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Showing posts from July, 2023

Pray Without Ceasing, or . . .

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  One farmer with one mule, plowing for one day, will yield enough grain to feed dozens of people. Thirty Christians praying for food for one month will yield thirty starving Christians.   bob r.u.reasonable@gmail.com

Why Does God Try To Fool Us All Of The Time ?

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  It seems to me that God is constantly trying to fool us humans.  He seemingly NEVER makes any attempt to convince us that he DOES exist, but He ALWAYS tries to convince us that he DOESN'T exist. With every claim that Christians make regarding the nature of God and the evidence for his existence, the world we live in is a daily - no - an hourly contradiction to those Christian claims.  The world we live in is a constant reminder that there is no god ! ~     ~     ~ Christian Claims: God loves us   1 John 4:7-12    Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.  God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins....

What are the chances - or - Another set of Minimal Facts

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A theologian is like a blind man in a dark room searching for a black cat which isn't there - and finding it. ~unknown Does the confirmation of one fanciful or absurd claim mean that another fanciful or absurd claim is true by association ?    For instance:   Fanciful / Absurd claim #1 - I can slam-dunk a basketball on a regulation goal from a standing jump. (note - I am  5'6" tall,  65 years old, with a degenerated disk in my lower back) Fanciful / Absurd claim #2 - I am a billionaire. (note - I live in a 35 year old mobile home and drive a well-used 1999 model vehicle)  Now, if I took you out to our local rec-center and proved to you that  Fanciful / Absurd claim #1 was true, wouldn't it still be wise of you to require evidence of my  Fanciful / Absurd claim #2 ? Just because I proved to you with convincing evidence one fanciful or absurd claim - does not / should not - in any way mean, that you should trust me that my 2nd claim is also t...

Songs

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  A few days ago I read a blog post by a fellow former Christian - it was about Christian music. The topic sent me back to my Christian experience. I enjoyed a variety of Christian songs, but mostly the old hymns. I didn't really care much for the contemporary Christian music - not that a lot of it wasn't any good, but in the Christian circles that I ran at that time - Independent Baptist - they didn't really approve of contemporary music. After reading that post I took an emotional journey back in time. I was familiar with only a few of the groups that were mentioned in his post. I don’t think we had many Christian musicians come to the churches that I attended.  I do specifically remember, back in the early 80's, a group from Lester Rolloff's, Rebekah's Home For Girls came to our church twice.  Lester had been scheduled to come as well but had recently died in a plane crash, so his right-hand man Wiley Cameron brought the girls. At some point in the early...

. . . still I look to find a reason to believe.

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  Well said Sir Rod, well said. ~   ~   ~ I was listening to one of my all-time favorite Rod Stewart songs a few days ago and I began to contemplate.  I am sure that there are Christians who can identify with this sentiment from Rod Stewart's song ". . . still I look to find a reason to believe. " According to google, about 80% of Christians in the US became Christians between the ages of 4 and 14.  I suspect that, of these 80%'ers, perhaps 99.999% of them did -  absolutely zero research   - into the Christianity that they were adopting as their faith.  They became believers for emotional reasons (fear, love, anxiety) mixed with a healthy dose of pressure from family and friends.  I suspect that not a single one of them simply sat down one day and started reading a bible, and their curiosity prompted them to do extensive research into the history of Christianity.  They didn't seek out the views from experts, eith...

Problems and Solutions . . .

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The   God of the bible created humans, and humans performed exactly as He knew they would perform, and He was not happy about it.   Let's see what His solutions to this problem was: The Problem Genesis 6:5-7 The  Lord  saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.    And the  Lord  was sorry that he had made humans on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.    So the  Lord  said, “I will blot out from the earth the humans I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air—for I am sorry that I have made them.” The Solution The Problem Leviticus 4:27-28 “If anyone of the ordinary people among you sins unintentionally in doing any one of the things that by the Lord’s commandments ought not to be done and incurs guilt, when the sin that you have committed is made known to you, you shall . . . ...