The Voice of Creation-- Would Chapter 1 convince an atheist?

Beanjay · Post by **Beanjay** » November 11th, 2016, 5:59 pm

Josefina I am not an atheist and have a whole hearted belief in what you call God. I just have exceptionally big problems with your religious beliefs. Religion has no connection with God.

Josefina1110 · Post by **Josefina1110** » November 12th, 2016, 7:08 pm

Where in the book could you find in my book about religion? I say some believe in other gods but they are not the true God. I am just emphasizing the God that I believe which is the trinity, the Father, the Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit which is the Word. Everything I have written about God, as much as I could, I support with a verse from the Holy Scripture which is the Word of God. As far as Christianity, that might be what you mean my religious belief and I am a Christian. You may say you are not an atheist but you do not believe in the Christian God. Since there is only one true God and that is Jesus Christ, then you are not a Christian and you are an atheist.

Pelegrin_1 · Post by **Pelegrin_1** » November 13th, 2016, 4:50 pm

Josefina1110 wrote:Where in the book could you find in my book about religion? I say some believe in other gods but they are not the true God. I am just emphasizing the God that I believe which is the trinity, the Father, the Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit which is the Word. Everything I have written about God, as much as I could, I support with a verse from the Holy Scripture which is the Word of God. As far as Christianity, that might be what you mean my religious belief and I am a Christian. You may say you are not an atheist but you do not believe in the Christian God. Since there is only one true God and that is Jesus Christ, then you are not a Christian and you are an atheist.

To the bolded part: Who says? Who says that I should necessarily believe? And if you say that God says; then how should I know for sure that a universal (Christian or whichever), or any God for that matter, actually said it to be so? If you said that the Bible (Holy Scripture) says itself that it is the word of God, then again why should I necessarily believe what this book says?

Josefina1110 · Post by **Josefina1110** » November 14th, 2016, 6:37 pm

Belief is a personal matter. If you don't believe, it is up to you. What I can tell you is that the Bible is the Word of God because it is written by people who walked and talked with Him such as Moses and the Prophets of the Old Testament and the Apostles and disciples and Mary and Joseph, Luke, Mark, Paul and numerous eyewitnesses of Jesus' birth and His ministry, Jesus' death and Jesus' resurrection in the New Testament. Believers can remind each other of the truth of the gospel and the Scriptures. Believers can affirm the power of the gospel through the demonstrations of that power that they have witnessed. The Bible is reliable and can be trusted as the Word of God. One instance is the words of the Father to Jesus at His transfiguration mirrored His words at Jesus' baptism. Hearing the heavenly voice proclaim that God was pleased with His Son was a validation that the honor and glory Jesus received on the mountain were legitimate. "For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount (2 Peter1:17-18).

Pelegrin_1 · Post by **Pelegrin_1** » November 14th, 2016, 8:42 pm

Josefina1110 wrote:Belief is a personal matter. If you don't believe, it is up to you. What I can tell you is that the Bible is the Word of God because it is written by people who walked and talked with Him such as Moses and the Prophets of the Old Testament and the Apostles and disciples and Mary and Joseph, Luke, Mark, Paul and numerous eyewitnesses of Jesus' birth and His ministry, Jesus' death and Jesus' resurrection in the New Testament. Believers can remind each other of the truth of the gospel and the Scriptures. Believers can affirm the power of the gospel through the demonstrations of that power that they have witnessed. The Bible is reliable and can be trusted as the Word of God. One instance is the words of the Father to Jesus at His transfiguration mirrored His words at Jesus' baptism. Hearing the heavenly voice proclaim that God was pleased with His Son was a validation that the honor and glory Jesus received on the mountain were legitimate. "For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount (2 Peter1:17-18).

Again, who says all of this? People who themselves "believed" that they walked and talked with what that "believed" was God, their God? Why should I or anyone necessarily "believe" as unquestionable truth what those people believed? How can we know that their belief was infallible? Because certainly I Am questioning the human certainty to know such a thing as who or what they may have somehow communicated with as being a "true God" of any kind. We are human, thus we are fallible. We are fallible in our understanding of many things, our knowledge is fallible, our ability to perceive is fallible, and furthermore we may not even be the most sophisticated creatures in the Universe, so any creature more sophisticated than us could likely very easily convince us that it is "The Universal God". But we likely don't even need that, because we can easily just convince ourselves of things, things we imagine, to be Godly things. Who and what truly communicated the things I bolded in what you wrote? You don't truly know, and you cannot truly know. You can only believe what you want to believe and believe it to be true, but you Cannot Know, unless you are something much more than human yourself, something close to a God yourself.

I will forever refuse to put my human ability to have "Godly knowledge" on such a high level as to think that I can know or even have the right to believe that there is or is not some Universal God. Such is Not my position in the Universe to know such a thing. I am nothing more than a member of apparently the most evolutionary advanced species to yet live on this special planet. A planet special because of its location, but a location that surely would be likely to exist somewhere in the vast Universe, and may well not be the only such planet. But because we do exist here, we think that this place must have been created for us, for the life that has flourished here. But just as simply, we are most likely here only because this is a place where we were able to come into existence, nothing more than that. We should definitely respect that this planet's location has allowed life to exist and evolve to the point of our existence, and profoundly respect that. However, there is nothing more grandiose that we should claim knowledge of.

Josefina1110 · Post by **Josefina1110** » November 15th, 2016, 12:45 am

I claim and declare that the Bible is the Word of God. That is a gift of knowledge from God to me and all the believers. If you do not accept that gift then do not keep on arguing with what I believe. You actually do not believe anything. God has hardened your heart and mind for some reason that He already knows. You are not destined to be with Him. So go ahead and be yourself. Just remember that He could be knocking at your door waiting for you to open it for Him to enter in your heart. This discussion is not an accident. It is God calling your attention. It is not me that is trying to convince you. You are the one convincing yourself not to believe in my God. I don't know you but I am glad to tell you about my God. "For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life." (J0hn 3:16).

Beanjay · Post by **Beanjay** » November 15th, 2016, 3:38 am

Josefina it is obvious that you have never carried out any meaningful research into the origins of the Christian belief system. Either that or you are not going to allow the facts to interfere with your beliefs. It is fine if you want to believe in myth and legend (some people believe that Harry Potter is real?) but you should not try and put this forward as factual information.

Lone Wolf · Post by **Lone Wolf** » November 15th, 2016, 10:48 am

I have been following this argument and in my opinion, this is a wall talking to a wall. I was raised in all the beliefs Josefina holds today, but somewhere along the way, I began to question the validity of my beliefs. She never has which is well and good for her. I would not even attempt to convince her that she might be wrong, because the fact is that she may be right. Beanjay, on the other hand, may also be right so I could not question his perceptions either. Each person finds their way to their belief through being taught as a child but when the tenets of a religion no longer suffice to answer the questions of Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? then you have to study and try to find the answers elsewhere.

Like Beanjay, I believe in a something beyond my ability to comprehend, but I do not try to convince others of my belief because I have no empirical evidence to support it. My belief comes from an emotional epiphany in October of 1984. Don't ask me to tell you about it because I can't tell you how completely loved and at peace I felt in that moment because there are no words to describe IT. In the Apochryphon of John, Jesus tells John of IT. IT has no name because none came before IT to name IT. IT is described as ineffable and that is the way I felt that night. Later I was told in a dream to work with the religion of my choice, so I studied all the major religions in the world and found that all are flawed because they are creations of man and have too many rules. Therefore, I usually keep my own counsel and don't say anything about it unless asked. I apologize for interjecting myself into this discussion, but it was becoming tiresome to me.

Josefina1110 · Post by **Josefina1110** » November 15th, 2016, 12:02 pm

Please don't apologize. You are entitled to your own opinion about anything including religion. I don't want to talk about religion here because true religion is the action of good will and peace among men and it boils down to making peace with everyone. What I want to raise up in this issue is the existence of God who is the Prince of Peace. Without Him there is no peace in this world. The Ten Commandments are written for peace to reign and there is no real peace unless you have Jesus Christ in you. That is why Jesus summarized the Ten Commandments into two, first to love God and then love your neighbor as yourself. Look at the nations who believe in another God, there is no peace in their country. Our country is trying to get rid of anything Godly and that God is Jesus Christ. Unless we go back to the belief of our founding fathers, we are doomed to all kinds of trouble and God will leave us alone to ourselves because He cannot stand to watch people wading in sin. When Jesus was born, the host of angels from heaven sang, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace and good will to men." We are not created for our own pleasure but for the pleasure of the Creator. Would you try to create something you don't want to love and possess. We are created in His image and that is also our God-given attitude. If you were able to create a person, what would you feel if that person you created would not even believe in you and even hate you and rebel against you? As God's creation, it is not us that initiates love. "We love because He first love us."
Thank you for your input.

Pelegrin_1 · Post by **Pelegrin_1** » November 15th, 2016, 2:51 pm

Josefina1110 wrote:I claim and declare that the Bible is the Word of God. That is a gift of knowledge from God to me and all the believers. If you do not accept that gift then do not keep on arguing with what I believe. You actually do not believe anything. God has hardened your heart and mind for some reason that He already knows. You are not destined to be with Him. So go ahead and be yourself. Just remember that He could be knocking at your door waiting for you to open it for Him to enter in your heart. This discussion is not an accident. It is God calling your attention. It is not me that is trying to convince you. You are the one convincing yourself not to believe in my God. I don't know you but I am glad to tell you about my God. "For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life." (J0hn 3:16).

Wow, I did not expect that you would take a turn to position Yourself as so high and righteous to say that "I claim and declare" with respect to God. And that this God of yours puts you and other believers in such high regard. I obviously don't know you, Josefina, but somehow I didn't imagine you to be such a self-righteous individual. And you do realize that this attitude that you're demonstrating suggests that you look down on people who don't believe as you do. And IF there be a true God, you are yourself truly discrediting ITs goodness by having this God be so discriminatory against people who don't blindly just believe in ITs existence. This God of yours, even if somehow (though truly impossible) I could know it exists, it's not a God I'd want to be a follower of. It's not me that has the hardened heart, but this God you describe that has the hardened heart. And how can you say that I don't believe anything? You don't know me. There are a lot of things I believe, but I don't venture or pretend to believe anything about whether there is some universal God or not. Such is not for me as a mere human to know. I might be able to imagine that there could be a God, but beyond that I would be arrogant to assume that I could actually know.

And regarding my destiny... therein lies the crux, if you ask me. The faithful proclaim that they are destined to be more than they are; that they are the children of God, or something akin to that, and that assuming that they do as they believe this God asks then they will one day be with this God. I'm sorry, but this is always laughable to me. Any Universal God that might possibly exist (though I'm extremely doubtful) has virtually nothing in common with human beings. There is nothing about us that gives us a closer relationship to a God than to chimpanzees. This whole idea that just by living our lives in worship of this (imagined) God, and being faithful and good as according to Biblical text, therefore we can gain a position somewhere/someway/somehow with that God is just beyond outlandish. We are so far removed from what a true God would be that it is glorified human nonsense to think that human beings are that close to being by a God's side. So, back to my destiny... After death, my destiny will be the return of my physical elements back to the earth, and the extinguishing of the electrical circuitry that has allowed my thought processes. I will be no more, accept hopefully in the memories of those who knew me, until they too have all died and any stories about me have all been forgotten or left in the past.

Pelegrin_1 · Post by **Pelegrin_1** » November 15th, 2016, 2:57 pm

Lone Wolf wrote:Therefore, I usually keep my own counsel and don't say anything about it unless asked. I apologize for interjecting myself into this discussion, but it was becoming tiresome to me.

I don't see why you should be apologizing, except perhaps to yourself. If the discussion has become tiresome for you, then perhaps you should apologize to yourself for wasting your time giving attention to it. But for my part, your comments are graciously received, though none seem to have been directly specifically at me.

Pelegrin_1 · Post by **Pelegrin_1** » November 15th, 2016, 3:12 pm

Josefina1110 wrote:We are not created for our own pleasure but for the pleasure of the Creator. Would you try to create something you don't want to love and possess. We are created in His image and that is also our God-given attitude. If you were able to create a person, what would you feel if that person you created would not even believe in you and even hate you and rebel against you? As God's creation, it is not us that initiates love. "We love because He first love us."
Thank you for your input.

This is very much a continuation of my previous response, because again above are the two elements to which I referred in the previous post. This, what I call, denigration of the concept of a Universal God as being something that sounds pretty damn human to me, much less than a true God, or a true good God. We are for ITs pleasure? I hope it takes a lot of pleasure from human suffering. We do have the ability to feel, and that includes all the painful feelings that there are. And there are those who feel pain of one sort or another, and with absolutely none of it being their own fault or cause. Innocent suffering! Now, I'm not criticizing any possible God that maybe could exist; I'm just saying that we, and our lives here on this planet, have nothing to do with a God's entertainment. And as to the second point, this whole idea of humans created in God's image is again so damn human elitist. What "image" does a Universal God have? If we're somehow similar in image, then I guess this Universal God is also fairly similar to a great ape in appearance as well. Of course I'm probably taking the whole point here too literally, but regardless, it's the whole idea of it that reeks of human arrogance, arrogance with respect to our species and our significance in the Universe.

Josefina1110 · Post by **Josefina1110** » November 16th, 2016, 5:56 pm

It is hard to wake-up a person who is pretending to sleep. I don't want to be an image of a chimpanzee. God has said that we are made in His image, the chimpanzee cannot say anything. I want to be an image of an intelligent, wonderful, eternal God. If God had told me so, then I would believe it because nobody else can say that. God gave us the complete senses in order to process His words: ears to hear, eyes to see, skin to touch, mouth to speak, tongue to taste, brain to think, His spirit to live an eternal life with him. If you don't appreciate what God has told you it is up to you but I do and I believe Him. My spirit will be with Him. I'm not arrogant about my belief, I am simply declaring Him as my God and Savior and I am proud to be with Him forever. I don't have an appearance of an ape or a chimpanzee, I am a woman created by by God. I know you don't look like an ape either. You may be one of the handsomest person in this part of the earth. If you look like an ape, I would believe you are the son of that ape. I can prove that you don't have the qualitites of a chimpanzee either because here you are discussing heavenly things with me. chimpanzees cannot even speak a word much more discuss intellihgently with a moron like me that believes in my Creator if that is what you mean.

Pelegrin_1 · Post by **Pelegrin_1** » November 17th, 2016, 12:09 am

Josefina1110 wrote:It is hard to wake-up a person who is pretending to sleep. I don't want to be an image of a chimpanzee. God has said that we are made in His image, the chimpanzee cannot say anything. I want to be an image of an intelligent, wonderful, eternal God. If God had told me so, then I would believe it because nobody else can say that. God gave us the complete senses in order to process His words: ears to hear, eyes to see, skin to touch, mouth to speak, tongue to taste, brain to think, His spirit to live an eternal life with him. If you don't appreciate what God has told you it is up to you but I do and I believe Him. My spirit will be with Him. I'm not arrogant about my belief, I am simply declaring Him as my God and Savior and I am proud to be with Him forever. I don't have an appearance of an ape or a chimpanzee, I am a woman created by by God. I know you don't look like an ape either. You may be one of the handsomest person in this part of the earth. If you look like an ape, I would believe you are the son of that ape. I can prove that you don't have the qualitites of a chimpanzee either because here you are discussing heavenly things with me. chimpanzees cannot even speak a word much more discuss intellihgently with a moron like me that believes in my Creator if that is what you mean.

I think we've probably gone about as far as we can go here, because as I think it's obvious that reasoning which contradicts beliefs of some people will frequently never be accepted by many of those people. I refer here to both sides. However, with respect to the bolded part, I will first confess that I do not respect your belief or more to the point, your faith in what you believe. But I do respect that it is what you believe. I think that you should be able to reciprocate in a like manner. You may not respect what I think, but at least respect that it is what I think,... not what I'm pretending to think or even what I'm self-deceiving myself to think. I am as firm about my atheistic leaning Agnostic stance as you are about your belief and faith that there is a God. As mere humans, we Cannot know about Gods, and that includes knowing as to whether there is a true Universal god or not.

Pelegrin_1 · Post by **Pelegrin_1** » November 17th, 2016, 12:22 am

Josefina1110 wrote:It is hard to wake-up a person who is pretending to sleep. I don't want to be an image of a chimpanzee. God has said that we are made in His image, the chimpanzee cannot say anything. I want to be an image of an intelligent, wonderful, eternal God. If God had told me so, then I would believe it because nobody else can say that. God gave us the complete senses in order to process His words: ears to hear, eyes to see, skin to touch, mouth to speak, tongue to taste, brain to think, His spirit to live an eternal life with him. If you don't appreciate what God has told you it is up to you but I do and I believe Him. My spirit will be with Him. I'm not arrogant about my belief, I am simply declaring Him as my God and Savior and I am proud to be with Him forever. I don't have an appearance of an ape or a chimpanzee, I am a woman created by by God. I know you don't look like an ape either. You may be one of the handsomest person in this part of the earth. If you look like an ape, I would believe you are the son of that ape. I can prove that you don't have the qualitites of a chimpanzee either because here you are discussing heavenly things with me. chimpanzees cannot even speak a word much more discuss intellihgently with a moron like me that believes in my Creator if that is what you mean.

Damn, sorry, I forgot to add this part... Again, what "Him" are you talking about? Him or IT or whatever,... The point isn't whether you declare "Him" as your God, the point is that you haven't proven that this Him/God even exists. All of us, I suppose, can choose to declare something as our God or not to, but first there should be some way of actually knowing that this something actually exists. I'll never be declaring anything as God unless I can know that, and as a mere human I know that I'll never be able to truly know such a thing.