Nnnyeah.

Do you have a point being here or are you just bored

Eh, it's a false dichotomy. My current 'point' is being to you as you are to others here, and I'm doing that because I'm bored.

He has done the ultimate already........

He raised Jesus Christ from the dead........

If you do not believe that one rose from the dead, then you will not believe anything else, thats for sure.

There is no need to do anything beyond what he has already done. Its the Christians who are living now that have the responsibility to hold for the word of God and to reconcile men to God.

True believing Christians who understand HOW to operate the power of God do miracles all the time. Never for show, and definately never to prove to someone who confesses that they believe there is no God.

You are a whining person who just looks for any angle to pretend that you really want answers, but in all reality your true colors shine forth very vividly to me, and I am sure to others on this forum.

What? Why do you think that God should do some fantastic thing to convince you above and beyond what He has already done?

You athiests on this forum for the most part, are pretty much just here to waste time and try and convince people that there is no God, with your very, very limited mis-understandings of the bible.

if I make a ridiculous completely wrong strawman and act pompous about it like I solved all your questions, please treat me the way I treated RLK in this thread

Heh, done and done.

OP - Because if this incredible thing were to happen to prove God's existence, faith would not be the requirement for salvation

I think it's important for atheists... if God DID do such a sign, would you worship him?

There are many who think a 'Warning' is going to occur before Pope Benedict dies and before Joey Lomangino dies, as per the Garabandal Marian apparitions, and then a Miracle will occur some time afterwards.

If you wouldn't worship God after such a miracle, then there's no point in asking why he wouldn't give a sign.

If you would worship the God then you may be living the Christian values now without recognizing it. And in my understanding, living a moral life is more important to God than saying "I believe in Jesus Christ" but not actually acting like it. Since those who say "Lord, Lord" do not all get to heaven, and the one who does the Father's will, even if he says he won't, will be the one who is rewarded.

How do you know this? Many people who know God exists, still require faith.

It is more like if God were to do something like this, it would take away free will as people know it. They would no longer have the free will to know God does not exist.

Does this mean the people in the bible who knew God and Jesus had no faith?

Exactly, faith is a requirement no matter what as far as i know.

OK, going back to the OP:

The point appeared to be that Rize could not construct a hypothetical scenario that would involve the existence of God and a failure of that God to make His presence known unambiguously. Thus there is no God. That seemed to be Rize's point. I restated it as: Assume the existence of God. If that God existed He would communicate with me. I receive no communication, therefore the original assumption is flawed.

Personally, I do not think that it is at all hard to postulate scenarios that involve God and no demonstrable communication. That does not prove there is a God, just that the OP (as I interpreted it) is not an argument that there is no God.

Apparently I have misunderstood the point of the OP. Feel free to clarify your point.

I couldn't answer because i would have to know what you mean by worship, what God wants form me and what Gods personal qualities are.

The idea is pretty easy. God knows I don't currently believe. Why won't he do something undeniable now with very little possibility of there being a misunderstanding of his existence and identity by me and billions around the world? Is he unable to do this? Is he able, but doesn't care to? Does he not care to save billions of souls in doing this?

I'm talking about the christian sense of god here, so you shouldn't necessarily feel the need to respond.

Possible reasons:

1. Perhaps He knows that you will come around to a sincere belief before you die so there is no need to do anything now.

2. Perhaps you are a developmental being and your personal characteristics are such that you will not develop properly unless the security of God's presence is not available to you. Other people may require different treatment to reach their full potential.

3. Perhaps this existence is a test of some sort and only by coming to an awareness of God's presence on your own can you succeed.

4. Again, a test but belief is not really a key element of the test. However the results will be unreliable if you are aware of the existence of God with certainty.

5. From my point of view, perhaps you do not really exist as a self-aware being, but are a programmed prop designed to test my faith.

6. From your point of view, perhaps I do not really exist but am a programmed prop designed to confuse you into holding a belief without physical evidence. If you had evidence, then the test would be messed up.

I think you get the picture. We have so little real grip on what our reality is once you realize that your entire reality only exists in your mind, that almost anything is possible.

Perhaps OP's epistemology needs to change as it's currently internally incoherent, only focusing on one kind of way to come to knowledge when there are more. By neglecting the others, he limits himself from the start. His presupposition of naturalism precludes him from even being able to consider some of the evidence for God which could be crucial in the decision making process.

I never claim to speak for anyone other than myself, god knows i have many objections not only to organised religion but also to the way some people respond to it, however; simply being a theist and a person who believes in the truth of the words of Jesus Christ (among others) I technically probably just about qualify as a christian by some definition of the word and I certainly get lumped in as one by the dawkins/hitchens lovers, so I'm happy trying to raise objections to their bullsh*t arguments.

Never said the OP wasn't trying hard enough, way to misunderstand the point of my post, and it's kinda ironic you bothered replying if you weren't gonna bother replying. Maybe you should have stuck to your guns?

Rize said so himself,

Yes it is, and it's based on a complete, across-the-board lack of understanding.

Pretty much, there's nothing else to say.

Rize is either happy being an atheist, in which case he should get on and be one, or he's really a plssed off agnostic who's thrown his toys out of the pram because god didn't personify in his living room and cook him breakfast, or spell out "I am God" in the stars, or whatever far-fetched impossible bullsh*t he was expecting.

In Christianity its always about us focusing on God. Every human being is spiritually blind. Even believing Christians. So we have to mentally focus our minds and our ears on the Gospel. We have to make a huge effort to stay focused on him.

If God does a miracle for you what he really does is split your focus away from Christ's work on the Cross which is the greatest work in history.

It also dilutes his sovereignty.

Followers of God are suppose to stay focused on God and his will and let his ways control. Our wills are not to be controlling. Christ himself was the most perfect example of a human submitted to God's will. He even gives us the Lord's Prayer which encapsulates in it the idea of a human being submitting himself to God's will.

The Lord's Prayer is probably the best prayer people have to break the controlling power of sin because it lets you put your will under God's.

The 23rd Psalm is a good prayer for walking with God every day.

It would be impossible for an omnipotent being to do any of the things you mentioned? I guess my definition and your definition of omnipotent are different.

LOL nm

Wait, so you're saying it's unreasonable for a person to expect the christian god to intervene in their lives, while at the same time holding the belief that god personally cared enough about you to intervene in your life and save you from from an incident which led you to the hospital and near death? Self-ownage....

Agnostics are a subcategory of atheists, genius

Complete, 100%, textbook strawman.

Arguing these definitions is a waste of time in general, but that statement is not a simple, universally accepted fact.

I have to ask. When you say "strawman", what do you mean exactly. The context of your usage seems inconsistent with my understanding of the term.

FYP.

Unless you're suggesting just because somebody wrote it down that it must be true?

FWIW, if a dude claiming to be the Son of God walked on water, raised people from the dead, and he himself was raised from the dead I'd probably take his word for it.

I'm gonna go against the grain of my incredible and obvious atheist bias and say that this isn't a good reason to not believe.

There's really no reason for god to have to do any of these things, if he had just created a world which meshed and made sense with our (supposedly god-given) sense of justice then I think more than 10% of the most intelligent people would believe. But we live in a world of chaos, suffering, and instability that just could have been done better. I'm certainly not the smartest person in the world or even my city, but I could do a hell of a lot better job if I were omnipotent.

That being said, the world is amazing and the real story of life is about a million times more fascinating and beautiful than anything you'll read in Genesis. It's just that this world looks like the end result of some crazy random processes more than it does something that came from some omnipotent thing's design.

Do you guys seriously believe that the average person today is on equal faith terms with people who (supposedly/hypothetically) actually witnessed miracles, and evidence of god? I don't care how you spin it, It's just not fair for the people of today in comparison to those who (supposedly) got tangible evidence of God's existence. It's easily much much harder for the modern man to believe in God, just by virtue of them not having privy to those miracles...and that's not even accounting for the advancement of scientific naturalism and skeptical philosophy over the past 2000 years. The OP's general question is a valid one. Why should a loving, just, and fair God favor a select few with the exposition of himself, at the least guaranteeing them a far greater chance of heaven and at most securing it, and then allow the rest to be at an increasingly disproportionate disadvantage in their capability for faith/salvation?