Man created God? [edited]

[Charlemagne_II]

It’s a waste of time in any case. It’s great to be aware of what great and popular thinkers have said and concluded, but conversations the name and statute of this person or that as polemic, these are conversations that kill brain cells rather than develop them. Tackling one of Flews particular points, for or against, that’s dealing on the merits, and tends to serve constructive, edifying discussion. Of course, once you do that, you don’t need Flew, as ideas stand on their own.

It’s never a waste of time to have an open mind to what others think. The fact that they are famous people, and especially famous for being former atheists, should not disqualify them from being heard. But you seem to think anyone with a brain who is offered to you as a source is just an appeal to authority. This is absurd. I am appealing to their arguments, not to their authority. But you seem to dismiss them rather cavalierly, and it appears you have not and don’t intend to read Flew. Am I right?

You know, I often wonder what would happen if you had to make your arguments on the merits. The very strong pattern I observe here in your answers is one that displays a passion for the appeal to authority, and a very self-serving one at that.

And I suppose you’ve never cited Dawkins as an authority, but just as an argument?

I expected more logic from you and less insult. I was wrong … again.

I think what really irritates you is that the best minds in science, like Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, are against atheism. And your only retort is that they’re just authorities? That they never reasoned on the merits the way you do?

Ah, that’s an interesting notion.

 

[nancy_dalrymple]

nncy,
The fact that this person is searching for God himself proves he needs the Lord.
Atheists have their own set of cliches that they use for their own comfort zone.
We should pray for them. It is the Lord that can change their direction according to His will.

God bless,
jean

Hello Jean! you are absolutely right and i do pray for him,i think of him often and do wish i could talk to him again or may be just listen to him But he was such an angry man and you could say he did most of the talking and yelling at me. But the fact he kept calling does tell me he did have a need. I pray in the mighty name of Jesus for his salvation, you know God does not force anyone to him self you must be willing. Love of Christ Nancy

 

[Leela]

I talked to an atheist once and he said he studied all the religions of the world and that he did not believe in God and that man needed a God and created Him. Quote" God didn’t create man, Man created God" But there is more to the story, which i will tell you later. Love of Christ Nancy

Here’s a good test I heard once: If God hates all the same people you do, you can be pretty sure you’ve created God in YOUR own image.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Leela
*
Here’s a good test I heard once: If God hates all the same people you do, you can be pretty sure you’ve created God in YOUR own image.*

I’m not sure what religion you’re talking about, but I believe God loves all people and wants us to love all people. And that’s how he created us to be in HIS image.

 

[nancy_dalrymple]

Here’s a good test I heard once: If God hates all the same people you do, you can be pretty sure you’ve created God in YOUR own image.

That’s a Good One Leela, Now i have one for you.

Jesus said " I am the good sheperd. A good sheperd lays down his life for the sheep. A hired man, who is not a sheperd and who’s sheep are not his own, sees a wolf comming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them. This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good sheperd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father: and I will lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one sheperd. This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have recieved from my Father" Praise to You Lord Jesus Christ! Love of Christ Nancy

 

[yellowbicycle]

Here’s a good test I heard once: If God hates all the same people you do, you can be pretty sure you’ve created God in YOUR own image.

I like that one!
I’ll have to use it some time!

 

[Leela]

That’s a Good One Leela, Now i have one for you.

Jesus said " I am the good sheperd. A good sheperd lays down his life for the sheep. A hired man, who is not a sheperd and who’s sheep are not his own, sees a wolf comming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them. This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good sheperd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father: and I will lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one sheperd. This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have recieved from my Father" Praise to You Lord Jesus Christ! Love of Christ Nancy

I don’t understand what you are saying. Does this have something to do with whether or not man created God?

 

[Leela]

Leela
*
Here’s a good test I heard once: If God hates all the same people you do, you can be pretty sure you’ve created God in YOUR own image.*

I’m not sure what religion you’re talking about, but I believe God loves all people and wants us to love all people. And that’s how he created us to be in HIS image.

Sounds like you passed that test. A better way to put it may be: if God disapproves of all the same things that you disapprove of, then maybe you’ve created God in your image.Then again, maybe not. But it’s something to think about.

What do you think?

 

[nancy_dalrymple]

I don’t understand what you are saying. Does this have something to do with whether or not man created God?

This my dear has every thing to do with God creating a man to die for you and me so we will have eternal life, for those who believe in Him! Love of Christ Nancy (Nice try)

 

[wxboss]

Hi wxboss, nice to talk with you.

If you create it, I’d say you are ontologically “outside” of the universe. But if you create it and are in control of it, being “inside” is not a problem, if that’s your desire. Going from “outside” to “inside” is not a problem. It’s going the other way that’s a toughie.

I’m a software developer, and I write simulations from time to time, sometimes very complex ones. One of the aspects of creating a “virtual environment” in software is that I can mess with it just about any way I want. I’m “outside” the program, but can interact with it as I choose, because I write the source code that governs its fundamental operation.

Right. I take it as a necessary predicate for this that if God exists as creator of the universe, he’s transcendent. Outside the universe.

But, fully capable of interacting inside it as he chooses.

Touchtone - we meet again
The illustration you provided lead you to the correct conclusion - just as you are outside of the program you created so is God outside of His creation (this observation is extremely important as it is the very thing that differentiates us from all other creatures, that is, our ability to create! A trait that we inherited from our Creator). But as we get back to the question of ‘authorship’ and proving if there is an actual author, I would propose the following example. Consider the authors of freeware, and suppose you were like minded in a certain area. Say you enjoyed fishing, it was something you were passionate about. So you develop a program that provides other like-minded enthusiasts with a way of determining what is the best time to fish in their area. Your goal is to aid and encourage those who appreciate the same thing that you feel so strongly about. You upload your file where people have free access to it without any kind of signature or personal identification except for an email address for those who wish to contact you. You conceal your identity while also allowing those who are interested to contact you if they wish. You could have given out your full name. address, phone number, personal schedule etc., yet you didn’t want just anyone to have all yourt personal information - only those who had an similar interest and were of a like mind and you felt could be trusted. In short, the author has control over that which he creates just as you have control over how the programs you create. Some may disagree with your reasoning, but they can’t deny that you alone control what you created.

That’s just an intrinsic feature of knowledge and reasoning;

That’s exactly it, Touchstone! You are closer to the truth than you think! Why is it natural to question such things? These are questions that aren’t intrinsic in the mechanical sense. They seek to answer those things which do not appear to be natural. For instance, do you ponder much of the day as to why your pulse pulses or why your heart beats? If your pulse didn’t pulse or your heart didn’t beat than those questions would be meaningless. Yet if you actually did ponder on such things it might bring you closer to the explanation for their existence.

The ordinary mechanics of life are, well, ordinary and require no explanation. But life teaches us that it is anything but ordinary (that things don’t always go as planned even though there is every reason to believe they should) it’s as if some other force holds sway in the ordinary way of things.

To be honest with you, I would not be on this site if I didn’t have questions. I was an atheist at one point who became a Lutheran and then a Baptist and now a desire to join the Catholic faith. The fact that I’ve changed several times could be used as an argument against what I really believe in, but that isn’t the case. The real failure was on my part since I didn’t really pursue what it was that I believed in. I simply accepted what others told me until I discovered (through personal investigation) that I really didn’t believe what I thought I believed. It was a long process of asking question after question after question where I required myself to come up with the answer. The more answers I came up with, the narrower the questions became until it all funneled down to a particular point which is the reason I’m posting here right now.

I regret that I’m unable to answer all your challenges as the time is late and I have to get up early, but I would like to end by say one thing: however much we may disagree, I can’t deny your conviction and my admiration for it.

I would like to quickly end by saying that even though we may be at odds here, I do respect the fact that you are a person of conviction. I’ve always despised the Agnostic as they are unable to decide what it is that they really believe (I always considered them to be cowards without a cause - no matter how much they try to convince everyone otherwise). The person who has put no thought into what they believe in has no right to expect others to believe in what they believe in.

Cheers

 

[benedictus2]

nncy,
The fact that this person is searching for God himself proves he needs the Lord.
Atheists have their own set of cliches that they use for their own comfort zone.
We should pray for them. It is the Lord that can change their direction according to His will.

God bless,
jean

Amen! Prayers can melt the hardest of hearts.

 

[Leela]

This my dear has every thing to do with God creating a man to die for you and me so we will have eternal life, for those who believe in Him! Love of Christ Nancy (Nice try)

I understand that you believe that, but to me it just sounds like that guy on the corner with a sign that says “Repent, the end is near!” Just saying so doesn’t make it true. Isn’t the question for this thread whether or not what you are saying about God is just made up by human beings? I assume you think that every other religion is just made up. How do you know that Christianity isn’t just made up too?

 

[benedictus2]

Here’s a good test I heard once: If God hates all the same people you do, you can be pretty sure you’ve created God in YOUR own image.

Okay first to definitions.

We have to have a working defintion of what you mean here by create. If I can create God in my own image then that god is lesser than me (being my creation) whereby he/she/it is no longer God.

What you mean here is we are projecting our own concepts unto God.

Secondly, the Christian God defies this boxing because Christ we know that He has said to love those who persecute you. If we allow the Bible to open up Christ for us instead of muzzling it so it will speak what we want to hear then we find that Christ indeed loves all and does not hate who we hate . That is what makes Christianity different. It demands of its adherents to go against the grain.

 

[benedictus2]

I understand that you believe that, but to me it just sounds like that guy on the corner with a sign that says “Repent, the end is near!” Just saying so doesn’t make it true. Isn’t the question for this thread whether or not what you are saying about God is just made up by human beings? I assume you think that every other religion is just made up. How do you know that Christianity isn’t just made up too?

Other religions’ concept of God are indeed man’s attempts a producing an image of a divine being (or at the very least attempt to explain existence).

The Judeo / Christian religion is different because here we have a God who reveals Himself.

The question then is whether one can believe that Christ is indeed God or just a good man but not divine.

But as Fulton Sheen said, there is no either/or here. If Christ is not God, then he is a liar (or dillusional) in which case one cannot say he is a good man.

So one either accepts that Christ is indeed who He claims to be (God) or one must conclude that he is an evil or crazy man.

No religious founder (Buddha, et al) has ever claimed to be God. Muhammad does not claim to be God. Only Christ made such a claim. What is interesting is that in spite the fact that Muslims hold Mohammad in the highest esteem. the Koran speaks more of Jesus than him and they believe that only Jesus and Mary have no sin. So go figure.

 

[benedictus2]

Sounds like you passed that test. A better way to put it may be: if God disapproves of all the same things that you disapprove of, then maybe you’ve created God in your image.Then again, maybe not. But it’s something to think about.

What do you think?

Or maybe Charlemagne disapproves of things God disapproves of because God has revealed that He disapproves of these things and Charlemagne wants to follow God’s will.

But of course you discount revelation. If there is indeed a Creator God, so therefore we are in some ways a part of Him, then it is not far fetched to reason that He would want to make Himself known to His creature.

 

[Leela]

Other religions’ concept of God are indeed man’s attempts a producing an image of a divine being (or at the very least attempt to explain existence).

The Judeo / Christian religion is different because here we have a God who reveals Himself.

The question then is whether one can believe that Christ is indeed God or just a good man but not divine.

But as Fulton Sheen said, there is no either/or here. If Christ is not God, then he is a liar (or dillusional) in which case one cannot say he is a good man.

So one either accepts that Christ is indeed who he claim to be - God - or one must conclude that he is evil or crazy man.

You are setting up a false choice. The question is not just, was Jesus who he said he was? The question is also, did Jesus really say he was who some people claimed that he said he was?

You’ve put the question as if it is a matter of believing Jesus or not. You are asking, are you calling Jesus a liar? No, I’m not. I’m not even calling the gospel writers liars. I’m just saying that we know how these sorts of legends evolve and ultimately have little to do with what actually happened.

A really good debate between William Lane Craig (have you heard of him?) and Bart Ehrman on the historical evidence of the resurrection can be found here:
holycross.edu/departments/crec/website/resurrdebate.htm

Obviously I find Ehrman’s arguments more compelling, and I suspect that you will favor Craig’s, but it is a good starting point for discussion in that you can see what the issues are and what the evidence is. From there we can go ahead and disagree about the significance of the evidence. At any rate, it should be clear that “are you calling Jesus a liar?” is not at all the issue.

 

[Leela]

Other religions’ concept of God are indeed man’s attempts a producing an image of a divine being (or at the very least attempt to explain existence).

The Judeo / Christian religion is different because here we have a God who reveals Himself.

The question then is whether one can believe that Christ is indeed God or just a good man but not divine.

But as Fulton Sheen said, there is no either/or here. If Christ is not God, then he is a liar (or dillusional) in which case one cannot say he is a good man.

So one either accepts that Christ is indeed who He claims to be (God) or one must conclude that he is an evil or crazy man.

No religious founder (Buddha, et al) has ever claimed to be God. Muhammad does not claim to be God. Only Christ made such a claim. What is interesting is that in spite the fact that Muslims hold Mohammad in the highest esteem. the Koran speaks more of Jesus than him and they believe that only Jesus and Mary have no sin. So go figure.

You like to argue that Christianity is different from other religions as if that makes it true. Every religion is different from every other religion ns some ways. Saying that only Christianity has a prophet who also claims to be God is just as compelling as an argument for its truth as saying Christianity has more pointy hats than any other religion.

 

[Jean_Anthony]

Please respect the OP by sticking to the topic. Take side discussions to new or existing threads. Thank you all.

 

[Leela]

Or maybe Charlemagne disapproves of things God disapproves of because God has revealed that He disapproves of these things and Charlemagne wants to follow God’s will.

But of course you discount revelation. If there is indeed a Creator God, so therefore we are in some ways a part of Him, then it is not far fetched to reason that He would want to make Himself known to His creature.

True enough, if God exists, he could certainly reveal himself, but the fact that the people who claim to have had reveal himself to them say such different things about God makes it sound to me like at least most of them must be creating their gods. Even if I accept that there are real revelations as well as made up ones, as I assume you do, how do you distinguish among them if not by applying your own human sensibilities? And by applying your human sensibilities to decide among various conception of God and what God wants, aren’t you then to at least that extent involved in the creation of the conceptions you hold of God?

 

[nancy_dalrymple]

HI! Leela, God reveals Himself in Love. For God is Love and all the attributes of Love. You are right about some people’s concept of God. you will know them (God’s children) by their Fruits, Works, Character, Charity(Love) and how they Live. When a Prophet does a prophecy you will see it come about, and don’t forget God can speak through anyone He chooses. The key is to believe first, and all other things will be added unto you. Pray for Descernment, Wisdom, and Knowledge, pray God will prepare your heart, and mind for what he has for you in His service. You will get an answer. For if you seek Him you will find Him, If you seek Him with all your heart! You are Loved! Nancy