h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

i know. ive just spent an amazing week at newhall just trying to keep in touch with him. its amazing. he's amazing. you dont have to read all the bible to notice that. im so glad that some one replied with something positive for once. keep faith god loves you
lizza

"First it was the Catholic church telling people not to question,"

And hence the Catholic Church changing the meaning of faith from "believing in something you can't see or otherwise sense based on evidence" to "believing in something *without* evidence".

There's a big difference, and it really turns a lot of people away. Unfortunate.

I do not believe in the God of the bible without evidence. If I may cite something from my own recent past?...

Two years ago, I was working at an orphanage in Beirut, and was taking a bus ride with one of my fellow workers, and one of the children from the home. The bus was stopped at a 'suprise' checkpoint so that the soldiers could check everyone's papers. I had mine with me, so I was fine, but my friend, Salema, did not, and would have had to be detained in prison (utterly horrible)until her papers had been sorted out, and the general had agreed her release. This has happened before. However, worse than that, the child with us had no papers, and was an orphan living under our protection. If this child had been caught, they would have been expelled from the country, forced to some refugee camp somewhere. It was a dire situation, we knew, but trusting in the power of our Lord, we prayed our arses off.
We were sitting in the back seats, and the five soldiers, complete with guns, were checking every person on the bus. They got to the people in front of us, also checking them, and then looked at the back seat blankly, as if there were nothing there, and walked back down the aisle and off the bus.

I could only attribute this miracle the the God I was praying to, the God of the bible and Father of Jesus. This story has in no way been exagerated, and I could come up with many more examples of this God working if they are wanted.

It is on this practical evidence that I remember that God exists, and is working, when I doubt my faith, because yes, the bible can seem confusing, and yes, it can be hard to understand. I hold that the bible is still truth, and is still relevant, and I know that the God who instructed its writing is real, and desperate to have a real relationship with all mankind, but broken that so many reject Him.

Gav. xx

Wow Gav, that is an awesome story. It is definitely a "God thing"!!!
Chauncey

Tell me about it - I just wish that could other people could have their eyes open to what God is doing all the time...

I know, there are so many people that don't realized that everything good that happens to them is a blessing from God.
Chauncey

We all wish that. Unfortunately, Satan "has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, that the illumination of the glorious good news about the Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine through."
So many people can see so much of the evidence with their own eyes, and it has no effect on them - Douglas Adams being a prime example, given what he said when discussing his book 'Last Chance to See':

'I realized that if evolution can produce all these amazing things, it proves theres no need for a God.'

Never even occured to him that evolution COULDN'T produce such amazing things, which proves there IS a need for a God. That wasn't what he wanted to see.
A tragic blinding of himself from the biggest, most significant truth of life - and from someone who wrote so much fiction largely based around trying to find it.
To quote John Cleese, "What a senseless waste of human life."

it takes a lot to really truly believe that all we see in the world today is there by chance. there are billions of animals and zillions more plants, fungi etc just on this earth. And it just so happened that there was one handy planet out of the many we know of that had purely accidently emerged with the precise atmosphere to sustain life as we know it. and even more remarkably evelution just wondered in exactly when we needed it. yeh pull the other one its got bells on. i've got 8 fingers and i don't believe that they all have different prints on them by pure coincidence and if i wasn't a christian i would find it hard to deny aven the smaller chance of there being a superbeing bearing in mind that there is no one in the entire world (and thats quite big) who has the same fingerprint as my little finger on my left hand. And that finger isn't worth much in the great sheme of things but God made it unique to me.

I agree. And for all those saying that the Bible has been "disproven", that is a lie. It hasn't. There has, in fact, been more proof for the truth of the Bible than there was for some of those other far-fetched ideas that people came up with. And nothing is truly objective.

Wow, Gav. That is so

Its lovely that the bigG helped that kid out.

Im inclined to ask what he was thinking when he let the Israeli army launch rockets that kill similar children in a distinctly un way?

one love

<>

And what about everything bad that happens to them? Is that God's punishment?


az

Personally I've always believed that, that is Satan interfering in our lives.
Chauncey

I must agree. If you put the Bible to the test that is used to determine if other documents are historically accurate, and come from when they are supposed to come from (I think that makes sense...read it slowly if it doesn't), then the Bible is more definitly historically accurate than most other ancient documents.

Bri

lol...sorry that last post was off-topic. I saw something from a while ago that I wanted to comment on. Carry on.

I have to say that I don't totally agree with what you are saying. I am a Christian and believe everything in the bible is true. A lot of the things that people point out about the bible, such as contradictions and silly laws, really depend on how you interpret the verse. Such as Jeremiah 10:2-5, which reads:

This is what the Lord says: "Do not act like other nations who try to read their future in the stars. Do not be afraid of their predictions, even though other nations are terrified by them. Their ways are futile and foolish. They cut down a tree and carve an idol. They decorate it with gold and silver and then fasten it securely with hammer and nails so it won't fall over. There stands their god like a helpless scarecrow in a garden! It cannot speak, and it needs to be carried because it cannot walk. Do not be afraid of such gods, for they can neither harm you nor do you any good."

You interpreted it saying that Christmas trees were banned. The passage is referring to people who idolize the tree, who worship it. I did some research, and there are several cultures who would bring evergreen trees into their homes and worship them or use them in worshipping their false gods. I believe God was referring to cultures like these and saying not to act like them. I don't know about you, but I personally don't know many people who worship their Christmas trees. There is nothing wrong with having a Christmas tree, and God isn't saying it's wrong. But He does say it is wrong to worship idols. I'm a Christian and my family sets up a Christmas tree every year. We set it up as a way to decorate for the season, not as something to worship.

Sorry. I was replying to something that was posted a long time ago. It used that verse to say that the bible said Christmas trees were banned. I disagreed with that.

That was an excellent answer, kristinraye! I am very glad to see your messages... as a fellow Christian..

I was a christian for a long time, and I agreed with alot of what is said in the bible as far as advice goes.

however, I (now some people will get pissed at me) started to try and see everything from god's point of view. now I am an artist and a programmer. I create things to come to life (I havent made love, no, I don't compare myself to god. I get it) and I realise that if my creations develop thoughts and feelings, I want them to be good. I can only assume that god wants us to be happier in the same, if not a stronger way. and here is the bible's big falldown, it tells us some things about god which don't add up:
-he will punish people who don't worship him.
-he gets pissed if we put our bodyparts in unorthodox places
-he expects us to believe in him often blindly, whilst bad things happen in the world.

the bible doesn't try to explain itself and has been proven almost to the point of ridiculessness that what we read in modern translations of it is wildly different from the original, let alone the events it was based on.

I feel that we should all accept that the bible (and those who follow it rigidly and expect others to do the same - I'm speaking to you mr. pope) should accept that it is missleading at best.

Now I'm not saying that the bible isn't a great thing. It has what were originally radical ideas at the time which still need enforcing such as 'love everybody' and I'm not saying jesus wasn't around doing some great things. however I can't honestly say that jesus sounds better than john lennon or bob geldof. and the uses the bible has been put too throughout history are much worse than the worst events of the bible itself.

It is a dangerous knife with bits of cake left on it just waiting to be licked off. lets keep the good all caring parts, and ditch the idiotic idea that worshiping the guy that made you will make him like you more. if he didn't like you you wouldn't be experiancing this potential for hapiness we call life.

the bible has been used for horrific brainwashing and ethics dodging throughout history (and continues to be used far too greatly in western polotics to justify things like wars on misty ill-defined ideals) anyway, gotta get to sleep, where I shall chat with god some and see if he agrees that the bible is just a bad portrait of him, like any celebrity and a gossip magasine.

I may come back to complain some more about the bible, polotics, the curch etc some time later. I would like to make it clear however that I don't plan to criticise some things:
faith: if you don't need proof to believe in something congratulations you are far ahead of most philosophers :D (just keep in mind that belief in religion comes close to some definitions of mental ilness and most definitions of disease and viruses.

I also don't want to critisise the idea that some explosion wasn't the start of everything, if there is a start (which is still highly debatable) it was caused by something, I like to think it was the possibility to love.

actually, speaking of love, it is something that as a species we have developed and learned to do yes? so is there even greater things we will be able to experiance if we survive the next few million years?

anyway, I'm just about ranted out... *falls asleep at dest, clicking 'post message' as my head bangs on the mouse.