Christianity Oasis Forum

[keeper]

Why do you think there is a God?
So much of what is preached, discussed, argued, etc. are about the ins and outs of following Gods/Jesus wishes for our lives. However the point of contention of the atheist/non-believers is more basic than that. They say the foundational assumption of a Gods existence is imagination. They want to know …Why you think there is a God. The idea to them seems like it was just handed down to us and we just blindly accept it. The answers/explanations I am hearing from my fellow Christians, the few that actually respond at all are thin, feeble, and unconvincing. What is the answer? Where are the convincing explanations? Why do you think there is a God?

[TrueAndMagneticNorth]

Hi keeper,

Interesting way that you frame this question. No doubt many people have different answers. For whatever they're worth, here are mine.

I split my answer into two sections: The first is the general creator aspect, the second is why the creator actually happens to be the God of the bible.

Regarding the first aspect, the burden of proof is very much, and continues to remain just as much on atheists/darwinists as it is creationists. They don't admit this, of course, because many of them are just as fanatical about their darwinist faith as hardline muslims are about theirs, or jews about theirs, or Christians about theirs.

Without going into all the ins-and-outs, there are many holes/gaps in darwinist theory which require faith and nothing more, that it is true. The majority of darwinists, when asked why they believe in it, say something like, 'Because it's scientific.' When asked for more details, it gets hard for them to provide anything concrete.

In a nutshell, did we pop out of thin air, or were we made by something/someone that has existed forever? Both seem utterly implausible, and whichever one you choose requires a leap of faith. Would a darwinist believe me if I said my car on the street was actually not manufactured by anyone, but rather just essentially popped out of thin air? And how much more complex are life systems than an automobile?

Thus, from my perspective, either side of the darwinist-creationist divide requires a leap of faith, but my own view is that the creationist side is the more logical one, even though darwinism is for all intents and purposes the current religion/ideology of the western political establishment.

From this perspective, darwinism is only 'scientific' in the way that the current scientific community is nothing more than a vehicle to promote an anti-God agenda, and an explanation of existence that deliberately excludes Him, absolutley regardless of whatever the truth my be.

So that's the first aspect. The second aspect is, 'Why is the creator of the universe explicitly the God of the bible?' My view is that this is very much faith. Pure faith, so pure that to the true believer it is an absolute truth; as pure as the faith of a hardcore darminist in Darwin's theory, or the muslim's faith in islam, and so on.

Even Jesus refers to a human's relationship with God as 'faith'. In 2 Corinthians 5:7, it states, 'We live by faith, not sight,' for example.

But is this a blind faith? As a Christian, my faith tells me that it is not a 'blind faith'. I believe that in Romans 1:20, for example, it explains that there is a connection between accepting that we were created, and then getting to know exactly who our creator is, 'For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.'

This begs the obvious question about believers of other religions, namely, 'If they have accepted there is a creator, why do they believe the creator is someone completely different to the creator who is described in the bible?'

Maybe that's a topic for another day, to which I don't necessarily have an answer. But I would say in defence of followers of other (non-Christian) religions, well, I believe they are barking up the wrong tree in regards to who they think the creator is. But at least they are in the right forrest.

Darwinists are not even in the right forrest in this regard, if you know what I mean. And no, just because they say that their unproven and unprovable atheist faith is 'fact', doesn't make it any less unproven and unprovable. Anyone who says so is being spoon-fed their beliefs, even though they say the same about believers in God.

I'll stop there. I'm not pretending to have all of the definitive answers to your question here. But I think you were seeking personal stories from different people about why they think there is a God, and why he's the God of the bible. This post was a summary of just my personal views.

God bless. It's very positive that you are posing these questions, and I hope you can get exactly the sorts of insights that you were looking for.

[dema]

1. The argument of the watchmaker. If you find a watch in the forest, you know it didn't grow there. How? Because it could not grow in all its complexity. We are more complex than a watch. Evolution is a fact - but there is evolution and there is evolution. I recommend Robert Shapiro's origins. In a nutshell - life didn't just happen. Shapiro does not profess a solution. He merely proves that life does not exist. But it does.

2. I know God. Here, meet my next door neighbor. God is more real. My next door neighbor doesn't choreograph my life. Oh, my life is funny with the choreographer. Being on a sales trip and just before I left I picked up a particular sample. Being 300 miles away from the office and a guy randomly calls in and wants to see that sample just as I am driving at the closest point to his office - 20 minutes away. Being ten minutes late and everyone else is 11 minutes late. . Having a check for the right amount for payroll come in on the day it had to come in on. The right amount. Actually it was two checks, that summed to the right amount. It isn't all gravy like that. But the "coincidences" are too frequent to be coincidences. Hearing the same message from three sources in two days - a lesson I apparently needed to learn. On one occasion it was so "spooky" I threw a book across the room. That was the fourth time in a few days and the next day was yet another one. How often do you read about Abraham and Hagar?

3. We know. Confront an atheist and you may find that once he did know. But Christians hurt him or her. But we know. We are born with the desire for God. It is a deep yearning. And if you are here, then I imagine that your heart knows that yearning.

I'm not much on apologetics. Faith is by faith. By stepping forward and taking the risk. And then there is Pascal's wager.

What if there is no God - so what? What if there is? Which way would YOU rather be wrong?

Why do we ask why? Why do we care?

God bless.

[dema]

PS *Origins and - evolution, even upward evolution, has been proven. The spontaneous creation of life is what is impossible at this current moment. And also, I believe the complexity of life as we know it is beyond any mathematical odds. And the intricacy. And the interdependence. The interdependence is HUGE. If you read about life from atoms to atmosphere - it is amazing. Beyond amazing. Oxygen and carbon dioxide. Food. Imagine starting the food chain.

It is a truly fascinating subject.

[TrueAndMagneticNorth]

Keeper,

Just found a great little (cost and registration-free) video that is relevant to this topic. I'm not sure that you have the time to watch it. It goes for about half an hour.

It's about the darwinist v creationist debate. The speaker makes the important point that 'evolution' is not just one thing. In fact, there are no less than half a dozen types of evolution that really should not be lumped into one category at all.

http://www.creationtoday.org/why-evolut ... t-science/

One is 'cosmic evolution', namely the big bang. A person can believe in it if they want, but it in reality has nothing to do with science, no matter what so-called scientists or other 'important' people say.

Another type is 'organic evolution', namely a non-living thing becoming a living thing, like a rock becoming an insect. He points out that no-one can prove this at all. In this way, it is also a religious like belief, no matter how much the view is promoted.

Another example is 'macro evolution', namely changing from one type of animal to another, eg. apes to humans. The speaker in the video explains how it is unscientific. It is purely a faith-based view.

Lastly, he talks about so-called 'micro evolution', namely changes strictly within the same species, like how there are different types of dogs these days who presumably had a common dog ancestor. This, the speaker explains, is the only one from the six that is actually scientific.

From my point of view, the video equips a viewer well to have a (hopefully) polite discussion with a die-hard darwinist about origins of life. The speaker is also entertaining and amusing in his style.

All the best.