Even though I saw it coming it was still a thing of beauty. The correct answer missed by god's mouthpiece.

L
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Oh so it wasn't an honest question, huh?

It was a trick question.

See you really don't want to know who God is.

You're like a lot of unbelievers. You cooperate with the thing blocking you.

Idols can block us and sin can weaken our ability to hear from God.

If you're lucky God will humble you through life's circumstances so you will pay attention to Him.

Imagine the absurdity of willfully dismissing a word that God has made available to everyone before you even know God's nature.

Most of these people with philosophical pretensions say God is unknowable just so they can argue.

The point of the bible is God is knowable and you can even have a relationship with Him.

But communication is open and 2 sided in a relationship. If you won't hear Him then how can you have one? The answer is you can't.

Quick question to quell my curiosity. When you say "Him", do you believe God to be male? Is it just another way of saying it? I always conceptualised god as without gender or sex.

My conceptions changed. I leaned toward God being a Him in my thinking from the father appellation.

But I feel sure God is male and female now. One of the early names used by the ancient Hebrews is El Shaddai and that name of God has a feminine origin.

Besides man and woman are both made in God's image.

Dr. Stephen E. Jones explains God is now a father at this point in time because humans have progressed to Sons in Training (that includes women). We were in the early Mommy stage of training in the OT.

How is it a trick question? I asked the question to point out that the ability to bring one back to life does not make it okay to kill them in the first place. What's tricky about that?

Then you weren't really interested in my answer.

All you were interested in was scoring a point.

I don't equate myself with God like some people do as demonstrated by the types of questions they ask.

I consider that type of equation a category error.

Just because I expected a different answer doesn't mean I wasn't interested in what you had to say. On the contrary, I found your response quite interesting.

I don't see death as the big boogeyman that most people do.

batair used to like to gripe about dead Indian tribes. So a tribe is gone. Yeah from our end it looks final. But if you're going to go why not the whole group go. Imagine the whole tribe rejoicing in heaven together. They aren't split apart. It's the people left behind that are crying.

I've got almost as much family in heaven as I do on Earth and all kinds of ancestors and even grandfathers I haven't met up there that I'm looking forward to meeting.

Besides an Indian tribe could be more spiritual than some of the tribes left down here. Maybe the whole tribe passed God's approval and got to pass "Go" to the next level which is a better place to be.

This is a tangent. We were talking about God killing babies. You think it's okay because he's God and he isn't held to human standards. I think it's not okay because he's God so he should be held to a higher standard. Humans aren't supposed to be perfect; God is. And you're just not going to convince me that killing babies is part of a bigger plan. A perfect God would've designed a plan that didn't involve killing babies in the first place.

It's not a tangent. I don't have to precede down the path that your mind dictates.

I don't see death as a boogeyman.

The bible says "be not afraid" 389 times. That includes death which has the biggest boogeyman of all The Grim Reaper.

The ancient Egyptians had a primitive version of this idea that is why they prepared for it by storing away special possessions for the after life.

You can also go back and see what various sects like the Essenes, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees had to say about it. They died a lot younger than we do today. They were a lot closer to death all the time imo.

Just because your mind went down this path doesn't make it on-topic. Fear of death is not the topic we were discussing.

Edit: Let me be more specific. I don't see death as a boogeyman either. I don't think infanticide is wrong because I'm afraid of death. So I don't see what the fear of death has to do with this topic.

You better go back and re-read several posts.

I think infanticide is impossible for God.

He's known as The God of the Living.

If you don't think anyone isn't better off with God then you're irrational.

Babies automatically go to heaven. They're too young to be held accountable for their actions.

Infanticide is the killing of an infant. You can call it "turning a switch on or off" if you want, but it's the same thing. Whether it's through a great flood or an angel of death, etc, it's still infanticide. Unless you want to claim the Bible's wrong and God didn't do these things.

God is the God of the Living.

Death is just a door to eternal life.

We focus on the dark side of the door. It's all light on the other side.

In that case we should all kill babies so we can guarantee they get eternal life. There's nothing crazy about infanticide after all.

No, we're not God. Only God is suppose to have power over life and death. Though he delegates exceptions for purposes of maintaining law and order.

Since he supplies the life he controls the supply. Like the electric company. You don't have the right to cut off your neighbor's lights do you?

No, but neither does the electric company unless you don't pay your bill. You didn't put much thought into that analogy, did you?

I was just showing we don't control the supply though a lot of people act like they do. Tin pot despots, for instance.

God is long suffering with us. He lets the rain fall on the evil and the good while he waits on them to repent. He allots a time for that but the bible never gives the exact amount of time. I expect because repentance is an urgent matter. The earlier people repent the more sins and crises they avert.

What if I install solar panels on my roof to produce my own power? Does that make me god?

No that makes you energy conscious.

It's okay to just admit it was a poor analogy.

Ok but sometimes even a poor analogy works to convey a thought.

New interesting books and research on this topic:

Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not by Robert N. McCauley
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Religion-N...810588-7751453

Born Believers
The Science of Children's Religious Belief by Justin L. Barrett
http://books.simonandschuster.com/Bo.../9781439196540

From Amazon....

'McCauley argues that religion has existed for many thousands of years in every society because the kinds of explanations it provides are precisely the kinds that come naturally to human minds. Science, on the other hand, is a much more recent and rare development because it reaches radical conclusions and requires a kind of abstract thinking that only arises consistently under very specific social conditions. Religion makes intuitive sense to us, while science requires a lot of work.'

Cliffs: Religion seems easy so it's correct. Science is hard man so it can't be correct.