Proving God's Existence Undermines Faith

It comes to the same thing. The result of not having faith is hell.

If a child expects to be punished by a parent for bad behavior, but is pretty sure he wouldn't get punished if he'd only be genuinely sorry and ask for forgiveness and try to make amends if he can, yet out of stubborn pride he won't do that, it's still punishment for the bad behavior he gets when he refuses to repent. Nothing new is added.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-11-2006 08:19 PM

The result of not being saved is Hell. If you are saved then faith you will be given. Faith goes with being saved - hand in hand.Its a multi-facetted affair, saved then all sorts, damned then allsorts. There is no particular reason to plump for faithIf you are not justified you are not saved
If you are not declared righteous then you are not saved
If you are not adopted then you are not saved
If you are not in Christ but remain in Adam you are not saved
If you have not faith then you are not savedAll same sides of the same coin. If you are one then you are automatically them all. Is that daunting? Know that it is He who accomplishes all these things... for you.This message has been edited by iano, 12-May-2006 01:23 AM

So we are pretty far off topic. Anybody want to start a new thread on the nature of faith or has it been done?My answer to the OP is that trying to prove God's existence doesn't affect faith at all. It's possibly a lost cause if the intention is to bring faith to others, since few of us come to faith by this kind of persuasion. But otherwise it's an expression of faith that we try to find explanations that make sense to others.

Here's another way of looking at it. Suppose I believe that the earth is flat. Have I committed an immoral act by believing such? No, I'm simply wrong in a factual sense, not in a moral sense.So if I say I believe there is no God, it seems to me the same evaluation applies. I might be wrong factually, but not morally.

This is just a way of saying you don't think you've done anything bad enough to deserve hell. If you did, you'd see how badly you need to be saved from it.

That is how the fallen mind thinks. If you want to trust it, that's your choice. But it's also why God gave His revelation of Himself in the Bible, so that we wouldn't be at the mercy of our fallen broken minds. Read the ten commandments. Have you obeyed them all to perfection? Only that would make you moral enough to avoid Hell. Otherwise you need a special dispensation of mercy from God. Which His revelation says He's provided. You can take it or leave it. If you trust your own intuition about what's right and moral over this purported revelation, and don't believe that your intuition and general powers of reasoning are terminally flawed by something we call the Fall, well, good luck.

Didn't get your whole post answered last time. Why it isn't just a factual matter to believe in God or not.Not to recognize the God who made you is a moral flaw, also a factual error but it's certainly moral as well, because both these flaws or errors are part of your fallen nature and the fallen nature is the result of moral transgression. The fallen nature is the consequence of the DISOBEDIENCE of God by our first parents. Disobedience of God is a moral matter, and it is the cause of our estrangement from God ever since. Again, all you have is your fallen thoughts on the one hand, and something purported to be God's revelation on the other, and it's your job to choose. If you choose your fallen thoughts, as I said, good luck.Oh, almost forgot. I guess you also have the option of Eastern style meditation in which you might learn to recognize (or achieve the state of, or whatever) the No-Self and supposedly be freed of your moral debt* that way. Good luck with that one too.ABE: * I note that Lfen has not mentioned the concept of a moral debt in all his discussions of freeing oneself from Samsara or the wheel of suffering, but the CAUSE of suffering in at least many cases (I don't know the whole philosophy) is Karma, or moral debt. What one extinguishes in Nirvana is Karma. There's more to it I suppose but it's interesting that that is left out of the discussion.That endless wheel, and all those supposed incarnations the Hindus and Buddhists believe in, are the result of moral debt. If you do a little better in one life you may get a nice temporary paradise between lives, but it's never over and you have to go back again to earth life and since we are all born in Ignorance you won't have a clue why you're there and are just as likely to do something really heinously bad and get sent to a terrible temporary hell next time, not to mention that in some Hindu views you could come back as something less than human as a result.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-11-2006 09:12 PM

"Oh wretched man that I am! WHO will deliver me from this body of death" is the point at which this dispensation is issued.I came to this point. Faith did too. The only thing that will prevent a person being brought to this point is a persons own denial that they are indeed wretched."On average I'm not so bad" is an escape which employs mans standard (which, although seemingly all enveloping, can be punctured like a balloon)We all do know that mans standard is insufficient. We all know what we are - were we to take our heads out of the sand for a moment.

http://EvC Forum: The Fact of Death -->EvC Forum: The Fact of DeathI'm not au fait with the genre but I gather that 'effort' is required on the part of the seeker. I was wondering here generally, whether one could be sure that the result wasn't simply the figment of ones own (spannered on) imagination

I wouldn't venture a guess at this point. The whole discussion is wearying to me. It simply struck me that in all the discussion the moral element hasn't even been mentioned. Karma is one's personal moral debt to the "universe" as it were -- at least that's how Americans tend to talk about it -- pain and suffering result from bad actions, as the natural consequence of the built-in moral law of the universe, and this keeps the wheel of life turning, and there's no way off it except by moral perfection, which I haven't seen anyone claim to be possible, or achieving nirvana or awakening or whatever it's supposed to be. It may well be a delusion, but I'm not commenting on that, just on the fact that there is a great deal in those religions that is similar to the Biblical picture of the human condition -- {abe: so that, if one recognizes this moral element, a perfect salvation of the sort offered in Christ might strike one as the appropriate solution to the problem, avoiding all that toil of meditation. Yes, it gets pretty toilsome. Sitting for days in one position without any breaks is one thing some do.} By the way, trying to get us away from the off topic stuff, I've proposed a new thread. If you have some suggestions please email me with them.This message has been edited by Faith, 05-11-2006 09:43 PM

Reincarnation doesn't particular interest me but it is a belief for many Hindu's and Buddhists.For Buddhism particularly it's a bit of a puzzle as to what incarnates. I've read the problem stated in the form of the Buddha talking about a candle lit at the beginning of the night and towards the end as it's about to go out another candle is lit from the flame. The question is then asked is the second candle's flame the same as the first?Karma is a generalization of observations about cause and effect. Again as to Buddhism the wheel of birth and death is also a generalization about cause and effect.When I was in college my paper on comparing and contrasting Dante's Inferno and Purgatory was about the psychology of giving up vs. struggling with temptations.I still think this so called moral flaw of not recoginizing the God who made you is a threat wielded by priests to control their congregations whether they be ancient Jews, medieval Catholics, or modern Calvinists, Muslims, or Mormons, etc. On those grounds I have no respect for the argument at all.Atheist scientists seriously studying the universe have far more respect from me than does C.S. Lewis and other apologists coming up with clever rationalizations to explain away historical facts that conflict with the religion the church has decided on. It seems to me these athesist scientist have far more respect for God than do the priests who seek to exploit people by threatening them with hellfire.lfenf

You're begging the question by assuming a fallen mind in the first place. Suppose let's not assume that.Looking at it logically, whether one believes a proposition is not, in itself, a moral matter.

Thought I was instructing you, not assuming it. OK. Like I said, good luck.abe: OR, maybe we're not talking about believing a PROPOSITION, but believing the testimony of people who claim to have witnessed evidence of God.Does it then become a moral matter?This message has been edited by Faith, 05-11-2006 11:34 PM

Wretchedness does not mean necessarily that there's some answer.