Choosing a faith

I have responded to that numerous times including in this thread. I have also responded to that numerous times. Yes, it is a problem for Christians. Part of the answer is that there can't be an ability to choose good if you can't choose evil. As far as natural suffering as in earthquakes and cancer, i simply conclude that they are a natural part of an entropic world with only one dimension of time, that will ultimately lead to a world that is not subject to entropy. I realize that is not a perfect answer but at this point it is about faith.I do see God in people's empathy for, and the desire to help those that are suffering.

I'm still very unclear of what you actually believe. I don't know anybody who thinks that way and I certainly don't.For myself Christianity is more about vocation than about salvation. We are called to live our lives based on the Golden Rule. I do believe in an afterlife, and although I would agree that this life does impact the life to come it is above my pay grade to worry about how that happens. I suggest it is quite enough to work towards having a heart that naturally turns to empathy, compassion and generosity to our neighbours and even our enemies. I'm happy to let God look after what comes next, but the Gospels are clear that it is about our hearts and minds, and not about believing in a specific doctrine.

I'm not going through over 500 posts to find the posts that were my response to this issue. I quoted Brian Greene where he tells that the mathematics of science tells us that time should be symmetrical and flowing backwards and forwards but that entropy limits us to only going in one direction. Some rather esoteric scientific theories such as string theory speculate on the existence of additional time dimensions. We can only comprehend our world with a single dimension of time. We can move around infinitely with our 3 spatial dimensions and I suggest that God could do the same with more than one dimension of time and so no creator of the creator is needed. Of course, but that wasn't my point. It is a question of how a Christian who believes in a God who created and loves us would allow for suffering. OK, this is pure speculation but it seems to me that to have the world without evil it requires beings that have freely chosen good in the first place. Firstly I understand much of the Bible to be understood mythologically, but I don't know the mind of God other that\n what we can see in Jesus.

Are you trying to actually discuss this or are you just trying to score debating points. I'll try it another way. Science leaves open the possibility of an intelligent designer. I use your so-called best method for ascertaining the truth on subjects that it has answers to. There are things such as the existence of a deity that are outside it's purview. There are things that are essentially knowable, but there are also things that aren't knowable but believed based on experience and observation.My faith makes sense of my life and the world I live in. I have concluded and believed that there is an intelligent designer. I don't know that to be true but I am convinced that it is.

I believe God to be eternal and I simply gave one way that I see as a possible way of considering an eternal being. I just did. The fact that you don't accept my answer isn't the point. Hopefully we bot agree that as humans we should work to mitigate the suffering.

I can't remember where I read it but it was in a book on science that hoped to help the great unwashed like myself. The writer claimed that our universe is "an emergent property of a greater reality".I see God as being in that greater reality, and I simply see within that in that greater reality is the possibility of there being multiple dimensions of time without entropy. I suppose I agree with that. It is getting well into an area that is faith and belief. However it does give us one way to consider an non-entropic eternal world. Sure it was spread as Dawkins might say by natural memes. However that doesn't tell us wheteher ro not there is a God meme involved as well.

Ok, fair enough but we can form opinions about any of those examples based on what we do know. I do know that we have life including sentient beings that have a sense of right and wrong and can feel empathy. I know that we live in a very complex world and I have come to the conclusion that all of that is far more likely to emerge from a pre-existing intelligence than from mindless dirt.As for all of your other examples I have come to the conclusion that they are inconsistent with the world as I perceive it so I have rejected them. We can observe the thoughts effect on the brain and in our actions but we can't actually observe an actual thought. In addition we can only make a best guess as to what caused an individual to form that thought. However, thoughts are real. I've looked and found God in a parent lovingly hugging their child, in an individual selfless act of charity, in an individual risking or even giving their life to save others etc. I realize that you you and others see that as being the result of evolutionary forces but this is just something we can only agree to disagree on. I'm not claiming to know that we are the result of a pre-existing intelligence or not. I simply say that theistic, and in my case Christian belief, makes is far more consistent with the world I experience than atheism. Again, we simply disagree. OK, so you believe that the scientific method is the only way to answer questions. Again, I disagree. You don't accept it, but finding truth is at least as important to me as it is to you. My Christian belief hugely impacts how I live my life whereas I don't see atheism impacting people's thinking and by extension their lives. Atheists form their world views on other grounds which is fine.

The whole Armageddon thing is a anachronistic misunderstanding of the Bible. Jesus preached a message rejecting a violent revolution that would drive the Romans out. He preached a message of non-violent revolution. The destruction was about what would happen to Jerusalem and the Temple if a violent revolution would occur. I'm not saying that He knew this supernaturally but it was pretty clear that the Jewish nation was going that route, and Jesus was simply saying that the Romans would respond as they always did, which wasn't a unreasonable conclusion, even though an unpopular one.His message was essentially that the problem wasn't the Romans but the evil behind the Romans and the weapon that we have against evil id love. (Love your enemy, turn the other cheek etc.)I see Jesus as the ultimate good.Incidentally I am inclined to believe that Jesus returns to us individually as we shuffle off this mortal coil.

Your video is an hour and a half. Maybe you could summarize it.Actually, I am agnostic about the formation of the universe. From my Christian POV what interests me is the formation of life. Whether or not God created life in an pre-exiting world or not doesn't really impact my Christian beliefs. Well there is that collection of 66 books but there is also a life of observation and experience. The Bible uses the metaphor of using a cloud as representing the presence of God. It is really only in the last few years that science has explored the possibilities of other dimensions that we don't directly perceive and so I simply see the idea of another dimension in place of a cloud. Sure, physical evolution is. Finches beaks are changed in order to adapt, and there is a physical record of this. Evolution does not tell us how particular lines of thought came about, but only that they did. Everything else is pure conjecture. I'm agnostic as the whether God intervened in the process of physical evolution. I'm fine with the idea that it was all in place at the outset. I agree that science never will support the idea of the resurrection of Jesus. I have come to the conclusion that a resurrected Jesus is the best answer as to why the early Christian church evolved the way it did. Of course, without my basic theistic conclusions then the resurrection makes no sense.

Revelation is a book using hyperbolic apocryphal language. It is about the renewal of all things. The Gospels passages that are often used are about what the romans will do in reaction to a violent revolution. I have gone over that with OT references earlier in this thread. I keep getting asked the same questions. Ya like love your enemy, turn the other cheek, those who live by the sword die by the sword etc.

I don't that my relationship to Christ is uniquely personal. I believe that the "still small voice of God" is there for everyone including Tangle. I guess it's personal in that we all choose how to respond to it. I've used this quote from our liturgy previously. (Christianity is) "so complex so simple, so clear so mysterious" The clear simple part is that God loves His creation and that we are called to love and serve His creation in return. Working out the theology and the doctrine around that is mysterious and complex. As a Christian I see Jesus making it least less complex.I actually speculatively see God creating the universe roughly this way. As I said earlier, I see our universe as being an emergent property of a greater reality. In that regard it simply always existed, but not necessarily the way we perceive it. I see God as having been responsible for the rise of life and for creatures that perceive our universe in the manner that we do.I am not claiming that as a fact, or that it is even likely, as for one thing I have no evidence to support it. However it does fit with all that I have read. I am convinced though that God is responsible for life and the world in the way that we perceive it.I'd add that my views in general are pretty consistent with a large chunk of the CofE, aside of the thoughts regarding creation.

Jesus taught that ultimately love is more powerful than evil.

That is nonsense. I don't deny that there is considerable evidence on how things occur naturally. What evidence do you have that all of these things that have evolved natural came about mindlessly. You have concluded that all that happens naturally is the result of more natural processes.. You base it on the fact that all that we have found that happens naturally simply happens without invoking a creative intelligence, but you don't have evidence on a root cause of why they happened. It requires a virtually infinite regression of processes. So you are then saying that a thought is physical. I'm certainly out of my depth here but a scan will show thought in the brain and we can deduce certain information regarding that thought but it doesn't tell us precisely what a thought is. I don't see it as not being able to find but about being able to ignore it. Certainly our thoughts are heavily influenced by life experience and also by a brain trauma. A damaged brain like will certainly mess up our ability to be able to love. You just keep saying that but it is simply wrong and I've explained over and over why that is the case. Studies have also shown that those who are generous are on average more content than those that are less so.Here is a study from the secular Hoover Institute on charitable giving. Religious Faith and Charitable GivingHere is a quote from that article.

quote:

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Socioeconomically, the religious and secular groups are similar in some ways and different in others. For example, there is little difference between the groups in income (both have average household incomes around $49,000) or education level (20 percent of each group holds a college degree). On the other hand, the secular group is disproportionately male (49 percent to 32 percent), unmarried (58 percent to 40 percent), and young (42 to 49 years old, on average). In addition, the sccbs data show that religion and secularism break down on ideological lines: Religious people are 38 percentage points more likely to say they are conservative than to say they are liberal (57 percent to 19 percent). In contrast, secular people are 13 points more likely to say they are liberal than to say they are conservative (42 percent to 29 percent).

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Judas was in all likelihood a revolutionary that wasn't opposed to violent revolution but who saw Jesus as Yahweh's messiah who would miraculously rid them of the Romans. When he came to the understanding that this was not going be the case, he turned on Jesus. He either did this because he saw Jesus as drawing away support for the revolutionary movement, or he could well have thought that by doing this it would cause Yahweh to react.As for the pigs I understand it as a an account of Jesus finding a man with a mental issue. He was not in Jewish territory as Jews wouldn't be keeping pigs or spending time in a grave yard for that matter. "Legion" would be a reference to the many soldiers in the Roman Legions and would represent evil. The OT and particularly Daniel taught that monsters as representing evil came from the sea. The Roman legions represent evil and so, this part at least, is a metaphorical account of evil being driven back into the sea from whence it came.

OK.
A man is having his brain scanned. Two meals are put in front of him and he is to choose one. Does the scan show us which meal he picked.