Why is Faith a Virtue?

"God told me to invade iraq etc" not exact quoteBBC - Press Office - George Bush on Elusive PeaceIndeed was said by a palestinian prime minister. Of course that was after private talks with Palestine...

Fits just fine for me! Doesn't ring hollow at all. I'm comfortable with my own mortality.Dreaming up an afterlife for which we have no evidence and no consistent model seems truly hollow to me. Assuming that ONE concept of an afterlife is more valid than all others also seems more than a little self-serving. Then why expect worship? Why should I "believe" in you? Is your ego SO fragile?..and why did you limit your intervention to a particular corner of the planet Earth 2000 years ago? How is "sacrificing" an ever-living avatar of yourself a true sacrifice? Do lifeforms on other planets (if they exist) worship you? Did you send a messiah to those people too?.......is warp-drive possible? What happens when a cat with a piece of buttered bread tied its back falls?

This is where Iano and others lose the rest of us. Let's say you got up tomorrow and decided "yeah got to more to this universe", what's the next stage?this happened to a friend of mine, who came to the conclusion there must be a god. However the leap he didn't make was saying well, that must mean the bible is true, - in actual fact he is more convinced than ever that the bible is a load of old chuff.The other problem, as you have pointed out, is that christians who try and promote their god via a mixture of needy pleading and threats (hell insurance) just tend to make their god appear a sad pathetic little creature full of ego and malice.

Yes, that's the quote. Reported ONLY in the BBC, nowhere else that I could find, and said by this Palestinian minister, and Bush denied it. If you search farther you will find that too.{edit: Here's one report from The San Francisco Chronicle onlineAlso found that the Guardian reported what the BBC reported. Seems to be a British preoccupation. But the White House denies it. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I mean 'it all' 'the whole show' 'the way it is'. The world, your life, your place in it. Accident and chance provides sufficient for you? Where would you look for evidence? And if you don't know where you would look, is it not a little premature to suppose as you do? Assuming for a sec you were in the no-evidence either way position. Yes, it might well be self-serving. But it can equally be that what I say is the case. Can you see a pattern building up here? Two equally viable options and you plump for one. Disbelief over belief. That is the mechanism of damnation - rejection.But it is not the case that you have no evidence, its that you choose explainations for the evidence which point in a different direction. You have, for example, a sense of right and wrong and plump for the argument which says this is something you learned from your parents (or more mystifyingly perhaps - accident and chance caused it to arise in you)The intricacy and harmony in nature? Chance. The fine balance that allows life to exist at all? Chance. The sheer mind boggling wonder of the universe? It just happened. Life arose out of non-life? Given enough time anything can happen (an evidenceless statement to beat them all)"Yup" you say. "It fits..." "I don't expect it, I deserve it. Look at what I did for you - I made a sacrifice nobody would contenance in order to make it possible for you to be with me (something which would have made you happier and more content that anything you ever experienced). Those who didn't reject me I brought to me and they realise what it is I did for them and can't help but worship me - they choose to do so - I do not demand it. I gave them as well as you free will. They exercise it. As do you."Your demolishing a straw-worship Rick. Its not some grovelling, forelock tugging exercise. I worship him because he deserves it. Has earned it if you like. I want to. If I didn't worship then it wouldn't affect my being saved in the least. I can do what I like and I will never be lost. It's just that I don't want to do what I like anymore, I want to do what he likes - he knows better than me whats good for me. I'm only a son afterall. He's the father. Common sense says that a son takes his fathers guidance. That at least fitsNo worship? What a crazy idea. It would be like loving someone but never expressing it. What a concept!

Yup. I simply don't look for evidence. I'm simply not interested in "finding" God. Even if God DOES exist, I'm not interested in living my life for him. "You sacrificed an avatar of yourself and brought it back to life 2000 years ago. What DOES that do for me? If you are referring to the entirity of creation, then well done, but again, why do you need me worship you? Isn't my respect enough?" "Well I'm not interested." "How very convenient... Still not interested. What happens now?" A good father doesn't seek to control his son with veiled threats.Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

Though off topic, I can't let this one go. You have never been able to support this either logically or Biblically yet you continue to spew it out as if it made any sense whatsoever. Satan had to believe in God yet he is obviously NOT an automaton.

The first centuries of the Common Era were not like today in regard to communication. In retrospect the Church has assembled what appears to be a seamless plausible story and if one looks no further and accepts the New Testament as an accurate historical record and doesn't consider other important historical documents then you can accept the teachings of the church, sure.When historians look at references to the Gospels or to information contained in the Gospels puzzling discrepancies emerge. Earl Dougherty at his website:http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/home.htm
Is one accessible source of a critical historical study of early Christianity though there are many others. The developements of the Christian religion as revealed by history is not as seamlessly smooth as the official church telling of it.Early Christian's didn't apparently know much of what is later "gospel" and as we see in the developements of the four official gospels. What began in Mark is added to and developed by the later writers. Christianity was a creation that took place over several centuries by early Christians.It is not a simple news story or biography that was written up and examined and critiqued for accuracies by the scholars, journalists, and critics of the time and then all errors corrected pronounced verified. This is something the church came up with much later.lfen Edited by lfen, : "discrepancy" made plural and changed subtitle

Actually, that's exactly what the Satan of the Bible is - an automaton, a servant of God, a slave with no free will of his own. Satan is an "aspect" of God, if you will, not a separate entity.So, is Satan's faith in God a virtue?

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Certainly you can make the case that Satan does God's bidding and as such is a slave. However, he is still described as the Enemy and is supposed to wind up in the Lake of Fire for his disobedience and rebellion (redundant?).
The ability to disobey certainly supports the idea of a free will. The Quadrinity?

It's a killer ain't it One characteristic of an automaton is that it has no choice. Now if God reveals himself, unbidden and in a direct way to a person then they cannot choose to believe he doesn't exist in precisely the way that he does. There would be no possibiliy to misconstrue who he is. No possibility to arrive at a god in own image and likeness (say like the Jews did). Similarily a person could no longer be an atheist. Nor a Hindu, Buddist or the like. Nor agnostic. At least not without having a full frontal lobotomy. Choice to disbelieve evaporates.And this full knowledge of him would leave no choice to decide that one isn't a sinner and will be exposed to his wrath because of it. God revealing in this manner would confirm these things as facts (his being only light would show by contrast that there is darkness in us - assuming we survived the exposure) And as with the time when God actually will reveal himself to all then "every knee will bow (whether it wants to or not) and every tongue will confess (whether it wants to or not) that Jesus Christ is Lord". There is ample Biblical backup for what happens a man when God reveals himself directly - they fall flat on their faces and say "Lord!" There is no choice at that point. He is that awesome.Then what? A person now knows that they are a sinner and that they cannot keep Gods laws no matter how hard they try - and that this means they are Hell-bound. They would have no choice but to go insane from the sheer terror of what awaited them "This God, this awesome power expressing total wrath against little old me - for eternity....AAAAAAARRRRGHHH!!" People have gone insane for lesser reasons than such a terror. They would have no choice but to go insane.Except that that is not a choice in fact. For there is the gospel: everyone would flee to the gospel because the prospect of such terror allows for no other option to be considered. No choice but to run gospel-ward.The gospel is indeed the power of God unto salvation for all who believe" so we seem to be on safe ground here. But we are not dealing with people here, we are dealing with automatons. People who have no choice but to run to the gospel aren't people, they automatons. The gospel doesn't save automatons.So it seems that Gods revealing of himself in unbidden fashion leaves a man no choice but to go insane. Perhaps thats why God doesn't do it. He wants that "none should perish" not a bunch of lunatics

Y'know, I deliberately put in my take on Satan to soften the on-topic part of my post:Is Satan's faith in God a virtue?

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I seem to recall a certain burning-bush incident....Moses seems to have misunderstood the obligation to go insane.Not to mention Adam, Enoch....

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You failed to address the fact that Satan did disobey even though he knew all the aspects of God. And yet, Moses, Isaiah, and Daniel all remained sane after seeing God directly. Funny thing though, I never said that God had to show up in front of me personnally. Some direct evidence would suffice. Here's a list of some things that my solidify my faith in Him.
1. Bring people back to life like Jesus did, such that it is medically verifiable that the people were dead and then alive. Three times in a row is enough.
2. Instantaneous healing of paralyzed people, verified medically in before and after examinations. Probably, need 5 or 6 of these.
3. Predict the winners of all the Major League baseball games for 2007 and be right on all of them. Some method of recording the prediction and keeping it safe should be worked out.
4. Predict the number, sexes and names of my Grandchildren before their mothers get pregnant. Should be handled by a third party without my knowledge so it can't affect any decision on names.Obviously, God doesn't have to do this in person. One of His followers will do, since Jesus declared that they would do greater things than He.I really don't think this is too much to ask of the awsome God in order to get more people into heaven. Especially, since it is God's will that all come to Him.One would think that, knowing the limitations of my ability to believe, God would have found a way to overcome them.

And your source for this revisionist history is one oddball?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.