Theists, a question:

Originally posted by TheSkipper
If God's purpose in giving us free will is because he wants us to choose to be with him freely then the choice he should present us with is God vs. nothing...not God vs. eternal torment. God vs. eternal torment is a very weighted choice.

Do you see the difference between my presenting you with a choice between following me or dying, and my asking you to choose between following me or continue doing whatever you want?

Originally posted by Nemesio
Two simple questions:

Let's say God sent all people no matter what to Hell, would you worship Him?

Let's say, no matter what, you would cease to exist when you died would you worship Him?
(no Heaven/no Hell/no Paradise/no Purgatory/no Limbo/no Elesian Fields/no nothing)


Nemesio

Originally posted by TheSkipper
This actually explains a lot! Once you get to college you should enroll in a geology course, because the things you apparently believe about Earth's hydrologic cycle are completely divorced from reality. A biology course might be a good idea too, because meat eating animals don't switch from veggies to meat in the course of one lifespan...they don't have ...[text shortened]... th of information out there you still need to get a grasp of, and you will, have fun with it.

Originally posted by thorvo
1) no i wouldn't. y the q?
2) he wouldn't be there for me to worship in the first place, if i would cease to exist when I died, and i wouldn't be alive, if he wasnt there in the first place.

"No. I'm positing that, perhaps, there was a better way. The patriarchs
and prophets questioned God and speculated all the time. Why do you
seem bothered when I do it? In order to discern that the flood was the
best way, you would have to know what God's aims were. Were they:
1) To wipe out all of humankind;
2) To inconvenience Noah;
3) To start Creation all over again; or
4) Something else?

If you want to conclude that 'God's' way was necessarily the best, you
have to be prepared to justify it and defend it against other ways that
might superficially appear better, but don't meet God's aims. So, how
do you account for the death of the 'evil infants?' How do you account
for the tremendous inconvenience to Noah (when God could simply place
him in a protective bubble, say). How do you account for bothering with
the animals that God could so easily recreate? These are things that,
as a believer that the flood was the best option, you must reconcile."

Yes, its not wrong to question God or have doubts or not understand everything, but the way you do it, thinking that there was a better way, insisting that God was cruel in the way he did it, and asking the same questions over and over, pushing about if all people deserved death, or how Noah preached to all the people, etc. seems to me a bit different. more like challenging. maybe that isnt your intent but it comes across like that. God brought about the flood to wipe out the huge amoutn of wickedness and evil in the world. As for Noah, why was it an inconvenience? Maybe God wanted to test him, see if he would really follow what He asked. there were other options, but I dont have all the answers as to why God chose a flood. is it that important to know, though?

Originally posted by Nemesio
Let me clarify question #2.

Would you still worship God if, no matter what, He made it such that
all people who died went into a state of eternal dreamless sleep
(regardless of whether they worshipped Him or not)?

Nemesio

Then how do you conclude that God isn't a failure as a Creator? I mean,
it was only two thousand years since He established Creation. If God
pronounced His Creation as 'good,' then why did it go to unsalvagably
evil in just two thousand years?

Originally posted by thorvo
I see you know a lot about the Bible, so I dont understand why you are asking how the world became evil in about 2000 years. In the first several chapters of Genesis it explains how the world became evil.

Originally posted by thorvo
Yes that is true. But God wants people who dont believe in Him to believe in Him. The faithfull will believe it, but what about those who arent faithful?

1) Genesis 7:11-12 says: "In the six hundredth year of Noah's liffe, on the seventeenth day of the second month, on that day all the sprngs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens ...[text shortened]... Yes I am interested in asnwering these questions. They are good questions and important ones.

Noah's Ark: An Engineering Imposibility
Actually the story of Genesis is, even at first glance, absurd.

First let us look at the ark built by Noah. Genesis 6:15 gives its measurements as 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high. The length of the cubit is based on the length of the human forearm and varies among the various ancient cultures. For instance, the Babylonian cubit was approximately 0.53 metres, the Roman cubit was about 0.44 metres while the Hebrew cubit was about 0.56 metres. Using the Hebrew cubit the ark would have measured 168 metres long, 28 metres wide and 17 metres high. There are two problems with this ark as described: it is both too big and too small at the same time.

* It is too big, because before the invention of steel, the wooden ark of Noah simply could not have been structurally sound and was thus unseaworthy. The longest wooden ship ever built (i.e. historically verified) was the USS Wyoming. This vessel, which was, at 110 meters long, a full 50% shorter than Noah’s ark, was found to be so unstable that it could only be used for short coastal hauls to avoid rough conditions further out in the sea. The huge structural stresses that developed in the USS Wyoming made the ship sag and, well, it leaked. Water thus had to be pumped out continuously to prevent the ship from sinking. Now, here we have Noah’s ark, built with wood, before the invention of steel and hydraulic pumps, undergoing the turbulent conditions of the flood unscathed. It is simply an engineering impossibility.

* It is too small, because there is simply not enough room for all the animals. There are extant today over 4,500 species of mammals, 6,000 species of reptiles, 8,600 species of birds and 3,000 species of amphibians. Each of these have many large members: elephants, camels, rhinoceros, hippopotamasus, giraffes, horses, donkeys, zebras, cattle, bison, tapirs, pigs, tigers, lions, jaguars, panthers, sea lions, walruses, crocodiles, alligators, giant turtles, Komodo dragon, snakes, ostriches, emus, falcons and giant salamanders. There are 23,000 species of fishes, many of which will not be able to survive the flood if not taken up into the ark. Each kilogram of fish require about a cubic meter of water to survive-this is simply to provide enough oxygen and provide space for swimming while sleeping and feeding. The volume of water required for the fishes alone would be larger than the ark.[4] And then there are the little creatures; there are about a million species of insects and 60,000 species of arachnids. How were these species stored in the ark?

Originally posted by SwissGambit
OK, let's examine your answers to the questions.

1) is basically "Goddunit". As predicted.
2) "what are now oceans and lakes" - do you contend that these things didn't exist before? Do you have any geological evidence to support that claim?
3) http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/flood.html eloquently sums up the physical problems with ark size:[quot ...[text shortened]... es of arachnids. How were these species stored in the ark?[/quote]
(continued next post)

Originally posted by thorvo
as I said, i am not sure of this. and this may have occured at a different time. Yes, i see your point about having the right teeth. yet we have teeth and we can eat vegetables as well as meat, can we not? and I dont see how the digestive system would be affected. yes, there is a lot I dont know, I am still learning.

Originally posted by Nemesio
No. It states that the world had become evil, not how it became evil.
And we're not talking you're everyday sort of evil, but an evil so profound
that God had to cleanse the world of it.

So, how do you explain that God's Creation which He Himself pronounced
as 'good' (no small compliment) became unsalvagable in two thousand
years? Don't you think t ...[text shortened]... ations towards compassion
and generosity than appears to have been the case?

Nemesio

Originally posted by thorvo
It states that sin entered the world when Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden fruit. Thats when satan tempted them to eat it. From then on man sinned, and pretty soon the sin got so bad God had to do something about it. God created something good, but when satan tempted eve, she ate and sinned, then adam ate and sinned. sin ruined the good that God made.

Originally posted by SwissGambit
OK, let's examine your answers to the questions.

1) is basically "Goddunit". As predicted.
2) "what are now oceans and lakes" - do you contend that these things didn't exist before? Do you have any geological evidence to support that claim?
3) http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/flood.html eloquently sums up the physical problems with ark size:[quot ...[text shortened]... es of arachnids. How were these species stored in the ark?[/quote]
(continued next post)