BlueMooner: lies the problem, as gods have continually existed in the darkness beyond our knowledge. When our knowledge only extended a few feet outside our village, we thought gods existed in the forests, rivers, and mountains. When we spread across the land, gods existed in the clouds and below the ground. Now that we're exploring the boundaries of the universe, gods exist beyond the universe. Doesn't that suggest anything to you?
There were philosophers who deduced logically necessary attributes of God longer before modern science, so I encourage you to read Aristotle or Aquinas. An excellent beginnings guide is Aquinas by Edward Feser.
http://www.amazon.com/Aquinas-Beginners-Guide-Edward-Feser/dp/1851686908
Image doesn't mean that. Image refers to appearance. To say that we share intangible attributes is to say that we share his character, or persona, or nature, or some other word. It sounds like you are trying to redefine image to mean what you want.
The term can be translated in His likeness, so what we're trying to figure our is in which ways God made us to be like Him. The Bible describes God as spirit, so it would be hard to look like this. However, throughout the Bible God wants us to be in a certain relationship with Him, so it would make sense that God would give us attributes that would allow for that, such as a intellect, or making us moral agents.
There was another post (I think it was Flash's), that said that the world created in six days actually meant thousands of years, since they were god-days and not human-days. It sounds to me like redefining words to make them work.
The Bible says that God is eternal, so I think the verse saying that a day is like a thousand years is simply expressing the timelessness of God rather than Giving precise measurements about how He relates to time.
I think humans are supremely arrogant, and I think that religion helps to justify and validate arrogant views. This is not just xianity. Religions with reincarnation for example never say people advance TO animals, but always FROM them. Animals are placed lower on the scale.
We say that we are justified in hunting, butchering, force-feeding and experimenting on animals because they are "lesser", yet if we were conquered by aliens who did those things to us, there's not a single person who would accept it because they were "superior". Humans are certainly more intelligent than other animals, and it is that intelligence that has allowed us to become dominant, but I wouldn't say it necessarily sets us above animals. Animals possess many traits such as speed and strength that are superior to our own.
It's not that God gave us superiority bodies to animals, but that God gave us dominion over the, which includes responsibility to them. Our intellect and morality set us apart from animals and allow us to have a relationship with God. If we were given dominion by God, then it's not really arrogance, and the point of the passage was not to foster arrogance, so to keep harping on that is really to miss what is being said.
"Wishful thinking". People believe lots of things without evidence because they want them to be true.
(www.dictionary.com)
be·lief [bih-leef]
noun
1. something believed; an opinion or conviction: a belief that the earth is flat.
2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.
3. confidence; faith; trust: a child's belief in his parents.
The common theme I see here is having confidence, conviction, or trust that something is true, which I don't think that comes from just merely wishing it to be true. Rather, it is evidence that gives us confidence that something is true, and the stronger the evidence, the greater the confidence we can have.
Conrad57: Putting aside the allegations that the Crusades weren't xian and that Naziism was atheistic, I'm unclear why you would spend time arguing that the Crusades weren't done by TRUE xians, and then claim that atheism is responsible for countless deaths. Deaths from atheism = 0.
Hitler said some very anti-Christians things, so it's clear that he wasn't a Christian, but he did believe in some sort of god, so he wasn't an atheists. He also said some negative things against the occult, so it not likely that he was a pagan either. He was a cultist in Positive Christianity that disagreed with Christianity on some major points. They dumped the entire Old Testament and anything in the New Testament that was deemed too Jewish. They dejudaized Jesus and they were more interested in right action than right doctrine. They said it was important to be good to humanity, but then said that Jews didn't qualify as part of humanity.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/grok558/2013/11/23/deeper-waters--hitlers-christianity Atheist.
I disagree with the responses calling you agnostic. There are only two possible positions people can have when it comes to beliefs: either you have the belief, or you don't. If you believe in gods, you are theist. ANYTHING else, you are atheist. This is not an attempt to add members... I do not respect
argumentum ad numerum. It is about using terms correctly. People continually use agnostic to mean some neutral middle ground, but that is
NOT what it means, and it only confuses the issue.
Everyone in the world that has ever lived is either theist or atheist, no exceptions.
A theist is someone who claims that god or gods exist while an atheist claims that god or gods do not exist. An agnostics is someone who doesn't know whether god or gods exist.
Why?
God is good, He loves me and made me for a purpose, I love God, and it is good to express my love for God in obedience to His commands.
In many of your posts, you use the words "evidence", "proof" and the like in ways I'm not familiar with. You seem to have different meanings with these words.
(www.dictionary.com)
ev·i·dence [ev-i-duhns]
noun
1. that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.
2. something that makes plain or clear; an indication or sign: His flushed look was visible evidence of his fever.
According to #2, evidence is an indication that something is is true. When you consider evidence to be strong enough to justify your belief, then it is grounds for belief and it is proved to you.
proof [proof]
noun
1. evidence sufficient to establish a thing as true, or to produce belief in its truth.
2. anything serving as such evidence: What proof do you have?
Again, this aligns with how I've been using it.
Shaolin_sKunk: You hear something from your parents. You accept it. You hear something from your friend. You accept it. Then you repeat it to someone who trusts your credibility and then passes it on. No one does their homework because they assume someone else already did it.
QFT
If your parents or friends tell you something and you accept it, then they indicated to you that it was true. If you tell someone else and they accept it, then you indicated to them that it was true. Evidence does not have to be strong evidence to qualify as evidence.
I've seen the numerous posts of yours asking Pimp to clarify his view, and I think the error lies in what you think he said. You seem to think he said views form without anything behind them at all, which is not what he said.
He said, "I don't need to give it too much though, there's no proof in a religion. So there's no reason to believe it." That is essentially the same as saying that those views don't have anything behind them at all.
