No offense, but this above statement or so-called arguement is knd of like a broken record, as it has been repeated incessantly.

If you knew what it was that you were diputing (which you do not), you would sieze this non-sensical repetitive speech that is ever making us believe that this IS the only excuse that you seem to have for your dis-belief.

You could not possibly know what faith IS, (except faith in scientists and their so-called theories, if one can call it such)), so how can you possibly understand it and give a fair and objective view? And do not say that you once had faith and THEN supposedly lost it, because if you had it in the first place, you NEVER would have completely lost it and therefore would still be able to understand it!!

GOD gave man "FREE WILL"!! UNDERSTAND "What" "free will" means! It means that God only KNOWS what we are going to do and WHAT the OUTCOME is going to be, ONCE we have made T-H-E decision!! GET THAT! GOD Gave Us Free Will! A GIFT!!! And up to you "ENTIRELY" as to what you are going to do with it!! HE will NOT take it back!!

Free Will is a gift of free choice that GOD HIMSELF has and HE shares this with HIS children, you, "ALL" so that HE would have True companionship.

Why would GOD that is Omnipotent and "All Knowing" need companionship?

Because HE DESIRED it! Why did an Omnipotent, "All-Knowing" GOD desire it?

Because HE WANTED it!!


I had already had the perfect vehicle, it had everything, fully loaded.
But I Desired a new one.
Why? Because I WANTED it!


Without IT, (Free Will) we would be just emotionless ATOMATOMS, without love, mercy, patience, kindness, empathy, forgiveness, laughter, humility, etc.. Without this GIFT, we'd be moving around the world in machine-like animation, without all the above emotions and not to mention abilities that only we, the Sons and Daughters of God have been gifted.

Wow I can envision a world like that! How peaceful, how harmonic the world "would" be if it were not for man and his ignorance, his ABUSE of his free will, to do other than than that of GOD's.
How GOD must really truely LOVE US to put up with it! HE is IN TRUTH long-suffering as time can testify IN its witness of such.

Another commonality we have with our FATHER isn't it? We always forgive our children when they have stumbled in their ignorance, but "know" too that they "MUST" learn from their own mistakes in order to "grow" in wisdom so that they will return back to whence they came,...home.


Blessings,
Curiousofall

Think on This ...
God. For He, as ye have been told, is not the God of the dead, no, not the God of those that have forsaken Him, but those that love His coming, that love His associations among men - the God of the LIVING, the God of Life! For, He IS Life.
Edgar Cayce Reading 3976-15

Think on This ...
(Q) If God is impersonal force or energy -
(A) (Interrupting) He IS impersonal; but as has just been given, so VERY personal! It is not that ye deal only with IMPERSONAL - it is WITHIN AND WITHOUT! It is IN and WITHOUT, and only as God QUICKENETH the spirit within, by the use, by the application of the God-force within to mete it out to others. Else HOW, WHY, did that material experience of a man hanging on a Cross bring - BRING - redemption to a world? In this:
Though ye know He had the power within Himself to come down from the Cross, though He had the power to heal, though He had power to rid the very taking HOLD upon death, it had no claims upon Him. Why? QUICKENED by the Father because the life LIVED among men, the dealings among MEN, brought ONLY hope, ONLY patience, ONLY love, ONLY longsuffering!
This then being the law of God made manifest, He BECOMES the law by manifesting same before man; and thus - as man, even as ye - becomes as one with the Father.
For until ye become in purpose, in activity, a savior - yea, a god - unto thy fellow man, ye do not take hold upon that PERSONALITY, the INDIVIDUALITY of GOD - that is the life, that is the being of life, eternity, hope and love!
These then become not only as impersonal but personal, in that ye know thyself, even as He - thy brother in the flesh - made manifest that ye are aware of thyself BEING thyself, yet one with Him; and thus able to enter into the joys, WHOLLY, that are prepared since - yea, before - the very foundations of materiality, for those that keep His ways.
Edgar Cayce Reading 1158-12

If you knew what it was that you were diputing (which you do not), you would sieze this non-sensical repetitive speech that is ever making us believe that this IS the only excuse that you seem to have for your belief.

You could not possibly know what reason IS, so how can you possibly understand it and give a fair and objective view? And do not say that you once had reason and THEN supposedly lost it, because if you had it in the first place, you NEVER would have completely lost it and therefore would still be able to understand it!!

more to the point:
i don't have faith, i have logic.
i know what the god is supposed to be, and i understand the various aspects of why people believe in such things.
broken records? that wouldn't be like the "faithful" going on and on and on and on now would it?

What IS logic without faith? Nothing, it would not exist.
To have logic, we must have faith that this logic is truth.

We that have faith can come up with as many arguements as any sceptic, but also with some variety, though it all comes to the same conclusion, that GOD exists.

I apologize that I put it in such a way as to be insulting. I meant only to make a point in that yours and anothers post's seem to use the "same" arguement. I guess I got a little snippy and I'm sorry.

Blessings,
Curiousofall

And yet another believer informing us that unless we believe, we cannot understand the concept of belief, or faith.

Thanks for the education.

To all the believers: Congratulations on your faith- whatever the flavor. I sincerely hope that it brings you comfort, either in this life, or the next.

To all the non-believers and those who are seeking answers: Keep asking those questions. Keep searching for the way. Whatever that way may be. and don not ever stop questioning the motives of men who would tell you it is wrong to ask those questions.

As for me, I'll spend my time on the other boards. The issues raised in the spirituality & scepticism threads will never be answered fully to anyones satisfaction as long as there are those on both sides unwilling to entertain the thought of 'something else'.

you use a star-trek-like analogy on faith:

every day i go out the mountain trails to run, and every day the mountains and the trails are there. if i took you out to the mountians, we could compare notes on what we perceive, and for the most part we would be in agreement.

Now what if on another day a third person goes out there and sees one mountain disappear. The mountain was a "cloak" for an alien observation post.

We meet this person and we argrue back and forth to the true nature of the mountian. We go back to the mountain and see it is a mountain, firmly discrediting our new friend and more firmly convinced that our perceptions were indeed correct.

The point is that the debate back and forth over higher order beings/gods has no resolution. It is foolhardy for either side to entrench itself though. Either one of us could be wrong, or both could be wrong (or both could be right).

I don't have faith in things because that, to me, it to place a falseness in them. Things are, and they are in the present. I can not be certian of any future or past events. As "out there" as it is, I can not prove my memories of life prior to now are not all fabricated, and my existance started at this moment! We accept things as absolute out of efficiency and convience since the likelihood if them becoming different is small. We must not falsely lock ourselves into these absolutes though!

Re-posted

Thank you. And thank you for yours.



It will!




All in good fun and no pun intended. Right back at ya!

This IS exactly what I, we, All of us ( faithful) ARE saying.

Seek!!! And Ye SHALL find the answers.

But not by putting your "faith" in mankind alone...

Blessings,
Curiousofall

My "faith" in God IS the only absolute that I have. It is the only thing in existense that gives me Hope. For me, all those I love, and mankind overall.

I confess, there was a time when I was so self-absorbed that I didn't care less about the other fellow, much less notice that God existed. And I put my belief in man, at least men/women that I believed that had all the answers. My life, decisions, "all" steps I took were basically because I thought that it was all there was. And I wouldn't have understood people that had faith even if it had had a physical manisfestation before my very eyes.

But through my own personal curiosity in seeking out the answers about GOD and what our purposes and reasons for being were, I had gained what we call faith.

So until one "understands" and "experiences" what is is that I've gained through this effort, there is no possible way to prove what "It" is.

Blessings,
Curiousofall

Yeah, they were evil.