument to prove that the Bible is God’s Word. Christ says, “My sheep know my voice,” and God’s children know His voice, and I know that the voice that speaks to me from the pages of that Book is the voice of my Father. You will sometimes meet a pious old lady, who tells you that she knows that the Bible is God’s Word, and when you ask her for a reason for believing that it is God’s Word she can give you none, She simply says: ”I know it is God’s Word.” You say: “That is mere superstition.” Not at all. She is one of Christ’s sheep, and recognizes her Shepherd’s voice from every other voice. She is one of God’s children, and knows the voice which speaks to her from the Bible is the voice of God.” –R. A. Torrey, in an article “Ten Reasons I Believe the Bible is the Word of God.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Cults use our vocabulary, but they don't use our dictionary.” –Charles Swindoll


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## SemperFiDawg

“If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.” 
–C. S. Lewis


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Regarding Pain and Suffering

"While Western atheists turn from belief in God because a tsunami in another part of the world caused great suffering, many brokenhearted survivors of that same tsunami found faith in God. This is one of the great paradoxes of suffering. Those who don't suffer much think suffering should keep people from God, while many who suffer a great deal turn to God, not from him." –Randy Alcorn, If God is Good, p. 102


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## SemperFiDawg

Regarding evil

“Today, people continue to rebel against God. We curse Him, ignore Him, and flaunt our disobedience. Motivated by pride, greed, and selfishness, people destroy one another and willfully abuse and pollute God's earth...it's amazing God has not lost His patience and destroyed all of us. Rather than condemning God for allowing evil, we should be thankful that He withholds the punishment we deserve.” –Dan Story, Defending Your Faith, p.176.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

On suffering:


“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” –C. S. Lewis


----------



## SemperFiDawg

On suffering:

“Supposing you eliminated suffering, what a dreadful place the world would be! I would almost rather eliminate happiness. The world would be the most ghastly place because everything that corrects the tendency of this unspeakable little creature, man, to feel over-important and over-pleased with himself would disappear. He's bad enough now, but he would be absolutely intolerable if he never suffered.” –Malcolm Muggeridge


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## SemperFiDawg

A point regarding suffering which atheist don't ever ask themselves.

“Let us remember that every worldview–not just Christianity's–must give an explanation or an answer for evil and suffering...this is not just a problem distinctive to Christianity. It will not do for the challenger just to raise the question. This problem of evil is one to which we all must offer an answer, regardless of the belief system to which we subscribe.” –Ravi Zacharias


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## SemperFiDawg

More Ravi on evil and suffering


“The Biblical world-view is the only one that accepts the reality of evil and suffering while giving both the cause and the purpose, while offering God-given strength and sustenance in the midst of it.” –Ravi Zacharias


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## SemperFiDawg

“I saw a young sister, just before this service; and I said to her, "When did you find the Lord?" She replied, "It was when I was very ill." Yes, it is often so; God makes us ill in body that we may have time to think of Him, and turn to Him....What would become of some people if they were always in good health, or if they were always prospering? But tribulation is the black dog that goes after the stray sheep, and barks them back to the Good Shepherd. I thank God that there are such things as the visitations of correction and of holy discipline, to preserve our spirit, and bring us to Christ.” –Charles Spurgeon


----------



## SemperFiDawg

A point most Atheist either deny or fail to grasp when speaking of evil:

 God created the possibility of evil; people actualized that potentiality. The source of evil is not God's power but mankind's freedom. Even an all-powerful God could not have created a world in which people had genuine freedom and yet there was no potentiality for sin, because our freedom includes the possibility of sin within its own meaning.” – Peter Kreeft


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## SemperFiDawg

The hypocrisy of man on display.  Again Ravi does a masterful job of focusing on the issue.

 “I said, “Can I ask you a question? On every university campus I visit, somebody stands up and says that God is an evil God to allow all this evil into our world. This person typically says, ‘A plane crashes: Thirty people die, and twenty people live. What kind of a God would arbitrarily choose some to live and some to die?’” I continued, “but when we play God and determine whether a child within a mother's womb should live, we argue for that as a moral right. So when human beings are given the privilege of playing God, it’s called a moral right. When God plays God, we call it an immoral act. Can you justify this for me?” That was the end of the conversation.” –Ravi Zacaharias


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## SemperFiDawg

“Sometimes detractors to Christianity object to the idea of God's existence because of the occurrence of "evil" natural disasters like earthquakes and floods, etc. God created a natural world that is good in that it accomplishes certain things. In order for plants to grow and to continue to nourish humans, the crust of the earth must be replenished. Plate tectonics is one thing that accomplishes this. The incidental by-products are things like earthquakes. It is because there is an ecosystem that God made in the physical universe that has necessary contingencies, and sometimes people get in the way of those things and get killed. That is tragic, but it doesn't mean that the earthquake itself is immoral. It is only tragic because it destroys human beings who have value. If human beings didn't have value, there would be no tragedy. The real question for the atheist is, "Where do human beings derive transcendent value?" The value comes from the God who created them in His image.” –Greg Koukl


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## SemperFiDawg

Someone once asked Billy Graham, "If Christianity is valid, why is there so much evil in the world?" To this the famous preacher replied, "With so much soap, why are there so many dirty people in the world? Christianity, like soap, must be personally applied if it is to make a difference in our lives." –Billy Graham


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## SemperFiDawg

On evolution:

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.” –Stephen Jay Gould



Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

On evolution

“Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality...which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man?” –Michael Denton

Michael John Denton is a British-Australian author and biochemist.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

On evolution:

“If Darwinism is true, then there is no purpose or meaning to life, there is no morality, there's no qualitative difference between humans and animals, there's no life after death, and there's no purpose to human history. Now, are you trying to tell me that it doesn't really matter if people believe we evolved or not?” –Greg Koukl


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Just one living cell in the human body is, more complex than New York City.” –Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize winner


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## SemperFiDawg

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.” –Stephen Jay Gould


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## SemperFiDawg

“Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” –Charles Darwin


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## SemperFiDawg

“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable [matchless] contrivances [plans] for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.” –Charles Darwin


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## SemperFiDawg

“DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced that any software we've ever created.” –Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft


----------



## SemperFiDawg

On evolution

“The positive evidence for Darwinism is confined to small-scale evolutionary changes like insects developing insecticide resistance....Evidence like that for insecticide resistance confirms the Darwinian selection mechanism for small-scale changes, but hardly warrants the grand extrapolation that Darwinists want. It is a huge leap going from insects developing insecticide resistance via the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation to the very emergence of insects in the first place by that same mechanism.” –William Dembski, Ph.D., author of The Design Revolution


----------



## SemperFiDawg

The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is “something behind it all” is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.” –Paul Davies, internationally known British astrophysicist and author


----------



## SemperFiDawg

On evolution

Human DNA contains more organized information than the Encyclopedia Britannica. If the full text of the encyclopedia were to arrive in computer code from outer space, most people would regard this as proof of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. But when seen in nature, it is explained [by Darwinists] as the workings of random forces.”  –Dr. George Sim Johnston


----------



## SemperFiDawg

On bais against a creator:

Even if all the data points to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.” –Dr. Scott Todd, Kansas State University


----------



## SemperFiDawg

We have no acceptable theory of evolution at the present time. There is none; and I cannot accept the theory that I teach to my students each year. Let me explain. I teach the synthetic theory known as the neo-Darwinian one, for one reason only; not because it's good, we know that it is bad, but because there isn't any other. Whilst waiting to find something better you are taught something which is known to be inexact.” –Professor Jerome Lejeune, in a lecture given in Paris on March 17, 1985


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## SemperFiDawg

On the growing scientific skepticism regarding evolution:

Scientists who utterly reject evolution may be one of our fastest-growing controversial minorities...Many of the scientists supporting this position hold impressive credentials in science.” –Larry Hatfield


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Funny and ironic at the same time

“It never ceases to amaze us that when we were in kindergarten they taught us that a frog turning into a prince was a nursery fairy tale, but when we got to college they told us that a frog turning into a prince was science.” –Ron Carlson & Ed Decker


----------



## bullethead

I would officially rename this thread to:
100 Assertions and counting.


Not a single one of them backed by fact that cannot be said for something else.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

On why one of the most noted Atheist of the 20th century came to reject atheism .

“It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.” –Antony Flew


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> On why one of the most noted Atheist of the 20th century came to reject atheism .
> 
> “It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.” –Antony Flew



SFD, you really... REALLLLLLLY need to check your sources.


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## SemperFiDawg

“Neanderthal man turned out to be not an ape-man but rather truly human. Java man turned out to be an arboreal ape. Piltdown man turned out to be a colossal hoax. Peking man turned out to be a monkey. Nebraska man turned out to be a wild pig. Lucy was apparently a chimpanzee. Yet, in each case, when these discoveries were made, the popular media reported them as hard proof for evolutionary theory.” –Ron Rhodes, The Ten Things You Should Know About the Creation vs. Evolution Debate, p. 86-87


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Another irony of evolutionary indoctrination:

“A Chinese paleontologist lectures around the world saying that recent fossil finds in his country are inconsistent with the Darwinian theory of evolution. His reason: The major animal groups appear abruptly in the rocks over a relatively short time, rather than evolving gradually from a common ancestor as Darwin’s theory predicts. When this conclusion upsets American scientists, he wryly comments: "In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin.” –Phillip E. Johnson in an article, “The Church of Darwin.”


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## SemperFiDawg

This speaks volumes!

“One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, or let's call it non-evolutionary view, was last year I had a sudden realization that for over twenty years I had thought I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up and something had happened in the night and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That's quite a shock to learn that one can be misled so long....For the last few weeks I've tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people. The question is this: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that you think is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar at the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, "I do know one thing-it ought not to be taught in high school."...The level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in the high school and that's all we know about it.” –Colin Patterson, former Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London and editor of its journal, in a speech given at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, November 5, 1981.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Evolutions Demise

“These are exciting times. When I finished the Epilogue to Darwin on Trial in 1993, I compared evolutionary naturalism to a great battleship afloat on the Ocean of Reality. The ship's sides are heavily armored with philosophical and legal barriers to criticism, and its decks are stacked with 16-inch rhetorical guns to intimidate would-be attackers. In appearance, it is as impregnable as the Soviet Union seemed a few years ago. But the ship has sprung a metaphysical leak, and that leak widens as more and more people understand it and draw attention to the conflict between empirical science and materialist philosophy. The more perceptive of the ship's officers know that the ship is doomed if the leak cannot be plugged. The struggle to save the ship will go on for a while, and meanwhile there will even be academic wine-and-cheese parties on the deck. In the end, the ship's great firepower and ponderous armor will only help drag it to the bottom. Reality will win.” –Phillip E. Johnson in an article, “How to Sink a Battleship: A call to separate materialist philosophy from empirical science.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Evolutions Demise

According to Darwinists, there is such overwhelming evidence for their view that it should be considered a fact. Yet to the Darwinists' dismay, at least three-quarters of the American people - citizens of the most scientifically advanced country in history - reject it....The truth is Darwinism is not a scientific theory, but a materialistic creation myth masquerading as science. It is first and foremost a weapon against religion - especially traditional Christianity. Evidence is brought in afterwards, as window dressing. This is becoming increasingly obvious to the American people, who are not the ignorant backwoods religious dogmatists that Darwinists make them out to be. Darwinists insult the intelligence of American taxpayers and at the same time depend on them for support. This is an inherently unstable situation, and it cannot last. If I were a Darwinist, I would be afraid. Very afraid.” –Jonathan Wells


----------



## SemperFiDawg

FALSE TEACHING IN THE CHURCH

“I think that it is so important to know this. In a time like this of tolerance, listen, false teaching will always cry intolerance. It will always say you are being divisive, you are being unloving, you are being ungracious, because it can only survive when it doesn’t get scrutinized. So it cries against any intolerance. It cries against any examination, any scrutiny—just let’s embrace each other; let’s love each other; let’s put all that behind us. False doctrine cries the loudest about unity. Listen carefully when you hear the cry for unity, because it may be the cover of false doctrine encroaching. If ever we should follow 1 Thessalonians 5, and examine everything carefully, it’s when somebody is crying unity, love, and acceptance.” –John MacArthur


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Indifference, timidity, compromise, and nonresistance are all ruled out as options for Christians when the gospel is under attack.” –John MacArthur, The Truth War, p. xxv


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Apostasy can have far-reaching and disastrous effects on an entire congregation’s spiritual health. When false teaching goes unchallenged, it breeds more confusion and draws still more shallow and insincere people into the fold. If not vigorously resisted, apostasy will spread like leaven through seminaries, denominations, missions agencies, and other Christian institutions. False teaching thus attacks the church like a parasite, affecting our corporate testimony, inoculating people against the real truth of the gospel, proliferating false and halfhearted “disciples,” and filling the church with people who are actually unbelievers. By such means, entire churches and denominations have been taken over by apostasy...Whole denominations (even many where the gospel was once proclaimed clearly) have been left spiritually bankrupt because error and unbelief were tolerated rather than being opposed.” –John MacArthur, The Truth War, p. 45


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Truth is never determined by looking at God’s Word and asking, “What does this mean to me?” Whenever I hear someone talk like that, I’m inclined to ask, “What did the Bible mean before you existed? What does God mean by what He says?” Those are the proper questions to be asking. Truth and meaning are not determined by our intuition, experience, or desire. The true meaning of Scripture—or anything else, for that matter—has already been determined and fixed by the mind of God. The task of the interpreter is to discern that meaning. And proper interpretation must precede application.” –John MacArthur, The Truth War, p. xx-xxi


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## SemperFiDawg

“The Bible constantly exhorts believers to beware of false prophets (Matt. 7:15), to test the spirits (1 John 4:1), and to watch out for the doctrines of demons (1 Timothy 4:1). But there is no way to recognize error unless we know the truth; counterfeits cannot be detected unless we know the genuine article. Likewise, there is no way to determine what is false about God unless we know what is true about him. Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). A study of the attributes of the true God is essential to the fulfillment of the apologetic task of defending the faith (Philippians 1:7; 1 Peter 3;15; Jude 3).” –Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, p. 18.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“If the Flood were local, why did Noah have to build an Ark? He could have walked to the other side of the mountains and escaped. Traveling just 20 km per day, Noah and his family could have traveled over 3,000 km in six months.  God could have simply warned Noah to flee, as He did for Lot in Sodom….If the Flood were local, why did God send the animals to the Ark to escape death? There would have been other animals to reproduce those kinds even if they had all died in the local area. Or He could have sent them to a non-flooded region. If the Flood were local, why would birds have been sent on board?  These could simply have winged across to a nearby mountain range. Birds can fly several hundred kilometers in one day….If the Flood were local, how could the waters rise to 15 cubits (8 meters) above the mountains (Gen. 7:20)?  Water seeks its own level.  It could not rise to cover the local mountains while leaving the rest of the world untouched.” –Ken Ham, The New Answers Book


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## 660griz

I guess I really can't say much based on the title of your thread. So, I will bow out now and let you have at it. If you would like to discuss anything, start another thread.


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## bullethead

Please keep them coming.....they are fantastic.


----------



## WaltL1

“Neanderthal man turned out to be not an ape-man but rather truly human"

Well that's interesting.


----------



## bullethead

These are just the type of quotes that are taken as facts by people who do not like to check facts.


----------



## ambush80

SemperFiDawg said:


> “If the Flood were local, why did Noah have to build an Ark? He could have walked to the other side of the mountains and escaped. Traveling just 20 km per day, Noah and his family could have traveled over 3,000 km in six months.  God could have simply warned Noah to flee, as He did for Lot in Sodom….If the Flood were local, why did God send the animals to the Ark to escape death? There would have been other animals to reproduce those kinds even if they had all died in the local area. Or He could have sent them to a non-flooded region. If the Flood were local, why would birds have been sent on board?  These could simply have winged across to a nearby mountain range. Birds can fly several hundred kilometers in one day….If the Flood were local, how could the waters rise to 15 cubits (8 meters) above the mountains (Gen. 7:20)?  Water seeks its own level.  It could not rise to cover the local mountains while leaving the rest of the world untouched.” –Ken Ham, The New Answers Book




The more important question is: "Why would anyone believe that the story of Noah and the Ark is true even though the premise of the story is ridiculous?"


----------



## SemperFiDawg

660griz said:


> I guess I really can't say much based on the title of your thread. So, I will bow out now and let you have at it. If you would like to discuss anything, start another thread.



Ketch you later.  Have a good one.


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Ketch you later.  Have a good one.



Hey!!!! Finally an original!!


----------



## TripleXBullies

Because none of it happened. If the flood was worldwide, how do we still have salt water and fresh water fish? Did the Ark have aquariums on it?




SemperFiDawg said:


> “If the Flood were local, why did Noah have to build an Ark? He could have walked to the other side of the mountains and escaped. Traveling just 20 km per day, Noah and his family could have traveled over 3,000 km in six months.  God could have simply warned Noah to flee, as He did for Lot in Sodom….If the Flood were local, why did God send the animals to the Ark to escape death? There would have been other animals to reproduce those kinds even if they had all died in the local area. Or He could have sent them to a non-flooded region. If the Flood were local, why would birds have been sent on board?  These could simply have winged across to a nearby mountain range. Birds can fly several hundred kilometers in one day….If the Flood were local, how could the waters rise to 15 cubits (8 meters) above the mountains (Gen. 7:20)?  Water seeks its own level.  It could not rise to cover the local mountains while leaving the rest of the world untouched.” –Ken Ham, The New Answers Book


----------



## bullethead

TripleXBullies said:


> Because none of it happened. If the flood was worldwide, how do we still have salt water and fresh water fish? Did the Ark have aquariums on it?



Do not let facts and common sense get in the way of an apologetic thread.


----------



## TripleXBullies

I've put fresh water feeder fish in to SW tanks and vice versa. Those fish don't last more than an hour or two.


----------



## drippin' rock

TripleXBullies said:


> Because none of it happened. If the flood was worldwide, how do we still have salt water and fresh water fish? Did the Ark have aquariums on it?



Of course it did. The Enterprise traveled back in time AGAIN and gave Noah the formula for Transparent Aluminum.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

TripleXBullies said:


> Because none of it happened. If the flood was worldwide, how do we still have salt water and fresh water fish? Did the Ark have aquariums on it?



Well evolution, of course.

In all actuality I don't know.  I don't have all the answers and that's ok.  I often think that if we truly knew everything, literally everything, this would become a very monotonous world to live in very quickly.  I like the wonder and the enchantment that comes from not having all the answers.  I do have enough of the answers that I can confidently put my trust in the One who does know, and that's more than enough for me.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> Do not let facts and common sense get in the way of an apologetic thread.



Unless you were there, you don't have the facts either brother.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

GOD, EVIDENCE FOR

"We have only to see a few letters of the alphabet spelling our name in the sand to recognize at once the work of an intelligent agent. How much more likely, then is the existence of an intelligent Creator behind human DNA, the colossal biological database that contains no fewer than 3.5 billion "letters" - the longest "word" yet discovered?" –John Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design Is It Anyway?, p. 75.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“God maintains a delicate balance between keeping his existence sufficiently evident so people will know he's there and yet hiding his presence enough so that people who want to choose to ignore him can do it. This way, their choice of destiny is really free.” –J.P. Moreland


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“As Christians we accept one big miracle: God, and everything else makes sense. An atheist denies God and has to have a miracle for every other thing.” –John MacArthur


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"The chief reason people do not know God is not because He hides from them but because they hide from Him." –John Stott


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“The most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.” –Sir Isaac Newton


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Scholar and apologist R.C. Sproul was once asked, “What is the difference between the Christian God, and the gods of the other religions?”  He simply, yet profoundly answered, “The main difference is this: The God of Christianity exists.” –R.C. Sproul, Now That's A Good Question, p. 14.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“When you analyze all of the most current affirmative evidence from cosmology, physics, astronomy, biology, and so forth...the positive case for an intelligent designer becomes absolutely compelling.” –Jonathan Wells


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"Either God exists, or he does not...Let us weigh the gain and the loss in betting that God exists...If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Do not hesitate then, to gamble on His existence." –Blaise Pascal, French scientist and theologian, quoted in Harold Sala, Why You Can Have Confidence in the Bible, p. 159


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“I confess that when I have to argue about the truth of divine things it is a dreary task to me....while they are wanting me to argue about this point or that it seems to me like asking a man to prove that there is a sun in yonder sky. I bask in His beams, I swoon under His heat, I see by His light; and yet they ask me to prove His existence! Are the men mad? What do they want me to prove? That God hears prayer? I pray and receive answers every day. That God pardons sin? I was in my own esteem the blackest of sinners, and sunk in the depths of despair, yet I believed, and by that faith I leaped into a fulness of light and liberty at once. Why do they not try it themselves?” –Charles Spurgeon


----------



## SemperFiDawg

The most astounding thing God has ever done to show His existence to us is when He passed through the veil between heaven and earth and came to live among us as a man.” –Sue Bohlin in an article, “Evidence for the Existence of God.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Many Christian college students have encountered criticisms of Christianity based on claims that early Christianity and the New Testament borrowed important beliefs and practices from a number of pagan mystery religions. Since these claims undermine such central Christian doctrines as Christ's death and resurrection, the charges are serious. But the evidence for such claims, when it even exists, often lies in sources several centuries older than the New Testament. Moreover, the alleged parallels often result from liberal scholars uncritically describing pagan beliefs and practices in Christian language and then marveling at the striking parallels they think they've discovered.” –Ronald Nash


----------



## SemperFiDawg

The Bible encourages people to put their faith in God. Unfortunately, many people equate faith with a blind leap in the dark or wishful thinking. But the faith that the Bible requires is intelligent faith. It is neither blind nor irrational. Biblical faith is a committing trust with an object (God) who is worthy of our faith. No one is asked to sacrifice his intellect when he puts his faith in the God of the Bible.” –Don Stewart,The Ten Wonders of the Bible, 1990, p. 13.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“The Christian faith does not call for us to put our minds on the shelf, to fly in the face of common sense and history, or to make a leap of faith into the dark. The rational person, fully apprised of the evidence, can confidently believe...” –William Lane Craig


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“I have noticed that whenever a person gives up his belief in the Word of God because it requires that he should believe a good deal, his unbelief requires him to believe a great deal more. If there be any difficulties in the faith of Christ, they are not one-tenth as great as the absurdities in any system of unbelief which seeks to take its place.” –Charles Spurgeon


----------



## SemperFiDawg

What an admission from an unbeliever!!!

“I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.” –H. G. Wells


----------



## gemcgrew

"After so many centuries of philosophy and science, including thousands of guesses, speculations, and random musings, this is as far as they got? As the people of God, we have been sure of the truth for thousands of years – indeed, since the beginning of the world – and there was never any need to change our answer." - Cheung


----------



## TripleXBullies

SemperFiDawg said:


> Scholar and apologist R.C. Sproul was once asked, “What is the difference between the Christian God, and the gods of the other religions?”  He simply, yet profoundly answered, “The main difference is this: The God of Christianity exists.” –R.C. Sproul, Now That's A Good Question, p. 14.



Now I get it!


----------



## TripleXBullies

SemperFiDawg said:


> Well evolution, of course.
> 
> In all actuality I don't know.  I don't have all the answers and that's ok.  I often think that if we truly knew everything, literally everything, this would become a very monotonous world to live in very quickly.  I like the wonder and the enchantment that comes from not having all the answers.  I do have enough of the answers that I can confidently put my trust in the One who does know, and that's more than enough for me.



What an apologist


----------



## SemperFiDawg

TripleXBullies said:


> What an apologist



A honest apologist.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Fundamentally, our Lord's message was Himself. He did not come merely to preach a Gospel; He himself is that Gospel. He did not come merely to give bread; He said, "I am the bread." He did not come merely to shed light; He said, "I am the light." He did not come merely to show the door; He said, "I am the door." He did not come merely to name a shepherd; He said, "I am the shepherd." He did not come merely to point the way; He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life.” –J. Sidlow Baxter


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene...No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.” –Albert Einstein


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“The most astounding thing God has ever done to show His existence to us is when He passed through the veil between heaven and earth and came to live among us as a man.” –Sue Bohlin in an article, “Evidence for the Existence of God.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but upon what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force! But Jesus Christ founded His upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.” –Napoleon Bonaparte I


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“If God became incarnate, what kind of man would He be?...We would expect Him to be sinless; we would expect him to be holy; we would expect His words to be the greatest words ever spoken; we would expect Him to exert a profound power over human personality; we would expect Him to perform supernatural doings; and we would expect Him to manifest the love of God. Of all human beings who have ever lived, Jesus Christ alone met all of those criteria.” 
–John MacArthur (summarizing a teaching by Bernard Ramm)


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science and learning, He shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and schools combined; without the eloquence of schools, He spoke words of life such as never were spoken before or since, and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of any orator or poet; without writing a single line, He has set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art and sweet songs of praise, than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times.” –Philip Schaff


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Christ remains the most influential figure in history. Any list of world-transforming individuals would no doubt include Moses, Buddha, and Muhammad. Moses, Buddha, and Muhammad, however occupy totally different places in Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam than Christ occupies in Christianity. Moses, Buddha, and Muhammad never professed to perform miracles; indeed they never claimed to be anything more than men. They viewed themselves simply as God’s messengers. Christ is the only person in history who has defined a whole religion around his person.” –Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity, p. 295.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

A most powerful analysis of Jesus

“Here is a man [Jesus] who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself...While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth - His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.” 
–Author Unknown


----------



## WaltL1

SemperFiDawg said:


> What an admission from an unbeliever!!!
> 
> “I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.” –H. G. Wells


What got you so excited about this?  Many A/A don't have a problem with Jesus the person actually existing. And its a fact that an entire religion was later produced based on him. Same type of thing has happened to many people over time -Daniel Boone is famous for his exploits killing indians. General Custer is famous for his last stand. Of course they are actual people, except the stories are not true. They were fabricated by people later.
Its interesting you describe intellectual honesty as 
"What an admission" as though its a last resort.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned Him to be crucified to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that He had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that He was alive.” –Flavius Josephus


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“He [Jesus] was the greatest human being who has ever lived. He was a moral genius. His ethical sense was unique. He was the intrinsically wisest person that I've ever encountered in my life or in my reading. His commitment was total and led to his own death, much to the detriment of the world...” – Charles Templeton


----------



## SemperFiDawg

WaltL1 said:


> What got you so excited about this?  Many A/A don't have a problem with Jesus the person actually existing. And its a fact that an entire religion was later produced based on him.



Can you separate the man from his legacy, the teacher from his teaching.  You Believe the cause, but deny he effect?  The intellectual dishonest cuts both ways does it not?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

One of my favorite Lewis quotes

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of He11. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” –C. S. Lewis


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“If there were even one spark of evidence from antiquity that Jesus even may have gotten married, then as a historian, I would have to weigh this evidence against the total absence of such information in either Scripture or the early church traditions. But there is no such spark-not a scintilla of evidence-anywhere in historical sources. Even where one might expect to find such claims in the bizarre, second-century, apocryphal gospels...there is no reference that Jesus ever got married.” –Paul Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic, and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of life, character, and teaching of Christ remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man” –Will Durant, renowned historian who devoted his life to the study of records of antiquity, Caesar and Christ, in The Story of Civilization, vol. 3, 1944, p. 557.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“If you had gone to Buddha and asked him: ‘Are you the son of Brahma?’ he would have said, ‘My son, you are still in the vale of illusion.’ If you had gone to Socrates and asked, ‘Are you Zeus?' he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, ‘Are you Allah?' he would first have rent his clothes and then cut your head off. If you had asked Confucius, ‘Are you Heaven?’ I think he would have probably replied, ‘Remarks which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste.’ The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic...” –C. S. Lewis


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Instinctively we do not class Him with others. When one reads His name in a list beginning with Confucius and ending with Goethe we feel it is an offense less against orthodoxy than against decency. Jesus is not one of the group of the world’s great. Talk about Alexander the Great and Charles the Great and Napoleon the Great if you will…Jesus is apart. He is not the Great; He is the Only. He is simply Jesus….He confounds our canons of human nature.” –Carnegie Simpson (Quoted by Don Stewart, The Ten Wonders of the Bible, 1990, p. 113)


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“So I cast my lot with Him—not the one who claimed wisdom, Confucius; or the one who claimed enlightenment, Buddha; or the one who claimed to be a prophet, Muhammad, but with the one who claimed to be God in human flesh. The one who declared, 'Before Abraham was born, I am'—and proved it.” –Norman Geisler


----------



## TripleXBullies

SemperFiDawg said:


> “He [Jesus] was the greatest human being who has ever lived. He was a moral genius. His ethical sense was unique. He was the intrinsically wisest person that I've ever encountered in my life or in my reading. His commitment was total and led to his own death, much to the detriment of the world...” – Charles Templeton



It was a detriment to the world that he died?????????


----------



## WaltL1

SemperFiDawg said:


> Can you separate the man from his legacy, the teacher from his teaching.  You Believe the cause, but deny he effect?  The intellectual dishonest cuts both ways does it not?


Of course you can and I gave you two specific examples that you apparently ignored.
By the way, you turned my intellectual honesty comment around completely backwards in your mind. I said this -


> Its interesting you describe intellectual honesty as
> "What an admission" as though its a last resort.


And somehow you turned it into this -


> The intellectual dishonest cuts both ways does it not


In your rush to respond to the contrary you don't even read correctly what you are responding to.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

WaltL1 said:


> Of course you can and I gave you two specific examples that you apparently ignored.



Not sure Boone or Custer would ever be described as anyone as "the very center of History".  I'm unsure as to what, if any, point you are attempting to make.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

TripleXBullies said:


> It was a detriment to the world that he died?????????


----------



## SemperFiDawg

JESUS, DEITY

“The Jehovah’s Witnesses, having been misled and misinformed by their leaders, continue to persuade people that the deity of Christ was a late invention by false teachers in the fourth century at the Council of Nicaea. Nothing could be further from the truth. In addition to the testimony of the Old Testament prophets (e.g., Isaiah 9:6), the disciples (e.g. John 20:28), and Christ Himself (John 8:58)—all who affirmed the deity of the Messiah—there is also the testimony of the church fathers in the second century, long before the fourth century Council of Nicaea. Men like Ignatius (A.D. 30 – 98 or 117), Justin Martyr (A.D. 100 - 165), Irenaeus (A.D. 120-202), and Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150 - 215), over and over in their writings, affirm that Jesus was God incarnate.” –Charlie Campbell


----------



## SemperFiDawg

JESUS, HISTORICITY OF

“Do you believe in the existence of Socrates? Alexander the Great? Julius Caesar? If historicity is established by written records in multiple copies that date originally from near contemporaneous sources, there is far more proof for Christ’s existence than for any of theirs.” –Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity, p. 296.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

MIRACLES

“As Paul stood on trial for preaching the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he asked those present a pointed question: "Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead (Acts 26:8)?" Many unbelievers find it too difficult, too incredible, that God would or could raise a dead man (Jesus) back to life. And yet, many of these same people have no problem believing that God exists and that He created the heavens and the earth. This is astonishing to me! Think this through with me. If God can create the universe with all of its billions of galaxies, and millions of kinds of living creatures from nothing, it certainly seems within the bounds of reason to believe that He could raise Jesus' body back to life. As it has often been said, if you can believe Genesis 1:1, you should have no problem believing Matthew 28:6: ‘He has risen, just as he said.’” –Charlie Campbell


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.” –G. K. Chesterton


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Another favorite Lewis quote



“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’”–C. S. Lewis


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"One key and defining attribute of God that does not appear in any other world religion or system is the biblical use of the term "Father." Over 70 times in the New Testament alone, God is described as "Father" to His children. No major world religion describes the relationship between its creator and its adherents in terms of a father." –Ergun Caner, The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics, p. 254.


----------



## WaltL1

SemperFiDawg said:


> Not sure Boone or Custer would ever be described as anyone as "the very center of History".  I'm unsure as to what, if any, point you are attempting to make.


Shocker.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Idolatry is not simply worshiping a stone image; idolatry is any concept of God that reduces Him to less than who He really is.” – Ron Carlson and Ed Decker, Fast Facts on False Teachings, p. 196.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Lots of people today would never consider themselves guilty of idolatry as far as it is spelled out in the Ten Commandments, but by reducing God to some benevolent "man upstairs" whose only attributes are love and tolerance, and who could not care less about sin, they truly have transgressed God's commandment. They have created a god in their mind who does not actually exist and will on the day of judgment, not be able to offer them any help.” –Charlie Campbell


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Maybe my favorite CS Lewis quote....ever:

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” –C.S. Lewis


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He hath done me no wrong. How can I speak evil of my King who saved Me?” –Polycarp, a disciple of the apostle John just before being burned alive for his faith at age 86


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“I always tried to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that my brains would fall out. As G. K. Chesterton says, "The purpose of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to close it again on something solid." I opened my mind, and I finally closed it on the most solid reality I had ever experienced. On December 19, 1959, at 8:30PM, during my second year at the university, I became a Christian.” –Josh McDowell


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“The unattended garden will soon be overrun with weeds; the heart that fails to cultivate truth and root out error will shortly be a theological wilderness.” –A. W. Tozer


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"The future of this nation depends on the Christian training of our youth." –George Washington, Quoted by Alison Thomas in Ravi Zacharias, Gen. Ed, Beyond Opinion, p. 58


----------



## SemperFiDawg

POSTMODERNISM

"Postmodernism is a form of intellectual pacifism that, at the end of the day, recommends backgammon while the barbarians are at the gate. It is the easy, cowardly way out that removes the pressure to...be different, to risk ridicule, to take a stand outside the gate. But it is precisely as disciples of Christ, even more, as officers in His army, that the pacifist way out is simply not an option. However comforting it may be, postmodernism is the cure that kills the patient, the military strategy that concedes defeat before the first shot is fired, the ideology that undermines its own claims to allegiance. And it is an immoral, coward’s way out that is not worthy of a movement born out of the martyrs’ blood." – J. P. Moreland, "Truth, Contemporary Philosophy, and the Postmodern Turn," delivered at the Evangelical Theological Society, November 18, 2004.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

QURAN, THE

“Even were the Qur’an a perfect word-for-word copy of the original as given by Muhammad, it would not prove the original was inspired of God. All it would demonstrate is that today’s Qur’an is a carbon copy of whatever Muhammad said. It would say or prove nothing about the truth of what he said. The Muslim claim that they have the true religion, because they have the only perfectly copied holy book, is as logically fallacious as someone preferring a perfectly printed counterfeit $1000 bill over a slightly imperfect genuine one. The crucial question, which Muslim apologists beg by this argument, is whether the original is God’s Word, not whether they possess a perfect copy of it.” –Dr. Norman Geisler


----------



## SemperFiDawg

REASONS PEOPLE REJECT CHRIST

“Therefore, when a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis really fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God.” –William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, p. 35-36.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

REASONS PEOPLE REJECT CHRIST

“One response was given by the innkeeper when Mary and Joseph wanted to find a room where the Child could be born. The innkeeper was not hostile; he was not opposed to them, but his inn was crowded; his hands were full; his mind was preoccupied. This is the answer that millions are giving today. Like a Bethlehem innkeeper, they cannot find room for Christ. All the accommodations in their hearts are already taken up by other crowding interests. Their response is not atheism. It is not defiance. It is preoccupation and the feeling of being able to get on reasonably well without Christianity.” –Billy Graham


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"Relativism poses as freedom but it is just another form of tyranny: You must believe that all religions are equal because we say they are. You must agree with us that everything is relative, or we will punish you." –Jeffrey Burton Russell, Exposing Myths About Christianity, p. 144


----------



## SemperFiDawg

RESURRECTION, JESUS

“The Canadian scientist G. B. Hardy one time said, "When I looked at religion I said, I have two questions. One, has anybody ever conquered death, and two, if they have, did they make a way for me to conquer death? I checked the tomb of Buddha, and it was occupied, and I checked the tomb of Confucius and it was occupied, and I checked the tomb of Mohammed and it was occupied, and I came to the tomb of Jesus and it was empty. And I said, There is one who conquered death. And I asked the second question, Did He make a way for me to do it? And I opened the Bible and discovered that He said, 'Because I live ye shall live also.'" – John MacArthur, (from The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, (c) Moody Press and John MacArthur, Jr., 1983-2002)


----------



## SemperFiDawg

RESURRECTION, JESUS


“I have been used for many years to study the histories of other times and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead.” –Thomas Arnold, historian and Oxford professor


----------



## SemperFiDawg

RESURRECTION, JESUS

“Even if the disciples had believed in the resurrection of Jesus, it is doubtful they would have generated any following. So long as the body was interred in the tomb, a Christian movement founded on belief in the resurrection of the dead man would have been an impossible folly.”   William Lane Craig


----------



## SemperFiDawg

RESURRECTION, JESUS

“If all the evidence is weighed carefully and fairly, it is indeed justifiable, according to the canons of historical research, to conclude that the sepulcher of Joseph of Arimathea, in which Jesus was buried, was actually empty on the morning of the first Easter. And no shred of evidence has yet been discovered in literary sources, epigraphy, or archaeology that would disprove this statement.” –Paul Maier, Historian


----------



## SemperFiDawg

RESURRECTION, JESUS

“They [the disciples] were testifying to the resurrection, a question of fact, not merely of faith. They were convinced of an event. And their willingness to die for attesting to that event is far more convincing that the willingness of others to die for a mere belief or because of loyalty to a religion or religious leader.” –Dave Hunt


----------



## SemperFiDawg

RESURRECTION, JESUS


“I claim to be an historian. My approach to Classics is historical. And I tell you that the evidence for the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ is better authenticated than most of the facts of ancient history...” – E. M. Blaiklock, Professor of Classics at Auckland University


----------



## SemperFiDawg

RESURRECTION, JESUS


“Raking all the evidence together, it is not too much to say that there is no historic incident better or more variously supported than the resurrection of Christ. Nothing but the antecedent assumption that it must be false could have suggested the idea of deficiency in the proof of it.” 
–Brooke Foss Westcott


----------



## SemperFiDawg

RESURRECTION, JESUS

“As Paul stood on trial for preaching the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he asked those present a pointed question: "Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead (Acts 26:8)?" Many unbelievers find it too difficult, too incredible, that God would or could raise a dead man (Jesus) back to life. And yet, many of these same people have no problem believing that God exists and that He created the heavens and the earth. This is astonishing to me! Think this through with me. If God can create the universe with all of its billions of galaxies, and millions of kinds of living creatures from nothing, it certainly seems within the bounds of reason to believe that He could raise Jesus' body back to life. As it has often been said, if you can believe Genesis 1:1, you should have no problem believing Matthew 28:6: ‘He has risen, just as he said.’” –Charlie Campbell


----------



## SemperFiDawg

RESURRECTION, JESUS

“If Jesus remained dead, how can you explain the reality of the Christian church and its phenomenal growth in the first three centuries of the Christian era? Christ's church covered the Western world by the fourth century. A religious movement built on a lie could not have accomplished that....All the power of Rome and of the religious establishment in Jerusalem was geared to stop the Christian faith. All they had to do was to dig up the grave and to present the corpse. They didn’t.” –Henry Schaefer III


----------



## SemperFiDawg

RESURRECTION, JESUS


“In 56 A.D. [the apostle] Paul wrote that over 500 people had seen the risen Jesus and that most of them were still alive (1 Corinthians 15:6ff.). It passes the bounds of credibility that the early Christians could have manufactured such a tale and then preached it among those who might easily have refuted it simply by producing the body of Jesus.” –John Warwick Montgomery


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Resurrection of Jesus


“If the Resurrection had not occurred, why would the apostle Paul give such a list of supposed eyewitnesses? He would immediately lose all credibility with his Corinthian readers by lying so blatantly.” –Norman Geisler and Frank Turek


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Resurrection of Jesus

“I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.” –Charles Colson


----------



## SemperFiDawg

On Resurrection of Jesus by none other than Anthony Flew

“The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It's outstandingly different in quality and quantity.” –Antony Flew


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Resurrection of Jesus

Why would the apostles lie?....Liars always lie for selfish reasons. If they lied, what was their motive, what did they get out of it? What they got out of it was misunderstanding, rejection, persecution, torture, and martyrdom. Hardly a list of perks!” –Peter Kreeft, in Geisler & Hoffman, Why I Am a Christian, 2001, p. 232.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Resurrection of Jesus

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the single greatest event in the history of the world. It is so foundational to Christianity that no one who denies it can be a true Christian. Without resurrection there is no Christian faith, no salvation, and no hope. “If there is no resurrection of the dead,” Paul explains, “not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain” (1 Cor 15:13-14). A person who believes in a Christ who was not raised believes in a powerless Christ, a dead Christ. If Christ did not rise from the dead, then no redemption was accomplished at the cross and “your faith is worthless,” Paul goes on to say; “you are still in your sins” (v. 17).” –John MacArthur


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Resurrection of Jesus


“The fact that the Christian fellowship, founded on belief in Jesus’ resurrection, could come into existence and flourish in the very city where he was executed and buried seems to be compelling evidence for the historicity of the empty tomb.” –William Lane Craig


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Resurrection of Jesus


“If you were going to make up a religion and base it on the resurrection of the founder, you wouldn't bury his body in the very city that he was put to death in, put his name on the outside of his ossuary and then also bury other members of his family in the same grave as The Jesus Family Tomb says. That would be foolish. No, you would get rid of the body, burn it, bury it, etc. Then you could more safely move about the city telling people, "Ah, our leader has risen!" And then if you were found out, you certainly wouldn't persist with your story under the threat of death; you would come clean to save your life by admitting that the whole thing was a poorly thought out attempt at deception. Jesus' disciples were not foolish enough to do any of these things. Their leader, Jesus, really had risen from the grave. They knew that, and they laid down their lives testifying to that fact. Their willingness to die at the hands of skeptics is compelling evidence that they were telling the truth.” –Charlie Campbell


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"If you are drawn into controversy, use very hard arguments and very soft words. Frequently you cannot convince a man by tugging at his reason, but you can persuade him by winning his affections.” –Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 173


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“If you're placed in a situation where you suspect your convictions will be labeled intolerant, bigoted, narrow-minded, and judgmental, turn the tables. When someone asks for your personal views about a moral issue-homosexuality, for example-preface your remarks with a question. You say: “You know, this is actually a very personal question you're asking, and I’d be glad to answer. But before I do, I want to know if you consider yourself a tolerant person or an intolerant person. Is it safe to give my opinion, or are you going to judge me for my point of view? Do you respect diverse ideas, or do you condemn others for convictions that differ from yours?" Let them answer. If they say they're tolerant (which they probably will), then when you give your point of view it’s going to be very difficult for them to call you intolerant or judgmental without looking guilty, too. This response capitalizes on the fact that there's no morally neutral ground. Everybody has a point of view they think is right and everybody judges at some point or another. The Christian gets pigeon-holed as the judgmental one, but everyone else is judging, too. It’s an inescapable consequence of believing in any kind of morality.” –Greg Koukl


----------



## SemperFiDawg

TRINITY

“The doctrine of the Trinity...is truth for the heart. The fact that it can not be satisfactorily explained, instead of being against it, is in its favor. Such a truth had to be revealed; no one could imagine it.” –A.W. Tozer


----------



## SemperFiDawg

TRUTH

“Truth is so obscured nowadays and lies [are] so well established that unless we love the truth we shall never recognize it.” –Blaise Pascal


----------



## SemperFiDawg

â€œThere is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.â€� 
â€• Blaise Pascal, Pensées


----------



## SemperFiDawg

WaltL1 said:


> Shocker.


----------



## WaltL1

SemperFiDawg said:


>


My point is completely obvious to anyone who reads and comprehends what they have read.
Just stick with your cutting and pasting.


----------



## gemcgrew

SFD, sorry if I double one of your quotes. I can't keep track of them all, but I am thoroughly enjoying the thread.

"In short, I didn't become a Christian because God promised I would have an even happier life than I had as an atheist. He never promised any such thing. Indeed, following him would inevitably bring divine demotions in the eyes of the world. Rather, I became a Christian because the evidence was so compelling that Jesus really is the one-and-only Son of God who proved his divinity by rising from the dead. That meant following him was the most rational and logical step I could possibly take." Lee Strobel


----------



## SemperFiDawg

gemcgrew said:


> SFD, sorry if I double one of your quotes. I can't keep track of them all, but I am thoroughly enjoying the thread.
> 
> "In short, I didn't become a Christian because God promised I would have an even happier life than I had as an atheist. He never promised any such thing. Indeed, following him would inevitably bring divine demotions in the eyes of the world. Rather, I became a Christian because the evidence was so compelling that Jesus really is the one-and-only Son of God who proved his divinity by rising from the dead. That meant following him was the most rational and logical step I could possibly take." Lee Strobel



Thanks.  That's very encouraging.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

WaltL1 said:


> What got you so excited about this?  Many A/A don't have a problem with Jesus the person actually existing. And its a fact that an entire religion was later produced based on him. Same type of thing has happened to many people over time -Daniel Boone is famous for his exploits killing indians. General Custer is famous for his last stand. Of course they are actual people, except the stories are not true. They were fabricated by people later.
> Its interesting you describe intellectual honesty as
> "What an admission" as though its a last resort.




O.K. Walt I'll give it a shot.  For what it's worth maybe Boone didn't kill any Indians, but I'm pretty sure Custer was there at the " Last Stand" unless you know something the rest of us don't.


----------



## WaltL1

SemperFiDawg said:


> O.K. Walt I'll give it a shot.  For what it's worth maybe Boone didn't kill any Indians, but I'm pretty sure Custer was there at the " Last Stand" unless you know something the rest of us don't.


If you are actually interested in the truth take a few minutes off from copy/paste and educate yourself.
And if you want to be honest you should change "the rest of us" to "I".


----------



## bullethead

The quotes are great, not an ounce of truth in any of them, but they certainly show how ignorant people are by believing quoted assertions and opinions are somehow facts.
Please keep them coming. I am keeping a list of the people quoted so I can reference and use their incredible wisdom later on. This stuff is priceless. Thank You SFD


----------



## ambush80

SemperFiDawg said:


> Well evolution, of course.
> 
> In all actuality I don't know.  I don't have all the answers and that's ok.  I often think that if we truly knew everything, literally everything, this would become a very monotonous world to live in very quickly.  I like the wonder and the enchantment that comes from not having all the answers.  I do have enough of the answers that I can confidently put my trust in the One who does know, and that's more than enough for me.



What?!?  You're telling me that a full grown, literate, educated person like yourself can just brush all that nonsense about the ark under the rug?  Full stop, no need for further investigation?  Don't you ever even postulate on HOW a thing like the ark could have worked?  Don't you care?!?  Why would you not?  Does that seem like something smart people do?

I'm beside myself.


----------



## WaltL1

ambush80 said:


> What?!?  You're telling me that a full grown, literate, educated person like yourself can just brush all that nonsense about the ark under the rug?  Full stop, no need for further investigation?  Don't you ever even postulate on HOW a thing like the ark could have worked?  Don't you care?!?  Why would you not?  Does that seem like something smart people do?
> 
> I'm beside myself.


Urban Dictionary
2. Ignorance is bliss  
The lack of knowledge in reference to a situation, particularly a messy one. Once the whole truth is revealed one realizes they were much happier being clueless.


----------



## drippin' rock

ambush80 said:


> What?!?  You're telling me that a full grown, literate, educated person like yourself can just brush all that nonsense about the ark under the rug?  Full stop, no need for further investigation?  Don't you ever even postulate on HOW a thing like the ark could have worked?  Don't you care?!?  Why would you not?  Does that seem like something smart people do?
> 
> I'm beside myself.



You can't know the mind of God.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> The quotes are great, not an ounce of truth in any of them, but they certainly show how ignorant people are by believing quoted assertions and opinions are somehow facts.
> Please keep them coming. I am keeping a list of the people quoted so I can reference and use their incredible wisdom later on. This stuff is priceless. Thank You SFD



Thank you, and you are very welcome.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

ambush80 said:


> What?!?  You're telling me that a full grown, literate, educated person like yourself can just brush all that nonsense about the ark under the rug?  Full stop, no need for further investigation?  Don't you ever even postulate on HOW a thing like the ark could have worked?  Don't you care?!?  Why would you not?  Does that seem like something smart people do?
> 
> I'm beside myself.



No Ambush.  Certainly not.  I wonder about it all the time.  It amazes me.  It perplexes me.  I have no earthly idea how it could have happened given our current understanding, but at the same time I believe it.  Before you have a heart attack, can you tell me one thing, just one, in the Bible that has been unequivocally been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be false?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

WaltL1 said:


> If you are actually interested in the truth take a few minutes off from copy/paste and educate yourself.
> And if you want to be honest you should change "the rest of us" to "I".



  anyone?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

WaltL1 said:


> Urban Dictionary
> 2. Ignorance is bliss
> The lack of knowledge in reference to a situation, particularly a messy one. Once the whole truth is revealed one realizes they were much happier being clueless.



Walt, if you are half as good hurling facts as insults, maybe you could post some regarding my challenge to Ambush above.


----------



## WaltL1

SemperFiDawg said:


> anyone?


And that's why you aren't taken seriously. You'll take the time to come up with this but not take the time to learn something.
That's also what makes my "ignorance is bliss" comment not an insult but a legitimate observation based on evidence.


----------



## WaltL1

SemperFiDawg said:


> Walt, if you are half as good hurling facts as insults, maybe you could post some regarding my challenge to Ambush above.


Sure just a couple off the top of my head -
turning into a pillar of salt
walking on water
talking donkeys
talking snakes
All physically impossible.


----------



## 660griz

SemperFiDawg said:


> Before you have a heart attack, can you tell me one thing, just one, in the Bible that has been unequivocally been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be false?



The great flood. Impossible.


----------



## drippin' rock

SemperFiDawg said:


> No Ambush.  Certainly not.  I wonder about it all the time.  It amazes me.  It perplexes me.  I have no earthly idea how it could have happened given our current understanding, but at the same time I believe it.  Before you have a heart attack, can you tell me one thing, just one, in the Bible that has been unequivocally been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be false?



Bats aren't birds.


----------



## ambush80

SemperFiDawg said:


> No Ambush.  Certainly not.  I wonder about it all the time.  It amazes me.  It perplexes me.  I have no earthly idea how it could have happened given our current understanding, but at the same time I believe it.  Before you have a heart attack, can you tell me one thing, just one, in the Bible that has been unequivocally been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be false?



When Jesus walked on the water do you think that he altered his specific gravity to make himself buoyant? That seems like it would create balance issues.   Or did he apply some method of water repulsion to the bottoms of his feet.  Or did he levitate just above the water in which case he wouldn't actually have needed to "walk".   I guess if he levitated they would have written "levitated" instead of "walked".  Do you suppose that he broke the plane of the water with his feet at all?


----------



## TripleXBullies

SemperFiDawg said:


> No Ambush.  Certainly not.  I wonder about it all the time.  It amazes me.  It perplexes me.  I have no earthly idea how it could have happened given our current understanding, but at the same time I believe it.  Before you have a heart attack, can you tell me one thing, just one, in the Bible that has been unequivocally been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be false?



Beaches holding back the water of oceans.


----------



## TripleXBullies

ambush80 said:


> When Jesus walked on the water do you think that he altered his specific gravity to make himself buoyant? That seems like it would create balance issues.   Or did he apply some method of water repulsion to the bottoms of his feet.  Or did he levitate just above the water in which case he wouldn't actually have needed to "walk".   I guess if he levitated they would have written "levitated" instead of "walked".  Do you suppose that he broke the plane of the water with his feet at all?



The magic parts are worth trying to prove didn't happen...


----------



## gemcgrew

drippin' rock said:


> Bats aren't birds.


Not by today's definition or category. Pluto is no longer a planet. Did Pluto change? What changed?


----------



## 660griz

gemcgrew said:


> Not by today's definition or category. Pluto is no longer a planet. Did Pluto change? What changed?



We learned about Pluto. Definition never changed for birds or planets.


----------



## gemcgrew

660griz said:


> We learned about Pluto. Definition never changed for birds or planets.


Source? You can PM it to me.


----------



## 660griz

gemcgrew said:


> Source? You can PM it to me.



Planet definition was created in 2006.
Others may be interested. http://missionscience.nasa.gov/nasascience/what_is_a_planet.html


----------



## ambush80

TripleXBullies said:


> The magic parts are worth trying to prove didn't happen...



I just don't understand why the people who believe that this stuff actually happened don't care to try to understand HOW it could have happened.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

WaltL1 said:


> Sure just a couple off the top of my head -
> turning into a pillar of salt
> walking on water
> talking donkeys
> talking snakes
> All physically impossible.



Again, I asked for proof.  You offered and opinion.


----------



## drippin' rock

gemcgrew said:


> Not by today's definition or category. Pluto is no longer a planet. Did Pluto change? What changed?



We are discussing things the bible says that have been proven false.  Did I miss something?  I don't recall Pluto being mentioned in the Bible.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Indeed, a quick glance around this broken world makes it painfully obvious that we don't need more arguments on behalf of God; we need more people who live as if they are in covenant with Unconditional Love, which is our best definition of God. (p. 21)” 
― Robin R. Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Indeed, a quick glance around this broken world makes it painfully obvious that we don't need more arguments on behalf of God; we need more people who live as if they are in covenant with Unconditional Love, which is our best definition of God. (p. 21)” 
â€• Robin R. Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus


----------



## Miguel Cervantes

I'm curious as to why Apologetics got clumped together with other "non-Christian" categories in a sub-forum.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.” 
― Francis A. Schaeffer


----------



## gemcgrew

660griz said:


> Planet definition was created in 2006.
> Others may be interested. http://missionscience.nasa.gov/nasascience/what_is_a_planet.html


So, revising previous definitions is advance in knowledge? Or could it be an indicator that they never had knowledge to begin with, but moving from one error to another?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“A man must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ready to toil and die for his convictions if he is not even ready to wear a wreathe around his head for them.” 
― G.K. Chesterton


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Miguel Cervantes said:


> I'm curious as to why Apologetics got clumped together with other "non-Christian" categories in a sub-forum.



Don't know, but it's certainly the best place to reach the lost among the sub forums.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Disasters work like alarm clocks to the world, hence God allows them. They are shouting, 'Wake up! Love! Pray!” 
― Criss Jami


----------



## SemperFiDawg

I love this quote.


“Imagine a person who comes in here tonight and argues 'no air exists' but continues to breathe air while he argues. Now intellectually, atheists continue to breathe - they continue to use reason and draw scientific conclusions [which assumes an orderly universe], to make moral judgments [which assumes absolute values] - but the atheistic view of things would in theory make such 'breathing' impossible. They are breathing God's air all the time they are arguing against him.” 
― Greg L. Bahnsen


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“The Bible is authoritative on everything of which it speaks.
Moreover, it speaks of everything.” 
― Cornelius Van Til


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“There is a greater Christian faith than one which settles for the temporal happiness, and that is the augmentation of faith. The more faithful you become, the harder the obstacles get; but the harder the obstacles get, the tougher your spine grows; and the tougher your spine grows, the less dependent you are on man's approval. I came to know this about Christianity when valuing faith before comfort.” 
― Criss Jami


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Also has a catchy book title


“Atheists don’t hate fairies, leprechauns, or unicorns because they don’t exist. It is impossible to hate something that doesn't exist. Atheists — like the painting experts hated the painter — hate God because He does exist.” 
― Ray Comfort, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Cant Make Him Think: Answers to Questions from Angry Skeptics


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Deceit for personal gain is one of history's most recurring crimes. Man's first step towards change would be thinking, counter-arguing, re-thinking, twisting, straightening, perfecting, then believing every original idea he intends to make public before making it public. There is always an angle from which an absolute truth may appear askew just as there is always a personal emotion, or a personal agenda, which alienates the ultimate good of mankind.” 
― Criss Jami


----------



## WaltL1

SemperFiDawg said:


> Again, I asked for proof.  You offered and opinion.


You are just not worth responding to any more.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe.” 
― Criss Jami


----------



## SemperFiDawg

WaltL1 said:


> You are just not worth responding to any more.



Haven't seen a response yet, only insults, denigrations and occasionally an out of context opinion.  An actual response would be a welcomed surprise.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it. It is the contention of these pages that while the best judge of Christianity is a Christian, the next best judge would be something more like a Confucian. The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgements; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of
which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and
already weary of hearing what he has never heard.” 
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man


----------



## SemperFiDawg

660griz said:


> The great flood. Impossible.



Proof?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

ambush80 said:


> When Jesus walked on the water do you think that he altered his specific gravity to make himself buoyant? That seems like it would create balance issues.   Or did he apply some method of water repulsion to the bottoms of his feet.  Or did he levitate just above the water in which case he wouldn't actually have needed to "walk".   I guess if he levitated they would have written "levitated" instead of "walked".  Do you suppose that he broke the plane of the water with his feet at all?



I don't know how it happened, only that it did.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

TripleXBullies said:


> Beaches holding back the water of oceans.



Unsure of what instance you are speaking of.


----------



## 660griz

gemcgrew said:


> So, revising previous definitions is advance in knowledge? Or could it be an indicator that they never had knowledge to begin with, but moving from one error to another?



Technically, there was no previous definition. The new one, The IAU...resolves that planets and other bodies, except satellites, in the Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:

(1)A planet [1] is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. Pluto does not. 
(2) A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape [2], (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit,(like Pluto) and (d) is not a satellite.

As advancements in technology increase, we can learn more. This may cause changes in previous assertions. That is what science is all about. The world use to be thought of as flat. Pluto may be a planet one day. It still is to lots of folks. One day, they may learn that Pluto indeed clears its own orbit and voila, it is a planet. 

I am sure back in the 'day', they probably had a name for anything that flew. Like has been stated, a typical high schooler today has more knowledge of the world than those who wrote the bible.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

ambush80 said:


> I just don't understand why the people who believe that this stuff actually happened don't care to try to understand HOW it could have happened.



Again Ambush, I do care how it happened.  I would love to know, but just because I don't understand it doesn't mean I can't accept it as the truth.  There's tons of stuff none of us understand, but we still don't deny it's existance.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

On Biblical accuracy


“To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament.” 
â€• John Warwick Montgomery, History and Christianity


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“I wanted to cast doubt on the step he was about to take, to help him see there are other ways to live, other ways to seek knowledge, love...even self-transformation. I wanted to convince him his dignity depended on maintaining a free, skeptical attitude towards doctrine. I wanted...to save him...
Doubt, like faith, has to be learned. It is a skill. But the curious thing about skepticism is that its adherents, ancient and modern, have so often been proselytizers. In reading them, I've often wanted to ask: "Why do you care?" Their skepticism offers no good answer to that question.” 
― Mark Lilla


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." 
C. S. Lewis - Mere Christianity


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"The Christian pities men because they are dying, and the Buddhist pities them because they are living. The Christian is sorry for what damages the life of a man; but the Buddhist is sorry for him because he is alive." 
Chesterton - Generally Speaking


----------



## SemperFiDawg

There is only one reason an intelligent person doesn't believe in miracles. He or she believes in materialism." 
Chesterton - St. Francis of Assisi


----------



## Miguel Cervantes

Here's a quote by a notable Apologist

“I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far  away is because that is where we have put him. We have kept him at a  distance, and then when we are in need and call on him in prayer, we  wonder where he is. He is exactly where we left him.”   
  â€•     Ravi Zacharias,     _ Has Christianity Failed You? _


----------



## Miguel Cervantes

Here's another one:

“To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate  infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, “I have infinite  knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge”   
  â€•     Ravi Zacharias


----------



## 660griz

SemperFiDawg said:


> Proof?



All the water that has ever been on the earth is still here. We don't make it and we don't use it up. 

Water would have to rise 8 miles high.(Unless you assume the world was practically at sea level back then which is wasn't) Then, where would it go.(drain) 
Mt. Everest:
Height: 29,028 feet, or 5 and a half miles above sea level. 
Location: part of the Himalaya mountain range; straddles border of Nepal and Tibet.
Age: approximately 60 million years old.



It is just physically impossible, for that amount of vapor to be in the air. For that amount of water to be underground, and for it to go anywhere based on sedimentary layers of high ground vs the ocean depth layers. The flood of the entire globe just didn't happen. Now, back then, without cars and planes and knowledge, a flood of 'their' world could have happened. Floods happen all the time. Just nature.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Miguel Cervantes said:


> Here's another one:
> 
> “To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate  infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, “I have infinite  knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge”
> â€•     Ravi Zacharias



Thanks MC.  Ravi is in my opinion the best Apologist alive today.  His reach is world wide.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

660griz said:


> All the water that has ever been on the earth is still here. We don't make it and we don't use it up.
> 
> Water would have to rise 8 miles high.(Unless you assume the world was practically at sea level back then which is wasn't) Then, where would it go.(drain)
> Mt. Everest:
> Height: 29,028 feet, or 5 and a half miles above sea level.
> Location: part of the Himalaya mountain range; straddles border of Nepal and Tibet.
> Age: approximately 60 million years old.
> 
> 
> 
> It is just physically impossible, for that amount of vapor to be in the air. For that amount of water to be underground, and for it to go anywhere based on sedimentary layers of high ground vs the ocean depth layers. The flood of the entire globe just didn't happen. Now, back then, without cars and planes and knowledge, a flood of 'their' world could have happened. Floods happen all the time. Just nature.



Griz, not trying to be a smart aleck, but that is not proof.  It's a good assumption based on what we know about the world today and extrapolating that data backwards through time taking several assumptions for granted such as the ones you noted.  But again, it's not actual proof.


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## SemperFiDawg

"There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition." 
Blaise Pascal Pensees


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## SemperFiDawg

"A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional...values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process."

CS Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

CS Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

Joy is the serious business of Heaven."
C. S. Lewis - Letters to Malcolm


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## SemperFiDawg

"In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are." 

CS Lewis


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## 660griz

SemperFiDawg said:


> Griz, not trying to be a smart aleck, but that is not proof.  It's a good assumption based on what we know about the world today and extrapolating that data backwards through time taking several assumptions for granted such as the ones you noted.  But again, it's not actual proof.



Proof to me. Unless someone comes up with something that makes more sense.


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## SemperFiDawg

The Heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands."
Psalms 19:1


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## SemperFiDawg

660griz said:


> Proof to me. Unless someone comes up with something that makes more sense.



That's fine, but not for me.


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## SemperFiDawg

"It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to." 

CS Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." 

CS Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak."
G. K. Chesterton


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## SemperFiDawg

The reason angels can fly is that they take themselves very lightly."
G K Chesterton


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## SemperFiDawg

"In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it."
G K Chesterton


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## SemperFiDawg

"It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into anything."

Chesterton


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## SemperFiDawg

If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments."
G. K. Chesterton


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## SemperFiDawg

"Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance."

Chesterton


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## SemperFiDawg

"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."
Chesterton, The Man Who Was Orthodox, 1963


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## SemperFiDawg

"The safest road to - I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH - is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

CS Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

"The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving it all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life coming flowing in."

CS Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

"A man's real belief is that which he lives by. What a man believes is the thing he does, not the thing he thinks."

George Macdonald


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## SemperFiDawg

"Education, the great mumbo-jumbo and fraud of the age, purports to equip us to live and is prescribed as a universal remedy for everything from juvenile delinquency to premature senility. For the most part it only serves to enlarge stupidity, inflate conceit, enhance credulity and put those subjected to it at the mercy of brain-washers with printing presses, radio and TV at their disposal." Malcolm Muggeridge, in the "Observer", 1966


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## SemperFiDawg

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither."

CS Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

It takes God a long time to get us to stop thinking that unless everyone sees things exactly as we do, they must be wrong. That is never God's view. There is only one true liberty -- the liberty of Jesus at work in our conscience enabling us to do what is right. Don't get impatient with others. Remember how God dealt with you -- with patience and with gentleness. But never water down the truth of God. Let it have its way and never apologize for it. Jesus said, "Go . . . and make disciples . . ." (Matthew 28:19), not, "Make converts to your own thoughts and opinions."
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost for His Highest - May 6


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## SemperFiDawg

"Faith is not belief held in the absence of evidence but rather a commitment to what one already believes when an insatiable appetite for more evidence is unmet."
(b. hearn)


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## SemperFiDawg

"Extreme open-mindedness is merely empty-mindedness."
(b. hearn)


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## SemperFiDawg

Panspermia n; Desperate naturalists begging the question 
(b. hearn)


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## TripleXBullies

SemperFiDawg said:


> Unsure of what instance you are speaking of.



Jeremiah 5:22 (ERV) | In Context | Whole Chapter
22 Surely you are afraid of me.”
This message is from the Lord.
    “You should shake with fear in front of me.
I am the one who made the sandy shores to hold back the sea.
    I made it that way to keep the water in its place forever.
The waves may pound the beach, but they will not destroy it.
    The waves may roar as they come in, but they cannot go beyond the beach.

The beaches do no keep the ocean in their place and the waves definitely roar beyond the beach. 100% FALSE.


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## TripleXBullies

maybe you prefer NIV

Jeremiah 5:22 (NIV) | In Context | Whole Chapter
22 Should you not fear me?” declares the Lord.
    “Should you not tremble in my presence?
I made the sand a boundary for the sea,
    an everlasting barrier it cannot cross.
The waves may roll, but they cannot prevail;
    they may roar, but they cannot cross it.Jeremiah 5:22 (NIV) | In Context | Whole Chapter
22 Should you not fear me?” declares the Lord.
    “Should you not tremble in my presence?
I made the sand a boundary for the sea,
    an everlasting barrier it cannot cross.
The waves may roll, but they cannot prevail;
    they may roar, but they cannot cross it.


Would you like me to start a thread to discuss this non-truth that your lord declared?


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## ambush80

SemperFiDawg said:


> Again Ambush, I do care how it happened.  I would love to know, but just because I don't understand it doesn't mean I can't accept it as the truth.  There's tons of stuff none of us understand, but we still don't deny it's existance.



Then how do you think it happened?  Surely if you cared you would have come up with some ideas.


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## SemperFiDawg

Just as the account in Genesis describes it.


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## SemperFiDawg

TripleXBullies said:


> Jeremiah 5:22 (ERV) | In Context | Whole Chapter
> 22 Surely you are afraid of me.”
> This message is from the Lord.
> “You should shake with fear in front of me.
> I am the one who made the sandy shores to hold back the sea.
> I made it that way to keep the water in its place forever.
> The waves may pound the beach, but they will not destroy it.
> The waves may roar as they come in, but they cannot go beyond the beach.
> 
> The beaches do no keep the ocean in their place and the waves definitely roar beyond the beach. 100% FALSE.




Really?  That's news to me.  I always assumed the oceans existed within the boundaries of the coastline.  Now you are positing they don't?


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## SemperFiDawg

Apologetics is not simply about reaching outside the church and helping people realize why Christianity makes so much sense. There are many people inside church congregations who are wrestling with apologetic questions; who come to faith but haven’t ...had all of their questions answered. I think the pastor, the preacher, needs to realize if they want their people to be good and minister to the faith, apologists and evangelists, they’ve got to be equipped. They’ve got to be reassured about their faith. They’ve got to be helped to be able to explain it and defend it in the secular marketplace. Now maybe many pastors and preachers say, ‘You know, I couldn’t do this.’ In which case, you need to bring somebody in who can. But there’s a real need for the local church to see this kind of ministry as a priority in our present cultural situation.   - Alister McGrath


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## SemperFiDawg

Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service. If we do not use the mind that God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality and cut ourselves off from many of the riches of God's grace.  - John Stott


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## SemperFiDawg

The apologetic task is difficult, complex, and never-ending. Yet it is the mandate of God to us. The responsibility is ours; its success is God’s. - R.C. Sproul


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## SemperFiDawg

Being faithful to Jesus Christ requires a broader picture of the task of giving sound reasons for the faith. Traditionally, the task of offering sound reasons to believe has been accomplished primarily by giving arguments for Christianity and against non-Christian perspectives. While arguments are important, they are only one of the ways apologetics encourage the development of Christian belief. Sometimes these impediments are actually intellectual objections—such as the notion that science has disproved God’s existence or that the existence of other religions makes it impossible to assert the truthfulness of Christianity. Other times, impediments to belief are based on misunderstandings of Christian teachings. Some think, for example, that the Trinity is the same as polytheism and that all Christians homeschool their kids, believe that the King James Version is the only inspired version of the Bible and believe that AIDS is God’s judgment on homosexuals. These are misunderstandings, and bringing some clarity to these issues can help people take Christianity seriously. Even more important than the task of clearing away impediments to belief, however, is the task of being authentically Christian as you offer arguments, answer objections and clarify issues. The attitude with which you engage questions can itself be a powerful apologetic or powerful deterrent. - James K. Beilby


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## SemperFiDawg

Here is the sum of the matter: We must earnestly endeavor to know the truth of the biblical worldview and to make it known with integrity to as many people as possible with the best arguments available. To know God in Christ means that we desire to make Christian truth available to others in the most compelling form possible. To be created in God’s rational, moral and relational image means that our entire being should be aimed at the glorification of God in Christian witness. A significant part of that witness is Christian apologetics. - Douglas Groothuis


----------



## SemperFiDawg

If our culture is to be transformed, it will happen from the bottom up - from ordinary believers practicing apologetics over the backyard fence or around the barbecue grill.  - Chuck Colson


----------



## SemperFiDawg

To be effective in equipping young people and professionals to face the challenges of a highly educated secular society, the church needs to redefine the mission of pastors and youth leaders to include training in apologetics and worldview.…Pastors must once again provide intellectual leadership for their congregations, teaching apologetics from the pulpit. Every time a minister introduces a biblical teaching, he should also instruct the congregation in ways to defend it against the major objections they are likely to encounter. A religion that avoids the intellectual task and retreats to the therapeutic realm of personal relationships and feelings will not survive in today’s spiritual battlefield. - Nancy Pearcey


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## SemperFiDawg

In high school and college Christian teenagers are intellectually assaulted with every manner of non-Christian worldview coupled with an overwhelming relativism. If parents are not intellectually engaged with their faith and do not have sound arguments for Christian theism and good answers to their children’s questions, then we are in real danger of losing our youth. It’s no longer enough to teach our children simply Bible stories; they need doctrine and apologetics. It’s hard to understand how people today can risk parenthood without having studied apologetics.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Unfortunately, our churches have also largely dropped the ball in this area. It’s insufficient for youth groups and Sunday school classes to focus on entertainment and simpering devotional thoughts. We’ve got to train our kids for war. We dare not send them out to public high school and university armed with rubber swords and plastic armor. The time for playing games is past.  – William Lane Craig


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## ambush80

SemperFiDawg said:


> Just as the account in Genesis describes it.



Why are you reluctant do discuss the details?  Convince me that it is POSSIBLE to walk on water, describe to me how it's done and I will be open to discussion of the other miracles.  I'm calling you out as an apologist.  Use reason to explain the ark or water walking.  There are countless heathens waiting for an answer.


----------



## TripleXBullies

SemperFiDawg said:


> Really?  That's news to me.  I always assumed the oceans existed within the boundaries of the coastline.  Now you are positing they don't?



Tsunami anyone? They are not bound by the beach as it is proclaimed by your lord. They CAN go beyond the beach. That is a 100% false statement.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

ambush80 said:


> Why are you reluctant do discuss the details?  Convince me that it is POSSIBLE to walk on water, describe to me how it's done and I will be open to discussion of the other miracles.  I'm calling you out as an apologist.  Use reason to explain the ark or water walking.  There are countless heathens waiting for an answer.



Im not reluctant.  Read the account and you will have exactly what i believe.

It's not my job to convince you.  

You're calling me out as an apologist?  ROFL!!!  You are giving me way tooooooooo much credit that is certainly not deserved.

Tell you what, you use reason to explain to me the actual ESSENCE of gravity because you seem to have this need to know such things in order to believe they exist. I assume you believe gravity DOES exist, so i know you can describe it's very essence to me with no problem.  In return I promise to describe the essence of God to you in a much more detailed manner than anything you offer on the essence of gravity.  Deal?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

TripleXBullies said:


> Tsunami anyone? They are not bound by the beach as it is proclaimed by your lord. They CAN go beyond the beach. That is a 100% false statement.




Tsunami?........Really?  Why not a dredging barge, dikes, levys, sea walls, or jetties?
That my friend is REACHING.  That being said, I think the average Bible is about 2000 pages, but I may be off on that.  If that (tsunami) is your best shot at proving it wrong,  it's a heck of a compliment you just paid to its inerrancy.


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Im not reluctant.  Read the account and you will have exactly what i believe.
> 
> It's not my job to convince you.
> 
> You're calling me out as an apologist?  ROFL!!!  You are giving me way tooooooooo much credit that is certainly not deserved.
> 
> Tell you what, you use reason to explain to me the actual ESSENCE of gravity because you seem to have this need to know such things in order to believe they exist. I assume you believe gravity DOES exist, so i know you can describe it's very essence to me with no problem.  In return I promise to describe the essence of God to you in a much more detailed manner than anything you offer on the essence of gravity.  Deal?



Gravity does not have anyone making the claims that are made for a God. We are content with what we have been taught about gravity. If we were content with what has been claimed about God(s) we would not need these discussions. If you actually have something about your God that you can actually share with us then go for it. But please, the "ill show you mine if you show me yours first" games were over in elementary school....then again that is when a lot of invisible friends got the boot too.....


----------



## TripleXBullies

The waves may roll but they can't prevail - YES THEY CAN

They may roar but they can't cross it - YES THEY CAN

The sand is an everlasting barrier that it cannot cross - YES IT CAN


If it just said that he made the sand a boundary for the sea, and left it at that, it wouldn't be a big deal... but there are some pretty big claims made here that the sea can't cross the beach... EVER.. it's and ever lasting barrier that can't be crossed. It can be crossed. I saw a video of it on tv the other day... 

If you can say that this passage is the inerrant word of a god then YOU'RE the one that's reaching. I'm not saying that the entire bible is a lie because of this passage. I'm saying that this makes it 100% NOT THE INERRANT WORD OF ANY GOD.... because this particular passage is 100% false. You're right about one thing.. You're saying that this is a minor detail? I agree to an extent. Compared to walking on water or a talking donkey.. Things that are magical. But maybe it's the same. It's claiming that the beaches somehow have some power to hold in the waves... yet you have seen it with your own eyes, that it's simply not true... that the waves can and do overtake the beach. This magical claim isn't so magical is it?



TripleXBullies said:


> maybe you prefer NIV
> 
> Jeremiah 5:22 (NIV) | In Context | Whole Chapter
> 22 Should you not fear me?” declares the Lord.
> “Should you not tremble in my presence?
> I made the sand a boundary for the sea,
> an everlasting barrier it cannot cross.
> The waves may roll, but they cannot prevail;
> they may roar, but they cannot cross it.
> 
> 
> Would you like me to start a thread to discuss this non-truth that your lord declared?


----------



## TripleXBullies

SemperFiDawg said:


> Im not reluctant.  Read the account and you will have exactly what i believe.
> 
> It's not my job to convince you.
> 
> You're calling me out as an apologist?  ROFL!!!  You are giving me way tooooooooo much credit that is certainly not deserved.
> 
> Tell you what, you use reason to explain to me the actual ESSENCE of gravity because you seem to have this need to know such things in order to believe they exist. I assume you believe gravity DOES exist, so i know you can describe it's very essence to me with no problem.  In return I promise to describe the essence of God to you in a much more detailed manner than anything you offer on the essence of gravity.  Deal?



What he's saying is that Gravity doesn't ask you to worship it. It doesn't tell you that you're a piece of junk without it. It doesn't condemn you if you need more evidence.

I know it has to do with mass and energy and that everything has some amount of it. It may not be completely understood but what it does do, is show you every second that it exists. When we walked on the moon, we saw that the concept as it had always been described was evident. We saw that it acted differently on the moon. We can see that it has affects on meteors. If you're more comfortable with it, you could worship it like the sun or the rain.


----------



## StriperrHunterr

TripleXBullies said:


> When we walked on the moon, we saw that the concept as it had always been described was evident. We saw that it acted differently on the moon.



Just reading through here and noticed this. 

Gravity didn't behave differently on the moon. It behaved exactly as it should have. Objects of disparate mass, and profile, when dropped at the same time, in a vacuum, will impact the ground at the same time.

Gravity doesn't seem to work that way on Earth, but that's a product of wind resistance and profiles of the objects. 

Sorry if this was just a typo on your part, but the Apollo landings are one of my favorite parts in history, considering they did validate the theory, thus becoming law, in an environment that was not created by man.


----------



## TripleXBullies

It validated the theory by it not affecting things exactly the same way, but with the same theory. I don't think it was a typo because I agree with what you're saying. When you see a man walking on the moon he you see a different gravitational affect. But it's affecting him the way the theory/law would say it should.


----------



## ambush80

SemperFiDawg said:


> Im not reluctant.  Read the account and you will have exactly what i believe.
> 
> It's not my job to convince you.



The Great Commission compels you to try your best to do just that.  How can I believe in a resurrection if I can't believe in Noah's arrk?



SemperFiDawg said:


> You're calling me out as an apologist?  ROFL!!!  You are giving me way tooooooooo much credit that is certainly not deserved.
> 
> Tell you what, you use reason to explain to me the actual ESSENCE of gravity because you seem to have this need to know such things in order to believe they exist. I assume you believe gravity DOES exist, so i know you can describe it's very essence to me with no problem.  In return I promise to describe the essence of God to you in a much more detailed manner than anything you offer on the essence of gravity.  Deal?



If you're not gonna play apologist then what are you doing down here?

I tend to be more interested in the curious stuff, prapsychology, quantum physics, talking donkeys..... I'm more critical of the stuff that doesn't jive with my natural observations.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question2321.htm

We can discuss each point that you might not understand individually.  



StripeRR HunteRR said:


> Just reading through here and noticed this.
> 
> Gravity didn't behave differently on the moon. It behaved exactly as it should have. Objects of disparate mass, and profile, when dropped at the same time, in a vacuum, will impact the ground at the same time.
> 
> Gravity doesn't seem to work that way on Earth, but that's a product of wind resistance and profiles of the objects.
> 
> Sorry if this was just a typo on your part, but the Apollo landings are one of my favorite parts in history, considering they did validate the theory, thus becoming law, in an environment that was not created by man.





TripleXBullies said:


> It validated the theory by it not affecting things exactly the same way, but with the same theory. I don't think it was a typo because I agree with what you're saying. When you see a man walking on the moon he you see a different gravitational affect. But it's affecting him the way the theory/law would say it should.



The effects of gravity are predictable, can be tested and even seen.  All I want is a reasonable explanation of how a man might walk on water.  Don't say "He just did".  Come up with a theory.  Use your imagination.
Extrapolate from concepts you know about.


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## SemperFiDawg

The Great God Science. It has failed us, because it was never meant to be a god, but only a few true scientists understand that. 
Madeleine L'Engle


----------



## SemperFiDawg

A man says to me, "Can you explain the seven trumpets of the Revelation?" No, but I can blow one in your ear, and warn you to escape from the wrath to come. 
Charles Haddon Spurgeon


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## SemperFiDawg

On the Depravity of mankind

Men sometimes object to the doctrine of the depravity of mankind. But the strongest teachings of the Bible and of the pulpit are more than confirmed by their own actions - by the conduct of the world itself. Every bolt and bar, and lock and key, every receipt, and check, and note of hand, every law book and court of justice, every chain, and dungeon, and gallows, proclaim that the world is a fallen world, and that our race is a depraved and sinful race. 
Anonymous


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## SemperFiDawg

How such already quite complex structures may have come together, remains a mystery to me. The possibility of the existence of a Creator, of God, represents to me a satisfactory solution to this problem.... I know that the concept of God helped me to master many questions in life; it guides me in critical situations, and I see it confirmed in many deep insights into the beauty of the functioning of the living world. 

Professor Werner Arber, Nobel Prize winner physiology/medicine


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## SemperFiDawg

On Moral absolutes

Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers. 
John Owens


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## SemperFiDawg

In this modern world of ours many people seem to think that science has somehow made such religious ideas as immortality untimely or old fashioned.I think science has a real surprise for the skeptics. Science, for instance, tells us that nothing in nature, not even the tiniest particle, can disappear without a trace. Nature does not know extinction. All it knows is transformation. If God applies this fundamental principle to the most minute and insignificant parts of His universe, doesn't it make sense to assume that He applies it to the masterpiece of His creation, the human soul? 

Dr.Werner Von Braun
Biography


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## SemperFiDawg

If I profess with loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not a confessing Christian. 

Martin Luther
Biography and Information


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## SemperFiDawg

A chasm is opening between the men who believe their Bibles and the men who are prepared for an advance upon Scripture. Inspiration and speculation cannot long abide in peace. Compromise there can be none. We cannot hold the inspiration of the Word, and yet reject it; we cannot believe in the atonement and deny it; we cannot hold the doctrine of the fall and yet talk of the evolution of spiritual life from human nature; we cannot recognize the punishment of the impenitent and yet indulge the "larger hope." One way or the other we must go. Decision is the virtue of the hour. 

Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The Spurgeon Archive


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## SemperFiDawg

What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that it is beyond finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason. It is so wild that it terrifies some Christians who try to dogmatize their fear by lashing out at other Christians, because tidy Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of God's love, a love we don't even have to earn. 

Madeleine L'Engle
Website


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## SemperFiDawg

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. 

Josh Billings


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## SemperFiDawg

Do you ever sit down and wonder what is wrong with the world? Do you ever ask yourself why it is that Christians seem to have so little influence, why they seem to achieve so little, for all their numbers, in putting the world right? To each of those two questions there is ultimately but one answer. It is this: we lack the mind of Christ. 
J. Arthur Lewis


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## SemperFiDawg

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others. 

Blaise Pascal
Biography


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## SemperFiDawg

World peace will come only when all mankind turns wholeheartedly to God in complete humility and voluntary unconditional surrender. Until human nature is changed, we'll have war. 

Robert Page


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## SemperFiDawg

Many people think that the mark of an authentic Christian is doctrinal purity; if a person's beliefs are biblical and doctrinally orthodox, then he is a Christian. People who equate orthodoxy with authenticity find it hard to even consider the possibility that, despite the correctness of all their doctrinal positions, they may have missed the deepest reality of the authentic Christian life. But we must never forget that true Christianity is more than teaching - it is a way of life. In fact, it is life itself. "He who has the Son has life," remember? When we talk about life, we are talking about something that is far more than mere morality, far more than doctrinal accuracy. 

Ray C. Stedman
Homepage


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## SemperFiDawg

The unattended garden will soon be overrun with weeds; the heart that fails to cultivate truth and root out error will shortly be a theological wilderness. 

A. W. Tozer
The Works of A. W. Tozer


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## SemperFiDawg

What reason have they for saying that we cannot rise from the dead? What is more difficult, to be born or to rise again; that what has never been should be, or that what has been should be again? Is it more difficult to come into existence than to return to it? Habit makes the one appear easy to us; want of habit makes the other impossible. A popular way of thinking! 

Blaise Pascal
Biography


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## SemperFiDawg

The Gospel is not a new law. It is not a code of morals or ethics. It is not a creed to be accepted. It is not a system of religion to be adhered to. It is the good news that God will forgive and accept any person who trusts His provision of the crucified and risen Christ as the answer to their rebellion and sin. 

Anonymous


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## SemperFiDawg

The distinction between Christianity and all other systems of religion consists largely in this, that in these others men are found seeking after God, while Christianity is God seeking after men. 

Thomas Arnold


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## SemperFiDawg

When Bible believers take a stand against false doctrine, they are accused of rocking the boat. It is better that belief should rock the boat than that unbelief should wreck the boat. 

Vance Havner
Biography


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## SemperFiDawg

These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own. 

Gilbert Keith G. K. Chesterton
American Chesterton Society


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## SemperFiDawg

Never before has the world been so desperately asking for answers to crucial questions, and never before has the world been so frantically committed to the idea that no answers are possible. 

Edmund Clowney


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## SemperFiDawg

It is of primary importance that the preacher should be clothed with the garment of salvation; that he should be filled with a sense of the immense worth of the truth, the guilt, depravity and danger man is in; the unsearchable love of Christ in the bloody purchase, and his ability and willingness to save redeemed penitents. Without this robe, he will preach a distant Jesus, by an unfelt gospel, and with an unhallowed tongue. 

John Leland


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## SemperFiDawg

I have read Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and beautiful; but I never read in either of them: "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give thee rest." 

Augustine
Works and Biography


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## SemperFiDawg

Humanism was not invented by man, but by a snake who suggested that the quest for autonomy might be a good idea. 

R. C. Sproul
Ligonier Ministries


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## SemperFiDawg

Whatever is only almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth, it is the more likely to lead astray. 

Henry Ward Beecher
Archives


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## SemperFiDawg

The modern world detests authority but worships relevance. Our Christian conviction is that the Bible has both authority and relevance, and that the secret of both is Jesus Christ. 

John R. W. Stott


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## SemperFiDawg

It is no fault of Christianity that a hypocrite falls into sin. 

Jerome
Biography


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## ambush80

What you are in effect doing is  plugging your ears and yelling "Blah, blah, blah!"  

How about a conversation?


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## bullethead

ambush80 said:


> What you are in effect doing is  plugging your ears and yelling "Blah, blah, blah!"
> 
> How about a conversation?



Ambush, let him go, he is the only one playing in this thread whether or not anyone else engages him anyway.


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## JB0704

ambush80 said:
			
		

> How about a conversation?



I'll play along....



ambush80 said:


> All I want is a reasonable explanation of how a man might walk on water.  Don't say "He just did".  Come up with a theory.  Use your imagination.



There are natural explanations, such as well placed rocks, very large floating shoes (like canoes), etc.

Then there are explanations which might require the acceptance of a god......such as the ability to increase the density of water (not too far out there if he created the water by command).

Which route would you like to take?


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## JB0704

bullethead said:


> Ambush, let him go, he is the only one playing in this thread whether or not anyone else engages him anyway.



We could start a new one on the walk on water thing, leave this one alone to be what it is........


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## ambush80

JB0704 said:


> I'll play along....
> 
> 
> 
> There are natural explanations, such as well placed rocks, very large floating shoes (like canoes), etc.
> 
> Then there are explanations which might require the acceptance of a god......such as the ability to increase the density of water (not too far out there if he created the water by command).
> 
> Which route would you like to take?



That's what I'm talking about!

Thanks JB. I can always count on you.  

So if he changed the density of water would it still be water?  Would it make ripples?  Why walk and not levitate?  What are the poetic and metaphoric implications of walking on water vs floating above it?  I think canoe shoes (sandals) would have been mentioned, don't you?


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## JB0704

ambush80 said:


> Thanks JB. I can always count on you.



 



ambush80 said:


> So if he changed the density of water would it still be water?



In one form or another.....kind-a like ice is still water.  Heck man, that could be your answer right there...



ambush80 said:


> Would it make ripples?



If it was dense enough for a man to walk on, probably not.



ambush80 said:


> Why walk and not levitate?



Dunno.  Maybe he thought that would be less believable 



ambush80 said:


> What are the poetic and metaphoric implications of walking on water vs floating above it?



There actually is an answer to that......water killed a lot of folks back then, ships sinking, etc. So it is representative of that which we cannot control or conquer. Being calm and walking on it in the middle of a storm has a ton of metaphorical applications in a believer's life.  Trust being primary.   Kind-a like saying "there ain't nothing he can't over come."



ambush80 said:


> I think canoe shoes (sandals) would have been mentioned, don't you?



Yes.


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## bullethead

JB0704 said:


> We could start a new one on the walk on water thing, leave this one alone to be what it is........



You said it all already.
It was either trickery.
God powers
or a 3rd option...it didn't happen.

You believe in the God option because the other 2 are not God-like and are detrimental to the belief system.
We do not believe in the God option so no matter how much we talk about it neither side will gain anything.

When introducing the God option all reality is thrown out the window and "anything is possible" takes it's place.

An entire thread about it will add nothing that has not been gone over already.


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## ambush80

JB0704 said:


> In one form or another.....kind-a like ice is still water.  Heck man, that could be your answer right there...
> 
> 
> 
> If it was dense enough for a man to walk on, probably not.
> 
> 
> 
> Dunno.  Maybe he thought that would be less believable
> 
> 
> 
> There actually is an answer to that......water killed a lot of folks back then, ships sinking, etc. So it is representative of that which we cannot control or conquer. Being calm and walking on it in the middle of a storm has a ton of metaphorical applications in a believer's life.  Trust being primary.   Kind-a like saying "there ain't nothing he can't over come."
> 
> 
> 
> Yes.



Ok. A column of ice forming directly under each footfall.  I see that.  He could also have changed the composition of his feet/sandals as to repel water, but there's still the problem of his weight and sinking.  He MUST have altered the water.


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## ambush80

bullethead said:


> You said it all already.
> It was either trickery.
> God powers
> or a 3rd option...it didn't happen.
> 
> You believe in the God option because the other 2 are not God-like and are detrimental to the belief system.
> We do not believe in the God option so no matter how much we talk about it neither side will gain anything.
> 
> When introducing the God option all reality is thrown out the window and "anything is possible" takes it's place.
> 
> An entire thread about it will add nothing that has not been gone over already.



C'mon man.  Use your imagination a little.


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## JB0704

ambush80 said:


> but there's still the problem of his weight and sinking.  He MUST have altered the water.



Depends on how big the column of ice is.  I recon you and I could go hang out on some of those icebergs floating in the artic and be just fine.

This is an exercise in imagination.....


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## JB0704

bullethead said:


> You believe in the God option because the other 2 are not God-like and are detrimental to the belief system.
> We do not believe in the God option so no matter how much we talk about it neither side will gain anything.



Yes.



bullethead said:


> An entire thread about it will add nothing that has not been gone over already.



True.....but that's just how we roll in the AAA


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## ambush80

JB0704 said:


> Depends on how big the column of ice is.  I recon you and I could go hang out on some of those icebergs floating in the artic and be just fine.
> 
> This is an exercise in imagination.....



I dunno.  An iceberg that could support a mans weight wouldn't be shaped like a column.  He changed his weight.  That would make sense.

Human flight was just in the imagination for a long time.


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## SemperFiDawg

Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed. 

(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
Into The Wardrobe


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## JB0704

ambush80 said:


> Human flight was just in the imagination for a long time.



I fI wasn't on my work PC right now I would insert the youtube clip from dumb and dumber:  "So you're sayin' there's a chance!!!! YEAH!!!"


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## SemperFiDawg

ambush80 said:


> What you are in effect doing is  plugging your ears and yelling "Blah, blah, blah!"
> 
> How about a conversation?



No Brother.  It's a quote thread.  I'm trying to keep it as such.  If you find one you want to discuss, then start a separate thread on it.  I'll be glad to discuss it with you there.  No problem.


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## ambush80

JB0704 said:


> I fI wasn't on my work PC right now I would insert the youtube clip from dumb and dumber:  "So you're sayin' there's a chance!!!! YEAH!!!"



I mean,  really he could have just made those people experience the whole thing in their minds.  They could have been sitting in a boat and he placed the experience into their minds then snapped them out of it when they got to shore.


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## SemperFiDawg

Nature is our sister, not our mother; she too has fallen. 

Gilbert Keith G. K. Chesterton
American Chesterton Society


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## JB0704

ambush80 said:


> I mean,  really he could have just made those people experience the whole thing in their minds.  They could have been sitting in a boat and he placed the experience into their minds then snapped them out of it when they got to shore.



Then you lose the poetic metaphorical application I detailed a few posts back.


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## floyd242

SemperFiDawg said:


> "If there were no God, there would be no Atheists." - GK Chesterton
> 
> I love me some G.K. Chesterton



If there were no magic unicorns, there would be no people who do not believe in magic unicorns.

Only someone with blind faith could find this quote logical.


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## centerpin fan

JB0704 said:


> I fI wasn't on my work PC right now I would insert the youtube clip from dumb and dumber:  "So you're sayin' there's a chance!!!! YEAH!!!"




Your wish is my command.


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## ambush80

JB0704 said:


> Then you lose the poetic metaphorical application I detailed a few posts back.



Yeah, but if it happened in their minds it's the same thing as if it really happened.  I'm just saying that that's a way to make people perceive something.  He could have changed his specific gravity but the result would be the same.  People "saw" him walk on water.


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## JB0704

centerpin fan said:


> Your wish is my command.


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## JB0704

ambush80 said:


> Yeah, but if it happened in their minds it's the same thing as if it really happened.  I'm just saying that that's a way to make people perceive something.  He could have changed his specific gravity but the result would be the same.  People "saw" him walk on water.



Then thinking is believing......so the fact of did he is irrelevant (were getting back to possibilities now.....if he can manipulate minds/gavity, walking on water ain't nothin).

Or, are you saying it could have been a magic trick?


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## ambush80

JB0704 said:


> Then thinking is believing......so the fact of did he is irrelevant (were getting back to possibilities now.....if he can manipulate minds/gavity, walking on water ain't nothin).
> 
> Or, are you saying it could have been a magic trick?



No, no, no.  I'm not going in that direction.  I'm assuming that they 'saw' it happen.  I'm just saying that given that he could have implanted the experience in their minds as easily as actually doing it the only proof that it happened would be physical evidence that it happened (wet shoes feet).


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## SemperFiDawg

floyd242 said:


> If there were no magic unicorns, there would be no people who do not believe in magic unicorns.
> 
> Only someone with blind faith could find this quote logical.



Spend much of your time worrying about things that don't exist?


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## TripleXBullies

ambush80 said:


> The effects of gravity are predictable, can be tested and even seen.  All I want is a reasonable explanation of how a man might walk on water.  Don't say "He just did".  Come up with a theory.  Use your imagination.
> Extrapolate from concepts you know about.



He created the water, the air, gravity, everything. He can modify it any way he wants to. That is how and to me, it's worthless trying to convince yourself how that could have happened.


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## TripleXBullies

ambush80 said:


> What you are in effect doing is  plugging your ears and yelling "Blah, blah, blah!"


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## floyd242

SemperFiDawg said:


> Spend much of your time worrying about things that don't exist?



No, not really.  Just a fan of logic.


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## TripleXBullies

ambush80 said:


> That's what I'm talking about!
> 
> Thanks JB. I can always count on you.
> 
> So if he changed the density of water would it still be water?  Would it make ripples?  Why walk and not levitate?  What are the poetic and metaphoric implications of walking on water vs floating above it?  I think canoe shoes (sandals) would have been mentioned, don't you?



I saw it on mythbusters.. I think they mixed water and corn starch... and you can press in to it slowly, but if you press quickly, you don't break the surface tension... and it still ripples in a way.


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## JB0704

ambush80 said:


> I'm assuming that they 'saw' it happen.  I'm just saying that given that he could have implanted the experience in their minds as easily as actually doing it the only proof that it happened would be physical evidence that it happened (wet shoes feet).



Gotcha. I guess he could have done that......but again, if mind-bending was the means, it might lose some effect once discovered.  But, that could be a nice segway into a decent discussion on whether or not it actually happened if it only happened in their mind.........


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## StriperrHunterr

floyd242 said:


> If there were no magic unicorns, there would be no people who do not believe in magic unicorns.
> 
> Only someone with blind faith could find this quote logical.



Forget the unicorns, try Bigfoot. 

So a belief that they do not exist is based on rejecting the notion they exist because they do exist?

Circular logic at its best.


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## StriperrHunterr

JB0704 said:


> Gotcha. I guess he could have done that......but again, if mind-bending was the means, it might lose some effect once discovered.  But, that could be a nice segway into a decent discussion on whether or not it actually happened if it only happened in their mind.........



Like Morpheus said, what _is_ real?

Seriously, it's all just electrical impulses and chemical reactions interpreted by your brain, so if the electrical impulses and chemical reactions occur who is anyone to say that anything did or didn't happen? 

I realize I'm jumping into the middle of a discussion here, so my apologies, but the science of that quote holds up pretty well, as far as I've researched it.


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## 660griz

What was 'their' definition of water? We are told that the 'unicorn' mentioned in the Bible is actually a single horned rhino from back in the day. 
Maybe 'flood' is the tide coming in. Were there any opiates around then?


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## JB0704

StripeRR HunteRR said:


> Like Morpheus said, what _is_ real?
> 
> Seriously, it's all just electrical impulses and chemical reactions interpreted by your brain, so if the electrical impulses and chemical reactions occur who is anyone to say that anything did or didn't happen?
> 
> I realize I'm jumping into the middle of a discussion here, so my apologies, but the science of that quote holds up pretty well, as far as I've researched it.



It's all good, and that's kind-a where I was going with my last comment.

Maybe Griz is onto something......in the event there is no God, mind altering substances might have assisted in some of the tales.  Maybe somebody was dumping something funny in the miracle wine.....or the two fish. 

As Bullet and I covered earlier, the value one will put on the possibility is directly related to your belief in the existence of a creator.....which opens a whole new realm of possibilities.


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## JFS

If there was a Nobel Prize for Irony this would be my nomination:




SemperFiDawg said:


> Spend much of your time worrying about things that don't exist?


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## SemperFiDawg

StripeRR HunteRR said:


> Forget the unicorns, try Bigfoot.
> 
> So a belief that they do not exist is based on rejecting the notion they exist because they do exist?
> 
> Circular logic at its best.



Unless they really do exist in which case it's denying the truth.


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## SemperFiDawg

JFS said:


> If there was a Nobel Prize for Irony this would be my nomination:



Thank You.


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## ambush80

JB0704 said:


> It's all good, and that's kind-a where I was going with my last comment.
> 
> Maybe Griz is onto something......in the event there is no God, mind altering substances might have assisted in some of the tales.  Maybe somebody was dumping something funny in the miracle wine.....or the two fish.
> 
> As Bullet and I covered earlier, the value one will put on the possibility is directly related to your belief in the existence of a creator.....which opens a whole new realm of possibilities.



I think it has more to do with what your idea of a creator is.


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## ambush80

JB0704 said:


> It's all good, and that's kind-a where I was going with my last comment.
> 
> Maybe Griz is onto something......in the event there is no God, mind altering substances might have assisted in some of the tales.  Maybe somebody was dumping something funny in the miracle wine.....or the two fish.
> 
> As Bullet and I covered earlier, the value one will put on the possibility is directly related to your belief in the existence of a creator.....which opens a whole new realm of possibilities.



I think it has more to do with what your idea of a creator is.


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## Ronnie T

SemperFiDawg said:


> God is not discoverable or demonstrable by purely scientific means, unfortunately for the scientifically minded. But that really proves nothing. It simply means that the wrong instruments are being used for the job. - J.B. Phillips



I really like this one.
.


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## ambush80

Ronnie T said:


> I really like this one.
> .



What "instruments" should one use?


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## StriperrHunterr

ambush80 said:


> What "instruments" should one use?



Probably, and not to be inflammatory here, more heart, less brain.


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## 660griz

ambush80 said:


> What "instruments" should one use?



Well, a "God helmet" of course. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/belief-and-the-brains-god-spot-1641022.html


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## seriadlata

I think it is sad that many people believe that God and Religion are synonyms. So, if one does not believe in Religion, then one cannot believe in God. In my life, these two exist separately and are not mutually exclusive. I do not believe many things that are said by the various world religious organizations....but I do believe in God. -Rob Miller (me)....since this is a quote thread. LOL


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## SemperFiDawg

seriadlata said:


> I think it is sad that many people believe that God and Religion are synonyms. So, if one does not believe in Religion, then one cannot believe in God. In my life, these two exist separately and are not mutually exclusive. I do not believe many things that are said by the various world religious organizations....but I do believe in God. -Rob Miller (me)....since this is a quote thread. LOL



Good one.


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## SemperFiDawg

“For even creation reveals Him who formed it, and the very work made suggests Him who made it, and the world manifests Him who ordered it.”

—Irenaeus
Against Heresies -- Book II, Chapter 9


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## SemperFiDawg

â€œThe most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Beingâ€¦This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God Ï€Î±Î½Ï„Î¿ÎºÏ�Î±Ï„Ï‰Ï� , or Universal Rulerâ€¦The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect; but a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to be Lord God; for we say, my God, your God, the God of Israel, the God of Gods, and Lord of Lordsâ€¦â€�

â€”Isaac Newton
The General Scholium to the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica


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## SemperFiDawg

“The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.”

—Johannes Kepler
De fundamentis Astrologiae Certioribus, Thesis XX


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## SemperFiDawg

“To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence. He gives us a sense of self-worth or personal significance, because He assures us of God's love for us. He sets us free from guilt because He died for us and from paralyzing fear because He reigns. He gives meaning to marriage and home, work and leisure, personhood and citizenship.”

—John Stott

Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today ( p. 154).


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## SemperFiDawg

"…fictional gods may well be enemies of reason: the God of the Bible certainly is not. The very first of the biblical Ten Commandments contains the instruction to 'love the Lord your God with all your mind'. This should be enough to tell us that God is not to be regarded as an enemy of reason. After all, as Creator he is responsible for the very existence of the human mind; the biblical view is that human beings are the pinnacle of creation. They alone are created as rational beings in the image of God, capable of a relationship with God and given by him the capacity to understand the universe in which they live."

—John Lennox
Gunning for God (p. 28). Lion Hudson. Kindle Edition.


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## SemperFiDawg

Bart Ehrman on the Historicity of Jesus

"With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of Paul) — sources that originated in Jesus’ native tongue Aramaic and that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life (before the religion moved to convert pagans in droves). Historical sources like that are pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind. [...] the claim that Jesus was simply made up falters on every ground."

—Bart Ehrman
Excerpt from this article.
Bart Ehrman is an agnostic scholar whose writings frequently attack Christianity and its truth claims.


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## SemperFiDawg

Doug Groothuis on Biblical Truth

"Without a thorough and deeply rooted understanding of the biblical view of truth as revealed, objective, absolute, universal, eternally engaging, antithetical and exclusive, unified and systematic, and as an end in itself, the Christian response to postmodernism will be muted by the surrounding culture or will make illicit compromises with the truth-impoverished spirit of the age. The good news is that truth is still truth, that it provides a backbone for witness and ministry in postmodern times, and that God's truth will never fail."

—Douglas Groothuis

Truth Decay, p. 81-82.


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## SemperFiDawg

"God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination."

- St. Augustine of Hippo


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## SemperFiDawg

Ronnie T said:


> I really like this one.
> .



You may like this one too.


"Though science may point to God, we cannot experiment our way to God. Knowledge of the divine and of salvation must be revealed to us by God himself, who ever remains in ultimate control of knowledge as well as of power. No scientific discovery will lead us from the lab to the heavens, though it may take us to space. Nature must be explored as a gift that points us to the Giver, not as an Aladdin's lamp yielding up to the diligent inquirer unlimited powers both physical and spiritual. The biblical message is that transforming grace rather than an evolving human race is the means of discovering our spiritual destiny."

—James A. Herrick

Scientific Mythologies: How Science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious Beliefs (Kindle Locations 3320-3323).


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## SemperFiDawg

"For the secularist, the belief that everything that exists is physical is based on faith in part; it cannot be fully proven by rational argument or by appeal to the evidence. In particular, the secularist has not proved that the human mind (consciousness, thoughts, ideas, etc.) is physical. Of course, he might believe that it is physical or hope to prove it one day (a misguided hope, I hold), but right now he believes this on faith. He might claim that it is a rational faith; whatever about this point, it is still a belief based partly on faith."

—Brendan Sweetman
Why Politics Needs Religion: The Place of Religious Arguments in the Public Square (pp. 119-120). Kindle Edition.


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## SemperFiDawg

J.P. Moreland on Tolerance, Religion, and Morality
"Tolerance has come to mean that no one is right and no one is wrong and, indeed, the very act of stating that someone else’s views are immoral or incorrect is now taken to be intolerant (of course, from this same point of view, it is all right to be intolerant of those who hold to objectively true moral or religious positions). Once the existence of knowable truth in religion and ethics is denied, authority (the right to be believed and obeyed) gives way to power (the ability to force compliance), reason gives way to rhetoric, the speech writer is replaced by the makeup man, and spirited but civil debate in the culture wars is replaced by politically correct special-interest groups who have nothing left but political coercion to enforce their views on others."

We see this played out daily I  our political arena.


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## SemperFiDawg

J.P. Moreland on Intellectual Virtue
"There is absolutely nothing wrong with admitting you don't know something or that you're currently inadequately equipped to think a topic through. What is unacceptable, however, is running from this fact and thereby giving up on intellectual and spiritual growth in the interest of avoiding embarrassment or possible rejection. We all need help in this area, and we should care enough about truth and reason to give that help. Even if we agree with one another's conclusions, we need to dedicate ourselves for Christ's sake to refusing to allow each other to reach those conclusions with poor argumentation and sloppy treatment of data."


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## SemperFiDawg

John Stackhouse on the Centrality of Christ

“Since the heart of God’s revelation of himself is the figure of Jesus Christ, and since the heart of the Christian story of salvation is the career of Jesus Christ, Christian apologetics—like everything else in the Christian religion, from worship to mission, from prayer to almsgiving—rightly focuses on Jesus Christ.”

—John Stackhouse
Humble Apologetics, p. 189. [HT: Hope's Reason]


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Tim Keller on Doubt

"A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person’s faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection."


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## SemperFiDawg

St. Augustine on the Gospel
"If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself."

- St. Augustine of Hippo


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## SemperFiDawg

AWESOME!!!


"If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by clarity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."

—G. K. Chesterton
Orthodoxy (New York: John Lane Co., 1909), p. 32


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## SemperFiDawg

Francis Schaeffer on Apologetics

‎"I am only interested in an apologetic that leads in two directions, and the one is to lead people to Christ, as Saviour, and the other is that after they are Christians, for them to realize the lordship of Christ in the whole of life... if Christianity is truth, it ought to touch on the whole of life... Christianity must never be reduced merely to an intellectual system... After all, if God is there, it isn’t just an answer to an intellectual question... we’re called upon to adore him, to be in relationship to him, and, incidentally, to obey him."

- Francis Schaeffer
‘The Undivided Schaeffer: A Retrospective Interview with Francis Schaeffer, September 30, 1980’ in Colin Duriez, Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life (Nottingham: IVP, 2008), pp.218 & 220..


----------



## SemperFiDawg

C.S. Lewis on Daily Devotion

‎"That is why daily praying and religious reading and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed."

—C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 125.
HT: KS


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"If all the evidence is weighed carefully and fairly, it is indeed justifiable, according to the canons of historical research, to conclude that the sepulcher of Joseph of Arimathea, in which Jesus was buried, was actually empty on the morning of the first Easter. And no shred of evidence has yet been discovered in literary sources, epigraphy, or archaeology that would disprove this statement."

- Historian Paul L. Maier


----------



## SemperFiDawg

J. Warner Wallace on Evidence

"As I speak around the country, I often encounter devoted, committed Christians who are hesitant to embrace an evidential faith. In many Christian circles, faith that requires evidential support is seen as weak and inferior. For many, blind faith (a faith that simply trusts without question) is the truest, most sincere, and most valuable form of faith that we can offer God. Yet Jesus seemed to have a high regard for evidence. In John 14:11, He told those watching Him to examine 'the evidence of miracles' (NIV) if they did not believe what He said about His identity. Even after the resurrection, Jesus stayed with His disciples for an additional forty days and provided them with 'many convincing proofs' that He was resurrected and was who He claimed to be (Acts 1:2-3 NIV). Jesus understood the role and value of evidence and the importance of developing an evidential faith. It’s time for all of us, as Christians, to develop a similarly reasonable faith'."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Jonathan Morrow on Apologetics for Everyone

"Here’s a common objection you may have encountered: Isn’t apologetics only for academics and intellectuals? The short answer is no. Here’s why. Everyone has questions—you do, your kids do, your friends and neighbors do, your family does, and our culture certainly does. It’s that simple. We will either think carefully or poorly about these questions, but the questions themselves cannot be avoided. Secondly, if Christianity is true, then it speaks to all of life. It doesn’t get more ‘everyday’ than that (1 Pet. 3:15)."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Oswald Chambers on Making Disciples

It takes God a long time to get us to stop thinking that unless everyone sees things exactly as we do, they must be wrong. That is never God's view. There is only one true liberty—the liberty of Jesus at work in our conscience enabling us to do what is right. Don't get impatient with others. Remember how God dealt with you—with patience and with gentleness. But never water down the truth of God. Let it have its way and never apologize for it. Jesus said, "Go . . . and make disciples . . ." (Matthew 28:19), not, "Make converts to your own thoughts and opinions."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Charles Spurgeon on Discernment

“Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong. It is knowing the difference between right and almost right.”

—C.H. Spurgeon


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Ravi Zacharias on the Problem of Evil

"When you say there's too much evil in this world you assume there's good. When you assume there's good, you assume there's such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But if you assume a moral law, you must posit a moral Law Giver, but that's Who you're trying to disprove and not prove. Because if there's no moral Law Giver, there's no moral law. If there's no moral law, there's no good. If there's no good, there's no evil. What is your question?"

—Ravi Zacharias

In response to the objection, "There cannot be a God, because there is too much evil in this world."
Can Man Live Without God?, p. 182 [HT]


----------



## SemperFiDawg

J. Budziszewski on Agnosticism

"To say that we cannot know anything about God is to say something about God; it is to say that if there is a God, he is unknowable. But in that case, he is not entirely unknowable, for the agnostic certainly thinks that we can know one thing about him: That nothing else can be known about him. In the end, agnosticism is an illogical position to hold to."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Morris Bender on Skepticism
"A skeptic is a person who, when he sees the handwriting on the wall, claims it is a forgery."

- Morris Bender

LOL


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"It may not, perhaps, be useless to my younger readers to observe on this part of my subject, that the very circumstances which contribute to this species of obscurity in the epistles [of Paul], form at the same time the strongest internal proofs of the genuineness of these compositions, and of the truth of all the transactions on which the proof of Christianity depends.

Such a variety of references to particular times, and places, and persons; and above all, appeals to individuals as to facts which they knew, and conversations they had heard, answers evidently given to letters that had been received, and inquiries that had been made; appeals and answers, such as would be clear and intelligible, if we suppose the facts alluded to real, and these letters to have been before the writer of the epistles, and these inquiries to have been made, but which could have no conceivable object or meaning otherwise—such particulars never find place in the artful texture of forged and fictitious compositions. These always avoid unnecessary references to circumstances, which would only make their detection easy and certain; they deliver their doctrines unconnected with facts; they guard as much as possible against objection; they every where betray marks of reserve and caution, of artifice and design.

Far different are the epistles of St. Paul: every line of them speaks the language of a man intent on present, real, urgent business, addressing others equally engaged in the same transactions, and anxious to influence, and to direct them in some particular mode of conduct. In a word, we see in the epistles of this great apostle nothing of the fictions of imposture, nothing of the visions of fanaticism; every thing bespeaks reality and truth."

—Richard Graves

Essay on the Character of the Apostles and Evangelists, in Richard Hastings Graves, ed., The Whole Works of Richard Graves, vol. 1 (Dublin: William Curry Jun. and Co., 1840), pp. 116-17.
[HT: Library of Historical Apologetics]


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Paul Copan on Apologetic Arguments

“God can and does speak to unbelievers through reason, beauty, moral failure, and the existence of evil. As a cloud of apologetical witnesses can testify, God has used philosophical arguments for his existence, scientific supports for the universe’s beginning (Big Bang) and its fine-tuning, and historical evidences for the resurrection of Jesus to assist people in embracing Christ—just as God uses the preaching of the gospel (Romans1:16) or the loving character of a Christian community (John 13:35). These are all part of the holistic witness to the reality of God and the gospel, all of which the Spirit of God can use to lead unbelievers to embracing Jesus Christ.”


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Proverbs: On Being Wise In Your Own Eyes

"Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him."

—Proverbs 26:12


----------



## SemperFiDawg

J. Gresham Machen on Faith and Knowledge

"Faith is indeed intellectual; It involves an apprehension of certain things as facts; and vain is the modern effort to divorce faith from knowledge. But although faith is intellectual, it is not only intellectual. You cannot have faith without having knowledge; but you will not have faith if you only have knowledge."

- J. Gresham Machen,

What is Faith? (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), p. 203.


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Tim Keller on the Need for Apologetics

"I’ve heard plenty of Christians try to answer the why question by going back to the what. ‘You have to believe because Jesus is the Son of God.’ But that’s answering the why with more what. Increasingly we live in a time in which you can’t avoid the why question. Just giving the what (for example, a vivid gospel presentation) worked in the days when the cultural institutions created an environment in which Christianity just felt true or at least honorable. But in a post-Christendom society, in the marketplace of ideas, you have to explain why this is true, or people will just dismiss it."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Tony Lane on Understanding History

"We need to read about the past in order to understand the present. People without a grasp of history are like a person without a memory. Many of the current beliefs in our society are properly grasped only when we see how they have emerged. A knowledge of history will help us to understand better both ourselves and those with whom we might disagree."

—Tony Lane, A Concise History of Christian Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 1.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday, October 07, 2012

Hudson Taylor on Hardness of Heart

“Perhaps if we had more of that intense distress for souls that leads to tears, we should more frequently see the results we desire. Sometimes it may be that while we are complaining of the hardness of the hearts of those we are seeking to benefit, the hardness of our own hearts and our own feeble apprehension of the solemn reality of eternal things may be the true cause of our lack of success.”

—Hudson Taylor

(From Hudson Taylor in Early Years: The Growth of a Soul, pp.178ff.)


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Pascal on Jesus Christ and Scripture
"Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves. Thus, without Scripture, which has Jesus alone for its object, we know nothing, and see only darkness and confusion in the nature of God, and in our own nature."

- Blaise Pascal, (Pensees, 547)


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## SemperFiDawg

Tim Keller on God and Culture

"For the sake of argument, let’s imagine that Christianity is not the product of any one culture but is actually the transcultural truth of God. If that were the case we would expect that it would contradict and offend every human culture at some point, because human cultures are ever-changing and imperfect. If Christianity were the truth it would have to be offending and correcting your thinking at some place."

- Tim Keller, The Reason for God, Kindle Locations 1276-1279


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## SemperFiDawg

Pascal on God's Hiddenness

"God has willed to redeem men and to open salvation to those who seek it. But men render themselves so unworthy of it that it is right that God should refuse to some, because of their obduracy, what He grants others from a compassion which is not due to them. If He had willed to overcome the obstinacy of the most hardened, He could have done so by revealing Himself so manifestly to them that they could not have doubted of the truth of His essence; as it will appear at the last day, with such thunders and such a convulsion of nature that the dead will rise again, and the blindest will see Him.â€� It is not in this manner that He has willed to appear in His advent of mercy, because, as so many make themselves unworthy of His mercy, He has willed to leave them in the loss of the good which they do not want.

It was not, then, right that He should appear in a manner manifestly divine, and completely capable of convincing all men; but it was also not right that He should come in so hidden a manner that He could not be known by those who should sincerely seek Him.

He has willed to make himself quite recognizable by those; and thus, willing to appear openly to those who seek Him with all their heart, and to be hidden from those who flee from Him with all their heart. He so regulates the knowledge of Himself that He has given signs of Himself, visible to those who seek Him, and not to those who seek Him not. There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition."

- Blaise Pascal, Pensées (430)


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Francis Schaeffer on Asking for Answers

"At first acquaintance, this concept, 'I do not ask for answers; I just believe,'� gives the feeling of spirituality and it deceives many fine people. These are often young men and women who are not content only to repeat the phrases of the intellectual or spiritual status quo. They have become rightly dissatisfied with a dull, dusty, introverted orthodoxy given only to pounding out a few well known clichés. The new theology sounds spiritual and vibrant and they are trapped. But the price they pay for what seems to be spiritual is high, for to operate in the upper story using undefined religious terms is to fail to know and function on the level of the whole man. The answer is not to ask these people to return to the poorness of the status quo, but to a living orthodoxy which is concerned with the whole man; including the rational and intellectual, in his relationship to God."

09/02/12


----------



## SemperFiDawg

We believe in Marx freud and darwin.
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone,
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before during
and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy's OK
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated.
You can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there's something in horoscopes,
UFO's and bent spoons;
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha
Mohammed and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher although we think
his good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same,
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of
creation sin heaven - I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH - God and salvation.

We believe that after death comes The Nothing
because when you ask the dead what happens
they say Nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied,
then it's compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan.

We believe in Masters and Johnson.
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between
warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors
and the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behaviour that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth
that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust. History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds. 
Steve Turner
Submitted: Friday, January 03, 2003


----------



## ddd-shooter

660griz said:


> Proof to me. Unless someone comes up with something that makes more sense.



Yeah, because you know God can only create water once.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Ravi Zacharias on Tolerance

"The truth is that all religions are not the same. All religions do not point to God. All religions do not say that all religions are the same. In fact, some religions do not even believe in God. At the heart of every religion is an uncompromising commitment to a particular way of defining who God is or is not. Buddhism, for example, was based on Buddha's rejection of two of Hinduism's fundamental doctrines. Islam rejects both Buddhism and Hinduism. So it does no good to put a halo on the notion of tolerance and act as if everything is equally true. In fact, even all-inclusive religions such as Bahaism end up being exclusivistic by excluding the exclusivists!"


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Keith Ward on the Origin and Nature of the Universe

"To the majority of those who have reflected deeply and written about the origin and nature of the universe, it has seemed that it points beyond itself to a source which is non-physical and of great intelligence and power. Almost all of the great classical philosophers — certainly Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Locke, Berkeley — saw the origin of the universe as lying in a transcendent reality. They had different specific ideas of this reality, and different ways of approaching it; but that the universe is not self-explanatory, and that it requires some explanation beyond itself, was something they accepted as fairly obvious."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

George Campbell on Evidence for Christianity

"God has neither in natural nor in revealed religion left himself without witness; but has in both given moral and external evidence, sufficient to convince the impartial, to silence the gainsayer, and to render inexcusable the atheist and the unbeliever. This evidence it is our duty to attend to, and candidly to examine. We must prove all things, as we are expressly enjoined in holy writ, if we would ever hope to hold fast that which is good."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Antony Flew on Multiverse Theory

"Some have said that the laws of nature are simply accidental results of the way the universe cooled after the big bang. But, as Rees has pointed out, even such accidents can be regarded as secondary manifestations of deeper laws governing the ensemble of universes. Again, even the evolution of the laws of nature and changes to the constants follow certain laws. 'We’re still left with the question of how these "deeper" laws originated. No matter how far you push back the properties of the universe as somehow "emergent," their very emergence has to follow certain prior laws.'1 So multiverse or not, we still have to come to terms with the origin of the laws of nature. And the only viable explanation here is the divine Mind.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

C.S. Lewis on the Question of Truth

‎"One of the greatest difficulties is to keep before the audience's mind the question of Truth. They always think you are recommending Christianity not because it is true, but because it is good. And in the discussion they will at every moment try to escape from the issue ‘True-or False’ into stuff about a good society, or morals, or incomes of Bishops, or the Spanish inquisition, or France, or Poland—or anything whatever. You have to keep forcing them back, and again back, to the real point. Only thus you will be able to undermine...their belief that a certain amount of ‘religion’ is desirable but one mustn't carry it too far. One must keep on pointing out that Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Charles Spurgeon on the Gospel

“Never does a man hear the gospel but he either rises or falls under that hearing. There is never a proclamation of Jesus Christ (and this is the spiritual coming forth of Christ himself) which leaves men precisely where they were; the gospel is sure to have some effect upon those who hear it.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Daniel B. Wallace on the New Testament Documents

"The wealth of material that is available for determining the wording of the original New Testament is staggering: more than fifty-seven hundred Greek New Testament manuscripts, as many as twenty thousand versions, and more than one million quotations by patristic writers. In comparison with the average ancient Greek author, the New Testament copies are well over a thousand times more plentiful. If the average-sized manuscript were two and one-half inches thick, all the copies of the works of an average Greek author would stack up four feet high, while the copies of the New Testament would stack up to over a mile high! This is indeed an embarrassment of riches."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday, July 01, 2012

William Dembski on Chance

"Scientists rightly resist invoking the supernatural in scientific explanations for fear of committing a god-of-the-gaps fallacy (the fallacy of using God as a stop-gap for ignorance). Yet without some restriction on the use of chance, scientists are in danger of committing a logically equivalent fallacy-one we may call the 'chance-of-the-gaps fallacy.' Chance, like God, can become a stop-gap for ignorance."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Alister McGrath on Giving Answers

“Apologists cannot be content to depend on borrowed answers. They need to develop answers for themselves. In short, they need to own their answers. Never give an answer to a question that doesn’t satisfy you in the first place.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

John Tukey on Giving Answers

“An approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question.”

6/17/12


----------



## SemperFiDawg

C.S. Lewis on Reasoning to Atheism

‎"Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Alister McGrath on Defending Christianity

“The best defense of Christianity is its explanation. In other words, if you want to defend or commend Christianity, it is best to begin by telling people what it is really all about.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Garry DeWeese on Arguing People Into the Kingdom

"It's often said that you can't argue someone into the kingdom of God. True—but you can't love them into the kingdom either. Faith is ultimately the gift of the Holy Spirit. But in showing that there are excellent reasons for Christian belief, we can lead unbelievers to a place where they may be more open to the Spirit's work."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Pascal on the Search for Truth

"Before entering into the proofs of the Christian religion, I find it necessary to point out the sinfulness of those men who live in indifference to the search for truth in a matter which is so important to them, and which touches them so nearly.

Of all their errors, this doubtless is the one which most convicts them of foolishness and blindness, and in which it is easiest to confound them by the first glimmerings of common sense, and by natural feelings.

For it is not to be doubted that the duration of this life is but a moment; that the state of death is eternal, whatever may be its nature; and that thus all our actions and thoughts must take such different directions according to the state of that eternity, that it is impossible to take one step with sense and judgment, unless we regulate our course by the truth of that point which ought to be our ultimate end.

There is nothing clearer than this; and thus, according to the principles of reason, the conduct of men is wholly unreasonable, if they do not take another course."

- Blaise Pascal, Pensées (195)


----------



## SemperFiDawg

John Lennox and Atheistic Dogma
"It is perfectly rational to propose that the universe is indeed without purpose - that what we see is all there is. But to assert that this is so, as Dawkins and Atkins do, is not at all 'rational'. It is merely a piece of dogma. Indeed, atheism—when you boil it down—is little more than dogma: simple denial, a refusal to take seriously the proposition that there could be more to the universe than meets the eye. To use science to justify such dogma, as these professors do, is a gross misuse of their own trade."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

C.S. Lewis on Learning

‎"If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Robert Jenkin on Christian Martyrs

“Martyrs are Witnesses, . . . no other Religion was ever propagated by Witnesses, who had seen, and heard, and been every way conversant in what they witnessed concerning the Principles of their Religion; no Religion besides was ever preach’d by Men, who, after an unalterable Constancy under all Kinds of Sufferings, at last died for asserting it, when they must of necessity have known, whether it were true or false, and therefore certainly knew it to be true, or else they would never have suffer’d and died in that Manner for it.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Greg Koukl on Faith, Reason & Rationality

"So let's set the record straight. Faith is not the opposite of reason. The opposite of faith is unbelief. And reason is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of reason is irrationality. Do some Christians have irrational faith? Sure. Do some skeptics have unreasonable unbelief? You bet. It works both ways."

—Greg Koukl
In Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists by Sean McDowell & Jonathan Morrow (p. 30).


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"The benefits [of the resurrection] are innumerable.
To list a few: Our illnesses don't seem nearly so final;
Our fears fade and lose their grip;
Our grief over those who have gone on is diminished;
Our desires to press on in spite of the obstacles is rejuvenated...
Our identity as Christians is strengthened as we stand in the lengthening shadows of saints down through the centuries, who have always answered back in antiphonal voice:
'He is risen, indeed!'"

— Charles Swindoll


----------



## SemperFiDawg

John Milliken on Apologetics and Story

"The most effective apologetic is not a treatise but a novel."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

J. Budziszewski on the Meaning of Morality

"The whole meaning of morality is a rule that we ought to obey whether we like it or not. If so, then the idea of creating a morality we like better is incoherent. Moreover, it would seem that until we had created our new morality, we would have no standard by which to criticize God. Since we have not yet created one, the standard by which we judge Him must be the very standard that He gave us. If it is good enough to judge Him by, then why do we need a new one?"


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Augustine on Knowledge and Ignorance

"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion."

3/18/12


----------



## TripleXBullies

Notice you've only got 1/10th the views that the memes did.... And to state that is the only reason I viewed it this time. Continue...


----------



## bullethead

TripleXBullies said:


> Notice you've only got 1/10th the views that the memes did.... And to state that is the only reason I viewed it this time. Continue...



And a couple hundred Apologist quotes with not one SFD original. Not an Atheist, not an Agnostic and certainly not an Apologist.


----------



## WaltL1

Actually I kind of like that last one


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Augustine on Knowledge and Ignorance
> 
> "Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.
> 
> If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion."
> 
> 3/18/12



Yep, a good quote indeed.
I think SFD was in a copy/paste frenzy and didn't read his own post before he hit submit.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

TripleXBullies said:


> Notice you've only got 1/10th the views that the memes did.... And to state that is the only reason I viewed it this time. Continue...



Not the reason for it brother, but thanks for the consideration.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> And a couple hundred Apologist quotes with not one SFD original. Not an Atheist, not an Agnostic and certainly not an Apologist.



Brother I would never consider myself in the same class as these guys.  Never.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

WaltL1 said:


> Actually I kind of like that last one



Me too.  It reminds me that I don't have to have an opinion on everything, but even if I do, I may not need to voice it.  No one ever shows his ignorance by being quiet.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> Yep, a good quote indeed.
> I think SFD was in a copy/paste frenzy and didn't read his own post before he hit submit.



No man, I read it and agree with it.


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> No man, I read it and agree with it.



I stand corrected.
You are an example of it.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> I stand corrected.
> You are an example of it.



Don't worry Brother.  It ain't the first time you were wrong, and it certainly wasn't the last.


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Don't worry Brother.  It ain't the first time you were wrong, and it certainly wasn't the last.



Takes someone with integrity to admit it and someone with without integrity to point it out.


----------



## WaltL1

SemperFiDawg said:


> Me too.  It reminds me that I don't have to have an opinion on everything, but even if I do, I may not need to voice it.  No one ever shows his ignorance by being quiet.


That wasn't the point that Augustine was making but I agree your point is very valid and a good one too.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> Takes someone with integrity to admit it and someone with without integrity to point it out.



Hubris- Insulting someone in the name of integrity.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

WaltL1 said:


> That wasn't the point that Augustine was making but I agree your point is very valid and a good one too.



I know, but that's what it reminds me of for some reason or another.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Douglas Groothuis on Apologetics

"Apologetics needs to be applied to the whole of life under the lordship of Jesus Christ. We should hear apologetics ringing out from the pulpit and being discussed in every level of Christian education. Apologetics should be part of the core curriculum at Christian seminaries, colleges and high schools. Campus ministries should train their workers to defend Christianity and understand the weaknesses of other worldviews. Every level of publishing-Christian and secular-should feel the force of Christian persuasion, both at the academic and more popular levels. Christian academics, whether at Christian or secular institutions, should strive to develop a Christian perspective on their disciplines, being unashamed of the gospel, yet wise as serpents and innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16)."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Dinesh D'Souza on the Existence of Jesus

“Do you believe in the existence of Socrates? Alexander the Great? Julius Caesar? If historicity is established by written records in multiple copies that date originally from near contemporaneous sources, there is far more proof for Christ’s existence than for any of theirs.”

- Dinesh D’Souza
What’s So Great About Christianity, p. 296.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

John Lennox on DNA and Design
"We have only to see a few letters of the alphabet spelling our name in the sand to recognize at once the work of an intelligent agent. How much more likely, then is the existence of an intelligent Creator behind human DNA, the colossal biological database that contains no fewer than 3.5 billion 'letters' - the longest 'word' yet discovered?”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Craig Keener on Miracles

"It was Hume who first spoke of miracles as violations of nature. But Christians don't believe that the Legislator is subject to any of the laws of nature."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

John Lennox on the Definition of Faith
"Faith is not a leap in the dark; it’s the exact opposite. It’s a commitment based on evidence… It is irrational to reduce all faith to blind faith and then subject it to ridicule. That provides a very anti-intellectual and convenient way of avoiding intelligent discussion.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

C.S. Lewis on Motivation

"I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of my life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

J.P. Moreland on the Testimony of the Disciples
"The disciples had nothing to gain by lying and starting a new religion. They faced hardship, ridicule, hostility, and martyr's deaths. In light of this, they could never have sustained such unwavering motivation if they knew what they were preaching was a lie. The disciples were not fools and Paul was a cool-headed intellectual of the first rank. There would have been several opportunities over three to four decades of ministry to reconsider and renounce a lie."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

William Lane Craig on Results

"Success in witnessing is simply communicating Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God. Similarly, effectiveness in apologetics is presenting cogent and persuasive arguments for the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit, and leaving the results to God."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Darrell Bock on the Bible

"The Bible is not a book like any other. It makes a claim that God spoke and speaks through its message. It argues that as his creatures, we are accountable to him for what he has revealed. The trustworthiness of Scripture points to its authority as well. Scripture is far more than a history book, as good and trustworthy as that history is. It is a book that calls us to examine our lives and relationship to God. Beyond the fascinating history, it contains vital and life-transforming truths about God and us."

- Darrell Bock
Can I Trust the Bible, p. 52.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Morality

"If 'good' or 'better' are terms deriving their sole meaning from the ideology of each people, then of course ideologies themselves cannot be better or worse than each other. Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring, For the same reason it is useless to compare the moral ideas of one age with those of another: progress and decadence are alike meaningless words."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Graham Stanton on the Significance of Jesus

"The early Christians' opponents all accepted that Jesus existed, taught, had disciples, worked miracles, and was put to death on a Roman cross. As in our day, debate and disagreement centred largely not on the story but on the significance of Jesus. Today nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Leibniz on the Universe and its Author

"...if we could sufficiently understand the order of the universe, we should find that it exceeds all the desires of the wisest men, and that it is impossible to make it better than it is, not only as a whole and in general but also for ourselves in particular, if we are attached, as we ought to be, to the Author of all, not only as to the architect and efficient cause of our being, but as to our master and to the final cause, which ought to be the whole aim of our will, and which can alone make our happiness."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

The Only Foundation of Sound Knowledge and Learning

"Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the maine end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, Let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him."

- Rule of Harvard College 1646


----------



## SemperFiDawg

John Dominic Crossan on Jesus' Death

"Jesus’ death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be. For if no follower of Jesus had written anything for one hundred years after his crucifixition, we would still know about him from two authors not among his supporters. Their names are Flavius Josephus and Cornelius Tacitus."

- John Dominic Crossan
Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography,


----------



## SemperFiDawg

William J. Abraham on the Christian Worldview

"Religious belief should be assessed as a rounded whole rather than taken in stark isolation. Christianity, for example, like other world faiths, is a complex, large-scale system of belief which must be seen as a whole before it is assessed. To break it up into disconnected parts is to mutilate and distort its true character. We can, of course, distinguish certain elements in the Christian faith, but we must still stand back and see it as a metaphysical system, as a world view, that is total in its scope and range."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sir Robert Anderson on Reason and Truth

"[W]hile Divine truth is spiritual, and can only be spiritually discerned, human error is natural, and can be met on its own ground. We cannot “reason” men into the kingdom of God, but by reasoning we can expose errors which prejudice them against it."

10/30/11


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Douglas Groothuis on the Biblical Worldview

"Here is the sum of the matter.  We must earnestly endeavor to know the truth of the biblical worldview and to make it known with integrity to as many people as possible with the best arguments available.  To know God in Christ means that we desire to make Christian truth available to others in the most compelling form possible.  To be created in God’s rational, moral and relational image means that our entire being should be aimed at the glorification of God in Christian witness.  A significant part of that witness is Christian apologetics."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Peter Kreeft on Moral Relativism

"No culture in history has ever embraced moral relativism and survived. Our own culture, therefore, will either (1) be the first, and disprove history's clearest lesson, or (2) persist in its relativism and die, or (3) repent of its relativism and live. There is no other option."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

C.S. Lewis on Christianity

"If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

William Wilberforce on Defending the Faith

"In an age in which infidelity abounds, do we observe parents carefully instructing their children in the principles of faith which they profess? Or do they furnish their children with arguments for the defense of that faith? ...it is not surprising to see them abandon a position which they are unable to defend."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Peter Kreeft on the Truth of the Gospels

"Here is a strong argument for the truth of the Gospels, for Christianity: Christ could not possibly be fictional, for if no one in the world even now, after 2,000 years of knowing Him, can write convincing fiction about Him, if no one can imagine ‘what would Jesus do’ in a convincing way, as they can imagine what Alexander or Buddha or Augustine or Lincoln or Churchill would do, then how could a few Jewish fisherman 2,000 years ago write such incredibly original, unprecedented creative fiction based on nothing? This character could not possibly have been invented because He still cannot be invented. He can only be real."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

C.S. Lewis on Books by Christians

"We can make people (often) attend to the Christian point of view for half an hour or so; but the moment they have gone away from our lecture or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite position is taken for granted. As long as that situation exists, widespread success is simply impossible. We must attack the enemy's line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects--with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way round. Our Faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defence of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Alister McGrath on Christianity Misunderstood

“Christianity is … rarely understood by those outside its bounds. In fact, this is probably one of the greatest tasks confronting the apologist -- to rescue Christianity from misunderstandings.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

John Warwick Montgomery on the New Testament
“To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

B.B. Warfield on Revelation
"Without special revelation, general revelation would be for sinful men incomplete and ineffective. … Without general revelation, special revelation would lack that basis in the fundamental knowledge of God as the mighty and wise, righteous and good, maker and ruler of all things."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Ronald Nash on Human Neutrality

"Human beings are never neutral with regard to God. Either we worship God as Creator and Lord, or we turn away from God. Because the heart is directed either toward God or against him, theoretical thinking is never so pure or autonomous as many would like to think."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Alister McGrath on Apologetics in the Local Church

“I think the pastor does play a very critical role here. And, apologetics is not simply about reaching outside the church and helping people realize why Christianity makes so much sense. There are many people inside church congregations who are wrestling with apologetic questions; who come to faith but haven’t had all of their questions answered. I think the pastor, the preacher, needs to realize if they want their people to be good and minister to the faith, apologists and evangelists, they’ve got to be equipped. They’ve got to be reassured about their faith. They’ve got to be helped to be able to explain it and defend it in the secular marketplace. Now maybe many pastors and preachers say, ‘You know, I couldn’t do this.’ In which case, you need to bring somebody in who can. But there’s a real need for the local church to see this kind of ministry as a priority in our present cultural situation.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Sunday Quote: A.B. Bruce on Apologetics

"Apologetic, then, as I conceive it, is a preparer of the way of faith, an aid to faith against doubts whencesoever arising, especially such as are engendered by philosophy and science. Its specific aim is to help men of ingenuous spirit who, while assailed by such doubts, are morally in sympathy with believers. It addresses itself to such as are drawn in two directions, towards and away from Christ, as distinct from such as are confirmed either in unbelief or in faith. Defence presupposes a foe, but the foe is not the dogmatic infidel who has finally made up his mind that Christianity is a delusion, but anti-Christian thought in the believing man's own heart."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"A good case for the Christian faith lays before the watching world such a winsome embodiment of the Christian faith that for any and all who are willing to observe there will be an intellectually and emotionally credible witness to its fundamental truth."

- James Sire


James W. Sire, Why Good Arguments Often Fail: Making a More Persuasive Case for Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), p. 17.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Jaroslov Pelikan on Atheism & Agnosticism

"An agnostic position is one that leaves open the question whether there exists a god or gods, professing to find such a question unanswered or unanswerable. For the atheist, the question has been answered, and in the negative."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Ben Witherington on the Historical Resurrection of Jesus

“Any position in which claims about Jesus or the resurrection are removed from the realm of historical reality and placed in a subjective realm of personal belief or some realm that is immune to human scrutiny does Jesus and the resurrection no service and no justice. It is a ploy of desperation to suggest that the Christian faith would be little affected if Jesus was not actually raised from the dead in space and time.

A person who gives up on the historical foundations of our faith has in fact given up on the possibility of any real continuity between his or her own faith and that of a Peter, Paul, James, John, Mary Magdalene, or Priscilla. The first Christian community had a strong interest in historical reality, especially the historical reality of Jesus and his resurrection, because they believed their faith, for better or for worse, was grounded in it.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Francis Schaeffer on Presuppositions

"People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize. By presuppositions we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic world-view, the grid through which he sees the world. Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. People's presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions."1

- Francis Schaeffer

1. Schaeffer, Francis. How Then Should We Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1976).


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## SemperFiDawg

F.F. Bruce on the New Testament Canon

“One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect.”


----------



## stringmusic

Great reading SFD. Thanks for posting these.


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## SemperFiDawg

Thanks for reading them.


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: F.F. Bruce on the Christ Myth

“Some writers may toy with the fancy of a ‘Christ-myth,’ but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the ‘Christ-myth’ theories.”


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Stephen T. Davis on Apologetics

"In truth, faith needs apologetics. It needs it both to answer both the negative arguments of the resurrection and to construct positive arguments in favor of it. Apologetics will not create faith, but perhaps, for some, it will pave the way for it or make it possible. What is destructive of genuine Christian faith, in my opinion, is not apologetics, but unfounded beliefs, unjustified commitments. Unsound arguments are irrational leaps of faith. It is the aim of apologetics to prevent Christian faith from amounting to anything like that."


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: David K. Clark on Speaking the Truth

"To tell someone he is a sinner is speaking truth, but it can antagonize him. Driving him away by telling the truth in the wrong way and at the wrong time is hardly good communication. Effective communication must not only be true, but loving as well. It is not loving to tell a person the truth before he is ready to hear and in such a way that it produces the reverse effect."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Thomas Aquinas on He11

“The magnitude of the punishment matches the magnitude of the sin. Now a sin that is against God is infinite; the higher the person against whom it is committed, the graver the sin—it is more criminal to strike a head of state than a private citizen—and God is of infinite greatness. Therefore an infinite punishment is deserved for a sin committed against Him.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: C.S. Lewis on Miracles

"Those who assume that miracles cannot happen are merely wasting their time by looking into the texts: we know in advance what results they will find for they have begun by begging the question."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Francis Schaeffer on Method

"I do not believe there is any one system of apologetics that meets the need of all the people, any more than I think there is any one form of evangelism that meets the need of all the people. It is to be shaped on the basis of love for the person as a person."

- Francis Schaeffer


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Malcolm Muggeridge on Jesus

"Plenty of great teachers, mystics, martyrs and saints have made their appearance at different times in the world, and lived lives and spoken words full of grace and truth, for which we have every reason to be grateful. Of none of them, however, has the claim been made, and accepted, that they were Incarnate God. In the case of Jesus alone the belief has persisted that when he came into the world God deigned to take on the likeness of a man in order that thenceforth men might be encouraged to aspire after the likeness of God; reaching out from their mortality to His immortality, from their imperfection to His perfection."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Thomas Jefferson on Design

"I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition....So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro’ all the time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe."

5/1/11


----------



## SemperFiDawg

William Lane Craig on What Makes for a Good Argument

"...let’s get clear what makes for a “good” argument. An argument is a series of statements (called premises) leading to a conclusion. A sound argument must meet two conditions: (1) it is logically valid (i.e., its conclusion follows from the premises by the rules of logic), and (2) its premises are true. If an argument is sound, then the truth of the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. But to be a good argument, it’s not enough that an argument be sound. We also need to have some reason to think that the premises are true. A logically valid argument that has, wholly unbeknownst to us, true premises isn’t a good argument for the conclusion. The premises have to have some degree of justification or warrant for us in order for a sound argument to be a good one. But how much warrant? The premises surely don’t need to be known to be true with certainty (we know almost nothing to be true with certainty!). Perhaps we should say that for an argument to be a good one the premises need to be probably true in light of the evidence. I think that’s fair, though sometimes probabilities are difficult to quantify. Another way of putting this is that a good argument is a sound argument in which the premises are more plausible in light of the evidence than their opposites. You should compare the premise and its negation and believe whichever one is more plausibly true in light of the evidence. A good argument will be a sound argument whose premises are more plausible than their negations."


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Thomas Arnold on the Resurrection

"Thousands and tens of thousands have gone through the evidence which attests the resurrection of Christ, piece by piece, as carefully as ever a judge summed up on the most important case. I have myself done it many times over, not to persuade others, but to satisfy myself. I have been used for many years to study the history of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fitter evidence and every kind."1


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Hudson Taylor on Hardness of Heart

"Perhaps if there were more of that intense distress for souls that leads to tears, we should more frequently see the results we desire. Sometimes it may be that while we are complaining of the hardness of the hearts of those we are seeking to benefit, the hardness of our own hearts and our feeble apprehension of the solemn reality of - I AM A POTTY MOUTH -eternal things may be the true cause of our want of success."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Francis Schaeffer on Morality

"If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong. By absolute we mean that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values. If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgements conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions."1

- Francis Schaeffer

1. Schaeffer, Francis. How Then Should We Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1976).


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: C.S. Lewis on Eternity

"Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever."

- C. S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Albert Mohler on Science and Christianity

"Are science and Christianity friends? The answer to that is an emphatic yes, for any true science will be perfectly compatible with the truths we know by God’s revelation. But this science is not naturalistic, while modern science usually is."


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Alvin Plantinga on Knowing about God

“If we don’t know that there is such a person as God, we don’t know the first thing (the most important thing) about ourselves, each other and our world. This is because… the most important truths about us and them, is that we have been created by the Lord, and utterly depend upon him for our continued existence.”

- Alvin Plantinga here in Warranted Christian Belief


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Ravi Zacharias on World Religions

"Anyone who claims that all religions are the same betrays not only an ignorance of all religions but also a caricatured view of even the best-known ones. Every religion at its core is exclusive."


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Pinchas Lapide on the Resurrection

"I accept the resurrection of Easter Sunday not as an invention of the community of disciples, but as a historical event. If the resurrection of Jesus from the dead on that Easter Sunday were a public event which had been made known...not only to the 530 Jewish witnesses but to the entire population, all Jews would have become followers of Jesus."


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Allan Sandage on Design

"The world is too complicated in all its parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception? The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some type of organizing principle - an architect for believers."

- Allan Sandage, "A Scientist Reflects on Religious Belief"


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Bradley Monton on Methodological Naturalism

"If science really is permanently committed to methodological naturalism – the philosophical position that restricts all explanations in science to naturalistic explanations -  it follows that the aim of science is not generating true theories. Instead, the aim of science would be something like: generating the best theories that can be formulated subject to the restriction that the theories are naturalistic. More and more evidence could come in suggesting that a supernatural being exists, but scientific theories wouldn’t be allowed to acknowledge that possibility."

- Bradley Monton, author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Ravi Zacharias on Jesus

"The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive in its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said that the simple record of three years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Irenaeus on Error

“Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected.  But it is craftily decked out in attractive dress, as as, by its outward form, to appear to the inexperienced (ridiculous as the expression may seem) more true than the truth itself.”

- Church father Irenaeus (Against Heresies 1.2)


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Paul Copan on Bias

“If writing with a goal – whether it be evangelistic, apologetic, or didactic – implies propaganda, then all recorded history is propaganda. . . a work shouldn’t be dismissed simply because of the strong convictions of the writer. Should we discount the facticity or reliability of the accounts of Nazi concentration camp survivors simply because they passionately recount their story?”

- Paul Copan

True For You, But Not For Me – Defeating the Slogans that leave Christians Speechless, (Bethany House, 1998), p.101.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Michael Green on Bias

“It is one thing to recognize bias and aim off for it: it is quite another to suppose that because men passionately believe something to be true it must therefore be false.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Nancy Pearcey on the Gospel

"The ultimate goal is to preach the gospel. But the gospel is not simple to those whose background prevents them from understanding it. Today's global secular culture has erected a maze of mental barriers against even considering the biblical message."


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## SemperFiDawg

Austin Farrer on Reasonable Faith

"Though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish."


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## SemperFiDawg

Tim Keller on Doubting Your Doubts

"The only way to doubt Christianity rightly and fairly is to discern the alternate belief under each of your doubts and then ask yourself what reasons you have for believing it. How do you know your belief is true? It would be inconsistent to require more justification for Christian belief than you do for your own, but that is frequently what happens. In fairness you must doubt your doubts. My thesis is that if you come to recognize the beliefs on which your doubts about Christianity are based, and if you seek as much proof for those beliefs as you seek from Christians for theirs – you will discover that your doubts are not as solid as they first appeared."


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## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Paul L. Maier on Jesus

"Anybody who tries to use the argument that Jesus of Nazareth never existed [as a verifiable historical figure] is simply flaunting his or her ignorance. There is no serious question in the mind of any serious scholar, anywhere in the world that there certainly was a historical personality named Jesus of Nazareth. Now you can argue if he was the Son of God or not, argue about the supernatural aspects of his life, but in terms of the historical character of Jesus, all the evidence is in favour."


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## SemperFiDawg

C.S. Lewis on Naturalism

"If all that exists is Nature, the great mindless interlocking event, if our own deepest convictions are merely the by-products of an irrational process, then clearly there is not the slightest ground for supposing that our sense of fitness and our consequent faith in uniformity tell us anything about a reality external to ourselves. Our convictions are simply a fact about us-like the colour of our hair. If Naturalism is true we have no reason to trust our conviction that Nature is uniform."


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## SemperFiDawg

Nick Pollard on Worldviews

"As inviduals develop, they do seem to adopt certain answers to the fundamental questions of life. These answers are put together into a comprehensive system - a view of the world. At the same time, however, this view of the world becomes the way they view the world. It becomes the spectacles through which they look, the grid upon which they organize reality. This view affects the way they answer the fundamental questions of life, and so on. If we understand worldviews this way, we can see why they are so hard to change. They tend to become firmly entrenched because they constantly reinforce themselves through the self-sustaining feedback loop."


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## SemperFiDawg

James Sire on Worldviews

"A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being."


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## SemperFiDawg

Peter Kreeft on Arguments

"An argument in apologetics, when actually used in dialogue, is an extension of the arguer. The arguer's tone, sincerity, care, concern, listening, and respect matter as much as his or her logic - probably more. The world was won for Christ not by arguments but by sanctity: 'What you are speaks so loud, I can hardly hear what you say.'"

11/28/10


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## bullethead

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
    Albert Einstein


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
> Albert Einstein



As in giving what you get, an eye for an eye and expecting different results?


----------



## Miguel Cervantes

bullethead said:


> Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
> Albert Einstein


Quoting a man that was an obsessive smoker, married his cousin and had an illegitimate daughter. 

That-a-way to show em'!!!


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> As in giving what you get, an eye for an eye and expecting different results?



Can you be more specific as to who is expecting different results in and eye for an eye scenario?


----------



## bullethead

Miguel Cervantes said:


> Quoting a man that was an obsessive smoker, married his cousin and had an illegitimate daughter.
> 
> That-a-way to show em'!!!



With those credentials he would have been a main character in the Bible.


> Each of the following individuals in scripture were in the lineage of Mary, Christ's mother, or Joseph, his "earthly" father, who were chosen by God to raise His son. Most, if not all, occurred (chronologically) after the time in which Levitican law was written. Zelophehad's daughters did as the LORD commanded Moses. Zelophehad's daughters, Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah and Noah, married their cousins on their father's side (Numbers 36:1-11).
> 
> Milcah was married to her cousin, Nahor. They had a grand daughter named Rebekkah. In Genesis 24:48-51, the story unfolds of how, against all odds, God's direction for her to marry her cousin's son Isaac (first cousin once removed) is made crystal clear.
> 
> Isaac and Rebekkah had two son's. Jacob was the son whom was blessed to fulfill God's prophecy that the descendant's of Abraham (Jacob's grandfather, Isaac's father) would become a great nation. Isaac instructed Jacob to marry a daughter of Rebekkah's brother. Although he immediately fell in love and became engaged to his cousin Rachel, his uncle tricked him into first marrying Rachel's sister Leah. Although God blessed Jacob greatly, Jacob suffered much grief and heartache for having married both sisters. Jacob's descendants became what is now known as the twelve tribes of Israel. (Genesis chapters 19 and 29)
> 
> In I Chronicles 23:22, Eleazar's daughters married their first cousins. Very little detail is given of this event.




Jesus doesn't judge, Cervantes does. What "dirt and habits" have you taken the time to look up for the authors of the quotes posted in this thread? Your champions armor might be more than a little tarnished.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> Can you be more specific as to who is expecting different results in and eye for an eye scenario?



No one.  I was referencing your comment in another thread regarding giving what you got.  The point I am trying to make is that with that mentality there's never a winner and never any peace. Take for instance Islam.  It is a prime example of a culture that lives an eye for an eye.  As a result Muslims have been at war with each other as well as their neighbors since the religion was founded.  With no room for forgiveness there can be no peace.  This holds true on an individual level also.  If I am wronged and cannot forgive, then it's me that remains bitter and resentful, not the person that wronged me.   They may care less.  As a result I endure this bitterness until I forgive them and let it go.  I think you feel you have been wronged by religion and are still seeking your pound of flesh but you are never going to be satisfied that you have it.  At some you are just going to have to let it go.


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> No one.  I was referencing your comment in another thread regarding giving what you got.  The point I am trying to make is that with that mentality there's never a winner and never any peace. Take for instance Islam.  It is a prime example of a culture that lives an eye for an eye.  As a result Muslims have been at war with each other as well as their neighbors since the religion was founded.  With no room for forgiveness there can be no peace.  This holds true on an individual level also.  If I am wronged and cannot forgive, then it's me that remains bitter and resentful, not the person that wronged me.   They may care less.  As a result I endure this bitterness until I forgive them and let it go.  I think you feel you have been wronged by religion and are still seeking your pound of flesh but you are never going to be satisfied that you have it.  At some you are just going to have to let it go.



I know you were referencing my comment, but the reason I asked was why? You included something about me having the "give what get" motto but expecting different results...Where did I ever say or even imply that I expected different results? You tried to link it to my Einstein quote but that didn't quite work for you.

I am confident you do not know a lot about what you try to pass off as fact. I thought there was no better example than your Islam reference....then that one was trumped by your thoughts on me being "wronged" by religion. The only thing I try to do with religion is connect it with fact. I have an issue with it when it does not jive.

http://www.soundvision.com/info/peace/justice.asp

You confuse the fanatics in most religions for being the entire religion. I would not point fingers at all of Islam because of the actions of fanatics unless you are willing to include all Christianity for the actions of their fanatics throughout history. Looking at both of the religions with no bias, I don't see a difference between the two in the Eye for an Eye motto throughout history. Each have enough radical followers to do whatever they deem necessary in order to cover that. I don't know of a war that was fought that neither side had any religious influence or felt they did not have the full blessings of their religion while attacking/retaliating someone else. Nobody turns the other cheek.


----------



## Miguel Cervantes

bullethead said:


> With those credentials he would have been a main character in the Bible.
> 
> 
> 
> Jesus doesn't judge, Cervantes does. What "dirt and habits" have you taken the time to look up for the authors of the quotes posted in this thread? Your champions armor might be more than a little tarnished.


You crack me up, but at least your fodder is good for a laugh occasionally.


----------



## bullethead

Miguel Cervantes said:


> You crack me up, but at least your fodder is good for a laugh occasionally.



Good rebuttal.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> I know you were referencing my comment, but the reason I asked was why? You included something about me having the "give what get" motto but expecting different results...Where did I ever say or even imply that I expected different results? You tried to link it to my Einstein quote but that didn't quite work for you.
> 
> I am confident you do not know a lot about what you try to pass off as fact. I thought there was no better example than your Islam reference....then that one was trumped by your thoughts on me being "wronged" by religion. The only thing I try to do with religion is connect it with fact. I have an issue with it when it does not jive.
> 
> http://www.soundvision.com/info/peace/justice.asp
> 
> You confuse the fanatics in most religions for being the entire religion. I would not point fingers at all of Islam because of the actions of fanatics unless you are willing to include all Christianity for the actions of their fanatics throughout history. Looking at both of the religions with no bias, I don't see a difference between the two in the Eye for an Eye motto throughout history. Each have enough radical followers to do whatever they deem necessary in order to cover that. I don't know of a war that was fought that neither side had any religious influence or felt they did not have the full blessings of their religion while attacking/retaliating someone else. Nobody turns the other cheek.



Sure they do, but it's certainly not as prevalent or as noticeable as an eye for an eye.  Why, other than the fact less people subscribe to it? Because with the eye for an eye mentality it always results in destructive newsworthy results.  The turn the other cheek doesn't.


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Sure they do, but it's certainly not as prevalent or as noticeable as an eye for an eye.  Why, other than the fact less people subscribe to it? Because with the eye for an eye mentality it always results in destructive newsworthy results.  The turn the other cheek doesn't.



Now wait a minute....
What stance are you taking? One post ago you cite all of Islam as your example of an eye for an eye religion so are they or aren't they? Or have you fallen for the more prevalent examples and hoped by using them you were making your point?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

No.  They are.  There are  Hadiths in the Koran that certainly speak of forgiveness, but it certainly isn't as prominent a doctrine in Islam as it it in Christianity.  I think its fair to say that without forgiveness there is no Christianity. But, back to the point I was trying to make regarding Islam.  It was simply 'without forgiveness there can be no peace'.

Regarding my being wrong regarding you feeling wronged by religion.  I may very well be, but there is something driving you that makes it personal for you.  Your anti theistic stance goes much deeper than just the intellectual level.  In all honesty I have no idea what caused it, but it's obviously there on a very personal level.


----------



## Oak-flat Hunter

I commend You for posting this Thank You....


----------



## Oak-flat Hunter

Too inflame ones passion.  Most people will begin it with a lie...


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> No.  They are.  There are  Hadiths in the Koran that certainly speak of forgiveness, but it certainly isn't as prominent a doctrine in Islam as it it in Christianity.  I think its fair to say that without forgiveness there is no Christianity. But, back to the point I was trying to make regarding Islam.  It was simply 'without forgiveness there can be no peace'.
> 
> Regarding my being wrong regarding you feeling wronged by religion.  I may very well be, but there is something driving you that makes it personal for you.  Your anti theistic stance goes much deeper than just the intellectual level.  In all honesty I have no idea what caused it, but it's obviously there on a very personal level.



How Old is Islam? When was the Koran written? What "type" of people were they for the centuries upon centuries before Islam came to be? They were no different than the people before Christianity and I might add there is not a follower of either religion that is anywhere near being the poster child for either religion. Our old buddy Moses is tied in with Christianity as  the lineage traces all the way to him and from him to Adam and Eve(according to the Bible). That Old Testament and it's characters were a real fine bunch and no wonder all THREE of the world's major religions are all based off of that OT and 2/3 needed a big change. You paint Christianity with a broad brush and use the fine brush for other religions. We both know what Christianity should be and we both know what the makeup of it's many followers has turned it into.

I have no use for any organized religion trying to tell me that "they", either as a group or on an individual level, understands or is closer to a God than anyone else. I was a devout Christian for @20 years, I struggled with the hard questions for another 4-5years because it went against everything I was told and thought, and for the last 20 years I can honestly say I am happier without organized religion. I have held many conversations about it. I have talked one on one with Pastors, Priests, Deacons, Rabbi's, individuals from all denominations and most of all 26 years with my Mother In Law. Where I am at now has been a work in the makings for a long time and it continues to be a work in progress.
I can't tell you there is not a God or a Creator. Truth is I just don't know. What I am very confident of is that no organized religions version of "their" God is true. The stories just do not add up and if their stories came from a God...that God is not worthy of my worship. The work is not God-like whatsoever.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

laskerknight said:


> I commend You for posting this Thank You....



You're welcome.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> How Old is Islam? When was the Koran written? What "type" of people were they for the centuries upon centuries before Islam came to be? They were no different than the people before Christianity and I might add there is not a follower of either religion that is anywhere near being the poster child for either religion. Our old buddy Moses is tied in with Christianity as  the lineage traces all the way to him and from him to Adam and Eve(according to the Bible). That Old Testament and it's characters were a real fine bunch and no wonder all THREE of the world's major religions are all based off of that OT and 2/3 needed a big change. You paint Christianity with a broad brush and use the fine brush for other religions. We both know what Christianity should be and we both know what the makeup of it's many followers has turned it into.
> 
> I have no use for any organized religion trying to tell me that "they", either as a group or on an individual level, understands or is closer to a God than anyone else. I was a devout Christian for @20 years, I struggled with the hard questions for another 4-5years because it went against everything I was told and thought, and for the last 20 years I can honestly say I am happier without organized religion. I have held many conversations about it. I have talked one on one with Pastors, Priests, Deacons, Rabbi's, individuals from all denominations and most of all 26 years with my Mother In Law. Where I am at now has been a work in the makings for a long time and it continues to be a work in progress.
> I can't tell you there is not a God or a Creator. Truth is I just don't know. What I am very confident of is that no organized religions version of "their" God is true. The stories just do not add up and if their stories came from a God...that God is not worthy of my worship. The work is not God-like whatsoever.



I certainly understand why you question religion.  I agree people have perpetrated evil in the name of all religions, but I still don't get the personal animosity.  Leary, suspicious, even critical I understand,yet the animosity I don't.


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> I certainly understand why you question religion.  I agree people have perpetrated evil in the name of all religions, but I still don't get the personal animosity.  Leary, suspicious, even critical I understand,yet the animosity I don't.



SFD, how would you feel tonight if you were convinced that what you always believed were not true(Religion or otherwise)?  How would you feel in ten years if you still knew it was not true yet people are always trying to convince you it is by using the same things that you understand to be the very things that turned you away? How would you feel after 20 years of the same? What if the entire time your goal was to convince yourself the things were true by looking into them and the deeper you dug the more you found out the information was false? I got sick of it real quick.


----------



## JB0704

bullethead said:


> SFD, how would you feel tonight if you were convinced that what you always believed were not true(Religion or otherwise)?



I can't answer for him, but that^^^^would bother me a good bit.  Not for the sake of being wrong, but for the implications to my worldview.  The rest of the timeline would only serve to make that feeling worse.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> SFD, how would you feel tonight if you were convinced that what you always believed were not true(Religion or otherwise)?  How would you feel in ten years if you still knew it was not true yet people are always trying to convince you it is by using the same things that you understand to be the very things that turned you away? How would you feel after 20 years of the same? What if the entire time your goal was to convince yourself the things were true by looking into them and the deeper you dug the more you found out the information was false? I got sick of it real quick.




I don't know.  Honestly I just can't see that happening.  I would like to think I have the faith of Job, where if I was stripped of everything, while I may long to die, I wouldn't deny God.  Not ever being close to that though I don't know, but certainly not many people do suffer those kind of tragedies so it's hard to know if it ever does come to that.  

Just curious, what was the tipping point for you.  As believers we all suffer doubts.  I question anyone who says they don't, but most believers don't deny God as much as they just simply fall away from the faith out of other interest or boredom.  If you ask them, they would reply that they still consider themselves Christians.  You however have not done that.  You seem to have renounced the entire idea of God based on a history of accumulating doubts.  That's why I ask  what was the tipping point for you?


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> I don't know.  Honestly I just can't see that happening.  I would like to think I have the faith of Job, where if I was stripped of everything, while I may long to die, I wouldn't deny God.  Not ever being close to that though I don't know, but certainly not many people do suffer those kind of tragedies so it's hard to know if it ever does come to that.
> 
> Just curious, what was the tipping point for you.  As believers we all suffer doubts.  I question anyone who says they don't, but most believers don't deny God as much as they just simply fall away from the faith out of other interest or boredom.  If you ask them, they would reply that they still consider themselves Christians.  You however have not done that.  You seem to have renounced the entire idea of God based on a history of accumulating doubts.  That's why I ask  what was the tipping point for you?



It is a long story and not much of a story without all the details but in a quick summary...
Parental Divorce, Parental re-Marriage, my Marriage Classes, a Priest that wanted me to convert to Catholicism and a visit to our house from a Priest.
The devil is in the details. It would be a great campfire sit, but it is too long to get into and go over here. The combination of them all got me curious as to how true this God was, how true his book was, how true the events in the book were and the more I checked into finding out how true things were I found evidence about how false things are. Not willing to accept that I dug deeper thinking I was missing something and I only found more information to back up the Con, not Pro. I spent years physically meeting and talking to various Priests, Pastors, Deacon, acquaintances that attended the Seminary and a close Friend that is a Priest. The conversations got to a point where it was much more than most of them wanted to handle honestly. That only fueled me to search deeper. Almost 20 years now and I am not getting closer to religion each day. It is to the point where the rhetoric is so wide spread that I tend to cut out the middle man sparring nonsense that I have been through a thousand times and often go right into the nitty gritty. I apologize for that but I have found it is easier to get right to the point instead of beat around the bush.

**The hardest part was going against the grain, asking the first question that bugged me for years, and not accepting the vague almost automated response. Each question got easier and easier to ask and find the answer myself when the "one's in the know" would only go so far.


----------



## bullethead

JB0704 said:


> I can't answer for him, but that^^^^would bother me a good bit.  Not for the sake of being wrong, but for the implications to my worldview.  The rest of the timeline would only serve to make that feeling worse.



Yep


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> It is a long story and not much of a story without all the details but in a quick summary...
> Parental Divorce, Parental re-Marriage, my Marriage Classes, a Priest that wanted me to convert to Catholicism and a visit to our house from a Priest.
> The devil is in the details. It would be a great campfire sit, but it is too long to get into and go over here. The combination of them all got me curious as to how true this God was, how true his book was, how true the events in the book were and the more I checked into finding out how true things were I found evidence about how false things are. Not willing to accept that I dug deeper thinking I was missing something and I only found more information to back up the Con, not Pro. I spent years physically meeting and talking to various Priests, Pastors, Deacon, acquaintances that attended the Seminary and a close Friend that is a Priest. The conversations got to a point where it was much more than most of them wanted to handle honestly. That only fueled me to search deeper. Almost 20 years now and I am not getting closer to religion each day. It is to the point where the rhetoric is so wide spread that I tend to cut out the middle man sparring nonsense that I have been through a thousand times and often go right into the nitty gritty. I apologize for that but I have found it is easier to get right to the point instead of beat around the bush.
> 
> **The hardest part was going against the grain, asking the first question that bugged me for years, and not accepting the vague almost automated response. Each question got easier and easier to ask and find the answer myself when the "one's in the know" would only go so far.



I'm a pretty analytical and pragmatic person.  Most people who know me would say I'm borderline obsessive about things being "right" for me to be satisfied.  You would think that finding apparent contradictions between the Bible and say Science or inter scriptural contradictions would drive me crazy, but it doesn't.  

There are those who say you can't look to the Bible for your science and you can't look to science for your philosophy/religion, and I believe that is true.  That however is not why those contradictions don't shake my faith. My faith, and I know this sounds like a cliche, but it's true, my faith is in Christ, the person.  The Bible tells me about him to a large degree, but I know him personally just like I would know you if you were my neighbor, co worker, friend or family, thus my faith is not based on my or anyone else's understanding of scripture, but on knowing a person.  There is a world of difference.


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> I'm a pretty analytical and pragmatic person.  Most people who know me would say I'm borderline obsessive about things being "right" for me to be satisfied.  You would think that finding apparent contradictions between the Bible and say Science or inter scriptural contradictions would drive me crazy, but it doesn't.


Religion has a way of taking people that are analytical, pragmatic and of certain ways in every other aspect of their lives and turning them into the complete opposite.




SemperFiDawg said:


> There are those who say you can't look to the Bible for your science and you can't look to science for your philosophy/religion, and I believe that is true.  That however is not why those contradictions don't shake my faith. My faith, and I know this sounds like a cliche, but it's true, my faith is in Christ, the person.  The Bible tells me about him to a large degree, but I know him personally just like I would know you if you were my neighbor, co worker, friend or family, thus my faith is not based on my or anyone else's understanding of scripture, but on knowing a person.  There is a world of difference.



I am sorry, but you think you know him. THAT is the world of difference. You are telling us that you know a guy that has been dead for over 2000 years. You have never met him, never talked to him and have never seen him. Best of all it is not like you found his diary in an attic beam and got to read his personal thoughts to gain an understanding of the man.....you have a man crush based off of stories with anonymous writers. Jesus is the 3rd person of Yourself. "Dear Jesus what should I do" you won't, have never, or will hear an answer from Jesus...you are going to do what YOU decide to do and then praise Jesus if it works out or chalk it up to Jesus not allowing it if it doesn't. You know absolutely nothing about Jesus except for what you have read in a book. Nothing. You actually know more about the neighbor that you have the least amount of contact with. There is certainly a reason your faith is not shaken, I'll give you that, but we differ on what that is.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> Religion has a way of taking people that are analytical, pragmatic and of certain ways in every other aspect of their lives and turning them into the complete opposite.
> 
> You're right, sometimes even worse.
> 
> 
> 
> I am sorry, but you think you know him. THAT is the world of difference. You are telling us that you know a guy that has been dead for over 2000 years. You have never met him, never talked to him and have never seen him. Best of all it is not like you found his diary in an attic beam and got to read his personal thoughts to gain an understanding of the man.....you have a man crush based off of stories with anonymous writers. Jesus is the 3rd person of Yourself. "Dear Jesus what should I do" you won't, have never, or will hear an answer from Jesus...you are going to do what YOU decide to do and then praise Jesus if it works out or chalk it up to Jesus not allowing it if it doesn't. You know absolutely nothing about Jesus except for what you have read in a book. Nothing. You actually know more about the neighbor that you have the least amount of contact with. There is certainly a reason your faith is not shaken, I'll give you that, but we differ on what that is.



Bullet with all due respect, you're wrong about that.  I guess everyone forms their opinions in a large part based on their own personal experiences, and I'm sure you have your reasons for saying that, but my experience has been totally different.  I do know Jesus.  He's real and as alive today.  I do talk with him and I listen as the Holy Spirit guides me.  

I know you call this rubbish, and don't believe it.  What can I say.  We are at two ends of an ideological spectrum.  You can't accept it because, and this is just my opinion, you can't accept anything supernatural.  I'm very analytical also, but I also accept the supernatural.  If you ask me why, it's simply this:  there is too much "stuff" out there, "important stuff" that science simply cannot and never will be able to address.


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Bullet with all due respect, you're wrong about that.  I guess everyone forms their opinions in a large part based on their own personal experiences, and I'm sure you have your reasons for saying that, but my experience has been totally different.  I do know Jesus.  He's real and as alive today.  I do talk with him and I listen as the Holy Spirit guides me.
> 
> I know you call this rubbish, and don't believe it.  What can I say.  We are at two ends of an ideological spectrum.  You can't accept it because, and this is just my opinion, you can't accept anything supernatural.  I'm very analytical also, but I also accept the supernatural.  If you ask me why, it's simply this:  there is too much "stuff" out there, "important stuff" that science simply cannot and never will be able to address.



If Christians were the only ones to ever have those types of experiences I would be more intrigued. What you claim to have is nothing else that each and every other religion's followers have claimed. Only the nit picking about why yours are "better" is what separates the experiences.

For all you know, because you have to believe in this spirit too,  the Devil may be fooling you all along. But I sense that you would not, could not be duped by such a force. What you have is real.


----------



## bullethead

Like I said before SFD, it really is not meant to be anything personal. I can say with 100% honesty that I was once where you are. I was 100% percent positive that I had a special relationship with a God. I found a way to tie it all in with everyday life happenings both good and bad. 
I found out that it just aint so.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Hey, what can I say other that I'm sorry you no longer believe.   Just curious again, but did you ever feel what you thought was the the Holy Ghost fill you?


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Hey, what can I say other that I'm sorry you no longer believe.   Just curious again, but did you ever feel what you thought was the the Holy Ghost fill you?



No, I have never eaten at a Golden Corral. 

Then again up in these parts that is not the "thing". I have never heard of anyone claiming that has happened to them around here.

Somehow I get the feeling that without being filled I was never a candidate for being a proper Christian anyway.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> No, I have never eaten at a Golden Corral.
> 
> Then again up in these parts that is not the "thing". I have never heard of anyone claiming that has happened to them around here.
> 
> Somehow I get the feeling that without being filled I was never a candidate for being a proper Christian anyway.




Good one.  I had forgotten about the Golden Coral.

I have been filled with the Holy Ghost although I'm not sure why I experienced it and others who are undoubtedly saved haven't.  I simply don't know.

Looking back over the years I would say that the one thing that the experience had on me was that I would never forget it and therefore I could never deny that Jesus is the Messiah and my Savior.  I often think about it and try to remember it more clearly to better describe it, but in all honesty I can't.  I can't adequately put it into words.   It was that powerful.

As far as you not being filled.  I don't know.  I do honestly think that if you have ever been filled, you can't/not go back into agnosticism.  I just don't see, based on my experience how anyone could.   Apostasy sure, agnosticism, Athiesm, I don't think so.

Over the last few years I have spent a lot of time trying to understand it better, but it's still a huge mystery.  

Regarding your agnosticism, I don't think its possible to experience or even conceptualize anything supernatural at all without at least being minimally open to the idea that such a thing exists.  I know people like that.  People who are so pragmatic and philosophically rigid in their thoughts that won't even entertain the idea of something outside of the physical, concrete, empirical world.  I don't understand why they restrict their thought process, but they do non the less.  To me it just seems that to a person, they are missing out of all the wonderous mysteries and marvels that make life so precious to start with, but that's just my opinion.  Not to say they are not good people, they are, but I can't help but want to say "I just wish that for a moment you could see what you are missing out on."  

Oh well.  I'll get off my soap box now.  Went further than I had intended anyway.


----------



## TripleXBullies

SemperFiDawg said:


> Hey, what can I say other that I'm sorry you no longer believe.   Just curious again, but did you ever feel what you thought was the the Holy Ghost fill you?



I'm not sorry. I'm glad. 


Yes, I was filled. It was emotion.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> The Bible tells me about him to a large degree, but I know him personally just like I would know you if you were my neighbor, co worker, friend or family, thus my faith is not based on my or anyone else's understanding of scripture, but on knowing a person.  There is a world of difference.





SemperFiDawg said:


> I do know Jesus.  He's real and as alive today.  I do talk with him and I listen as the Holy Spirit guides me.



Where were you when I was literally begging anyone on the "Calvinism" thread to admit that they had a personal relationship with Jesus and were led by the Holy Spirit?

All I heard was crickets.

In the Calvinism thread, read my posts 143, 145, 147, 149, 150, 171, 198, 200, 207, 208, 214, and 219.  And read the lack of response from anyone claiming to have a personal relationship with Jesus, specifically posts 146, 148, and 153.

By post 220, I had ONE person to say that they felt led by God, but they wouldn't go much further than that.


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Regarding your agnosticism, I don't think its possible to experience or even conceptualize anything supernatural at all without at least being minimally open to the idea that such a thing exists.  I know people like that.  People who are so pragmatic and philosophically rigid in their thoughts that won't even entertain the idea of something outside of the physical, concrete, empirical world.  I don't understand why they restrict their thought process, but they do non the less.  To me it just seems that to a person, they are missing out of all the wonderous mysteries and marvels that make life so precious to start with, but that's just my opinion.  Not to say they are not good people, they are, but I can't help but want to say "I just wish that for a moment you could see what you are missing out on."



None of that explains my devotion to Christianity for the first 20 years of my life.
I have seen both sides of it and I am a prime example of how someone once so filled with God and Jesus can just walk away. Knowing both sides I have not missed out on anything.


----------



## HawgJawl

This is what I say to people who refuse to give Scientology a chance:



SemperFiDawg said:


> I don't understand why they restrict their thought process, but they do non the less.  To me it just seems that to a person, they are missing out of all the wonderous mysteries and marvels that make life so precious to start with, but that's just my opinion.  Not to say they are not good people, they are, but I can't help but want to say "I just wish that for a moment you could see what you are missing out on."


----------



## bullethead

HawgJawl said:


> This is what I say to people who refuse to give Scientology a chance:



One of my biggest issues was "How could MY religion be the only "right" one?" "How did I happen to choose the "right" one?" Then I realized.....It isn't and I didn't.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> Where were you when I was literally begging anyone on the "Calvinism" thread to admit that they had a personal relationship with Jesus and were led by the Holy Spirit?
> 
> All I heard was crickets.
> 
> In the Calvinism thread, read my posts 143, 145, 147, 149, 150, 171, 198, 200, 207, 208, 214, and 219.  And read the lack of response from anyone claiming to have a personal relationship with Jesus, specifically posts 146, 148, and 153.
> 
> By post 220, I had ONE person to say that they felt led by God, but they wouldn't go much further than that.



Sorry Hawg but I just skimmed that thread.  Those inter faith debates don't interest me much.  In most cases I think many of them things are a waste of time and energy.  I have my opinions on those things, but ain't gonna waste a lot of time getting bogged down debating another Christian over them.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> This is what I say to people who refuse to give Scientology a chance:



God is not the only one with a sense of humor.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> None of that explains my devotion to Christianity for the first 20 years of my life.
> I have seen both sides of it and I am a prime example of how someone once so filled with God and Jesus can just walk away. Knowing both sides I have not missed out on anything.



Did I assume wrong?  Are you open to supernatural events?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> One of my biggest issues was "How could MY religion be the only "right" one?" "How did I happen to choose the "right" one?" Then I realized.....It isn't and I didn't.



I guess if you are open to the idea of God then you have to make a decision as to which religion aligns more closely with what you observe and reason.  One of them has to come closer to the answer than the others.  If you are not open to the idea of God, it's a non issue I would assume.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> Where were you when I was literally begging anyone on the "Calvinism" thread to admit that they had a personal relationship with Jesus and were led by the Holy Spirit?



What do you want to know?  I will do my best to answer your questions if you are still interested.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> What do you want to know?  I will do my best to answer your questions if you are still interested.



Do you believe that God answers your prayers?  

For the purpose of this particular discussion, there is no reason to argue over the difference between "sometimes" or "always, but the answer may be yes, no, or wait".


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Did I assume wrong?  Are you open to supernatural events?



Supernatural events like?


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> I guess if you are open to the idea of God then you have to make a decision as to which religion aligns more closely with what you observe and reason.  One of them has to come closer to the answer than the others.  If you are not open to the idea of God, it's a non issue I would assume.



That is just it, I don't feel a need to align myself with any religion, nor do I believe I should have to.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> Do you believe that God answers your prayers?
> 
> For the purpose of this particular discussion, there is no reason to argue over the difference between "sometimes" or "always, but the answer may be yes, no, or wait".



Yes


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> Supernatural events like?



Anything that cannot be explained as a natural occurance.

Miracles, ghosts, God, etc


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> that is just it, i don't feel a need to align myself with any religion, nor do i believe i should have to.



 o. K.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> What do you want to know?  I will do my best to answer your questions if you are still interested.



If you earnestly pray for God to help you understand the "true" doctrine relating to salvation so that you can accurately spead His message to the lost, do you think he would grant that request?


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Anything that cannot be explained as a natural occurance.
> 
> Miracles, ghosts, God, etc



I have witnessed some odd events. Some unexplainable.  I consider them odd and unexplainable, I do not automatically default them to a God or higher power.


----------



## 660griz

SemperFiDawg said:


> Anything that cannot be explained as a natural occurance.
> 
> Miracles, ghosts, God, etc



Most can be explained. Imagination, halucination, .etc.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> If you earnestly pray for God to help you understand the "true" doctrine relating to salvation so that you can accurately spead His message to the lost, do you think he would grant that request?



Honestly  I don't think I nor anyone else needs to pray in order to understand the "true doctrine" of salvation.  It's laid out very clearly in the New Testament.  It doesn't need special revelation to grasp it.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> Honestly  I don't think I nor anyone else needs to pray in order to understand the "true doctrine" of salvation.  It's laid out very clearly in the New Testament.  It doesn't need special revelation to grasp it.



So, you understand it perfectly and need no assistance from the Holy Spirit?  You know which specific set of Christian dogma or doctrine is the correct one and you know which dogma or doctrine originated with man and is not necessary for salvation?


----------



## gordon 2

SemperFiDawg said:


> No.  They are.  There are  Hadiths in the Koran that certainly speak of forgiveness, but it certainly isn't as prominent a doctrine in Islam as it it in Christianity.  I think its fair to say that without forgiveness there is no Christianity. But, back to the point I was trying to make regarding Islam.  It was simply 'without forgiveness there can be no peace'.
> 
> Regarding my being wrong regarding you feeling wronged by religion.  I may very well be, but there is something driving you that makes it personal for you.  Your anti theistic stance goes much deeper than just the intellectual level.  In all honesty I have no idea what caused it, but it's obviously there on a very personal level.



It is my experience that people use "religion" to butt heads with parents dead or alive. Often parents can't match up to the moral and religious ideals they impose on their children or as ideals to children. More than not parents'  skeletons are well know to their children and when matched up to young rigid minds their can be a rebelion I think..., From forcing kids to go to church, to kicking them out of the house when they are young teens.

 An example, a friend of mine attends a SBC church, yet he was raise in a catholic family by a devote father. My friend is male and my friend accuses his father of  sexually molesting his sisters when children ( or the father's dauthers). The protest for my friend is not against the CC, but against his father, but it comes out as my friend and his spouse "hating" the CC. This is the honor they have for parents, since they cannot hate them and must honor them ( see scripture), it is diverted to sacking the father's spiritual values and the CC. These they don't have to honor. 


I know have a 90 yr old friend who cannot bear to listen to gospel music or indeed have anything to do with religion. And since at ninety one's social filters are pretty much worn out, he easily says that he is still upset by his father's demands on him, their relationship, when he was a young child and teen. He as yet does not say anything wrong concerning his father, but I suspect he sees him as a hypocrit and a worldly man void of the compations he saw important to his children. ( His parents died perhaps 50 or 60 yrs ago!)

I have friends who after leaving their home full of family daily prayers from their infant days to young adulthood, who after being on their own, turned the cross upside down litterally and in their minds --as a deep emotional relief from the "H e L L" of their mothers' and fathers' religious tyranies. 

I wonder what Sigmond Freud and that swedish phycologist (name: Carl Yung) might say...?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> So, you understand it perfectly and need no assistance from the Holy Spirit?  You know which specific set of Christian dogma or doctrine is the correct one and you know which dogma or doctrine originated with man and is not necessary for salvation?



Look Hawg I understand what you are trying to do, but if you honestly want to continue this conversation then quit putting words in my mouth in some veiled attempt to drive your "dogma" .  You want an honest conversation, I told you I would do my best to answer your questions.  You want to twist or ad lib my responses in order to espouse your own opinions, then you don't need mine.  Go start your own thread.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> I have witnessed some odd events. Some unexplainable.  I consider them odd and unexplainable, I do not automatically default them to a God or higher power.



Not sure if that's a yes or a no or a maybe.  No biggie I was just curious.  

There a lot of things out there that I feel can't be explained.  Some fall within the natural realm and may very well be explained by science.  Some are supernatural and never will be, because by definition they fall outside of the scope of science.  Among the latter I would list spirits, ghost, demons, miracles, God, etc.  Of course if you don't believe in the supernatural then this is a non issue.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

660griz said:


> Most can be explained. Imagination, halucination, .etc.



Most?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

gordon 2 said:


> It is my experience that people use "religion" to butt heads with parents dead or alive. Often parents can't match up to the moral and religious ideals they impose on their children or as ideals to children. More than not parents'  skeletons are well know to their children and when matched up to young rigid minds their can be a rebelion I think..., From forcing kids to go to church, to kicking them out of the house when they are young teens.
> 
> An example, a friend of mine attends a SBC church, yet he was raise in a catholic family by a devote father. My friend is male and my friend accuses his father of  sexually molesting his sisters when children ( or the father's dauthers). The protest for my friend is not against the CC, but against his father, but it comes out as my friend and his spouse "hating" the CC. This is the honor they have for parents, since they cannot hate them and must honor them ( see scripture), it is diverted to sacking the father's spiritual values and the CC. These they don't have to honor.
> 
> 
> I know have a 90 yr old friend who cannot bear to listen to gospel music or indeed have anything to do with religion. And since at ninety one's social filters are pretty much worn out, he easily says that he is still upset by his father's demands on him, their relationship, when he was a young child and teen. He as yet does not say anything wrong concerning his father, but I suspect he sees him as a hypocrit and a worldly man void of the compations he saw important to his children. ( His parents died perhaps 50 or 60 yrs ago!)
> 
> I have friends who after leaving their home full of family daily prayers from their infant days to young adulthood, who after being on their own, turned the cross upside down litterally and in their minds --as a deep emotional relief from the "H e L L" of their mothers' and fathers' religious tyranies.
> 
> I wonder what Sigmond Freud and that swedish phycologist (name: Carl Yung) might say...?



I've seen something along those lines with my co-workers from up North, who are very wary of all religion because of what wrongs they suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church.  I think it happens just like you describe and in all Churches.  It's a shame.  It honestly is, and it's direct evidence that becoming a Christian doesn't alleviate you having to deal with sin on a personal basis every day within yourself.  It's also a reminder to me that when I fail as a Christian, I run the risk of taking a lot of my loved ones down with me.  Sadly I'm a long way from being perfect.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> Look Hawg I understand what you are trying to do, but if you honestly want to continue this conversation then quit putting words in my mouth in some veiled attempt to drive your "dogma" .  You want an honest conversation, I told you I would do my best to answer your questions.  You want to twist or ad lib my responses in order to espouse your own opinions, then you don't need mine.  Go start your own thread.



If I were putting words in your mouth there wouldn't be question marks after the two sentences.



HawgJawl said:


> So, you understand it perfectly and need no assistance from the Holy Spirit?  You know which specific set of Christian dogma or doctrine is the correct one and you know which dogma or doctrine originated with man and is not necessary for salvation?



The question was not whether you think the Holy Spirit is needed to help interpret scripture.  A very brief look at the many different denominations should serve as proof that there is not a general consensus on what scripture "clearly" states.

The question is if you think God would answer that type of prayer.  If you think that God would not answer that type of prayer, why do think God would not?


----------



## 660griz

SemperFiDawg said:


> Most?



Yep. Some have other explanations. All based on science.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> If I were putting words in your mouth there wouldn't be question marks after the two sentences.
> 
> 
> 
> The question was not whether you think the Holy Spirit is needed to help interpret scripture.  A very brief look at the many different denominations should serve as proof that there is not a general consensus on what scripture "clearly" states.
> 
> The question is if you think God would answer that type of prayer.  If you think that God would not answer that type of prayer, why do think God would not?



You asked a question based on a false premise.  I informed you of it to which you ad libbed from there.  Like I said, if you aren't interested in an honest discussion go find another floor for your talking points.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> You asked a question based on a false premise.  I informed you of it to which you ad libbed from there.  Like I said, if you aren't interested in an honest discussion go find another floor for your talking points.



I really don't understand what false premise I based my question on.  You indicated that you believe that God answers prayer.  I asked if you believe that God would answer a prayer for understanding. 

People pray for all sorts of things;
Please God don't let that cop pull me over for speeding.
Please God let my kid pass that test.
Please God send a big buck to my tree stand.
Please God let the biopsy come back negative.
Please God give me understanding so that I can accurately spread your true message to a lost and dying world.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> I really don't understand what false premise I based my question on.  You indicated that you believe that God answers prayer.  I asked if you believe that God would answer a prayer for understanding.
> 
> People pray for all sorts of things;
> Please God don't let that cop pull me over for speeding.
> Please God let my kid pass that test.
> Please God send a big buck to my tree stand.
> Please God let the biopsy come back negative.
> Please God give me understanding so that I can accurately spread your true message to a lost and dying world.



What are your thoughts on the matter?


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> What are your thoughts on the matter?



This is one of those questions that in my experience, Christians tend to avoid or answer very vaguely.  A firm position on part of the issue might contradict our position on a different aspect of the issue.  

There are many such issues that I have trouble with and the fact that so many other Christians avoid these issues only serves to strenghten my suspicions.  If, as a Christian, I felt the need to avoid certain questions concerning Christianity, I would step back and take a serious look at my professed beliefs.


----------



## TripleXBullies

Everyone should always take a serious look at their professed beliefs. Especially those that dictate pretty much everything about their life.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Well I do believe I have a personal relationship with Christ.  Does God speak to me?  Yes.  No burning bush, no thunder, no talking donkey yet.  More so via that still small voice that is somewhat, but not exactly, like your conscious.  Is it every day? No.  Maybe it should be if I would take more time to listen.  How do I know it's God and not my conscious, ego, etc?  I put it through a few questions?

1). Does it align with scripture?  If no it's not God.
2). Does it advance the Kingdom of God?  Same as above?
3). Do I want to do it?  If yes, this is a big warning to me that It may be my ego and not God.
4).  Does this calling continue despite doing everything I can do to alleviate it?  If so it may be God speaking to me.
5)Does I involve doing something radical, something I would have never thought of, something I don't understand?  If so it may very well be God.
6). What are the circumstances surrounding the issue?  
7). If it's a big thing then I will talk with my pastor and other strong Christians and ask their council also.

If it's not a big thing then I will just do it.  For instance I will often start thinking about my sermon the week before, but just before I start to write it down I will pray again for Gods guidance in delivering the message he wants to get across to his church.  Many times I have either started off with what I had been thinking about all week only to be lead into a totally different message or just trashing the original message from the get go and being led deliver a totally different message all together.  Sometimes even after I start a sermon, I will end up on another subject altogether..  I've had, and I've often heard other pastors express the same thing, that they would preach one message and have someone after church express that the heard something totally separate, but personal to them.  I attribute it all to the work of the Holy Spirit.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> Well I do believe I have a personal relationship with Christ.  Does God speak to me?  Yes.
> 
> Many times I have either started off with what I had been thinking about all week only to be lead into a totally different message or just trashing the original message from the get go and being led deliver a totally different message all together.  Sometimes even after I start a sermon, I will end up on another subject altogether..  I've had, and I've often heard other pastors express the same thing, that they would preach one message and have someone after church express that the heard something totally separate, but personal to them.  I attribute it all to the work of the Holy Spirit.



The part I have trouble with is when several different pastors are led by God to deliver a specific message to their respective congregations but the different messages contain doctrine which is in direct contradiction with each other.  

The messages were reportedly from the same God who has only one truth.

It could be that all the other pastors (but you) were lying. 

Or all the other pastors (but you) were being led by Satan and they thought it was God.

Or all the other pastors (but you) misunderstood God because they don't have a close enough relationship.

Or,


----------



## centerpin fan

HawgJawl said:


> The part I have trouble with is when several different pastors are led by God to deliver a specific message to their respective congregations but the different messages contain doctrine which is in direct contradiction with each other.



God is not the author of confusion.


----------



## HawgJawl

centerpin fan said:


> God is not the author of confusion.



If you agree that there is more than one doctrine being preached by pastors who report to be led by the same God, then how would you explain it?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> The part I have trouble with is when several different pastors are led by God to deliver a specific message to their respective congregations but the different messages contain doctrine which is in direct contradiction with each other.
> 
> The messages were reportedly from the same God who has only one truth.
> 
> It could be that all the other pastors (but you) were lying.
> 
> Or all the other pastors (but you) were being led by Satan and they thought it was God.
> 
> Or all the other pastors (but you) misunderstood God because they don't have a close enough relationship.
> 
> Or,



Give me some examples of these contradictions you speak of.


----------



## StriperAddict

SemperFiDawg said:


> Well I do believe I have a personal relationship with Christ. Does God speak to me? Yes. No burning bush, no thunder, no talking donkey yet. More so via that still small voice that is somewhat, but not exactly, like your conscious. Is it every day? No. Maybe it should be if I would take more time to listen. How do I know it's God and not my conscious, ego, etc? I put it through a few questions?
> 
> 1). Does it align with scripture? If no it's not God.
> 2). Does it advance the Kingdom of God? Same as above?
> 3). Do I want to do it? If yes, this is a big warning to me that It may be my ego and not God.
> 4). Does this calling continue despite doing everything I can do to alleviate it? If so it may be God speaking to me.
> 5)Does I involve doing something radical, something I would have never thought of, something I don't understand? If so it may very well be God.
> 6). What are the circumstances surrounding the issue?
> 7). If it's a big thing then I will talk with my pastor and other strong Christians and ask their council also.
> 
> If it's not a big thing then I will just do it. For instance I will often start thinking about my sermon the week before, but just before I start to write it down I will pray again for Gods guidance in delivering the message he wants to get across to his church. Many times I have either started off with what I had been thinking about all week only to be lead into a totally different message or just trashing the original message from the get go and being led deliver a totally different message all together. Sometimes even after I start a sermon, I will end up on another subject altogether.. I've had, and I've often heard other pastors express the same thing, that they would preach one message and have someone after church express that the heard something totally separate, but personal to them. I attribute it all to the work of the Holy Spirit.


 
Well said, thanks.



SemperFiDawg said:


> "If there were no God, there would be no Atheists." - GK Chesterton
> 
> I love me some G.K. Chesterton


 
_Likewise!_
"The doctrine of original sin is the one Christian doctrine that is empirically verifiable"  - GK Chesterton


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> Give me some examples of these contradictions you speak of.



Well, off the top of my head;

Loosing salvation vs. OSAS
Saved by faith only vs. faith plus works
Born with "original sin" vs. personally sinning
Baptism necessary for salvation
Trinity
Significance of child baptism
Acquiring sainthood
Observing holidays
Drinking alcohol
Utilizing modern medicine vs. faith healing
Rock-n-Roll music in church
Divorce
Speaking in tongues and handling snakes


----------



## centerpin fan

HawgJawl said:


> If you agree that there is more than one doctrine being preached by pastors who report to be led by the same God, then how would you explain it?



The fallibility of men.


----------



## HawgJawl

centerpin fan said:


> The fallibility of men.



That could mean several different things.  Instead of me "putting words in your mouth" could you be more specific as to where the problem occurs?


----------



## centerpin fan

HawgJawl said:


> That could mean several different things.  Instead of me "putting words in your mouth" could you be more specific as to where the problem occurs?



Everybody reads the Bible through the lens of their theological background.


----------



## TripleXBullies

1 - You can't do that when the you're asking for clarify of scripture

2 - Subjective

3 - So you're saying you don't normally want to do things that your god would want you to do?

5 - So you thought of something you never would have thought of? That's a mind blower...



SemperFiDawg said:


> ..... How do I know it's God and not my conscious, ego, etc?  I put it through a few questions?
> 
> 1). Does it align with scripture?  If no it's not God.
> 2). Does it advance the Kingdom of God?  Same as above?
> 3). Do I want to do it?  If yes, this is a big warning to me that It may be my ego and not God.
> 4).  Does this calling continue despite doing everything I can do to alleviate it?  If so it may be God speaking to me.
> 5)Does I involve doing something radical, something I would have never thought of, something I don't understand?  If so it may very well be God.
> 6). What are the circumstances surrounding the issue?
> 7). If it's a big thing then I will talk with my pastor and other strong Christians and ask their council also.
> 
> .....


----------



## HawgJawl

centerpin fan said:


> Everybody reads the Bible through the lens of their theological background.



Absolutely.  But we can take the Bible out of the picture in this situation.  Obviously the Bible should be used to confirm the message God is giving the pastor, but people are able to find scripture (out of context) to justify almost anything.  So instead of focusing on misinterpreted scripture, we are talking here about specifically what God leads a pastor to say to his congregation.



SemperFiDawg said:


> Well I do believe I have a personal relationship with Christ.  Does God speak to me?  Yes.
> 
> I put it through a few questions?
> 
> 1). Does it align with scripture?  If no it's not God.
> 
> 
> I will often start thinking about my sermon the week before, but just before I start to write it down I will pray again for Gods guidance in delivering the message he wants to get across to his church.  Many times I have either started off with what I had been thinking about all week only to be lead into a totally different message or just trashing the original message from the get go and being led deliver a totally different message all together.  Sometimes even after I start a sermon, I will end up on another subject altogether..  I've had, and I've often heard other pastors express the same thing, that they would preach one message and have someone after church express that the heard something totally separate, but personal to them.  I attribute it all to the work of the Holy Spirit.



The question is how are different pastors "led by God" to preach conflicting doctrine.  I'm not trying to blame this on God.  I'm asking specifically where the problem occurs.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> Well, off the top of my head;
> 
> Loosing salvation vs. OSAS
> Saved by faith only vs. faith plus works
> Born with "original sin" vs. personally sinning
> Baptism necessary for salvation
> Trinity
> Significance of child baptism
> Acquiring sainthood
> Observing holidays
> Drinking alcohol
> Utilizing modern medicine vs. faith healing
> Rock-n-Roll music in church
> Divorce
> Speaking in tongues and handling snakes



You know Hawg.  I honestly thought you were gonna name some big ones.  The fact that you didn't speaks volumes.  

There's a guiding precept regarding doctrine within Christianity that you may or may not have heard that goes something like this:  "With regards to essential doctrines; unity, with non essential doctrine; diversity."  The only topic that you named above considered essential is the Trinity and without you being more specific I'm not sure what the contradiction is.

That being said, a lot of people make a lot of hay regarding the differences in opinion between various denominations regarding non essential doctrine and tertiary doctrine. While it is true the differences exist, to focus on it is to miss or deny the much more important point that almost all denominations are unified on the essential doctrines.  It is this unity that actually defines us as Christians in the first place.


----------



## centerpin fan

HawgJawl said:


> So instead of focusing on misinterpreted scripture, we are talking here about specifically what God leads a pastor to say to his congregation.



Unless there's a burning bush involved, I think this is very subjective.  Also, God will not lead one pastor to preach on the Trinity and another pastor to deny the Trinity.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> You know Hawg.  I honestly thought you were gonna name some big ones.  The fact that you didn't speaks volumes.
> 
> There's a guiding precept regarding doctrine within Christianity that you may or may not have heard that goes something like this:  "With regards to essential doctrines; unity, with non essential doctrine; diversity."  The only topic that you named above considered essential is the Trinity and without you being more specific I'm not sure what the contradiction is.
> 
> That being said, a lot of people make a lot of hay regarding the differences in opinion between various denominations regarding non essential doctrine and tertiary doctrine. While it is true the differences exist, to focus on it is to miss or deny the much more important point that almost all denominations are unified on the essential doctrines.  It is this unity that actually defines us as Christians in the first place.



I'm not dissagreeing with you.  But that doesn't answer the question.  If we were discussing "opinion" or "Bible interpretation" then obviously there is much room for variance.  But we are discussing a message provided directly to a pastor who is being led by God.  

If God spoke to Moses and God spoke Aaron about the same issue, I would expect that they would have received the exact same message.


----------



## centerpin fan

HawgJawl said:


> The question is how are different pastors "led by God" to preach conflicting doctrine.



The answer is they are _not_ "led by God" to preach conflicting doctrine.


----------



## HawgJawl

centerpin fan said:


> Unless there's a burning bush involved, I think this is very subjective.  Also, God will not lead one pastor to preach on the Trinity and another pastor to deny the Trinity.



I agree with you.  And again, I am not trying to blame this on God.

One pastor SAYS that he is led by God to preach this particular docrine.

Another pastor SAYS that he is led by God to preach a conflicting doctrine.

What are some possible reasons this could happen?


----------



## centerpin fan

HawgJawl said:


> But we are discussing a message provided directly to a pastor who is being led by God.



God spoke to directly to Moses through a burning bush.  He dictated the ten commandments to him.  That is _not_ how Pastor Bob is being "led by God".


----------



## centerpin fan

HawgJawl said:


> I agree with you.  And again, I am not trying to blame this on God.
> 
> One pastor SAYS that he is led by God to preach this particular docrine.
> 
> Another pastor SAYS that he is led by God to preach a conflicting doctrine.
> 
> What are some possible reasons this could happen?



Men make mistakes.


----------



## HawgJawl

centerpin fan said:


> God spoke to directly to Moses through a burning bush.  He dictated the ten commandments to him.  That is _not_ how Pastor Bob is being "led by God".



The Old Testament is full of examples of the priests proclaiming exactly what God said about many different issues.  That was part of their job.

If pastor "A" can say that he has prayed about this and God has led him to the clear conclusion that drinking alcoholic beverages is a sin,

and pastor "B" can say that he has prayed about this and God has led him to the clear conclusion that drinking alcoholic beverages is not a sin,

then how do we know which one to believe?


----------



## centerpin fan

HawgJawl said:


> If pastor "A" can say that he has prayed about this and God has led him to the clear conclusion that drinking alcoholic beverages is a sin,
> 
> and pastor "B" can say that he has prayed about this and God has led him to the clear conclusion that drinking alcoholic beverages is not a sin,
> 
> then how do we know which one to believe?



Alcohol is a peripheral issue.  OTOH, if you're talking about the nature of God, salvation, etc., I would start with the belief that both pastors were not "led by God" to preach conflicting doctrine.


----------



## WaltL1

HawgJawl said:


> I agree with you.  And again, I am not trying to blame this on God.
> 
> One pastor SAYS that he is led by God to preach this particular docrine.
> 
> Another pastor SAYS that he is led by God to preach a conflicting doctrine.
> 
> What are some possible reasons this could happen?


There is only one reason. The pastor preaches from his own understanding and his own interpretation of what he knows. Neither of them or any of them are led by anything other than what is in their individual brains.


----------



## bullethead

Hawgjawl I would just ask a select few in here what God wants, we are constantly told what God is and what God is not...what God wants and what God does not want...what God tells others and what God does not tell others...what God did and what God did not do....what God will do and what God will not do.
This thread has gotten very entertaining in short order.


----------



## WaltL1

bullethead said:


> Hawgjawl I would just ask a select few in here what God wants, we are constantly told what God is and what God is not...what God wants and what God does not want...what God tells others and what God does not tell others...what God did and what God did not do....what God will do and what God will not do.
> This thread has gotten very entertaining in short order.


And in the next sentence tell us that no one can understand God and why he does or doesn't do ........


----------



## bullethead

WaltL1 said:


> And in the next sentence tell us that no one can understand God and why he does or doesn't do ........



Correct-A-Mundo


----------



## BT Charlie

SemperFiDawg said:


> Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself. --Madeleine L'Engle



Wow. Amen


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> I'm not dissagreeing with you.  But that doesn't answer the question.  If we were discussing "opinion" or "Bible interpretation" then obviously there is much room for variance.  But we are discussing a message provided directly to a pastor who is being led by God.
> 
> If God spoke to Moses and God spoke Aaron about the same issue, I would expect that they would have received the exact same message.



These examples of contradiction you gave are as CPF alluded to theological.  I would suggest that the very fact that God did not make them crystal clear is evidence that they are of secondary importance.  The underlying message of the Bible is Christ and the Gospel.  He got that message across.

I'm not aware of a pastor saying God told him Calvinism is true.  There may be some.  I'm not saying it never has happened, but most pastors see these secondary doctrines as just that, secondary.  When I preach I don't go any farther than things that are crystal clear in scripture without telling people I am giving them my opinion.  I would certainly never say God told me something that contradicted scripture.  In all honesty I rarely even venture into a secondary doctrine.  I don't need to in order to preach Christ and Christ crucified, and that is my sole purpose....to spread the Gospel, not give a theological lecture.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> The Old Testament is full of examples of the priests proclaiming exactly what God said about many different issues.  That was part of their job.
> 
> If pastor "A" can say that he has prayed about this and God has led him to the clear conclusion that drinking alcoholic beverages is a sin,
> 
> and pastor "B" can say that he has prayed about this and God has led him to the clear conclusion that drinking alcoholic beverages is not a sin,
> 
> then how do we know which one to believe?



I see your point and it's a good one.  In matters like this(again it's not essential doctrine) I think it comes down to where God leads the individual follower.  It's quiet possible pastor As congregation needs to hear one message and pastor B's congregation doesn't.   The fact that one considers it a sin and another doesn't changes nothing.  All sins are covered by Christ's sacrifice and both saved and unsaved are still going to sin and have to deal with the consequences thereof until they die.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Just a correction on something I posted earlier regarding doctrine.
The entire quote  is

“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”


― Augustine of Hippo


----------



## TripleXBullies

bullethead said:


> Hawgjawl I would just ask a select few in here what God wants, we are constantly told what God is and what God is not...what God wants and what God does not want...what God tells others and what God does not tell others...what God did and what God did not do....what God will do and what God will not do.
> This thread has gotten very entertaining in short order.



Finally... The first thousand posts were horrible...


----------



## TripleXBullies

WaltL1 said:


> And in the next sentence tell us that no one can understand God and why he does or doesn't do ........



I was waiting for that one too.


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> All sins are covered by Christ's sacrifice and both saved and unsaved are still going to sin and have to deal with the consequences thereof until they die.



Then, all of eternity.

Nothing says worship me the "RIGHT" way or burn for eternity like Consequences.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> I'm not aware of a pastor saying God told him Calvinism is true.  There may be some.  I'm not saying it never has happened, but most pastors see these secondary doctrines as just that, secondary.  When I preach I don't go any farther than things that are crystal clear in scripture without telling people I am giving them my opinion.  I would certainly never say God told me something that contradicted scripture.  In all honesty I rarely even venture into a secondary doctrine.  I don't need to in order to preach Christ and Christ crucified, and that is my sole purpose....to spread the Gospel, not give a theological lecture.



If you affiliate with any established religious denomination, tradition, or family, I would say that you do venture into secondary doctrine by your mere affiliation.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> I see your point and it's a good one.  In matters like this(again it's not essential doctrine) I think it comes down to where God leads the individual follower.  It's quiet possible pastor As congregation needs to hear one message and pastor - I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH - congregation doesn't.   The fact that one considers it a sin and another doesn't changes anything.  All sins are covered by Christ's sacrifice and both saved and unsaved are still going to sin and have to deal with the consequences thereof until they die.




I've tried to be clear that I am not blaming any of this on God.  I am not attacking Christianity.  This has nothing to do with the basic principles of the religion.  Call it non-essential doctrine or anything you wish.  For the purposes of my conversation, there is no need to defend Christianity.

My issue is directed at pastors, not at God.

I believe that God has the ability to communicate clearly to man if He desires and the ability to overcome any problem man might have with hearing.  Jonah heard clearly but wasn't trying very hard to hear.

If you believe that God answers prayer (even sometimes) then there is no reason to believe that God would refuse to answer a prayer that would help accurately spread His true message to a lost and dying world.

The existence of so many different denominations is proof that there are issues which are not crystal clear in scripture.  If God has ONE message, a prayer for clarity is not an unreasonable request.

I'm not inferring that God should speak clearly to everyone.  But when different pastors profess that God has clearly led them to a conclusion, those conclusions should be identical.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> Hawgjawl I would just ask a select few in here what God wants, we are constantly told what God is and what God is not...what God wants and what God does not want...what God tells others and what God does not tell others...what God did and what God did not do....what God will do and what God will not do.
> This thread has gotten very entertaining in short order.



Bullet.  That's a very easy question to answer.  
He wants you to let him love you.  That's is as base and simply as anyone can make it.


----------



## 660griz

SemperFiDawg said:


> He wants you to let him love you.  That's is as base and simply as anyone can make it.



Or, BURN IN H3LL YOU ROTTEN SCUM! The exact way I treat my children.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> I've tried to be clear that I am not blaming any of this on God.  I am not attacking Christianity.  This has nothing to do with the basic principles of the religion.  Call it non-essential doctrine or anything you wish.  For the purposes of my conversation, there is no need to defend Christianity.
> 
> My issue is directed at pastors, not at God.
> 
> I believe that God has the ability to communicate clearly to man if He desires and the ability to overcome any problem man might have with hearing.  Jonah heard clearly but wasn't trying very hard to hear.
> 
> If you believe that God answers prayer (even sometimes) then there is no reason to believe that God would refuse to answer a prayer that would help accurately spread His true message to a lost and dying world.
> 
> The existence of so many different denominations is proof that there are issues which are not crystal clear in scripture.  If God has ONE message, a prayer for clarity is not an unreasonable request.
> 
> I'm not inferring that God should speak clearly to everyone.  But when different pastors profess that God has clearly led them to a conclusion, those conclusions should be identical.



I don't know that I agree with your last statement.  Again, and I will reference the Old Testament, but there were literally hundreds if not thousands of prophets that were contemporaries of each other.  We know about the prominent ones but there ere many others.  I'm sure they all preached separate specifics depending on what God wanted their target audience to hear.  Ezekiel was a contemporary of Jeremiah and Daniel.  Three separate prophets, three separate messages for three separate audiences yet One author.   

Baptist don't believe in drinking, Catholics do.  Some people don't do well with alcohol.  Others can drink and it not destroy their life.  Regardless of which opinion you personally hold on this you can see that both views have a benefit to a particular audience so both are useful, but neither affects ones salvation, hence diversity in non- essential doctrine allows for unity in essential doctrine.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> Then, all of eternity.
> 
> Nothing says worship me the "RIGHT" way or burn for eternity like Consequences.



Bullet if you want to converse, let's do it without the sarcasm, denigration, etc.  if not, count me out.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> If you affiliate with any established religious denomination, tradition, or family, I would say that you do venture into secondary doctrine by your mere affiliation.



Very possible.  I agree, but again salvation revolves around essential doctrine.  Freedom around non essential.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> I believe that God has the ability to communicate clearly to man if He desires and the ability to overcome any problem man might have with hearing.



I agree, but God will not overcome a mans free will to rebel nor reject God.  I'm not sure he can, but that's a thread all by itself, and I'm not entirely certain of my stance on that.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

660griz said:


> Or, BURN IN H3LL YOU ROTTEN SCUM! The exact way I treat my children.



I see the venom is out in full force today.  Not just pointing to you Griz, but we were having a pretty good conversation here until some of you showed up and starting throwing insults.  Why don't you guys that can't keep it respectful go start your own thread unless you are just here to drive up the post count on this one, in which case thanks but no thanks.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> I don't know that I agree with your last statement.  Again, and I will reference the Old Testament, but there were literally hundreds if not thousands of prophets that were contemporaries of each other.  We know about the prominent ones but there ere many others.  I'm sure they all preached separate specifics depending on what God wanted their target audience to hear.  Ezekiel was a contemporary of Jeremiah and Daniel.  Three separate prophets, three separate messages for three separate audiences yet One author.
> 
> I'm not asserting that every sermon should be identical, and there is room for personal opinion in sermons.
> 
> Baptist don't believe in drinking, Catholics do.  Some people don't do well with alcohol.  Others can drink and it not destroy their life.  Regardless of which opinion you personally hold on this you can see that both views have a benefit to a particular audience so both are useful, but neither affects ones salvation, hence diversity in non- essential doctrine allows for unity in essential doctrine.



As long as an "opinion" is labeled as such there is no problem.  If a particular stance on drinking is reported as being from God, then there should be no variance between "led" pastors on that stance.  

It doesn't even have to be a black and white answer.  If God's position on drinking is that it is only a sin if a person cannot control it or if it causes another to stumble, then that should be the position of every pastor who is actually led by God.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Hawg, I guess another way to say it is, everyone understands and agrees on the central message of the Bible.  It's the details that cause the confusion.  I'm OK with that, because in the end it has no bearing what-so-ever on the outcome other that who was right and who was wrong which is a pride issue and therefore a sin to begin with.  I preach the Gospel.  God's Grace covers the gaps of my ignorance as well as my sins.  He's concerned with the love I show and how I follow what I DO understand, not on the depth of my understanding.  I think that's why he made the Gospel so easy to understand.  Even a child can grasp the essentials of it;  GOD LOVES US!!!


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> Hawg, I guess another way to say it is, everyone understands and agrees on the central message of the Bible.  It's the details that cause the confusion.  I'm OK with that, because in the end it has no bearing what-so-ever on the outcome other that who was right and who was wrong which is a pride issue and therefore a sin to begin with.  I preach the Gospel.  God's Grace covers the gaps of my ignorance as well as my sins.  He's concerned with the love I show and how I follow what I DO understand, not on the depth of my understanding.  I think that's why he made the Gospel so easy to understand.  Even a child can grasp the essentials of it;  GOD LOVES US!!!



You're still defending Christianity, which I am not attacking.  

Do you believe that God wants His message spread?

Do you think God cares if the message is spread accurately as opposed to being full of man's opinions?


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> Hawg, I guess another way to say it is, everyone understands and agrees on the central message of the Bible.  It's the details that cause the confusion.  I'm OK with that, because in the end it has no bearing what-so-ever on the outcome other that who was right and who was wrong which is a pride issue and therefore a sin to begin with.  I preach the Gospel.  God's Grace covers the gaps of my ignorance as well as my sins.  He's concerned with the love I show and how I follow what I DO understand, not on the depth of my understanding.  I think that's why he made the Gospel so easy to understand.  Even a child can grasp the essentials of it;  GOD LOVES US!!!



If God's message is spread incorrectly, it could be far enough off to tell a large group of people they are saved when in fact they are not.  But even if it is close enough to the truth that God's grace will cover it, it still causes people to turn away from God.

Some people who would otherwise accept Christianity will reject Christianity based solely upon the existence of such division of beliefs.

Some people who would otherwise accept Christianity will reject Christianity based solely upon the incorrect set of standards required of them.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> As long as an "opinion" is labeled as such there is no problem.  If a particular stance on drinking is reported as being from God, then there should be no variance between "led" pastors on that stance.
> 
> It doesn't even have to be a black and white answer.  If God's position on drinking is that it is only a sin if a person cannot control it or if it causes another to stumble, then that should be the position of every pastor who is actually led by God.



Hawg, you are expecting perfection from imperfect beings.  I'm not sure that is very reasonable.  Admirable; yes.  Commendable; yes.  Just not reasonable.  In light of that I would ask you to reconsider your assumptions and ask yourself this:  Isn't it remarkable that The Gospel continues to reach people in spite of all the ignorance, misconceptions, outright falsifications, etc that man has subjected it to.  That is a miracle in itself.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> If God's message is spread incorrectly, it could be far enough off to tell a large group of people they are saved when in fact they are not.  But even if it is close enough to the truth that God's grace will cover it, it still causes people to turn away from God.
> 
> Some people who would otherwise accept Christianity will reject Christianity based solely upon the existence of such division of beliefs.
> 
> Some people who would otherwise accept Christianity will reject Christianity based solely upon the incorrect set of standards required of them.



Again, salvation is a heart issue, not a intellectual one.  Those looking for an excuse to avoid God will find one.  Those who truly yearn in their heart to know God will find him. 

There are without a doubt many charlatans out there behind pulpits that deceive many, but again, God knows the circumstances and the hearts of those deceived, and again like the thief on the cross beside Jesus who espoused nothing what so ever along the lines of doctrine other than "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." was assured of his salvation on the spot.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> Hawg, you are expecting perfection from imperfect beings.  I'm not sure that is very reasonable.  Admirable; yes.  Commendable; yes.  Just not reasonable.  In light of that I would ask you to reconsider your assumptions and ask yourself this:  Isn't it remarkable that The Gospel continues to reach people in spite of all the ignorance, misconceptions, outright falsifications, etc that man has subjected it to.  That is a miracle in itself.



When scripture was being written, do you believe that God was able to accurately relay His message to man?  If so, why would He be unable to do the same now?


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> Again, salvation is a heart issue, not a intellectual one.  Those looking for an excuse to avoid God will find one.  Those who truly yearn in their heart to know God will find him.



That is putting all the responsibility on the "lost" to seek out God.  That is not what the Great Commission was all about.

If Peter had preached that anyone wanting salvation must sell all they own and set out on foot preaching the gospel, must never marry, must never own any property, must rely daily on the charity of strangers for sustenance, etc., this message would have not only hurt the spread of Christianity, it might have ended it.  So, an incorrect message does have a negative affect.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> You're still defending Christianity, which I am not attacking.
> 
> Do you believe that God wants His message spread?
> 
> Do you think God cares if the message is spread accurately as opposed to being full of man's opinions?



Yes I think he wants his message spread.


Yes I think he wants it spread accurately, and I believe it is despite all of our fallibilities, shortcomings, misunderstandings, ignorance, etc.

For 2000 years it has been suppressed, maligned, misinterpreted, reconstructed, deconstructed, and every weapon man or the Devil has ever thought of has been brought to bear on it, yet,YET, despite all that is is as pristine and real today to the person who is reading it for the first time as it was back then.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> Yes I think he wants his message spread.
> 
> 
> Yes I think he wants it spread accurately, and I believe it is despite all of our fallibilities, shortcomings, misunderstandings, ignorance, etc.
> 
> For 2000 years it has been suppressed, maligned, misinterpreted, reconstructed, deconstructed, and every weapon man or the Devil has ever thought of has been brought to bear on it, yet,YET, despite all that is is as pristine and real today to the person who is reading it for the first time as it was back then.



But remember we're not talking about the Bible or  interpreting scripture.  This is about pastors professing to be led by God, not their personal interpretation of scripture or their personal opinion.


----------



## centerpin fan

HawgJawl said:


> But remember we're not talking about the Bible or  interpreting scripture.  This is about pastors professing to be led by God, not their personal interpretation of scripture or their personal opinion.



I highlighted the key words.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> But remember we're not talking about the Bible or  interpreting scripture.  This is about pastors professing to be led by God, not their personal interpretation of scripture or their personal opinion.



I don't know what to say then.  Personally I've never heard a pastor say he was led by God in interpreting scripture.  Scripture is generally understood to interpret itself.  I'm always kinda wince inside when I hear a pastor make an outlandish claim and brother I have heard some.
I actually heard a pastor once say during a sermon that he would give anyone $500 dollars if they could show him were it said baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost in the Bible.  My jaw hit the floor.  No I didn't have the heart to embarrass him in his home Church.  

Again pastors are people too and there are good ones and bad ones.  You just have to test them against Scripture and draw your own conclusions.  I believe a good pastor will encourage you to read your Bible and not take his word on what it says.  I do.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> Personally I've never heard a pastor say he was led by God in interpreting scripture.
> 
> Have you ever wondered why?  It seems like a no-brainer to just ask the source if you have a question.
> 
> Again pastors are people too and there are good ones and bad ones.  You just have to test them against Scripture and draw your own conclusions.  I believe a good pastor will encourage you to read your Bible and not take his word on what it says.  I do.



Isn't there another option?

Imagine a world famous poet who is still alive but whose work is already being taught by professors in many major universities.  It bothers this poet when college professors teach incorrect interpretations of his poetry so he issues an open invitation to any teaching professional to call him with any questions they may have concerning his poetry.

Later, when two college professors are teaching two different interpretations of the same poem, what do you think would be the best way to resolve the issue and ensure that both are teaching the correct interpretation?


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Bullet.  That's a very easy question to answer.
> He wants you to let him love you.  That's is as base and simply as anyone can make it.



You want that.
It is a simple answer based off of your ability to justify it in your mind.
Sorry SFD, you might speak out loud, you might speak within your head, you might write things down on paper, you might think you are talking to a God but you are the only one talking,,,there is no conversation. You have no idea what God wants, you know what you want a God to say.


----------



## bullethead

SFD, apologies if you think the Venom is out in full force. I tend to be short tempered when someone speaks for a Deity. You expect decent conversation on one end while literally making things up on your end. When the - BeeEss--O-Meter gets pegged my tolerance drops.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> But remember we're not talking about the Bible or  interpreting scripture.  This is about pastors professing to be led by God, not their personal interpretation of scripture or their personal opinion.



So what do you want me to say brother.  There's 4 options.
1) One of them is mistaken.
2) Both of them are mistaken.
3) Neither of them are mistaken.
4) You, the listener is mistaken.


It's true that God is not the author of confusion, so where does the confusion lie?  That's for you to determine, but remember in all things do in love.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> You want that.
> It is a simple answer based off of your ability to justify it in your mind.
> Sorry SFD, you might speak out loud, you might speak within your head, you might write things down on paper, you might think you are talking to a God but you are the only one talking,,,there is no conversation. You have no idea what God wants, you know what you want a God to say.



Bullet why do you even bother?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> SFD, apologies if you think the Venom is out in full force. I tend to be short tempered when someone speaks for a Deity. You expect decent conversation on one end while literally making things up on your end. When the - BeeEss--O-Meter gets pegged my tolerance drops.



Simple solution.  Don't trouble yourself with it to begin with.  I don't understand why you do.  I certainly wouldn't let someone who believed in something that I didn't think existed bother me one iota.  You know what I believe.  You know what my stance is going to be.  If it bothers you that much then just ignore it, but if I'm not mistaken you are the one who chose to post on this thread


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> Isn't there another option?
> 
> Imagine a world famous poet who is still alive but whose work is already being taught by professors in many major universities.  It bothers this poet when college professors teach incorrect interpretations of his poetry so he issues an open invitation to any teaching professional to call him with any questions they may have concerning his poetry.
> 
> Later, when two college professors are teaching two different interpretations of the same poem, what do you think would be the best way to resolve the issue and ensure that both are teaching the correct interpretation?






> Have you ever wondered why? It seems like a no-brainer to just ask the source if you have a question?



No, I haven't wondered why.  I think scripture is pretty clear.  I don't think I need a personal revelation from God to understand it.  99% of Gods will for me it right there in black and white......and red.  Again, almost anyone can read it and get the central message it is conveying.  

There are those that would chose to argue with a stop sign, but to even do that, they are at least tacitly confirming that they understand the message the sign is portraying. 


Do you feel that a special revelation is needed to understand scripture.  If so why and which part?


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> Do you feel that a special revelation is needed to understand scripture.  If so why and which part?



(1)  Yes I do.
(2)  Because there is so much that is not agreed upon by the people who claim to agree upon the same thing.
(3)  Every part that is not unanimously agreed upon by every different religious denomination, tradition, and family under the Christian religious group.

I keep hearing you say that you need no clarification.  In the example below, if you were one of the college professors, would you refuse to call the author?



HawgJawl said:


> Imagine a world famous poet who is still alive but whose work is already being taught by professors in many major universities.  It bothers this poet when college professors teach incorrect interpretations of his poetry so he issues an open invitation to any teaching professional to call him with any questions they may have concerning his poetry.
> 
> Later, when two college professors are teaching two different interpretations of the same poem, what do you think would be the best way to resolve the issue and ensure that both are teaching the correct interpretation?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> (1)  Yes I do.
> (2)  Because there is so much that is not agreed upon by the people who claim to agree upon the same thing.
> (3)  Every part that is not unanimously agreed upon by every different religious denomination, tradition, and family under the Christian religious group.
> 
> I keep hearing you say that you need no clarification.  In the example below, if you were one of the college professors, would you refuse to call the author?



Unity doesn't mean uniformity.  No I wouldn't call the author if I understood what was being conveyed.

Take the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  Does it really matter whether it was porridge or soup n the bowls for you to get the moral of the story?  No.

Now take the Bible.  Does it really matter whether it's Calvinism or Armenianism  for you to understand that Christ is Gods gift to mankind, given out of love, as a gift to you, to save you from the consequence of your sins?  No.  Again your salvation doesn't rest on what's in your head, but what's in your heart.  If you think otherwise, you are mistaken.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> Unity doesn't mean uniformity.  No I wouldn't call the author if I understood what was being conveyed.
> 
> Both of the college professors believe that they understand what is being conveyed.  The fact that they have different views confirms that at least one of them is wrong.
> 
> Take the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  Does it really matter whether it was porridge or soup n the bowls for you to get the moral of the story?  No.
> 
> Neither your eternal soul nor the eternal souls of your congregation rest upon an understanding of the moral of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
> 
> Now take the Bible.  Does it really matter whether it's Calvinism or Armenianism  for you to understand that Christ is Gods gift to mankind, given out of love, as a gift to you, to save you from the consequence of your sins?  No.  Again your salvation doesn't rest on what's in your head, but what's in your heart.  If you think otherwise, you are mistaken.
> 
> That is like saying that everyone who even loosely affiliates with a form of Christianity (in their heart) is going to heaven.



Do you believe that a one-time profession of faith is all that is needed to secure salvation?  In your opinion, is there anything further that is required?  Does it matter how you live your life after your profession of faith?  Is there any possible way that a person can lose their salvation, or throw it away?


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Unity doesn't mean uniformity.  No I wouldn't call the author if I understood what was being conveyed.
> 
> Take the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  Does it really matter whether it was porridge or soup n the bowls for you to get the moral of the story?  No.
> 
> Now take the Bible.  Does it really matter whether it's Calvinism or Armenianism  for you to understand that Christ is Gods gift to mankind, given out of love, as a gift to you, to save you from the consequence of your sins?  No.  Again your salvation doesn't rest on what's in your head, but what's in your heart.  If you think otherwise, you are mistaken.



If a writer inspired by God cannot get the simple details correct what would make a person think the more complex details are spot on? Maybe the original moral is nothing like the moral portrayed. I see a pattern with explanations where many times it boils down to "never mind what the Bible says, go with what it is your heart". I tend to think the work of a God would not leave any doors open to such scrutiny.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> Do you believe that a one-time profession of faith is all that is needed to secure salvation?  In your opinion, is there anything further that is required?  Does it matter how you live your life after your profession of faith?  Is there any possible way that a person can lose their salvation, or throw it away?



We'll let me put it this way.  That's all it took for the thief on the cross, the centurion, and every other person Christ healed.  Don't recall him quizzing any of them on their understanding of scripture prior to him forgiving them.  If I recall correctly it was the ones that were bogged down in scripture that missed him altogether.  As far as the rest of your questions, they're  topics for different threads and most have already been discussed ad nausea a few floors up.


----------



## HawgJawl

SemperFiDawg said:


> We'll let me put it this way.  That's all it took for the thief on the cross, the centurion, and every other person Christ healed.  Don't recall him quizzing any of them on their understanding of scripture prior to him forgiving them.  If I recall correctly it was the ones that were bogged down in scripture that missed him altogether.  As far as the rest of your questions, they're  topics for different threads and most have already been discussed ad  nauseating a few floors up.



Lets say that salvation has been granted at the time of the profession of faith.  That is not the issue in question.  The question is if it matters how a person lives their life after that.  Is baptism required (assuming you're not hanging on a cross at the time of salvation)?  Do works enter into the issue at all?  Can a person lose or throw away their salvation after it has been granted?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

HawgJawl said:


> Lets say that salvation has been granted at the time of the profession of faith.  That is not the issue in question.  The question is if it matters how a person lives their life after that.  Is baptism required (assuming you're not hanging on a cross at the time of salvation)?  Do works enter into the issue at all?  Can a person lose or throw away their salvation after it has been granted?



Look Hawg I would like to at least make an attempt to keep this thread true to the OP as much as possible.  I entertained your last point because I missed it on the Calvinism thread.  I don't mind sharing my thoughts on the matters you bring up, but let's either do it via pms or you direct me to another thread to where it is more appropriate.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

bullethead said:


> If a writer inspired by God cannot get the simple details correct what would make a person think the more complex details are spot on? Maybe the original moral is nothing like the moral portrayed. I see a pattern with explanations where many times it boils down to "never mind what the Bible says, go with what it is your heart". I tend to think the work of a God would not leave any doors open to such scrutiny.



Again Bullet, why bother?


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Again Bullet, why bother?



To point out the absurd.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: G.K. Chesterton on Evils

"Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable."

- G.K. Chesterton


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday Quote: Antony Flew on Belief

"I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source. Why do I believe this, given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than a half century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Pascal on Our Ultimate Objective

"For it is indubitable that this life is but an instant of time, that the state of death is eternal, whatever its nature may be, and thus that all our actions and thoughts must follow such different paths according to the state of this eternity, that the only possible way of acting with sense and judgement is to decide our course in the light of this point, which ought to be our ultimate objective."

- Blaise Pascal, Pensées (427)


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Lee Strobel on Apologetics

"For me, apologetics proved to be the turning point of my life and eternity. I'm thankful for the scholars who so passionately and effectively defend the truth of Christianity - and today my life's goal is to do my part in helping others get answers to the questions that are blocking them in their spiritual journey toward Christ."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Alexander Vilenkin on Cosmic Beginnings

"It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning."

- Alexander Vilenkin


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Darrell Bock on the Bible

"The Bible is not a book like any other. It makes a claim that God spoke and speaks through its message. It argues that as his creatures, we are accountable to him for what he has revealed. The trustworthiness of Scripture points to its authority as well. Scripture is far more than a history book, as good and trustworthy as that history is. It is a book that calls us to examine our lives and relationship to God. Beyond the fascinating history, it contains vital and life-transforming truths about God and us."

- Darrell Bock
[HT: JM] 

Darrell L. Bock, Can I Trust the Bible: Defending the Bible's Reliability (Norcross, GA: RZIM, 2001), 52.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

> I don't mind belonging to a club... but what kind of an inspirational sermon would it be?



Anonymous Atheist upon learning that inspirational sermons were being delivered at Atheist 'Churches'


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Anonymous Atheist upon learning that inspirational sermons were being delivered at Atheist 'Churches'



Nice fudge factor padre. Your collar is transparent.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

David Berlinski

Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence?
Not even close.

Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here?
Not even close.

Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life?
Not even close.

Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought?
Close enough.

Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral?
Not close enough.

Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good?
Not even close to being close.

Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences?
Close enough.

Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational?
Not even in the ballpark.

Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt?
Dead on.


----------



## TripleXBullies

Almost as many posts but half the views of the memes thread. You lose.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

G K Chesterton on Skeptic.

“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. . . . As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. . . . The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.


----------



## bullethead

I have noticed a trend. The more you don't do well in discussions in other threads, the more you revert to your "comfort" thread to post things that only you get a kick out of. Always the champ in your own sandbox I guess.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

J. Gresham Machen on Modern Culture

"Modern culture is not altogether opposed to the gospel. But it is out of all connection with it. It not only prevents the acceptance of Christianity. It prevents Christianity even from getting a hearing."

- J. Gresham Machen, What Is Christianity?, 1951


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Mortimer J. Adler on Faith and Reason

"I suspect that most of the individuals who have religious faith are content with blind faith. They feel no obligation to understand what they believe. They may even wish not to have their beliefs disturbed by thought. But if God in whom they believe created them with intellectual and rational powers, that imposes upon them the duty to try to understand the creed of their religion. Not to do so is to verge on superstition."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

William Lane Craig on Evangelism

"Successful evangelism involves not only harvesting, but sowing and watering, too. We must never think that because a nonbeliever remained unconvinced by our case that our apologetic has failed. For one encounter is not the end of the story."


----------



## bullethead

Sad


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“Creed” on the World
By Steve Turner
We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don’t hurt anyone
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.
We believe in sex before, during, and
after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.
We believe that everything’s getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
And you can prove anything with evidence.
We believe there’s something in horoscopes
UFO’s and bent spoons.
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,
Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher though we think
His good morals were bad.
We believe that all religions are basically the same-
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of creation,
sin, heaven, - I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH -- I AM A POTTY MOUTH -, God, and salvation.
We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens
they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then its
compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps
Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn
We believe in Masters and Johnson
What’s selected is average.
What’s average is normal.
What’s normal is good.
We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between warfare and
bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors .
And the Russians would be sure to follow.
We believe that man is essentially good.
It’s only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.
We believe that each man must find the truth that
is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth
that there is no absolute truth.
We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.
If chance be
the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear
State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man
worshipping his maker.


----------



## Denton

SemperFiDawg said:


> Mortimer J. Adler on Faith and Reason
> 
> "I suspect that most of the individuals who have religious faith are content with blind faith. They feel no obligation to understand what they believe. They may even wish not to have their beliefs disturbed by thought. But if God in whom they believe created them with intellectual and rational powers, that imposes upon them the duty to try to understand the creed of their religion. Not to do so is to verge on superstition."



I actually like this one.  SFD you surprise me.  Most of these are just mocking non-believers.  This one is mocking most believers.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Denton said:


> I actually like this one.  SFD you surprise me.  Most of these are just mocking non-believers.  This one is mocking most believers.



I don't think any of them mock anyone.  Critique? Yes.  Mock? No.  That being said, with reference to blind faith as noted above, it is a dangerous thing for anyone to practice, but I think most People base their beliefs on evidence and Christians are no exception.


----------



## 660griz

SemperFiDawg said:


> but I think most People base their beliefs on evidence and Christians are no exception.



Christians, for the most part, are a product of where they were born, what their parents believed, or what they were forced to believe. Then, evidence is created to support those beliefs when asked. Primarily, it is blind faith.


----------



## stringmusic

660griz said:


> Christians, for the most part, are a product of where they were born, what their parents believed, or what they were forced to believe. Then, evidence is created to support those beliefs when asked. Primarily, it is blind faith.


What are you a product of?


----------



## StriperrHunterr

660griz said:


> Christians, for the most part, are a product of where they were born, what their parents believed, or what they were forced to believe. Then, evidence is created to support those beliefs when asked. Primarily, it is blind faith.





stringmusic said:


> What are you a product of?



Yeah, I'm curious. Those are the same factors that shape all of us. Not all inclusive, by no means, but all of those do come into play.


----------



## ambush80

SemperFiDawg said:


> I don't think any of them mock anyone.  Critique? Yes.  Mock? No.  That being said, with reference to blind faith as noted above, it is a dangerous thing for anyone to practice, but I think most People base their beliefs on evidence and Christians are no exception.



The "evidence" I always hear is " I received Christ and I was able to stop (insert: doing some bad thing here)" Or "My life was empty without Christ."  People everywhere have been able to accomplish the same things or find fulfillment without Christ.  

Show me some REAL evidence.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

ambush80 said:


> The "evidence" I always hear is " I received Christ and I was able to stop (insert: doing some bad thing here)" Or "My life was empty without Christ."  People everywhere have been able to accomplish the same things or find fulfillment without Christ.
> 
> Show me some REAL evidence.



No amount of evidence would suffice.  We both know that.  For those who chose to believe, there is enough.  For those who don't, there never will be.

It is odd though don't you think, that you never hear anyone say I received Christ and I've been a drunk, drug addict, gambler, gossiper, liar, etc ever since or since I met Christ my life is empty, I'm lost, depressed and suicidal all the time now.

BTW thanks for the testimony.


----------



## ambush80

SemperFiDawg said:


> No amount of evidence would suffice.  We both know that.  For those who chose to believe, there is enough.  For those who don't, there never will be.
> 
> It is odd though don't you think, that you never hear anyone say I received Christ and I've been a drunk, drug addict, gambler, gossiper, liar, etc ever since or since I met Christ my life is empty, I'm lost, depressed and suicidal all the time now.
> 
> BTW thanks for the testimony.



One freakin' talking donkey.  That's all I ask.

I do hear Christians often say:

http://

Maybe that lady that burned her kids will say it.  Maybe you will forgive her.

What "testimony" are you talking about?


----------



## SemperFiDawg

ambush80 said:


> One freakin' talking donkey.  That's all I ask.
> 
> I do hear Christians often say:
> 
> http://
> 
> Maybe that lady that burned her kids will say it.  Maybe you will forgive her.
> 
> What "testimony" are you talking about?



I hope she does seek and find Christ.   I have nothing to forgive her for.  She hasn't done anything against me.  I truly pity her.  She's lost and blind.  


This testimony



> The "evidence" I always hear is " I received Christ and I was able to stop (insert: doing some bad thing here)" Or "My life was empty without Christ.



You at least acknowledge that you comprehend what others testify as truth and evidence about Christ.  If that's what you "always hear" and not "Christ destroyed my life." that's a powerful testimony in and of itself.

Now may I ask the obvious?  If that is what you always hear, why not ask Christ to do the same for you?


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> No amount of evidence would suffice.  We both know that.  For those who chose to believe, there is enough.  For those who don't, there never will be.
> 
> It is odd though don't you think, that you never hear anyone say I received Christ and I've been a drunk, drug addict, gambler, gossiper, liar, etc ever since or since I met Christ my life is empty, I'm lost, depressed and suicidal all the time now.
> 
> BTW thanks for the testimony.



Yeah.....NO ONE  with an addiction that has ever "found" Christ has ever relapsed or fallen off the wagon.......


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> I hope she does seek and find Christ.   I have nothing to forgive her for.  She hasn't done anything against me.  I truly pity her.  She's lost and blind.
> 
> 
> This testimony
> 
> 
> 
> You at least acknowledge that you comprehend what others testify as truth and evidence about Christ.  If that's what you "always hear" and not "Christ destroyed my life." that's a powerful testimony in and of itself.
> 
> Now may I ask the obvious?  If that is what you always hear, why not ask Christ to do the same for you?



You only hear that from the people that think Christ had something to do with it.......it is as credible as anything else anyone has ever thought helped them through a crisis. You don't believe any of those stories. 7 Billion people in the world and ONLY Christ is capable or has helped all the drug addicts,drunks, sex offenders, thieves......odd how Christ jumps in RIIIIGGGHHHT after they are caught........things that make a person go hmmmmm.


----------



## ambush80

SemperFiDawg said:


> I hope she does seek and find Christ.   I have nothing to forgive her for.  She hasn't done anything against me.  I truly pity her.  She's lost and blind.
> 
> 
> This testimony
> 
> 
> 
> You at least acknowledge that you comprehend what others testify as truth and evidence about Christ.  If that's what you "always hear" and not "Christ destroyed my life." that's a powerful testimony in and of itself.
> 
> Now may I ask the obvious?  If that is what you always hear, why not ask Christ to do the same for you?





bullethead said:


> You only hear that from the people that think Christ had something to do with it.......it is as credible as anything else anyone has ever thought helped them through a crisis. You don't believe any of those stories. 7 Billion people in the world and ONLY Christ is capable or has helped all the drug addicts,drunks, sex offenders, thieves......odd how Christ jumps in RIIIIGGGHHHT after they are caught........things that make a person go hmmmmm.



Maybe she's had Christ all along and is just a poor sinner.  All she has to do is ask for forgiveness.

What Bullet said.  There are many, many people that have been "healed" by rubbing crystals and praying to Vishnu.  Why don't you say that their "evidence" is real?  Heck, I've even rubbed a rabbits foot from time to time.

What a reasoning person would take from this is that some people get comfort and healing from Christ.  Some get it from rubbing gems.  Some get it through their will.  Seems to me that the "power" is in the individuals perception of what's happening.  That's what the evidence points to.

As for asking for Christ's help, I can't get passed the talking donkey.  Just one freakin' talking donkey and I'm all in.

My testimony is that belief in Christ made my life more irrational, not quite destroyed but certainly made it worse; fear of He11, self righteousness, irrationality.  It made me be afraid of ghosties and made me believe in giant Heaven bass.  It made me think that good people were going to He11.  If I had continued down that path eventually I might have been intellectually and spiritually irreparably destroyed.


----------



## stringmusic

ambush80 said:


> Maybe she's had Christ all along and is just a poor sinner.  All she has to do is ask for forgiveness.
> 
> What Bullet said.  There are many, many people that have been "healed" by rubbing crystals and praying to Vishnu.  Why don't you say that their "evidence" is real?  Heck, I've even rubbed a rabbits foot from time to time.
> 
> What a reasoning person would take from this is that some people get comfort and healing from Christ.  Some get it from rubbing gems.  Some get it through their will.  Seems to me that the "power" is in the individuals perception of what's happening.  That's what the evidence points to.
> 
> As for asking for Christ's help, I can't get passed the talking donkey.  Just one freakin' talking donkey and I'm all in.
> 
> My testimony is that belief in Christ made my life more irrational, not quite destroyed but certainly made it worse; fear of He11, self righteousness, irrationality.  It made me be afraid of ghosties and made me believe in giant Heaven bass.  It made me think that good people were going to He11.  If I had continued down that path eventually I might have been intellectually and spiritually irreparably destroyed.


Why did you fear he11? People with a relationship with Christ aren't going there.

Self righteousness is on you, not Christ.

No wonder you think it was irrational.

You shouldn't have been afraid of ghosties.


----------



## ambush80

stringmusic said:


> Why did you fear he11? People with a relationship with Christ aren't going there.
> 
> Self righteousness is on you, not Christ.
> 
> No wonder you think it was irrational.
> 
> You shouldn't have been afraid of ghosties.



I feared He11 because I believed it existed.  I worried that my faith was not strong enough because I couldn't force myself to believe in talking donkeys.  I was unwilling to simply trust and obey.  Indeed the thought of simply trusting and obeying and turning of my reason scared me more that He11.  When I see grown men say that they believe all the crazy claims in the Bible I can't help but shudder at the thought that I might have been that way too; the same way that you can't believe how people can believe in Vishnu.

I did a lot of finger pointing a praying for people who I thought were "lost" because they didn't believe like I did and I had scripture to back me up.

I was afraid of the Devil and his power and his evil hordes.  Ghosties.  I used to say the Lord's Prayer when I walked down dark alleys.  Gosh, I'm almost embarrassed to admit that.  It sound so silly now.


----------



## stringmusic

ambush80 said:


> I feared He11 because I believed it existed.  I worried that my faith was not strong enough because I couldn't force myself to believe in talking donkeys.  I was unwilling to simply trust and obey.  Indeed the thought of simply trusting and obeying and turning of my reason scared me more that He11.  When I see grown men say that they believe all the crazy claims in the Bible I can't help but shudder at the thought that I might have been that way too; the same way that you can't believe how people can believe in Vishnu.
> 
> I did a lot of finger pointing a praying for people who I thought were "lost" because they didn't believe like I did and I had scripture to back me up.
> 
> I was afraid of the Devil and his power and his evil hordes.  Ghosties.  I used to say the Lord's Prayer when I walked down dark alleys.  Gosh, I'm almost embarrassed to admit that.  It sound so silly now.



Again, no wonder you think all of it is so irrational.


----------



## ambush80

stringmusic said:


> Again, no wonder you think all of it is so irrational.



It made perfect sense at the time, just like it does to you, but the luster wore off when confronted by reality.


----------



## stringmusic

ambush80 said:


> It made perfect sense at the time, just like it does to you, but the luster wore off when confronted by reality.



How do you know what you think is reality, really is reality?


----------



## ambush80

stringmusic said:


> How do you know what you think is reality, really is reality?



Cause donkeys don't talk.


----------



## stringmusic

ambush80 said:


> Cause donkeys don't talk.



I don't want to continue this conversation in SFD thread, I'm sure we will get around to this discussion in the other thread.


----------



## WaltL1

bullethead said:


> Yeah.....NO ONE  with an addiction that has ever "found" Christ has ever relapsed or fallen off the wagon.......


Or cheated on their wife
Or molested children
Or married young girls
Or beat their wives
Or commit suicide
Or stole money
Or are alcoholics
Or use drugs 
Or lied
Or ........
Or.....
It takes a special kind of dishonesty to contend that Christians don't do the same wrong things or have the same problems as any one else of other faiths or no faith.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

WaltL1 said:


> Or cheated on their wife
> Or molested children
> Or married young girls
> Or beat their wives
> Or commit suicide
> Or stole money
> Or are alcoholics
> Or use drugs
> Or lied
> Or ........
> Or.....
> It takes a special kind of dishonesty to contend that Christians don't do the same wrong things or have the same problems as any one else of other faiths or no faith.



I agree, but it misses the point which bullet adeptly dodged by changing the topic.


----------



## ambush80

SemperFiDawg said:


> I agree, but it misses the point which bullet adeptly dodged by changing the topic.




I responded to your point.

_"My testimony is that belief in Christ made my life more irrational, not quite destroyed but certainly made it worse; fear of He11, self righteousness, irrationality. It made me be afraid of ghosties and made me believe in giant Heaven bass. It made me think that good people were going to He11. If I had continued down that path eventually I might have been intellectually and spiritually irreparably destroyed." _

Belief in Christ can make you worse off.  It's true.


----------



## ambush80

stringmusic said:


> Again, no wonder you think all of it is so irrational.



Do you believe that the Devil  and his minions are at work causing evil and mayhem but you have the power of Christ to drive him off and place a hedge of protection around you and yours?


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> I agree, but it misses the point which bullet adeptly dodged by changing the topic.



I just shed more light on your poor point.


----------



## drippin' rock

ambush80 said:


> Do you believe that the Devil  and his minions are at work causing evil and mayhem but you have the power of Christ to drive him off and place a hedge of protection around you and yours?



I wonder what the last coherent thought was of the snake handling preacher that just died from snakebite.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

ambush80 said:


> I responded to your point.
> 
> _"My testimony is that belief in Christ made my life more irrational, not quite destroyed but certainly made it worse; fear of He11, self righteousness, irrationality. It made me be afraid of ghosties and made me believe in giant Heaven bass. It made me think that good people were going to He11. If I had continued down that path eventually I might have been intellectually and spiritually irreparably destroyed." _
> 
> Belief in Christ can make you worse off.  It's true.



Only if it's twisted as yours apparently was.  Self righteousness, irrationallity,  ghosties, Heaven Bass?????  
Really?

And you are telling me truthfully that YOU personally gleaned these messages when you read the New Testament? That was your take home point so to speak?   

And then with a straight face you say it made you MORE irrational? 

 Let's just stop now, because i honestly don't have the will.  If you are being truthful it's pointless, because you need help with a capital H that I can't provide.   If you are lying its pointless, because a liar has no allegiance to the truth, no integrity and their words are meaningless, and I won't waste time in discussion with one.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Francis Schaeffer 

"Every man has built a roof over his head to shield himself at the point of tension...The Christian lovingly, must remove the shelter and allow the truth of the external world and of what man is to beat upon him. When the roof is off, each man must stand naked and wounded before the truth of what is...He must come to know that his roof is a false protection from the storm of what is."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Charles Malik on Souls and Minds

"The problem is not only to win souls but to save minds. If you win the whole world and lose the mind of the world, you will soon discover you have not won the world. Indeed, it may turn out you have actually lost the world."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Avery Dulles on Apologetics

“In pressing the case for their discipline, apologists should keep in mind that it is neither necessary nor sufficient for salutary acts of faith. It is not necessary, for we all know people who have strong faith without having ever read a word of apologetics. It is not sufficient, because faith is a grace-given submission to the Word of God, not a conclusion from human arguments. Apologetics has a more modest task. It seeks to show why it is reasonable, with the help of grace, to accept God’s word as it comes to us through Scripture and the Church. Reflective believers can be troubled by serious temptations against faith unless they find reasons for believing. Converts, in particular, will normally deliberate for some time about the reasons for embracing the faith. … there are sufficient signs to make the assent of faith objectively justifiable. The task of apologetics is to discover these signs and organize them in such a way as to be persuasive to particular audiences. The arguments can never prove the truth of Christianity beyond all possibility of doubt, but they can show that it is reasonable to believe and that the arguments against Christianity are not decisive. God’s grace will do the rest.”


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Pascal on Christianity

"Men despise religion; they hate it and fear it is true. To remedy this, we must begin by showing that religion is not contrary to reason; that it is venerable, to inspire respect for it; then we must make it lovable, to make good men hope it is true; finally, we must prove it is true. Venerable, because it has perfect knowledge of man; lovable because it promises the true good."


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Hastings Rashdall on Moral Law

"On a non-theistic view of the Universe...the moral law cannot well be thought of as having any actual existence. The objective validity of the moral law can indeed be and no doubt is asserted, believed in and acted upon without reference to any theological creed; but it cannot be defended or fully justified without the presupposition of Theism."


----------



## BowtechDan

SemperFiDawg said:


> Bullet why do you even bother?



Says the one with how many pages of random jibberish?



I'm sure you're doing it because it's gods will (or until you rationalize it into something the devil is doing). You know, whatever looks the best in front of a crowd.

Keep googling baby, keep googling.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

BowtechDan said:


> Says the one with how many pages of random jibberish?
> 
> 
> 
> I'm sure you're doing it because it's gods will (or until you rationalize it into something the devil is doing). You know, whatever looks the best in front of a crowd.
> 
> Keep googling baby, keep googling.



Why don't you drop the animosity and stereotypes and let's talk seriously about God.  You can PM me if you like.


----------



## SemperFiDawg

“To give truth to him who loves it not is to only give him more multiplied reasons for misinterpretation.”

George McDonald


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Charles Darwin on Doubt

"With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"


----------



## JB0704

SemperFiDawg said:


> Charles Darwin on Doubt
> 
> "With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"



SFD, that quote could be a decent thread starter.......the nature of intuition and trust absent a soul. 

(we have really needed a new thread down here for a while  )


----------



## SemperFiDawg

Go ahead and start it.  I've pretty much given up on the possibility of having an intellectually honest conversation here unless it occurs between believers.


----------



## ambush80

SemperFiDawg said:


> Go ahead and start it.  I've pretty much given up on the possibility of having an intellectually honest conversation here unless it occurs between believers.



Your testimony is strong.  STROOOOOONG!


----------



## WaltL1

JB0704 said:


> SFD, that quote could be a decent thread starter.......the nature of intuition and trust absent a soul.
> 
> (we have really needed a new thread down here for a while  )


If I was to look into a crystal ball I think we wouldn't get past this part -


> which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals



And your new avatar is priceless!


----------



## JB0704

WaltL1 said:


> If I was to look into a crystal ball I think we wouldn't get past this part -



Most likely.....but I'm thinking that's the point of the question, and might be some fun to kick around a while.  "Why do we value intuition if it is no different than the animals," or "shouldn't we pay more attention to animal thoughts." 



WaltL1 said:


> And your new avatar is priceless!



Thanks   My kid just finished middle school this week (can't believe he is a high schooler!), and I was feeling sentimental.  I was looking at old fishing pics and came across that one.......great memories.

He and I were fishing one morning on a small pond and I saw that fish boil on the edge.....I tossed a pink trick worm over to it, handed him the rod and said "reel!"  The fish hit it before he turned the reel 3 x's, and it was a battle, for sure!  Watching a 6 year old fight a 6 # bass is a hoot! Once landed, he could barely hold it up   It now resides proudly on his wall.


----------



## bullethead

SemperFiDawg said:


> Go ahead and start it.  I've pretty much given up on the possibility of having an intellectually honest conversation here unless it occurs between believers.



Intellectual honesty is honesty in the acquisition, analysis, and transmission of ideas. A person is being intellectually honest when he or she, knowing the truth, states that truth.

That leaves out believers and especially you SFD.

Substitute willful ignorance for intellectual honesty and you are onto something.


----------



## bullethead

Yep...that is more like it:

Willful ignorance is the state and practice of ignoring any sensory input that appears to contradict one’s inner model of reality. At heart, it is almost certainly driven by confirmation bias.

It differs from the standard definition of “ignorance“ — which just means that one is unaware of something — in that willfully ignorant people are fully aware of facts, resources and sources, but refuse to acknowledge them. Indeed, calling someone "ignorant" shouldn’t really be a pejorative, but intentional and willful ignorance is an entirely different matter. In practice though, the word "ignorance" has often come to mean "willful ignorance", and indeed, in many non-English languages, the word based on the same stem actually carries that meaning.

It is sometimes referred to as tactical stupidity.

Depending on the nature and strength of an individual’s pre-existing beliefs, willful ignorance can manifest itself in different ways. The practice can entail completely disregarding established facts, evidence and/or reasonable opinions if they fail to meet one’s expectations. Often excuses will be made, stating that the source is unreliable, that the experiment was flawed or the opinion is too biased. More often than not this is simple circular reasoning: “I cannot agree with that source because it is untrustworthy because it disagrees with me”.

In other slightly more extreme cases, willful ignorance can involve outright refusal to read, hear or study, in any way, anything that does not conform to the person’s worldview. With regard to oneself, this can even extend to fake locked-in syndrome with complete unresponsiveness. Or with regard to others, to outright censorship of the material from others.


----------



## JB0704

bullethead said:


> Intellectual honesty is honesty in the acquisition, analysis, and transmission of ideas. A person is being intellectually honest when he or she, knowing the truth, states that truth.
> 
> That leaves out believers and especially you SFD.



That's what's been missin'......too much gettin' along going on in here these days


----------



## bullethead

JB0704 said:


> That's what's been missin'......too much gettin' along going on in here these days



You know all you have got to do is ask....


----------



## bullethead

> Quote:
> Originally Posted by bullethead View Post
> Intellectual honesty is honesty in the acquisition, analysis, and transmission of ideas. A person is being intellectually honest when he or she, knowing the truth, states that truth.





> That leaves out believers and especially you SFD.



JB, full well knowing that No One actually KNOWS the Truth (regarding "believers" and religion) is the part in Red me NOT being intellectually honest? Or Is it me being intellectually honest?


----------



## WaltL1

> "Why do we value intuition if it is no different than the animals," or "shouldn't we pay more attention to animal thoughts."


Um we ARE animals 


> A person is being intellectually honest when he or she, knowing the truth, states that truth.


Here's a question. Whats the "truth" when it comes to the existence of gods? What is required for something to undeniably be called the "truth"? At this point in history can either a unbeliever or believer claim to know the undeniable truth? Maybe neither?


> Depending on the nature and strength of an individual’s pre-existing beliefs, willful ignorance can manifest itself in different ways. The practice can entail completely disregarding established facts, evidence and/or reasonable opinions if they fail to meet one’s expectations.


Now we are getting somewhere.
Does religion REQUIRE willful ignorance?


> That's what's been missin'......too much gettin' along going on in here these days





> You know all you have got to do is ask....


----------



## bullethead

WaltL1 said:


> Um we ARE animals


YUP!



WaltL1 said:


> Here's a question. Whats the "truth" when it comes to the existence of gods? What is required for something to undeniably be called the "truth"? At this point in history can either a unbeliever or believer claim to know the undeniable truth? Maybe neither?


That is right...neither.
Yet SFD would yet again assert that believers are the only people to posses intellectual honesty which asserts all believers know the truth. 
His very statement is the perfect example of Intellectual Dishonesty due to Willful Ignorance.




WaltL1 said:


> Now we are getting somewhere.
> Does religion REQUIRE willful ignorance?


With post after post after post after post both in this forum and the religious forums above there is no doubt religion is overflowing with willful ignorance. If it is not required "believers" have certainly found ways to include it.


----------



## JB0704

bullethead said:


> JB, full well knowing that No One actually KNOWS the Truth (regarding "believers" and religion) is the part in Red me NOT being intellectually honest? Or Is it me being intellectually honest?



I don't have a lot of time to post, but we are on a roll today......the above could be a great thread too!

When I get a chance, I may post 'em up later tonight and see if we can find some new ground to cover.

Consider this, how can you "know" whether you are being intellectually honest or not? I'm not saying you aren't, but think about the parameters by which you make that judgment.


----------



## JB0704

WaltL1 said:


> Um we ARE animals



Sure.....and that's why it's a decent topic.  Refer back to Darwin's concerns over the logical conclusion of his beliefs.  What does that say about our intuition?

I think this could be a thread 



WaltL1 said:


> Here's a question. Whats the "truth" when it comes to the existence of gods? What is required for something to undeniably be called the "truth"? At this point in history can either a unbeliever or believer claim to know the undeniable truth? Maybe neither?



That's another point, and I touched on it briefly in my reply to Bullet.

Who defines the parameters?



WaltL1 said:


> Now we are getting somewhere.
> Does religion REQUIRE willful ignorance?



Oh.....heck no.


----------



## WaltL1

JB0704 said:


> Sure.....and that's why it's a decent topic.  Refer back to Darwin's concerns over the logical conclusion of his beliefs.  What does that say about our intuition?
> 
> I think this could be a thread
> 
> 
> 
> That's another point, and I touched on it briefly in my reply to Bullet.
> 
> Who defines the parameters?
> 
> 
> 
> Oh.....heck no.


I know Darwin was just communicating a thought and not making any claims but -


> "With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"


My thoughts are his thought is really flawed. This -


> Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind


Ignores this -


> which has been developed


His thought is comparing apples and oranges.
Would we compare an infants mind to the mind of a Harvard graduate? The infant and the Harvard grad both share DNA etc but beyond that.....


----------



## JB0704

WaltL1 said:


> Would we compare an infants mind to the mind of a Harvard graduate? The infant and the Harvard grad both share DNA etc but beyond that.....



No, we would not.   As far as value of the thoughts are concerned, we do not as well.....but, we also give people value for being people.


----------



## WaltL1

bullethead said:


> YUP!
> 
> 
> That is right...neither.
> Yet SFD would yet again assert that believers are the only people to posses intellectual honesty which asserts all believers know the truth.
> His very statement is the perfect example of Intellectual Dishonesty due to Willful Ignorance.
> 
> 
> 
> With post after post after post after post both in this forum and the religious forums above there is no doubt religion is overflowing with willful ignorance. If it is not required "believers" have certainly found ways to include it.


Were you expecting anything different from him?

 As for willful ignorance being a requirement, for me personally, I think it is undeniable that a certain amount of willful ignorance is required to believe the whole story. That was the main problem with religion for me. I had to make a choice. Why?
But I will add that I don't find that right or wrong in believers. For believers the benefit they receive is worth more than what the cost is and of course every good thing has a cost.  What I do find wrong/don't agree with, is when believers are not honest about that. And again Im talking about religion specifically.


----------



## WaltL1

JB0704 said:


> No, we would not.   As far as value of the thoughts are concerned, we do not as well.....but, we also give people value for being people.


I agree.
And to be honest, Im hanging on by a thread in understanding the direction you are wanting to go with this. I think Im missing the point you are making? And hopefully by now you know me well enough to know Im pointing my finger at myself, not you


----------



## JB0704

WaltL1 said:


> I agree.
> And to be honest, Im hanging on by a thread in understanding the direction you are wanting to go with this. I think Im missing the point you are making? And hopefully by now you know me well enough to know Im pointing the finger at myself, not you




It's all good.  I might be doing a poor job of gettin' my point across, I've been jumping in and out of this thread in between a lot of other stuff.

I guess my point is that we will value humans more than any other animal.  This is true for believers, agnostics, atheists, etc.  We all do.   This is an emotional position, because the logical conclusion would be that humans carry no more value, in a universal perspective, than a monkey.

Regardless of our belief system, whether we are believers, agnostic, atheist, whatever, we have this one area where we do not consider the intellectually honset position (everybody is stardust) and we operate under the emotional conclusion.......humans carry more value.

It's just my way of pointing out that intellectual honesty cannot always be the basis for what we think say and do.  Sometimes, we have to go with our instinct.  Whether those instincts were created or evolved.


----------



## WaltL1

JB0704 said:


> It's all good.  I might be doing a poor job of gettin' my point across, I've been jumping in and out of this thread in between a lot of other stuff.
> 
> I guess my point is that we will value humans more than any other animal.  This is true for believers, agnostics, atheists, etc.  We all do.   This is an emotional position, because the logical conclusion would be that humans carry no more value, in a universal perspective, than a monkey.
> 
> Regardless of our belief system, whether we are believers, agnostic, atheist, whatever, we have this one area where we do not consider the intellectually honset position (everybody is stardust) and we operate under the emotional conclusion.......humans carry more value.
> 
> It's just my way of pointing out that intellectual honesty cannot always be the basis for what we think say and do.  Sometimes, we have to go with our instinct.  Whether those instincts were created or evolved.





> I guess my point is that we will value humans more than any other animal.


Well most of us. Lots of threads about "if you shoot my dog, I shoot you".


> and we operate under the emotional conclusion.......humans carry more value


.


> Whether those instincts were created or evolved


Maybe its natural. Started out as a survival mindset. Which maybe now has turned into a sort of arrogance.


> the logical conclusion would be that humans carry no more value, in a universal perspective, than a monkey.


From a universal perspective humans may just have the LEAST value. In fact the intellectually honest position might be that we are the locusts of the universe.


----------



## JB0704

WaltL1 said:


> Maybe its natural. Started out as a survival mindset. Which maybe now has turned into a sort of arrogance.



I don't guess there is any way of knowing whether or not this is unique to humans.  I wonder if any other critter ever rationilzes it's existence, or what it is for that matter.  I doubt it.  But, I think this is also kind-a what sets us apart. 



WaltL1 said:


> From a universal perspective humans may just have the LEAST value. In fact the intellectually honest position might be that we are the locusts of the universe.



Yes.  And that adds to my other point, there is only so much value in intellectual honesty before we have to rationlize otherwise.  If a person were to hold to such a position, it would be contrary to survival.  In that case, intellectual honesty is the inferior position to emotional rationalization.


----------



## ambush80

WaltL1 said:


> Well most of us. Lots of threads about "if you shoot my dog, I shoot you".
> .
> 
> Maybe its natural. Started out as a survival mindset. Which maybe now has turned into a sort of arrogance.
> 
> From a universal perspective humans may just have the LEAST value. In fact the intellectually honest position might be that we are the locusts of the universe.



Locusts want to live.  They don't want to die.  But they don't seem to have the capacity to reason.  When they eat a place out they go to a new place.  When all the food is gone they die.  They don't really plan for the future.  They're just slaves to natural processes. 

People for whatever reason can reason.  Why the ability to reason developed can be explained mostly by the sciences. Of course there are some gaps in the evidence and some assumptions have to be made until better methods of gathering info are developed.   Still, the fact that we can reason is no certain evidence of a higher power, not to me anyway.

Now ants, that's a different story.


----------



## WaltL1

ambush80 said:


> Locusts want to live.  They don't want to die.  But they don't seem to have the capacity to reason.  When they eat a place out they go to a new place.  When all the food is gone they die.  They don't really plan for the future.  They're just slaves to natural processes.
> 
> People for whatever reason can reason.  Why the ability to reason developed can be explained mostly by the sciences. Of course there are some gaps in the evidence and some assumptions have to be made until better methods of gathering info are developed.   Still, the fact that we can reason is no certain evidence of a higher power, not to me anyway.
> 
> Now ants, that's a different story.





> Locusts want to live.  They don't want to die.


Just like us.


> When they eat a place out they go to a new place.  When all the food is gone they die.  They don't really plan for the future.  They're just slaves to natural processes.


Break us down to our most basic and we aren't that much different. Sure we plan for the future but we have to because we are destroying the resources now and we know it wont last forever.
The locust uses resources for survival.
We destroy resources for fun, pleasure, profit, arrogance..... not sure I would call that more "reasonable".


> Still, the fact that we can reason is no certain evidence of a higher power, not to me anyway.


Agree.


> Now ants, that's a different story


  Ants and cockroaches will inherit the earth.


----------



## ambush80

WaltL1 said:


> Just like us.
> 
> Break us down to our most basic and we aren't that much different. Sure we plan for the future but we have to because we are destroying the resources now and we know it wont last forever.
> The locust uses resources for survival.
> We destroy resources for fun, pleasure, profit, arrogance..... not sure I would call that more "reasonable".
> 
> Agree.
> 
> Ants and cockroaches will inherit the earth.




"Reasonable".  That's a funny word that gets thrown around alot (particularly in the PF).   

Back to the JB's point which I believe is "The unique ability of humans to reason is somehow an indicator of divine origins".

How is this not simply another "God of the gaps" argument?


----------



## JB0704

ambush80 said:


> "Reasonable".  That's a funny word that gets thrown around alot (particularly in the PF).



Down there, somehow it has become a negative term, and defines the user as a commie liberal. 

But, "reasonable" is unique to humans.  



ambush80 said:


> Back to the JB's point which I believe is "The unique ability of humans to reason is somehow an indicator of divine origins".
> 
> How is this not simply another "God of the gaps" argument?



I'm not sure the conclusion can be made, from that information, that reason is evidence of divine origin.  It just opens up a pattern outside the typical evolution of everything else.  Expands the possibilities.


----------



## ambush80

JB0704 said:


> Down there, somehow it has become a negative term, and defines the user as a commie liberal.
> 
> But, "reasonable" is unique to humans.



I don't know about that.  Primates are capable of some provocative behaviours.  So are some of the cetaceans.  Until we can communicate effectively with them we will never really know what they're thinking.  Koko the gorilla is an interesting case .  She knows over a thousand signs and from what I've seen demonstrates some pretty complex thoughts.





JB0704 said:


> I'm not sure the conclusion can be made, from that information, that reason is evidence of divine origin.  It just opens up a pattern outside the typical evolution of everything else.  Expands the possibilities.



It should be looked at as something we should try to understand.


----------



## WaltL1

ambush80 said:


> I don't know about that.  Primates are capable of some provocative behaviours.  So are some of the cetaceans.  Until we can communicate effectively with them we will never really know what they're thinking.  Koko the gorilla is an interesting case .  She knows over a thousand signs and from what I've seen demonstrates some pretty complex thoughts.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It should be looked at as something we should try to understand.


Yup. My cat knows to hide behind the tree next to the bird feeder. I don't know if she is thinking "If I sit here long enough its pretty reasonable that a bird will show up". Or if she just associates the bird feeder with a bird.
Although if she will wait when one is not there seems to be evidence of some kind of "reasoning". 

And yes I like cats. Some of them.


----------



## JB0704

WaltL1 said:


> Although if she will wait when one is not there seems to be evidence of some kind of "reasoning".



Yes, that seems to be reasoning.  My wife's cat will catch moles for fun, and kill them, but not eat them.  A person would regard this as wasteful, as we contemplate the value of life, and the morality of killing for pleasure.  The cat just does what it does, and does not figure much else into the equation.

The degrees of complexity seems to be much greater amongst people, as well as the motivation.


----------



## ambush80

JB0704 said:


> Yes, that seems to be reasoning.  My wife's cat will catch moles for fun, and kill them, but not eat them.  A person would regard this as wasteful, as we contemplate the value of life, and the morality of killing for pleasure.  The cat just does what it does, and does not figure much else into the equation.
> 
> The degrees of complexity seems to be much greater amongst people, as well as the motivation.



I saw a show, David Attenborough was the narrator, where a killer whale caught a seal, flung it around for a bit and then returned it to the beach.

We'll never REALLY know what animals are thinking about until we can communicate with them somehow.  If an animal were to speak on "spiritual" matters, I wonder what it would say.  How would that fit into the Biblical ideas of animals?


----------



## JB0704

ambush80 said:


> If an animal were to speak on "spiritual" matters, I wonder what it would say.  How would that fit into the Biblical ideas of animals?



Good topic......

What types of communication would contradict Biblical concepts of animals?


----------



## ambush80

JB0704 said:


> Good topic......
> 
> What types of communication would contradict Biblical concepts of animals?



I guess it would depend on whether you're the type of Christian that believes animals don't have souls or not.  

If you don't believe that animals have souls and an animal were to tell you otherwise it might be a problem.

What if an animal told you it communicates with god and that god is Hindu.


----------



## JB0704

ambush80 said:


> If you don't believe that animals have souls and an animal were to tell you otherwise it might be a problem.



Depends on what the beliefs for such a position are based on.  I generally think that they do not, but, that is from something I think I remember from being a kid in church.....I have not studied the topic so much from a biblical perspective.  I think I remember reading that they return to the earth, sort of thing, somewhere.



ambush80 said:


> What if an animal told you it communicates with god and that god is Hindu.



I would fully vet the source of information against that which I know and believe.....primarily I would wonder why God, who would be external to religion, would claim any religion.  Religion is how we see and interact with God, it does not define him.


----------



## ambush80

JB0704 said:


> Depends on what the beliefs for such a position are based on.  I generally think that they do not, but, that is from something I think I remember from being a kid in church.....I have not studied the topic so much from a biblical perspective.  I think I remember reading that they return to the earth, sort of thing, somewhere.
> 
> 
> 
> I would fully vet the source of information against that which I know and believe.....primarily I would wonder why God, who would be external to religion, would claim any religion.  Religion is how we see and interact with God, it does not define him.



That's the thing,  an animal that tells you it has a soul would have the same amount of evidence that you have (not including any doctrine).  


I got ahead of myself with that second part.


----------



## JB0704

ambush80 said:


> That's the thing,  an animal that tells you it has a soul would have the same amount of evidence that you have (not including any doctrine).



An animal telling me it has a soul, in a reasoned interaction to convince me, would most likely make me rethink my opinion on the matter.

We've discussed it before, but, this seems to be what sets us apart.  I have been deep sea fishing when dolphins would steal snapper right off the hook, yet never get hooked themselves.  That is very intelligent, as most predators in the wild hammer what they intend to kill, and, tend to get themselves hooked in the process.  So, there is an ability to reason to some extent, but what is the motivation?


----------



## bullethead

Survival is the motivation. Trial and error and the ability to pass the technique to other dolphins and or offspring shows the intelligence and ability to adapt.


----------



## JB0704

bullethead said:


> Survival is the motivation. Trial and error and the ability to pass the technique to other dolphins and or offspring shows the intelligence and ability to adapt.



Yes.  I've heard of divers watching them teach the young to do it.  It's cool.......but crazy annoying when I've dropped $1400 on an off-shore trip and lose half the fish to dolphins.

They are motivated for survival, what motivated me to drop $1400 on an off-shore trip?  I could take that same money and bring home a lot more fish from the grocery store......and probably be a lot safer in doing so.


----------



## ambush80

JB0704 said:


> Yes.  I've heard of divers watching them teach the young to do it.  It's cool.......but crazy annoying when I've dropped $1400 on an off-shore trip and lose half the fish to dolphins.
> 
> They are motivated for survival, what motivated me to drop $1400 on an off-shore trip?  I could take that same money and bring home a lot more fish from the grocery store......and probably be a lot safer in doing so.




Boredom?


----------



## JB0704

ambush80 said:


> Boredom?



That's certainly my motivation for beating this dead horse 

As far as off-shore trips, and most adventures we get into, we are interested in intangibles which really have nothing to do with survival.


----------



## BowtechDan

bullethead said:


> Survival is the motivation. Trial and error and the ability to pass the technique to other dolphins and or offspring shows the intelligence and ability to adapt.



Same thing with humans. Why would survival be motivation?  If a pronounced lover of god got in a life or death situation....who cares?  Just shows death is where the rubber meets the road if you are a true believer.  Rationalizing starts in 3, 2, 1.......


----------



## SemperFiDawg

"You cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it."

- C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man


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## SemperFiDawg

"The Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th edition, devotes 20,000 words to the person of Jesus Christ and never once hints that He didn’t exist."

- John Ankerberg


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## SemperFiDawg

Kant on the Bible

“The existence of the Bible, as a book for the people, is the greatest benefit the human race has ever experienced. Every attempt to belittle it is a crime against humanity.”


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## SemperFiDawg

Malcolm Muggeridge on Faith

"I may, I suppose, regard myself, or pass for being, as a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the streets–that’s fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Internal Revenue–that’s success. Furnished with money and a little fame even the elderly, if they care to, may partake of trendy diversions– that’s pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time–that’s fulfillment. Yet I say to you — and I beg you to believe me–multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing–less than nothing, a positive impediment–measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are."


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## SemperFiDawg

Louis Pasteur on the Work of the Creator

"The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator... There is something in the depths of our souls which tells us that the world may be more than a mere combination of events."


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## SemperFiDawg

Blaise Pascal on God's Hiddenness

"What can be seen on earth indicates neither the total absence, nor the manifest presence of divinity, but the presence of a hidden God. Everything bears this stamp."

5/16/10


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## SemperFiDawg

Ravi Zacharias on Implications of Belief and Disbelief

"Nothing, absolutely nothing, has a more direct bearing on the moral choices made by individuals or the purposes pursued by society than belief or disbelief in God."


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## Israel

How strict a discipline a man has endured is manifest in his ability to bear contradiction.
Writer unknown


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## SemperFiDawg

“This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.”


― William Blake


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