View topic - Is there proof that God exists? :: Free Dominion - Principled Conservative - Party and Canadian Politics

Posted: 10/ 06/ 05 4:46 pm Post subject:

In addition, there are many nominal 'Christians', who, although they might profess belief, are non-practicing, while the vast majority of Muslims practice their religion.
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Posted: 10/ 06/ 05 4:47 pm Post subject:

Posted: 10/ 06/ 05 6:03 pm Post subject:

Posted: 10/ 06/ 05 6:50 pm Post subject:

Strictly speaking, it's off topic to raise a criticism of the "existence" of God in the form of a disagreement with a specific aspect of Christian theology. If I follow one of the previous contributors, he's saying that it makes no sense that sinful people can repent after a lifetime of terrible conduct and get into heaven while good atheists and agnostics can not.

That, if it were true, would not undermine the idea that God exists, so much as it would define a characteristic of God who did exist. However, I don't happen to believe that it is true, either.

The salvation of sinners was the main point of the ministry of Christ. It was more or less implied that any sinner, no matter how gross his or her sins, could achieve salvation by repentance and acceptance of Jesus as son of God. And that assurance has, indeed, led to the conversion and salvation of millions of people, many of whom were probably not gross sinners any more than the average person. But to make the point unmistakeably clear, Paul was chosen as the chief spokesman for the new profession of faith -- the same Paul who had basically been complicit in the murder or torture of believers. This conversion absolutely transcends our human notions of justice and proportionality.

However, note that Jesus did not spend a lot of time preaching the converse part of the argument, that non-believers would be condemned to hell. There is plenty of room in God's mercy for the just to be accepted into heaven as well as all manner of believers. Some would then say, yes but didn't Jesus say that there was no way to the Father except through Himself (Jesus) ??

That statement does not automatically imply damnation of non-believers. It rather states that if one searches for the truth about God, the only way to discover all of that truth is through the way established by Jesus Christ. Imagine the self-confidence of such an assertion by a man about to face death, who knew that he was leaving behind a ragged band of disciples of at best moderate devotion and organizational ability, in the middle of a land hostile to any new version of the faith already present there. Imagine the degree of knowledge of future events that it would take to state to onlookers, "I will be with you always, even to the end of the world," and to imply further that the new "church" would grow into a powerful presence in the world, and to know that the Holy Spirit, as yet unrevealed to mankind, would also come and assist in the great task of ministry to the world.

Also in the discussion today, a rather telling point was made -- conservatives would be uncomfortable with the assertion of Jesus that it would be more difficult for the rich to gain entry to heaven than it would be for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. This clearly speaks to a different concept of holiness than the "gospel of wealth" type of thinking, whether inside or outside the Christian tent. It almost sounds socialist to many who hear it. I think it does teach us that our politics must have a full compassion for suffering and a full reverence for life. If our politics have nothing to do with our professed faith, then we are serving two masters. This makes the walk for conservatives narrow indeed, but observe this -- the Liberals long ago fell off a cliff in this regard, for they have neither concern for the poor nor any kind of morality, so even if the Conservative has only a form of morality and no concern for the poor, he or she is in better shape than that.

It almost makes me wonder some days if the New Testament is an allegory and that the real "life and times" of Christ are happening now, because imagine how simple it would be for a contemporary Jesus to say, "woe to the scribes and pharisees," perhaps more like, "woe to the journalists and pretend Christians." And then there's the matter of Pilate (Dithers) washing his hands of the troublesome man, and saying he found no fault in him, but was content to send him where he knew that death would follow.

Of course, today is not an allegory for what really happened two thousand years ago. But the paradigm of our faith never changes -- Christ is always facing the hostility of the world from the same places -- received self-satisfied wisdom, the political order, the religious authorities, and the sin in the hearts of human beings.

Posted: 10/ 06/ 05 7:09 pm Post subject:

Posted: 10/ 06/ 05 7:34 pm Post subject:

Peter O'Donnell,

I appreciate the thrust of your arguments regarding the use of specific theology as evidence for or against the existence of God, but the fact of the matter is that many supporters of ID and Creationism do exactly that. They try to "prove" the accuracy of the Biblical acocunt of Creation to the exclusioin of the evolutionary account on the basis that the Bible is infallible.

With respect to your point about liberals not caring about the poor "by definition" (if I take your meaning correctly), and conservatives who may choose not to care for the poor, I wholeheartedly disagree, although it does depend on what you mean by liberals. Your average liberal believes that things like EI, Public Education, Universal Health Care, Welfare, Daycare, etc. are all programs intended to redress certain inequities and help the poor. The 'liberal' position is that this won't happen if private voluntary charity is relied upon, so the state taxes us and makes it a forced public charity.

But none of that means that liberals don't care about poor people, that is just conservative sour grapes. There is a different philosophy about how poverty can be dealt with and what its causes are, but not a lack of concern. That's no better than me saying that all conservatives are greedy money grubbers that don't want to share anything with their fellow man. It's simply not true and only a zealot can say it with a straight face.
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My 2 cents

Posted: 10/ 06/ 05 7:40 pm Post subject:

Posted: 10/ 06/ 05 7:40 pm Post subject:

I would not wish anyone to be misled by what any believer might say about things to come. We are generally in agreement, Catholics and evangelicals, Orthodox and in many cases Jews, Mormons, whatever profession of faith other than Muslim you could name -- God will come to judge the world. Muslims share this belief but we have seen that they interpret their own faith as the exclusive path to salvation, and that qualifies as a rejected or erroneous assumption among believing Christians and Jews. Among those who say, all things are equal, let's give them their due, then the very meaning of words begins to come into question.

In other words, there is room for the Christian and the Jew to agree that they are two sides of the same coin, but there is no third side.

And also flowing out of this, we face the prospect of a judgment and a change in the world system, at the very least (some believe in the utter destruction of the world), so that after some future time, when Jesus has returned (and when Christians believe, the Jews have accepted Jesus as their messiah also, re-uniting the divided faiths), then God is in charge of the world, and not humans, whose ideas essentially come more from Satan than from God and so therefore we say, Satan is in charge now.

So that nobody might be lulled into a false sense of security, this judgment of nations and individuals will not proceed necessarily along any kinds of legal or ethical pathways that we might imagine or construct. The laws of Canada, the United States, or any other nation, may not apply to it in any way. Whatever you said or thought in this age will count for nothing, unless God says that it does. And this is what I wanted to bring out in this discussion -- that we all face the judgment of a specific God, and therefore, from some perspectives, from an arbitrary or unkind or perhaps even violent God. This is the destiny of each soul, and there is nothing you can do to escape this reality. We are told about this destiny and the challenges it provides, and we are given the most amazing resources in our struggle -- I can attest that the Holy Spirit is an amazing presence, and something entirely transcending the gifts that arrive in envelopes or in the various gifts of the world.

Therefore, while one would hope and pray for God's mercy, first of all upon one's self and family, and then for all others that one might know and respect, the whole thing about judgment to come is that it forms a revolutionary situation. This represents the forced imposition of a new order on the world, or at least on the people of the world. You can't expect that what you know, who you know, or what you think, are going to mean anything in this revolutionary framework. And I have no doubt that this will sound stark and perhaps hostile to many, because there are times when it seems that way to me. The burden that is lifted, however, is that we know our God to be a God of grace. He has promised to judge us by our faith and not exclusively by our works. If we have struggled along and failed in the world, by our own standards or by yours, then that will not be held against us, unless our failure has been to show compassion to those who need our help.

There is as much challenge in this for conservatives as for liberals or socialists. Nobody in the conventional political spectrum is anywhere near the position that is implied by the full reading of the Gospel. Most of the large institutions, including the churches, are some distance away from where they ought to be as well. It's not my way to point fingers from one part of the Christian church towards another part, unless I think some are entirely off the right path. So I would simply say, each denomination should always be humble in the Spirit, and searching for the right way to use their resources in the world.

And also, what of alternate faiths or philosophies, such as the Hindus, the Buddhists, the native North American spiritual traditions, Taoism, the Sikh religion, etc?

The universe is complex enough that these could very well be more similar to Christianity than appears at first glance. We have to be careful that we are not thrown off by different cultural forms or different expressions of language. What is the essential nature of these faiths when compared to Christianity? I do not enter into this with hostility, but with the expectation that I will learn things and find commonalities. With Buddhism, for example, there are many parallels to Christianity, and many obvious strengths both of spirituality and conduct. On a much smaller scale, I have personally gained much from studying the features of the native spirituality that developed not in opposition to our own, but in ignorance of them as far back as the period of 800 to 1200 A.D. in the one case that I am most familiar with.

My concept of God allows for a great deal of complexity and transcendence of what we see and think we know, and I do not fear for God's judgment of entirely different religions and the people who sincerely practice them. Perhaps God will wish to establish a hierarchy of faith, or perhaps He will reveal principles of equivalence, but I know that the entire concept of judgment is open-ended, that it may as easily raise up as put down. I rather fear for the harsh judgment of the Muslims, who have chosen to replace the Gospel with the theology of Mohammed, which appears inferior on so many specific points, thus reducing the existing level of faith in God and exposing one billion people, ultimately, to what amounts to a false prophecy. The Muslim faiths did not develop in isolation from our traditions, but in opposition to them, a fact which is becoming more obvious with every passing year nowadays. This is another reason, given the whole scope of Biblical prophecy, why I believe that the present world may be near its final days, moving ever closer to a time appointed for its judgment by God.

Posted: 10/ 06/ 05 7:47 pm Post subject:

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Posted: 10/ 06/ 05 11:02 pm Post subject:

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