Religion??? WTF

Exactly Straightshooter

You think youre the 1st person to ask this??

Get over yourself mwhit82!

mwhit82: "It is such a moronic concept that I beg anyone w/ ballz to explain why they think a "god" exists..And why I'm wrong. And NO I won't accept "God told me so"!!!"

"I wont accept"

I have no obligation to you jagoff. You will accept whatever I say and like it. lol

usually you are pretty cool mwhit but this thread is lame. People have been bitching about Religion for a 1,000 years and you are going to get down to the bottom of this on Covers?!!

SMH

You think youre the 1st person to ask this mwhit82 ??

I always laugh at people who say "I don't believe in the supernatural!'

What is more supernatural then a flesh and bones, walking around, talking?

Have you every thought how supernatural that really is? Here is a body, with hair, with two legs, arms, ears, eyes, but something has to move that thing.  But then, when it's time, or by accident, that thing is gone, and the flesh and bone becomes dust.  THAT my friend, is supernatural.  The Soul or whatever it is, begins from somewhere, sometime.  Everything has a beginning.

A couple of points.......

Did it ever occur to you that when GOD made us, he put something inside our brains so we can believe in him?

I find it quiet ironic that people who say they believe that aliens are out there yet have never seen them, yet the same people wont believe in GOD because they have never seen him............"happy to those who believe but have not seen".......

This is a mystery........the one thing for me that gives me my faith is the love humans have for one another.......Science is NOT love, but GOD is love........and that is echoed through our love for family and friends and the human society...........Love is real and visible....

You must not have alot of love in your life, i pray for you that you find love and you start to see the goodness of the Lord.....

The comments people make here is an indication of the devil....where there is good , there is bad.........

We are put on this earth for a reason, to love one another and love GOD.........and at the same time we are put through tests.......some more than others.......

Otherwise, the way u see things is, why are we here? to earn as much money as we can? to bang as many chicks as we can find? what are we here for........? we dont take anything with us, that is why u should put your treasures in heaven as opposed to this earth where it can be destroyed by moth or stolen by thieves.....

I dont have all the answers, far far far from it, that is why it is a mystery.......

U have this belief because u have not looked for Jesus....its as simple as that......

here is a small story, a barber was cutting a mans hair one day when the man who was getting his hair cut said, i dont believe in GOD, the Barber said, why not? The man said, well, look at all the sick kids, wars, people suffering etc etc etc........If there was a GOD, surely this would not be happening.........

The Barber said, ok, fair enough........

A month later, the same man walked in...The barber said to him, you know what, i dont believe that barbers exist........The man said, that is crazy, i am in a barbers shop.........

The barber then said, well, i was walking down the street this morning and i saw a man with really really long hair and he was un shaven, surely if there were barbers, he wouldnt have long hair.....

The man said, well he didnt go looking for a barber.......

The moral of the story.......go search for GOD......

Peace be with you...

Interestingly enough, the word fool can also be translated to wicked. You know atheists are usually wicked. That's how they get to be atheists. They have wickedly reduced God to non-existence in order to entertain their sin with a sense of moral obligation. A fool denies God because he reasons against his own innate knowledge. He reasons against the most simple and obvious fact and his existence that something had to make everything.

In order for the fool to say the word God, he had to have a concept of God. And if he had to have a concept of God, that implies that God is. So when an atheist comes along and says there is no God, maybe the best answer is there is no, what? There is no God. What's that? I mean, if there isn't one and you've got the thought of one that you had to eliminate. You say well, that's the old analogical argument. Yes, you see, it's impossible to think of something that isn't.

You say well, what about the people who may have dreamed in the future about an airplane. That's simply the putting together of mechanical devices. That's just a modified bird. That's not something that isn't. That's a mechanical thing and that's just putting together the pieces of what is. But to think of an absolute non-existent thing is impossible.

Were the fool to work hard enough to try to eliminate God is testimony that God must be or he wouldn't have to worry about getting rid of Him. You say well, how would a person ever come to that. Romans 1:25 says he develops futile thinking patterns and they result in the rejection of God's existence. Now a natural revelation reveals the consciousness of God. And it tells us that God is glorious. That He is also powerful. You have to believe that when you look at the universe. That He is sovereign. Whoever He is, He's running the show.

And that He is moral, because people can see in the world that generally speaking evil brings evil results and good brings good results. There is a moral entity somewhere in the universe. And only a very wicked man denies it. You can call him a full or a wicked man. It's the same thing. Nature then is God's self-disclosure in man and around him.

Herschel, the astronomer said and I quote, "the broader the field of science grows, the more manifold and irrefutable become the proofs of the eternal existence of a creative and omnipotent wisdom." Van Nadler, the professor of astronomy in Dorpat in Europe said, "No true scientist can be an atheist. Whoever has looked as deeply into God's workshop as we have and has had as much opportunity to admire omnitions and eternal ordering of nature must bow the knee in humility before the rule of a holy God."

Manausthe professor of medicine and botany at Upsulasaid, "I have seen the footsteps of God." Keplerthe astronomer said "In creation I grasp God as it were in my hands." One of the outstanding Christian leaders of the third century, long time ago, was widely known for his wisdom. And he was once asked where he got all of his wisdom. This is what he said. "The source of all that I have learned is in two books. The one book is outwardly small, the other is outwardly large. The former book has many pages, the latter only two. The pages of the former are white with many black letters on them. One of the pages of the big book is blue and the other is green. On the blue page there is one big golden letter and many small silver ones. On the green page there are enumerable colored letters in red and white and yellow and blue and gold. The small book is the Bible, the large book is nature. These two books belong together. Both testify to the revelation of the one living God. Their testimonies are in harmony and point to the power greatness and love the Lord of the world."

So natural or general revelation gives to man the consciousness of God. But that isn't enough. God went further than that and gave to us what we call special revelation. Now special revelation really came in two parts. First of all, special revelation appears in the Holy Bible, verbal revelation. This is God's verbal disclosure of Himself. Special revelation.

Not nearly the same thing.  First off, I can touch my cat.  He greets me at the door.  He comes over and sits on my lap. 

Secondly, if someone doesn't like cats, then they don't like cats.  It's not because they don't understand them....it's just because they don't like them.  I don't like snakes....but many people do.  It's not because I don't understand them or never attempted to bond with them.

So you worship a person who would offer person A ever lasting salvation after he committed murder....and sold drugs....just because he happened to "see the light" before he died?

And the person who spends their entire life doing good deeds to his fellow man is out of luck.  Incomprehensible to me. 

Then by definition, you're saying it's completely arbitrary?  So it's possible his favorite people to let into heaven are rapists?

Your body functioning is not science?  So the THOUSANDS of medications that have been invented which prevent people from dying aren't about science?  My business partners dad has a heart pump as well as a defibrilator......my dad had his heart valve repaired.  That's not science?  Both would be dead right now if not for science and technology. 

Are people really that unable to think for themselves?

And yet another one of my questions goes unanswered.

What about the Hindu who lives in Asia and has never heard of your God?  Does that person go to heaven or is he punished just because of pure ignorance?

Simple question. 

what about that really hot chick i met at the club right before i got married who was cool as shit and loved to party (x was her favorite) and was a lot of fun and didn't give a shit about religion?  i need to know where she's going (along with some of her friends, probably strippers who slept late on sundays) and also whether or not my marriage contract remains valid in the afterlife. 

We never had the law. And if we never had the law, how in the world can we be condemned for not obeying it?" Fair question? The person says this, we are exempt because of special favor. God says no. The Gentile says, we are exempt because of ignorance. Is that right? What about that pagan? What about that heathen who never saw the law of God, never read the Scripture, never heard the gospel? Can you condemn somebody for not obeying the written word? I mean, after all in Romans 15 it says, "Where no law is there is no transgression." And in Romans 5:13 it says, "For until the law sin was in the world but sin is not imputed when there is no law." And in Romans 7:7, "What shall we say then, is the law sin? God forbid, nay, I had not known sin but by the law." So if there is no transgression when there's no law and there's no knowledge of sin when there's no law, how can we be responsible when we don't have the written law? And a lot of people ask that question. Does God hold people responsible who never heard the written law of God?

Let's find out the answer. Verse 14, "For when the heathen, or pagan, Gentiles, ethna, who have not the law," that is the written law now, keep that in mind, the written law, they don't have that, "when they do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another."

Now what is he saying? He's saying simply this, you do not have to have the written law to be responsible. For you have a law within you manifest in your behavior, manifest in your conscience, and manifest in your thinking patterns. There are four great reasons why the heathen are lost. Here they come. Reason number one, creation...creation. Go back to chapter 1 and we'll pick up a thought from verse 18. "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness of men." Now you see it is not just the religious men, it is not just the people with the law of God, it is all men, all men, all men. The wrath of God is revealed against all of the ungodliness and all of the unrighteousness of all men...whether they had the written law or not. Why? Because they hold the truth.

How do they hold the truth? Verse 19, "That which may be known about God is manifest in them." How is it manifest in them? Well, God has shown it unto them. Well how did He show it unto them? "For the invisible things of Him from the...what?...creation of the world are clearly seen so they are without excuse." So from chapter 1 we learn the first reason why the heathen are lost, creation. They can look around them and know there's a God. They can look around them and perceive that He is supernatural and that He is more powerful than any being that they know of in their dimension. And so they are responsible because they hold that knowledge.

But now as we come to chapter 2 we find the three remaining reasons why the heathen are lost and why we have to send missionaries to reach them. Verse 14, and the word is conduct. First they're lost because of creation, secondly, because of conduct. "For when the heathen who have not the law do by nature or do naturally the things contained in the law, these though they don't have the law become a law unto themselves." In other words, they don't have an outside law, but they have an internal law that makes them a law unto themselves and it is manifest in their conduct

"Now when the heathen do by nature the things contained in the law" indicates that it does occur. When they do it...and it is a common occurrence. Pagans naturally do things that are written in God's law. Did you know that? Without ever reading God's law. Their conduct, listen to this now, their conduct proves they know what is right and wrong. Their conduct proves that there is available within them residing in them the law of God.

Sometimes pagans pay their debts. Is that in the law of God? Yes. They honor their parents. There are many people who do not know Jesus Christ, do not know God, never read the Bible who love their wives. There are many wives who so love their husbands. There are many people who have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ who care for their children and there are many children who care for their parents. There are many of them who believe it's wrong to kill. There are many people who've never known Jesus Christ or the message of Christ or the Bible or the meaning of the gospel who would feed the hungry, who would help a man who was sick or a woman who was sick. Pagans will tell the truth, sometimes. They will even seek to do justice. They will struggle for equity. You see, all of these things reveal an internal human code of ethics that is the law unto themselves.

We see it in our human system of justice. We see it in our humanitarianism. And the humanitarianism and the justice around the world even in very obscure and isolated peoples. Sometimes it's warped but in any society you ever see, you will find some of those heathen exercising things which they do naturally that are in direct line with God's law. And they therefore show that that law is in them.

The Stoic said that in the universe there were certain laws operative which a man broke at his own peril. And the Stoics who were utterly pagan philosophers said they are the laws of health, the laws of morality and the laws governing life and living. And the Stoics called all of these laws which means nature. They said men are to live kata phusin, they are to live according to what is natural. The Stoics actually said that these laws were natural to man. You see, man can recognize that there is a right, that there is a code of ethics. The very fact that man has a guilty conscience is because he violates the very code of ethics that's in him. There's a sense of right and wrong. And when men naturally do something that lines up with the law of God and they do it all the time, they show that the law of God is written in them.

The unregenerate world, you see, does do relative human good. They do not do good in terms of spiritual righteousness. They do not do good in terms of good that is based on the right motive because nothing is truly good unless it is done for the glory of God, right? But they do good in a relative human sense and when they do that, they show the law of God at work though unwritten at work in their heart. They will do good in the right manner if not for the right motive.

I think about Cyrus in the Old Testament who did good. He let God's people go. I think about Darius. I think about Artaxerxes. And they are even commended, Ezra chapter 7 commends Artaxerxes, pagans who did good on behalf of God's people. What about the city clerk in Ephesus? A pagan who quieted the rioters. What about Romans of high standing in Acts 23 who protected Paul? And even the barbarians who showed unusual kindness to Paul in building a fire in Acts 28 to warm him.

Yeah, man is totally depraved in the sense that he cannot do anything that is righteously good or that is good toward God or that is good as revealing God. But he can do a man kind of good. But every time he does that he proves that there is a law within him that points to that as good. Are the heathen lost? Yes. Can they claim ignorance? No. First, because of creation. It is around them. And they can perceive within their minds God in that creation and secondly, because of their conduct they prove that there's a law within them.

Now this may shock you. Basically if you look at it simply from the standpoint of general human good, most people are outside the prisons, right? It's the few that are inside. What does this mean? This does not mean that man is basically good, he is depraved. But there is in him a sense of rightness that keeps him from being as bad as he possible could be. And that is the law of God within him.

Now extending the thought, let's look at a third reason why the heathen are lost and that is conscience. And this is part of that same concept in verse 14 but it's in verse 15. They not only reveal the work of the law within them by their conduct when they do naturally the things that are in them, but they also reveal the law of God written in their hearts when their conscience functions in bearing testimony. Now stop there for a minute.

Now we all know what conscience is. The word simply means co-knowledge. And I guess we could say that it means co- knowledge with oneself. The etymology of the word basically comes whether it's in Greek, or Latin or English from the same root, the idea is to know along with. And conscience is sort of that thing in you that knows along with you what's right. It refers to a person's inner sense of right and wrong, the moral consciousness that pronounces judgment on thoughts and attitudes and speech and deeds.

You know, I remember reading about a tribe in Africa that had a very interesting process to determine who was guilty of something. When there was some stealing and it had gone on in the tribe, they would line all of the men up because stealing was normally done by men, and they would go along and they would ask them if they did it. And they would say yes or no. And then they would, after having said it, ask them to stick their tongue out at which time they took a hot knife and placed it on the tongue. If there was saliva on the tongue, the knife would be removed without a problem. If there was no saliva on the tongue, the knife would stick and burn its way through their tongue. And they could always tell who the liar was because he had no saliva.

What makes your saliva dry up when you do something wrong? There's a conscience in you. There's a thought process in you that knows right and knows wrong and deals with you when you violate it. It's like when you cheat and you live in this constant state of fear of being found out. That's conscience. Conscience responds to the internal norm and I would say in the Christian, of course, conscience is tremendously intensified because you not only have that basic law within you but you have also the law of Christ from His word added to the normal natural law and the compounding of that even excites the conscience more to respond.

And Paul listened to his conscience several times, he said, my conscience bears witness, didn't he? In other words, he was saying my conscience agrees with me that I'm doing right, that my heart is pure. The Bible also suggests that your conscience can become scarred and scar tissue has no feeling. That's why Paul in Romans tells us, "Do not violate your conscience. Don't violate your conscience." In other words, he's talking about Christian liberty and he says if you...if somebody tells you it's okay to do that but your conscience says don't do that, then don't do it even though it is okay because if you get in the habit of violating your conscience, you're going to scar something that you desperately need to protect you. It's like losing your sense of feeling.

That's what happens when conscience is scarred. And so Paul says don't do that. Even the heathen have a conscience. But over a long period of time they can dull that conscience. But I don't think they can always obliterate it. I think it's there telling them what is right and what is wrong. And I don't care if you're in a primitive society or any other one, you show me a person who has committed a crime and they may do everything they can to justify that crime, but they're always looking like this...to see whose coming after them because they know what's right and what's wrong.

Little children are the perfect illustration. Why do you think an ungodly family with an ungodly little kid, the kid does something wrong and he comes back, his mother says, "Did you do it?" What's the first thing he does? He lies. Why? Because he knows what he did was...what?...was wrong. Even though he maybe never did it before. There's a standard, his conscience tells him that.

The heathen are lost because of creation, conduct, conscience. Fourth, the heathen are lost because of contemplation. Here's another indicator of the lostness of the heathen. "Their thoughts are in the process of accusing or excusing one another." In other words, there is in us the capacity to contemplate or to reason and to determine what someone does is right or wrong. For example, a person without God, without Christ, without the Bible hears about someone who has murdered a child, what is his reaction? Unless the person is totally at the extremity of vileness he's going to say that's awful. He's going to accuse, we ought to find that person and do something to that person. Why do you think we have a punitive system in our society? Why do you think there are punitive systems in every society? Because men know what is right and wrong. They have the capacity in their minds to accuse or excuse. They know that's all right, we can excuse that, but not this. The heathen do that.

People in our society who are godless heathen people fight against crime, don't they? They...I don't think everybody who is for the death penalty and capital punishment is a Christian, do you? I think there are some people who just think that somebody ought to do something about the crime because it's wrong. I watched a mother who used profanity on the news, I know she wasn't a Christian, and she said that a man had raped her little girl and killed her and she said, "I want that man to give his life for the life of my daughter that he took." Why? Why did she feel that way? Because there is in her the capacity to contemplate right and wrong and to say this is excusable, this is inexcusable.

That's true of the heathen. The sum of it is this, people. Creation, conduct, conscience, contemplation, what they do, how they deal with the good and bad in their own life and how they deal with it in the lives of others indicates that they know the law of God as written in them. Now here is the most important thing I've said yet. The sum of it is this, if they live up to that much light, and they accept that much light, God will reveal to them the full light of Jesus Christ. I believe that with all my heart. You see, that's what it says in Acts 17, "He is not far from us if we would feel after Him." Do you see? If they would just take what they have and accept that. John 7:17, mark it down, "If any man wills to do My Father's will, he shall know of the teaching." If the willing heart is there, he'll know.

We had a living illustration of this in our church in the last week. A man by the name of Augustus Marway(?), some of you came on Wednesday night and heard his testimony. He is proof positive of this and I have his testimony and I'm just going to read a few excerpts from it.

This man lived in a village involved in tribal wars, never put a stitch of clothes on his body till he was 14. In a most aboriginal circumstance in Africa and this is his own testimony.

I resented it whenever strangers passing through the village were invited to our house. At first mother allowed me and my two brothers to eat with the guest, but I made a pig of myself, stuffing my mouth with handfuls of rice and grabbing another handful before I could even swallow what I had. Mother was ashamed of me. She wouldn't let me eat with the guests after that. I would just sit and glare at the visitors, making them feel uncomfortable until they would invite me to the table.

From then on mother made me sit outside the house until the guests had finished eating. I don't know what made me so incorrigible. In fact the whole village asked the question, "What's the matter with that so of Marwey(?)," they would ask and my poor parents were at their wits end.

Even though I love my mother dearly I found myself doing terrible things. I can remember seeing her sitting on a bench outside the house and impulsively picking up a stick to throw at her legs. I missed her and struck a little child, hurting him badly.

At times like that the villagers would join my parents in meting out a punishment. That time they held me down on the ground by my legs and my arms while they poured a bowl of hot pepper soup down my nose. I nearly choked to death and for hours afterward my nose burned.

There's a new one for you, mom and dad. If Campbells only knew. Let me stop in this testimony for a moment. Why did that tribe of aboriginal people who never heard about the true God, who never heard of the gospel, never heard the name Jesus, why did they punish a young boy for throwing a stick and hurting a child? Why? Who told them that was wrong? Why did this young man feel guilty? He told us when he talked to our staff one day, he said, "My heart was broken every day because I loved my mother and I knew she was ashamed of me but I couldn't correct my behavior." Why did he feel that way? Where did he get to feel that guilt? Where did that come from? And why was his mother ashamed of him? Who told her what the standard was?

He goes on:

I couldn't understand myself. After one of those episodes I would go off into the forest and pound my head against a tree crying, "What's wrong with me? I should kill myself." I hated being the white sheep of the family. (All depends on your perspective.)

He says, But one day when I was about twelve years old a boy returned to our village from the coast where he had been visiting his father. (By the way, that was a long, long, long journey by foot.) None of us younger ones had ever seen the ocean. So we crowded around him to hear all about it. It was as though he had been to the moon and back. Enjoying the acclaim he kept us spellbound with his experiences as he recounted the strange things he saw. Among other things he told us about how some people met together in a house on Sundays and they sang and stayed a long time.

He couldn't figure out what they were doing. And finally his curiosity got the better of him so he asked one of the villagers, "What do you do in there for such a long time?" They told him they were praying to God, the God who created everything and they said they believed He heard their prayers.

I had never heard anything like this. A God who hears your prayers? It excited me. And I wanted to pray to God, too. I asked the boy to meet me on Sunday since that's the day they met in that house and we would go someplace outside the village and he could tell me how to pray. But he wasn't interested. Disappointed I decided the next Sunday to try it by myself.

I went to a hut that my cousin was still building and with no one around I tried to pray for the first time. I had never heard anyone pray. But I decided I would just talk to this God like He was my father. I can't explain what happened but it was an exciting experience. I wanted to know more about this God but there was no one in our village who knew anything about Him. So for two years I kept praying by myself on Sundays and hoping that some day some one would come along who could tell me about Him.

You see? Now he lived up to the light he had, didn't he? He followed that light.

About this time the government started building a motor road to prepare for the new invention called the automobile. And along with many of my relatives, we spent two weeks a month for the next two years building the road under terrible working conditions. Then I went back to Sidor(?) where I had been born to stay with my cousin. When I reached Sidor I made the most wonderful discovery of my entire life, for in Sidor there was a house where people met to pray to the God who created the world.

How excited I was. I could hardly wait for Sunday. All night I lay on my mat waiting for that bell that my cousin said would ring and call us to that house. That morning I sat in the back. I listened to a man tell about God for the first time in my life. I found He was far more wonderful than I had ever imagined. The preacher said that God loved the world so much that He sent His only Son named Jesus to take away my sins. I wondered if He knew how terrible I was. I wonder if He knew the awful things I had done back in my village. But the preacher said no matter what I had done, God would forgive me and make my heart clean.

Listen to this next statement.

I knew it was all true.

How did he know that? How did he know that was true? You say, "Well, he went to the counseling room. He gave him a sheet on apologetics." How did he know that was true? He was following a light God had given him and that was the next logical step and his heart was a prepared heart.

Hadn't this God heard my prayers when I talked to Him and asked Him to help me? Hadn't He sent me here to Sidor when I didn't even know He had one of His houses here? I gave my heart to God that morning and it was nice to know He had a Son, too. He was really a father, just like I had been praying to.

You know what happened to that man? That man became the most significant man in the nation of Liberia in our day in founding and building churches.

Do you get the picture? You see, the very...listen to this..the very fact that that could occur proves the heathen have the knowledge if they'll live up to it. God will be fair, no favorites but each is responsible for the light he has.

Finally, there's a sixth principle of judgment, I'm just going to mention. God judges by knowledge, by truth, by guilt, by deeds, by impartiality and sixthly, by motives. There's another dimension and these all interface and overlap. There not as distinct as I've made them in the outline but they are elements of the act of judgment. God will judge on the basis not only of what a man's deeds are but what his reasons were. Because you can falsify the deed but you can't falsify the motive, right? And so verse 16 says, "In the day when God shall judge the...what?...secrets of men." Judgement, you see, will finally reach down into the secret place of motives...of motives.