I think the common rebuttal is "you are free to choose but he knows what you will choose." The funny thing is they always say it with a straight face like that even makes sense.

 

x2

yeah if someone knows what you will choose then there is no choice to begin with.

so either you have to say god doesnt know everything, or that he doesnt exist, or that he also has an evil side and just punishes people for fun.


and these are all things i am trying to think of while atemtping to 'think outside the box' and support the god theory

 

how about over a billion starving people in the world?

We all can see those children in india and africa dying of hunger, is it because they don't worship the real god? Or are they there starving to teach US a lesson?

 

LOL... It's so funny when people thank god for all the good stuff that happens to them like wining a football game. I just think to myself dude... don't you think god has way better things to do like help innocent starving disease ridden babies in Africa. Why would he help you get an A on your test but not help innocent children live? Talk about arrogant!

 

Wait!!! I just realized something! If god gave us free will what is the point of praying? He can't do anthing to help you as it would affect the decision you would ultimately make. So everything you have ever thanked god for is a contradiction of your belief that we have free will.

 

exactly.

I love when you get that interview from nfl players and they say something equal to "I'd like to thank god for acknowledging my team's superior faith and devotion, and awarding us the trophy because we are deserving, so says jesus."

 

When Jesus was alive, Satan tempted him by saying that if Jesus bowed down and did a act of worship to him, that he would give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world. If Satan did not control the kingdoms, why wouldn't Jesus just say "Those arent yours to give me."? Satan is in control of this system of things.

God CAN know what the future will bring, he chooses not to know what each individual person will do. He gives us the ability to choose if we want to serve him.

 

Wait! Normally I let people get away with dumb rationalizations but can you "CHOOSE" not to know something? Either you know it or you don't, once you know you can't not know.

 

why would god choose not to know, seems like he would just know all. Your saying, he chooses to block that part out, as like a little game he is playing with himself for amusement? That doesn't make a whole lotta sense.

again, if he knows all, he already knows the choice we'll make. So us praying or not praying to him, and him forgiving or not us, is already known to him. Seems like with the bible's guess of him knowing everything, means even he doesn't make a choice in anything he does, as what will happen simply will happen. As a all powerful god, anything he could want to happen could, UNLESS he already knows what he will do. then he doesn't even have a choice. right?

 

“And God said, Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) and “. . .And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1 :5), versus “And God said, ‘Let there be light in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night....’ “And God made two lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also… And the evening and morning were the fourth day” (Genesis 1 :14-19).


It is quite clear that when Genesis says "the evening and morning" to be equal to a "day", Genesis meant that in a literal sense. It is mentioned not once, not twice, not even three or four times. In Genesis 2:7 humans are created instantaneously from dust and breath, whereas they actually evolved over millions of years from simpler life forms. Science can in fact trace back human evolution CONCLUSIVELY 3 .2 million years. How is it possible then that the bible is right since it is beyond doubt that the Earth is billions of years old, not 6000 as is claimed in the bible:

“So God created man in his own image,...male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27), and “the evening and the morning were the sixth day” (Genesis 1:31). If Adam was created on the 6th day, approximately 6,000 years ago (Bishop Usher’s calculations), then nobody lived before 4,000 B.C. Prehistoric men would be fictitious. By tracing the genealogy of jesus back 77 generations to Adam, the third chapter of Luke also supports belief in a very young earth. If each man had lived approximately 100 years, then the world would be no more than 9,684 (7,700 + 1984) years old. If each of jesus’ ancestors had lived to be 1,000 years old (an age not even reached by Methuselah), the earth would still be only 78,984 (77,000 + 1984) years old, according to creationists.






“And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind… ‘And the evening and the morning were the third day” (Genesis 1:11-13), versus “And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life… And God created - great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly… And the evening and the morning were the fifth day” (Genesis 1:20-23).

Genesis says that life existed first on the land as plants and later the seas teemed with living creatures. Geological science can prove that the sea teemed with animals and vegetable life long before vegetation and life appeared on land.





“And God said, ‘Let the water bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven” (Genesis 1:20).

Birds did not emerge from water.





"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, the beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made…every thing that creepth upon the earth after his kind…" (Genesis 1:24-25).

While reptiles existed in the Carboniferous Age, mammals did not appear until the close of the Reptilian Age.





“And to every beast of the earth, and every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so” (Genesis 1:30).

Carnivorous beasts and fowl do not eat green herbs, nor were all animals originally herbivores. Simply consider tapeworms, vampire bats, mosquitoes, barracudas, tigers, etc.




“There were giants in the earth in those days.” Genesis 6:4

But there is no archaeological evidence for the existence of these giants. Also there is a reference to the “Nephilim” being on the earth. Which is a term used for half angel, half human. Why is there no archaeological evidence for the existence of the Nephilim either?





Noah is told to make an ark that is 450 feet long (Genesis 6:14-15). The largest wooden ships ever built were just over 300 feet, and they required diagonal iron strapping for support. Even so, they leaked so badly that they had to be pumped constantly. Are we to believe that Noah, with no shipbuilding knowledge and no shipbuilding tradition to rely upon, was able to construct a wooden ship that was longer than any that has been built since?





The flood covered the highest mountain tops (Mount Everest?) with fifteen cubits to spare (Genesis 7:20). Where did all the water come from? Where did it all go? Why is there no evidence of such a massive flood in the geological record?





God is filled with remorse for having drowned his creatures in the flood. He even puts the rainbow in the sky so that whenever the animals see it they will remember gods promise not to do it again (Genesis 9:13).

But rainbows are caused by the nature of light, the refractive index of water, and the shape of raindrops. There were rainbows billions of years before humans existed.





“The whole earth was of one language” (Genesis 11:1).

But this could not be true, since by this time (around 2400 BCE) there were already many languages, each unintelligible to the others.





Bats are birds to the biblical god (Leviticus 11:13-19 & Deuteronomy 14:11-1.





Unicorns have never existed, yet they are said to in Deuteronomy 33:17.

 

i'd just like to point out, that no matter how old someone lives to be, "generations" are still the same as our generations. It doesn't matter that I live to 200 years old. I had my son at 22. just like most everyone in the bible. Abrahams wife had her kid at what 80-100?, and that is of such huge importance in the bible that it is deemed a miracle.

 

Why is it the every civilization have stories of a great flood that almost wiped out all humans on earth?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_%28mythology%29

All different civilizations, but roughly the same story.

Couldn't the water of the flood created the oceans? Does it matter?

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_%28mythology%29
* A decayed human skeleton claimed by eyewitnesses to measure around 3.28 metres (10 feet 9 inches tall), was unearthed by labourers while ploughing a vineyard in November 1856 in East Wheeling, now in West Virginia.
* A human skeleton measuring 3.6 metres (12 foot) tall was unearthed at Lompock Rancho, California, in 1833 by soldiers digging in a pit for a powder magazine. The specimen had a double row of teeth and was surrounded by numerous stone axes, carved shells and porphyry blocks with abstruse symbols associated with it.
* Several mummified remains of red haired humans ranging from 2-2.5 metres (6.5 feet to over 8 feet) tall were dug up at Lovelock Cave, (70 miles) north-east of Reno, Nevada, by a guano mining operation. These bones substantiated legends by the local Paiute Indians regarding giants which they called Si-Te-Cahs. For some reason scientists did not seem to want to investigate these finds further so many of the bones were lost. Fortunately one of the giant Lovelock skulls is still preserved today. It measures almost 30cm (1 foot) tall and resides along with other various Lovelock artefacts in the Humboldt Museum in Winnemucca, Nevada. Some of these artefacts can also be found in the Nevada State Historical Society's museum at Reno.
* A 9' 11" skeleton was unearthed in 1928 by a farmer digging a pit to bury trash in Tensas Parish, Louisiana near Waterproof. In 1931 a 10' 2" skeleton was unearthed by a boy burying his dog in 1933 in Nearby Madison Parish.

Show me where in Deuteronomy 33:17 that it mentions of a unicorn creature. As the firstborn of a bull his splendor is,
From the New World Translation

And his horns are the horns of a wild bull.
With them he will push peoples
All together to the ends of the earth,
And they are the tens of thousands of E′phra·im,
And they are the thousands of Ma·nas′seh

Fragments of bones are found, are from those small pieces, Scientists put together a full skeleton.

Again from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Man

Java Man was one of the first specimens of Homo erectus to be discovered. It was originally given the scientific name Pithecanthropus erectus by its discoverer Eugčne Dubois, who found the remains at the site of Trinil in 1891. The word "pithecanthropos" was derived from Greek roots and means ape man.

Dubois' find was not a complete specimen, but consisted merely of a skullcap, a femur, and three teeth. It was also not clear whether those bones came from the same species. (Itallics added). SCIENTISTS DONT EVEN KNOW IF THESE BONES ARE FROM THE SAME SPECIES!

You know, I could go outside, dig a hole, find one or two bones, and from these bones, draw up pictures of a flying fire breathing half dragon/half octupus, based mearly on my find. Would it be accurate? No. All these "skeletons" are just random collections of bones.

From this

Scientist get this

Read

These scientist are just so desperate to believe, that they will believe anything. Yet if I found a arm bone in the middle east, that was slightly different than other arm bones, and I said that it was a nephilim bone. Would scientist believe me? No. Could you blame them? No. Wouldn't finding one piece of a skeleton and from that, deducing everything about a civilization from body hair to tools that they used be kinda retarded? Even though they do the same thing.

 

BTW, no one answered my question that if Scientists have been wrong before even though they have proof (flat earth, earth being the center of the universe), why couldn't carbon dating be wrong? Couldn't things like more or fewer amounts of different elements in the ground make items from the same time period, yield completly different results?

 

Carbon dating experiments have been wrong in the past, and this is what christians keep pointing to. Carbon dating today is much more accurate.

you're refereing to the "catholic approved" science that said the world was like a flat floating coin and the center of the universe.

and please-please-please start a debate on the flood.

your book says 40days and 40 nights. if ALL the world's ice melted, you know sealevel wouldn't go up but 215 feet, right? That means anyone 215 feet above sea level would be fine. All those people that didn't get on noah's boat, could run up a little hill and be saved from god's wraith.

and I'd even be ok with "god put all that extra water on the earth, and then took it away by magic". Ok, have you heard about the term salinity? I have saltwater tanks at home, and i can tell you, if you lowered the salinity a hundredth as much as the great flood says it was, you'd whipe out 98% of all marine life. Anemones, corals, most all aquaticlife, gone, dead within hours of a salinity change like that. Noah didn't have a huge aquarium in his boat in which he closely maintained salinity and ph.

see the authors who wrote genesis didn't know how salinity works. they thought if it's in the sea, all it needs is water to live.

 

Ok lets just put it this way, if god did make the earth, (which he did), and did cause a flood, couldn't he make it so the marine life wouldn't die out? If God did create earth (which he did) why couldnt he instruct Noah to build the ark in a way that would work?

I'll admit, that I dont fully understand how God did it. Just like you dont fully understand how evolution happened (or didnt happen). I hope and pray that one day, I will be able to ask Noah how he did it.

 

I get it, God is Magic, and Magic can do anything.

perfect logic.

ok, "god" gave noah exact dimensions of his ship right?

Pretend dinosaurs and any animal that is extinct never existed, do you really think 2 of each animal could fit on his boat? hard to say without doing the math, right?

from christiananswers.net: (The total available floor space on the ark would have been over 100,000 square feet, which would be more floor space than in 20 standard-sized basketball courts.)

ok, now add all the species of land insects. ok, now you don't even got to guess, it can't be done.

 

Are you all still arguing over a persons opinion, or choice to believe in something?

Believe or not, to each his own.

Either way, Al Gore invented the internet, Chuck Norris is the boogyman, and Vin Diesel is still ___.

 

i think that at the end of the day the brigthtest scientist can not solve everything. Gravity for example, we(humans) know it exists but not how. we have theories but not hardcore facts. Also as we keep finding smaller and smaller parts of cells there will come a time where we find the smallest, and how can we explain how this particle would of been formed?

faith is what holds religon together. the belief in that something greater then whats currently on earth created the universe is not that hard to believe in. Everything comes from something. "Matter is neither created nor destroyed", but orignally has to come form somewhere. that somewhere is God.

dont get me wrong, i am not a very religious person myself but i do have to admit that a higher being exists. to me it just makes sense. i also respect those that have different views. in the end "from ashes we are born, to ashes we will go".

 

Whatever I say, will be mocked. I admit I dont have all the answers as to how it happened, you admit that you dont have all the answers to how evolution happened. Yet you mock me by saying how can you believe in something that I cant prove.

I hope that one day, you will see that Evolution isnt as much of a fact that you believe it is. I think your major turnoff to religion is hypocrasy. I understand that, and have answered numerous questions that have been raised up.

Just one last point, do you really think its possible for how everything is perfect exactly the way it is now to come from evolution? Everything by chance happened to fall into place in exactly the right place? We have a immune system to protect us from disease. We have a sense of taste? Why do we have a sense of taste? What reason would we evolve in a matter that gives us that? We have eyes that are more complicated than any camera that will ever exist. Why? We live on a earth that is perfect, is at the perfect angle, rotates at the perfect speed, and can replenish itself, even after mankind damages it.

I CAN NOT believe that this all just happened by chance. Its ridiculous. You mock religion, yet when you get down to it, evolution requires as much faith in a unseen force as does religion.

 

Unicorns are found in the KJV nine times: Numbers 23:22, 24:3, Deuteronomy 33:17, Job 39:9, 29, Psalm 22:21, 29:6, 92:10, and Isaiah 34:7.