Let's say that a God does exist

[Zetesis Apistia]

This is not an argument for the existence of God. This is not a trick to say gotcha. Just curious as to your response. No levity please. Here is the scenario......

You die and all of the sudden you find your self still consciously aware in a spiritual dimension that is foreign to the world in which we live. You are suddenly apprehended by an angelic host and carted off to a courtroom of sorts....You are then seated before a judge (God). God then asks you to plead your case before he makes his decision on your eternal destiny. What would be your response?

[Zetesis Apistia]

Do you believe God has a gender? Pure spirit is not aligned to any sex. Him, her, it, all of it is the same.

No I don't. That us why I was asking.

[Zetesis Apistia]

[Replying to post 114 by Zetesis Apistia]

Eyewitnesses???

Under what evidence??

Decades of believer's embellished stories never to be written down until later in the next century in another country in another language???

and no copies of them in original form or authors??

and they claim to have eyewitness?

You have no idea how weak on convoluted the process of information is with the claims of biblical manuscripts.......

You do understand that much of what is in our history books comes from weak sources. How many of those do you discount? Lets take Alexander the Great for example. We have far less to prove any of those claims than we do of the Jesus claims. Are you skeptical of those claims as well?

This is a common response to such a discussion and I will explain the fault in that position.............Alexander the Great is a historical figure.........there is no claim to divinity and/or authority that demands a decision to worship him or suffer condemnation...........so the evidence that demands what he did in history is not unprecedented.........(like all the miracles proclaimed to Christ)..........Are you aware that both Caesar and Alexander the Great have documents proclaiming them to be born of a virgin?....................do you think anyone believes such nonsense??

We throw out such claims and accept what they did in history as something any human could do if they were that person.

I don't know, there were some pretty outrageous claims made of Alexander. But at any rate, people will fabricate just to sell more books. We know that. So how do you know what is fabrication and how do you know what isn't in any ancient text? The fact is with many you can't be sure, but I doubt that you approach anything other that the bible with skepticism as far as ancient texts go.

There are more manuscripts of the gospels than any other documents in antiquity which is not a asset but a huge liability because they are in conflict with each other and embellished with so many outrageous claims of the supernatural that even the early church had to canonized what they would establish as traditional dogma in order to eliminate the 100s of Jewish and Gentile sects of Christ followers all in conflict with each other's theology...what you hold in your hand today is a collection of manuscripts that began with Constantine's Roman command of Christianity as a state religion that lead to this consolidation and compromising of a biblical canon that people today assumes was divinely inspired word of God.

The 4 gospels were chosen for the canon to consolidate three church movements.....the Petrus (or followers of Peter)........the Paulines (Paul followers) and the Johniannes (claiming John as Jesus's favorite) that were all in conflict with each other let alone all the other sects.............Constantine wasn't interest in truth but in consolidation and control of what would be taught to unify all followers.......

If there was truth........we'd only need one gospel not 4 of which 2 are copies from Mark and known as the synoptic gospels.............and John which was debated for over 400 years of whether to include in the bible because of its outrageous divinity claims........

Determining what would and what would not be canon was a very careful process. Most of these events were still very fresh in the minds of people when these things were written. It would have been difficult to pass off things that weren't true. The men that wrote the new testament were risking their lives for Jesus and you want me to believe they would risk it for a lie. Every Apostle except for one was killed for their beliefs and you want me to believe that they willingly died for something they didn't believe? Remarkable.

There are only stories that all of them gave their lives.........no extra biblical collaborated facts confirm any of it.......

Second, people give their lives all the time for beliefs that are false...........do you think the guys who died in 911 will see all those virgins in heaven?

Yes but we are talking about men who were eyewitnesses of what they wrote and what they died for. The people who died on 9/11 died for something that was written hundreds of years ago and couldn't possibly be confirmed by the suicide bombers. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, Jude, and James didn't rley on what they read they relied on what they saw and they gave their lives for it.

[Starman]

For at least two decades I had a good friend who was an atheist. One day I posed this very question to him. His reply:

"God, you should have given me more evidence."

He was a retired physics teacher, fully knowledgeable in physical laws, equations, exquisitely tuned physical constants, etc.

My response to him was, "Oh that will impress God, won't it. He's never heard that one."

[OnceConvinced]

Sad that God would have heard that so many times, but still never made an effort to provide the necessary evidence to some. You'd surely expect that he might make a little more effort in that department so as to avoid having to roast yet another of his beloved humans.

[Zzyzx]

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[Replying to post 134 by OnceConvinced]

Perhaps "God of the bible" is primarily interested in sheep, the meek, weak, humble, easily led, downtrodden, hopeless, and needy. Preachers and proselytizers appear to dislike intelligence, education, critical / analytical thinking, self-confidence, or other traits that tend to reduce gullibility and naivety.

[Danmark]

For at least two decades I had a good friend who was an atheist. One day I posed this very question to him. His reply:

"God, you should have given me more evidence."

He was a retired physics teacher, fully knowledgeable in physical laws, equations, exquisitely tuned physical constants, etc.

My response to him was, "Oh that will impress God, won't it. He's never heard that one."

Posed WHAT question? You've implied you asked a difficult question. What was it?

[Tired of the Nonsense]

I would respond to God: You created Adam, Eve and the serpent with your own hand, brought them together in the garden with the full foreknowledge of what would happen, condemned both sides when it did, and then required your son to die in agony to fulfill YOUR rule that atonement required a blood sacrifice. You required me to believe on faith a story that a corpse came back to life and flew away, and that this corpse, who was really you in human form, has been about to return again "Soon," FOR THE LAST 2,000 YEARS NOW! If you actually expected me to buy into all of that, why give me a thinking brain?

[Starman]

Sad that God would have heard that so many times, but still never made an effort to provide the necessary evidence to some. You'd surely expect that he might make a little more effort in that department so as to avoid having to roast yet another of his beloved humans.

Says the judge of God who made him. Whence came your morality? By what authority is your morality better than al Qaida's?

[Goat]

Sad that God would have heard that so many times, but still never made an effort to provide the necessary evidence to some. You'd surely expect that he might make a little more effort in that department so as to avoid having to roast yet another of his beloved humans.

Says the judge of God who made him. Whence came your morality? By what authority is your morality better than al Qaida's?

My authority, and the authority of the entire world that Al Qaida is fighting.

[Danmark]

Yes but we are talking about men who were eyewitnesses of what they wrote and what they died for. The people who died on 9/11 died for something that was written hundreds of years ago and couldn't possibly be confirmed by the suicide bombers. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, Jude, and James didn't rley on what they read they relied on what they saw and they gave their lives for it.

Paul admitted he never saw Jesus except in a vision he claimed to have had after he'd been unconscious or delirious for three days.
The evidence is fairly solid that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John were not written by eyewitness nor by the original disciples. When Paul, the earliest author of what was collected as the 'New Testament' he appears to have been unaware of even an oral tradition that corresponds to the gospels. Jude is only 25 verses long, its author unknown, quotes directly from the apocryphal Book of Enoch, and its inclusion in the Canon is highly disputed.

In short, the 'evidence' for supernatural events having actually taken place, based on the New Testament is not only weak, it would not be admitted even for consideration in a courtroom to prove the truth of matters asserted there.