To the deeply religious who feel god has made a change in their lives... answer this

reply to post by P-a-r-a-d-o-X-2


how do you make man in the image of god if god isn't indeed a physical being.

reply to post by ybab hsur


Actually, Brother, it would appear that we both might be correct:

[Archangels]
-able to belong to several levels in the hierarchy angel

reply to post by narissa83


Hey its not me Im just quoting the bible and seeking clarification.

WHO says god isnt a physical being? and when we say physical it doesnt mean he has to be made of the same stuff our human body is made of? there is theory on some kinda silicon based bodys in the future. I believe in spirit obviously aswel or I wouldnt exist.. so I can imgaine 'Light beings' too.. etheric.

But let me go back to the physical bit for a minute. I found this picture can I get some comments?



The quote under it in the book reads:

''The modern Hebrew letters Yahweh make the image of a man; For if man is in the image of Yahweh then Yahweh is in the image of man''.



Well I find this fascinating, and too coincidental.. so I am still open minded.

Adam and Eve got booted from paradise.

God said "You're on your own now kids. You disobeyed me because you wanted to be like me. Now I give you the chance to figure it all out by yourselves. We'll discuss which life you prefer when you return to my kingdom after your earthly body's death."

We're on our own. The only way God interacts with us is by possibly filling our souls with a bit of warmth from time to time when we pray to him or when we do good things for other people.

God isn't going to save a sick diabetic child who's parents are praying for healing. Thus, he isn't going to save a starving child who doesn't have parents or never had a chance to hear about God. To believe that he would make the choice to save one over the other is ignorance.

The idea that God treats someone extra-special because they build up big shrines of gold and pray where everyone else can see them is absurd.
Do you think God loves them more than that poor African child in the photo? Is that child damned for never hearing the word of God?

Every Christian sect will put a different spin on this and it will all come out in illogical and predjudiced tones.

I don't know what stance Jewish and Muslim folks take on this.

My idea is that God loves all of us. He put us here without him to show us how hard and empty an existence that is. Everyone will be given a chance to return to his kingdom; even those we think of as evil here on earth. I think all is revealed to us when we die; that includes all humans who never had a chance to hear about Him whether they were from an isolated part of this earth, or handicapped, or dead before birth.
He will ask us if we want to come home and are we going to abide by his rules now? I'm sure not many will say no.

Peace

To the OP,
God gave man free will, we chose poorly and now we live with the consequences. Man rules this world, God will only interviene if we ask Him to, this is the key, most of these people I feel don't know God, at least the true God, that is why Christians have thousands of missionairies going over seas to help these poeple, giving them food, love and the message of hope in Christ. I personally want to do this, the more I love God, the more I love humanity, the human part of me hates humanity though, this is a daily battle I fight. One dat I would love to live like the poor live and to build houses for and with them, help them grow food, dig wells and much more.
I ask for God's help and He has helped me, because I have a personal relationship with Him, all we can do is offer that to others and pray for these people, I wonder how many people really do pray heart felt prayers for the starving in Africa? I bet very few do, Yeshua said the poor will be with us always and that God's blessings fall upon the righteous and unrighteous. But for me instead of worrying about why God allows things to happen, I should take action in preventing bad things and trying to help these people and telling them about God, I live in blessing, I should pass that blessing on to others.

-Jimmy

still not convinced, how can you say that your religion is right over all other religions. if anyone can do this it would be buddhists, but they have better things to do with their time than argue religion

Originally posted by P-a-r-a-d-o-X-2
reply to post by ybab hsur

 

God isnt a man....... hmmm... ok... so what is the definition of making man in our image and after our likeness? does that just mean we... WE.. will make man as we feel like making them? [says God and crew] and it doesnt suggest that man indeed resembles God?

Wow i missed out on a lot. Created him in his own image. i knew this one would come up - and quite frankly- i dont know the answer. My guess is that its some mixup of words that got mistranslated, or over translated (example: the mayan word for treasure is often misused as "gold") As we know, treasure comes in all shapes and sizes, and isnt always "gold"

So to say that God created humankind in his own image, could be "god created humans to his likeness." or in other words, he perfered our image most of all.
Sounds a little conceded, yes.

To answer the question about my source: the bible.

if you choose to believe that Moses spoke with the word of God, that is called Faith. You have to search inside of yourself and ask what you FEEL - not what you THINK. Faith is what God is all about. When you are a child - you have Faith that your father or mother will never harm you. Its not a certainty - there are millions of cases everywhere of child abuse, but children still have the FAITH that it wont happen from their parents.

Faith is believing in something you can't see or understand. Atheists keep asking for answers - its impossible to give "the" answer when human beings arent capable of such knowledge.

If a computer program that was designed to compute mathematical equations only, and you ask it "what is the noun in this very sentance?"
it wont have the answer, because it doesnt know anything other than what it is told to know.

reply to post by AlexG141989

The starving people in the world are in that situation because of the choices of others. This affects this and that affects that, which in turn affects these, you know? God didn't create robots. If he created us to be slaves, we'd complain even more than we do now. Also, people who don't ask for help will not receive help. God COULD have stopped 9/11 from happening, but then he'd be taking away free will. Those planes crashed because the terrorists chose to crash them. People starve because of the wrong choices someone made earlier in the line.

Originally posted by narissa83
still not convinced, how can you say that your religion is right over all other religions. if anyone can do this it would be buddhists, but they have better things to do with their time than argue religion

this answer is easy
If you succumb and say "your religion COULD be right" so that you are "PC" and dont offend anyone - then you are breaking the creed of your very religion. There is only one true God and mohammad is definately not his prophet.

Jesus Christ is the one true savior, and all others are just fakers. All religions teach peace (For the most part i guess) but only one religion teaches the truth, and that is Christianity.

Some people want a god that will "hold their hand" thru every problem they have. The truth is that god won't directly interfere in anyone's life. Not anymore. Mabye 3000 years ago he did a little divine intervention but today, he's in a watch and wait stance. I have faith that god help me know which path to walk but I know full well that I am the one who has to walk it. If I starve and am dying, I know that god isn't going to drop some mc d's in front of me, more than likely I am gonna get eaten.

That poor child sadly is a fact of real life in a sinful world. The weak get weaker and the strong get stronger.

Quail have 20-30 chicks per year and on average 2-5 of them live to maturity. We are just as subject to these things without our technology.

As for that cameraman, he should have carried that child to the relief camp. If he shot himself because of that then so be it. Of course you can hope he got to the camp on his own, anything can happen.

Hand down, religion is responsible for so much humanitarian aid, though it does not reach everyone. There are very few organized athiest group assiting anyone other than themselves.

Is it true that many athiest do not want there to be a God because they are afraid it there were they would go to hell? Just wondering.

Originally posted by Ragnarok691
Some people want a god that will "hold their hand" thru every problem they have. The truth is that god won't directly interfere in anyone's life. Not anymore........
(truncated)

I completely agree with you Ragnarok. I wish that the Atheists would look at the question of "does God exist" through a set of unbiased eyes, as they tell us everyone should. They look at this question with biased eyes in the sense that they say "if God exists, why is there suffering" Because human beings cause it. If God steps in and takes care of it for you - what is the point of you even existing?

Its like the business i own. My employee's, from time to time, complain about the managers doing managerial duties. My response to them is if the managers have to do the basic employee's work, then what is the reason for me to have basic employees if i just make my managers do it all

(FYI: I am in no way refering to myself as anything remotely close to God. I am just giving an eartly example of the same type of thinking as i believe it to be)

On a side note: what are the ATS BTS points for on our names, and how do you raise/lower them?

reply to post by ybab hsur


Hi.. when you say there may have been a mix up in words... I dont disagree I am a firm believer in mistranslations but the problem is people pick and choose what they wish to in the bible, and that is about the most famous statement in the bible which makes total sense if we just stretch our minds a bit more. But you see some people dont wish to believe God MAY be some kind of advanced human OR even just HUMAN from another planet..

Imagine what we can do in the future? we can go colonise a planet, leave some clones there to get on with it, visit them sometimes and play a 'god' game... you know what Im getting at.. just wondering if there is too much WORD problems causing debates.

Another way I could look at it is this... what if we are not in the same physical substance or form now that we was then? [Adam and Eve I mean] so maybe they was created looking like god but now we have devoluted and we get old and die.. so we may be still in gods 'image' we just arent in our true form / state. [Immortal] IF thats even our true state!! I dont know and the whole thing is deep.

I thought we were supposed to die and go to heaven in spirit.. but now when I read the bible I see God wants to bring heaven to earth and we live here immortal.... I cant help wonder if thats just satanic

Can you please comment on the picture in my other post?


EDIT -- Feel the need to apologize to the original poster for going off course from his original post.. thing is how can we even answer the OP till we can at least define GOD?


[edit on 05/09/2008 by P-a-r-a-d-o-X-2]

reply to post by P-a-r-a-d-o-X-2


I see what you're getting at, Paradox.

Here is the way i see it:

1.) As for your picture, hebrew is a written human language, so for me, it naturally makes sense that the word for "God" is in the shape of a human.

2.) I also just thought about this as an explanation for the "in his own likeness"
Human beings have two forms. Spirit and Body. We are our spirit, we are not our body. What i mean is -- your brain is just an organ USED by YOU (what makes you who you are). So the part of "you" that is the self-aware sentient being, is what you actually are.

If God made man in God's own image, then technically - God made you a spirit just like God.

I also agree with your comment to the O.P.

It seemed to me that the O.P. was questioning the existance of God through the context of that picture. To examine God and prove his existance by any means necessary is still an answer to the O.P. *unless ive mistaken the OP's question all together*

"can you please give me a reason as to why god couldnt take the time out of his omnipresent day to help this child???"

Ooh ooh i know....
I used common sense and logic to come to the conclusion, that god won't help this child because............god doesn't exist.

I'm also sickened at some of the answers posted by the religous zealots...

Originally posted by ybab hsur

Originally posted by narissa83
still not convinced, how can you say that your religion is right over all other religions. if anyone can do this it would be buddhists, but they have better things to do with their time than argue religion

this answer is easy
If you succumb and say "your religion COULD be right" so that you are "PC" and dont offend anyone - then you are breaking the creed of your very religion. There is only one true God and mohammad is definately not his prophet.

Jesus Christ is the one true savior, and all others are just fakers. All religions teach peace (For the most part i guess) but only one religion teaches the truth, and that is Christianity.

why because you say so, sorry millions of people around the world would disagree, you believe what you have been taught to believe.

reply to post by P-a-r-a-d-o-X-2


Also - i understand that the Bible is written by man. Men recorded their testaments of Jesus Christ, and their own encounters with Heavenly figures and with God.

You have to look at the bible as a bastion of hope. The words of the bible, for me, dont have as much impact as the spiritual bliss that comes from its teachings. So to say that the bible is fallible because it is written by man does not contain merit. Every human being has a soul, and that soul is connected to God. So when you feel sorrow in your heart for less fortunate people (refer to OP's first posting) i believe that it is the 'tears' of God crying through you urging you to do something about it.

That "feeling" has to be put down into words that human beings can understand.
Try to describe an "orange" to a blind man. Cant' be done, because the blind man can't see what the color orange is, or rather what a circle looks like. But you can describe what an orange is by talking to the blind man about smell and touch.

You have to change the context for all to understand, otherwise you are not preaching a religion, you are just standing around jabbering and fewer people will pay attention to you.

reply to post by narissa83


You missed the INTENT of the post. You are missing the forest for the tree's....now please focus.

If i say that Islam holds water - i am REFUTTING the word of God and my own religion that is Christianity.

If an muslim says that my religion holds water, he or she does the same thing by their own belief structure.

And no, its not because i said so. Its because God said so.

Also - Skunk2 - if you dont believe in religion - fine, but you can knock off that # of name calling and hate. We've been having a discussion. People asked me MY opinion and i am giving it to them as i see things through my own eyes.

If you're so damn smart, then you tell me how all of existance, EVERYTHING, came from nothing? (the supposed "big bang theory")

You're obviously atheist, so please provide some insight. Dont come here to flame. Tell me how the big bang happened, if NOTHING existed before the big bang.

reply to post by ybab hsur

I don't know how everything started and I don't pretend to know because I was not there. Neither were you or whoever "made up " the adam and eve story, which has several versions. How everything started is not the issue.

You believe in God because you were taught to, you haven't seen him and unless you are in a nut house you can't claim to have had a conversation with him (note: a conversation is a verbal EXCHANGE, not one person talking to an imaginary being). I believe there is more out there than what meets the eye, but I do not agree with all the messages the bible delivers.

reply to post by narissa83


Well, ill say this about you Narissa83, atleast your mind is open to the notion of God. That is a very good start.

But im afraid you wont ever see things the way i see them until you start thinking a little bit further outside the box. What i mean is that you're still applying human context to a spiritual question.

If you are to understand God even an enth of a degree, you have to be okay with the idea that you don't understand God. You have to give up on saying "God can't exist, because there is evolution, and a big bang"

I never claimed to be there in the beginning of creation, now did i?

No i didnt.

But the words that are in the bible make me feel as though it was God who did it. Its all about internal answers, not tangible proof and evidence. Use your instincts, use your feelings, use your heart. Because all that is left is "logic" and "logic" is so easily distorted.

Dont think im right?
Cocaine
Alcohol
Weed
Speed
Meth
etc...
All of the afformentioned distort one's LOGIC. So "Logic" really isnt that solid and concrete.