Is Pain And Suffering The Only Way To Convince Atheists That There Is A God

[Looncall]

Atheists always claim they have to have evidence that God exists, but history shows us different. Once you provide the evidence, then end up forgetting like that which happened to Jesus Christ or they want even more evidence such that every atheist must be convinced.

Then the Bible says otherwise. The existence of God cannot be proved or disproved. The Bible says that we must accept by faith the fact that God exists:

"Jesus performed countless miracles, yet the vast majority of people did not believe in Him. If God performed miracles today as He did in the past, the result would be the same. People would be amazed and would believe in God for a short time. That faith would be shallow and would disappear the moment something unexpected or frightening occurred. A faith based on miracles is not a mature faith. God performed the greatest “God miracle” of all time in coming to earth as the Man Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sins (Romans 5:8) so that we could be saved (John 3:16). God does still perform miracles—many of them simply go unnoticed or are denied. However, we do not need more miracles. What we need is to believe in the miracle of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ."

Does God still perform miracles?

Lawrence Krauss is a professor of physics at Arizona State University. He said evidence for God would be as follows.

"Now, it would be easy to have evidence for God. If the stars rearrange themselves tonight and I looked up tonight—well not here, but in a place where you could see the stars, in Arizona, say,—and I looked up tonight and I saw the stars rearrange themselves say, “I am here.”

The Craig - Krauss Debate at North Carolina State University | Reasonable Faith

Later, another atheist responded that he would not accept the stars rearranging themselves because people south of the equator would not be able to see this.

Thus, the only way I see to convince atheist is pain and suffering. If they knew God brought this upon them, then they would have to believe. It's like they brought it upon themselves. You asked for it. You got it. Of course, this is what I think happens in the afterlife. The existence of God cannot be proved or disproved in this life.

I have a video on pain and suffering. Maybe this is one of the methods.

A quick note: atheists do not care what the bible says. Quoting the bible to atheists is hilariously inane.

Your remarks about pain and suffering make no sense. Those happen constantly from altogether natural causes.

If the existence of god cannot be verified, believing in him/her/it/them is irrational.

 

[Serpent Child]

Atheists always claim they have to have evidence that God exists, but history shows us different. Once you provide the evidence, then end up forgetting like that which happened to Jesus Christ or they want even more evidence such that every atheist must be convinced.

Then the Bible says otherwise. The existence of God cannot be proved or disproved. The Bible says that we must accept by faith the fact that God exists:

"Jesus performed countless miracles, yet the vast majority of people did not believe in Him. If God performed miracles today as He did in the past, the result would be the same. People would be amazed and would believe in God for a short time. That faith would be shallow and would disappear the moment something unexpected or frightening occurred. A faith based on miracles is not a mature faith. God performed the greatest “God miracle” of all time in coming to earth as the Man Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sins (Romans 5:8) so that we could be saved (John 3:16). God does still perform miracles—many of them simply go unnoticed or are denied. However, we do not need more miracles. What we need is to believe in the miracle of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ."

Does God still perform miracles?

Lawrence Krauss is a professor of physics at Arizona State University. He said evidence for God would be as follows.

"Now, it would be easy to have evidence for God. If the stars rearrange themselves tonight and I looked up tonight—well not here, but in a place where you could see the stars, in Arizona, say,—and I looked up tonight and I saw the stars rearrange themselves say, “I am here.”

The Craig - Krauss Debate at North Carolina State University | Reasonable Faith

Later, another atheist responded that he would not accept the stars rearranging themselves because people south of the equator would not be able to see this.

Thus, the only way I see to convince atheist is pain and suffering. If they knew God brought this upon them, then they would have to believe. It's like they brought it upon themselves. You asked for it. You got it. Of course, this is what I think happens in the afterlife. The existence of God cannot be proved or disproved in this life.

I have a video on pain and suffering. Maybe this is one of the methods.

You might like this article:

Why is There Suffering in the World? Satan Gives Answers

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

This is your choice, but you have to accept the consequences.

The saddest thing about this statement is that (proven by the tone and content of your posts in this and other threads) you actually HOPE that there are consequences in store for non-believers. You actually wish us to suffer for eternity, and I expect you think you'll be in "heaven" chumming it up with "God", while you both look down on all the atheists in "hell" and laugh together riotously.

That's the kind of believer you are. Vindictive, sadistic and judgmental, yet delusionally considering yourself sincerely pious.

 

[Stevicus]

>>It would seem to me that, in order for faith to be real and genuine, it would have to come purely from the heart.<<

You got it!!!

>>It would have to be internal and instinctive - something that would occur even if Jesus never came to Earth, even if there was no Bible, no Christianity, no religion whatsoever. People would just naturally arrive at it through their own thoughts and contemplation, not through any "teachings" or indoctrination. What kind of "faith" is it when it has to be taught by others? <<

Sheesh. You didn't get it.

How so? You asked in your thread title if pain and suffering is the only way to convince atheists that there is a God. You also included an article which stated that "a faith based on miracles is not a mature faith," but the same could be said about a faith based on indoctrination. It's not a mature faith, and perhaps it's even less mature than a faith based on actually witnessing miracles.

 

[metis]

Evolution does not apply the scientific method. The scientific method disproved some of Darwin's theories.

Absolutely false as we are bound by the scientific method in our research and in our scientific papers that must be submitted for peer review. Religious beliefs, however, are not and aren't.

 

[Quetzal]

Atheists always claim they have to have evidence that God exists, but history shows us different. Once you provide the evidence, then end up forgetting like that which happened to Jesus Christ or they want even more evidence such that every atheist must be convinced.

For what it is worth the Bible is not, nor will it ever be, considered evidence in this context.

 

[Quetzal]

The earth is 6000 years old-

*record screech*

Say again? It is how old?

 

[Polymath257]

"A faith based on miracles is not a mature faith"? But the Bible recounts the miracles of God and Jesus and uses that as "proof" of God. And, as pointed out here, God coming to Earth as Jesus Christ to die on the cross so that sinners could be "saved" (from what?) is viewed as the greatest miracle and also considered "proof" of God's existence.

It would seem to me that, in order for faith to be real and genuine, it would have to come purely from the heart. It would have to be internal and instinctive - something that would occur even if Jesus never came to Earth, even if there was no Bible, no Christianity, no religion whatsoever. People would just naturally arrive at it through their own thoughts and contemplation, not through any "teachings" or indoctrination. What kind of "faith" is it when it has to be taught by others?



One thing that came to mind was from an episode of Star Trek TOS, "Errand of Mercy." This is where Kirk and Spock end up on a planet (Organia) in a disputed zone between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. The inhabitants of the planet are deceptively primitive, but are actually extremely powerful. At the end, they prevent a war between the Federation and Klingon Empire by making every instrument of violence radiate a temperature of 350°, thus making them useless. They couldn't even do hand to hand combat, since that would have the same effect.

That's something that God could do, if He really wanted to "prove" His existence. It would have to be something that totally violates the laws of physics as we know it, and it would have to be something that occurs planet-wide, not something that would only be seen by a handful of people in a limited area. He could also announce His presence with a loud, reverberating voice which can be heard by everyone all over the planet (each in their own native language).

Why limit it to this planet?

Well, if there is an afterlife, then that by itself would prove the existence of God.

Actually, no it would not be. it would prove the existence of an afterlife. It need not even prove the existence of a supernatural, if that afterlife is a natural thing.

But it's a kind of guessing game in this life. It's not even just a matter of believing in "a god," any "god" - but it also has to be a certain specific "God" and a whole slew of other characters, along with many rules, regulations, and rituals. Even the slightest slip-up could lead to an afterlife of pain and suffering, no less than what you presume would be in store for the atheists.

If we're talking about pain and suffering in this life, then that happens to everyone eventually. A key reason why a lot of people don't believe in God is because of so much needless suffering.

Precisely. How is pain and suffering supposed to be a proof for a benevolent deity? Perhaps a malicious one....

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The original post of this thread seems like a threat. Such thinking is easily used to justify torturing people until they convert, and Christianity has been using that tactic for thousands of years.

I feel like this is an attempt to intimidate others. I don't know why this kind of thing is allowed here.

"The man who says to me, ‘Believe as I do or God will damn you' will presently say to me, ‘Believe as I do or I will kill you'." - Voltaire

"Belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man." - Thomas Paine.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

>>Enjoy the illusion of Free Will you have now because there is no free will heaven<<

Ha ha. One of the most ridiculous beliefs of all. Atheists are wrong again.

You have no more knowledge regarding such matters than anybody else.

How long do you think you could remain in heaven if you had free will? You would eventually rebel and get tossed out like the rebellious angels.

Do you think that you could go a million years? If so, how about a thousand times that, a billion years? Piece of cake you say? How about a billion billion years? Can you last that long? Multiply that by itself - a billion billion billion billion years? Still hanging in there? Congratulations. You only have an infinite number of years left - no fewer than when you started. You have literally completed exactly 0%.

That's assuming that this god doesn't change its mind again, throw out the old covenant with you, and come up with a new arrangement. How many times has he done that already in the last few thousand years.

 

[ChristineM]

Ha ha. I won't say who the straw man is.

>>Actually there are several proofs that the bible god does not or cannot exist. Just that the faithful believer will not accept them and creates all sorts of apologetics to deny that they apply to their version of god.<<

LMAO.

Yet you are too fixed in your make believe to even ask what those proofs are. Much easier to laugh it off eh?

 

[james bond]

Your logic equates to 'blind faith in anything is better than belief in nothing'

That's not what world history suggests to me. Quite the opposite.

It's not blind faith. That's a negative way to describe believers that atheists have and that is wrong. Faith should be based on reason, wisdom and logic. If one has reason and logic, then they should be able to gain the wisdom through reading the Bible and meeting people at church.

Well, I can't change your interpretation of world history. You're entitled to your opinions.

 

[james bond]

Then I apologize. I didn't mean to misrepresent you.



I'm confused. If he cares who follows Jesus, doesn't it also mean he cares who believes in God?


>>Pain and suffering could be counterproductive in that sense. But hell, if you just want blind obedience, I guess it could work, in general terms. God could inflict pain on my kids, for example, and I'd go through the motions of worship. Yay, God!<<



I know. But if the threat/promise of pain in the next life wasn't meant to impact our actions on this, he'd have needed to keep hell secret. Otherwise, Pascal's Wager kicks in, shoddy logic as I think it is.

Apology accepted.

>>I'm confused. If he cares who follows Jesus, doesn't it also mean he cares who believes in God?<<

You said God wants atheists to believe in him, and I don't think that's the case at all. God didn't want to program people. He didn't want robots who follow him and praise him. That's why he gave us free will. He even gave free will to the angels first and that ended in war and hell, a place for fallen angels, to be created. By their reasoning, the atheists claim there is no free will. That means, according to atheists, it has been determined that they will not believe. However, that is not what predestination means at all; Maybe it's the atheist's own determinism philosophy. God gave us all free will. That means the future is not set. One can change, start to believe in God and follow Jesus.

>>Pain and suffering could be counterproductive in that sense. But hell, if you just want blind obedience, I guess it could work, in general terms. God could inflict pain on my kids, for example, and I'd go through the motions of worship. Yay, God!<<

You make a good point. I agree that it can be counterproductive and we have much evidence for it. Charles Darwin, a former Christian, blamed God after his daughter Annie died*. Her death may be what pushed Darwin toward publishing his Origin of Species. There are countless stories of bitterness or not being able to understand why a loving and caring God would allow this. The movie I recently watched, The Tree of Life, was about this.

* - A. Desmond and J. Moore, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1991, 387.

As for forced belief, that is the only way I see to prove to an atheist that an unproveable God exists unless they find God themselves.

It's not a easy thing to understand, but the Bible states that death, pain and suffering and the negatives came after Adam and Eve sinned.

So the truth may be that it lies somewhere in-between. What could drive one to believe could also be that which drives one to disbelieve.

 

[james bond]

Wait, what? I'm "quote mining"...myself?



Darwin didn't get everything 100% correct, but Origin of Species was published in 1859. You really didn't think that the study of biology and genetics hadn't advanced in the last 158 years, did you?


I've heard of it. It's pretty dumb. “Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’" -Douglas Adams

Which is dumb and nonsensical, unless god gets off on torture to soothe his wounded ego, but then what kind of garbage god would that be?

You're quote mining me and what I presented.

I use evolution.berkeley.com in addition to Origin of Species. I doubt you even read it or else you would be using it as evidence. I doubt you read biology and genetics either. What you present in your posts is sadly lacking.

Your atheist scientists such as Stephen Hawking discovered it, so it's pretty good cosmology for us Christians ha ha.

It's pretty dumb and nonsensical to quote Douglas Adams in reply to fine tuning cosmology.

>>Which is dumb and nonsensical, unless god gets off on torture to soothe his wounded ego, but then what kind of garbage god would that be?<<

I usually present Ben Piershale's video, but after countless posts showing evidence of God and people not listening, I become pretty jaded. If one can't be persuaded in this world, I wonder what would persuade them in the next? Everyone: Pain and suffering!

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

There is no evidence of Jesus even existing, let alone of anyone performing "miracles". How any one who proports to be sane and reasonable can believe that rotting corpses came back to life is beyond me. It's simply myth.

 

[ChristineM]

There is no evidence of Jesus even existing, let alone of anyone performing "miracles". How any one who proports to be sane and reasonable can believe that rotting corpses came back to life is beyond me. It's simply myth.

I'm pretty sure he existed, there is considerable third person/circumstantial evidence. Just not a magic son of a god.

He is mentioned in the talmud as Yeshua Ben Pantera, son of Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera. I've seen his dads gravestone and nowhere does it say " here lies a god"

There are other indications he [jesus] was a sicarri, knife wielding zealot assassin and a leading light in the fourth philosophy anarchist movement. Kind of interesting that a whole religion was built on an illegitimate child of a roman soldier who grew to become an anarchist/terrorist assassin and was crucified for his crimes. The story goes his 4th philosophy buddies bribed the guard to look away at his crucifixion. He was seen out and about for a few weeks but eventually succumbed to blood poisoning from those pesky Romans using rusrty nails. Makes more sense than magic.

See the books of
Sara Reinke - Pantera
Robert Eisenman – James, the brother of Christ,
Hyam Maccobys – The Mythmaker,
Danial Underbank – Judas the Galilean: the flesh and blood Jesus
Paul Cresswell – Jesus the Terrorist

Also
Josephus – The last couple of books of Antiquities of the Jews for background and War of the Jews books 3 to 7

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I'm pretty sure he existed, there is considerable third person/circumstantial evidence. Just not a magic son of a god.

He is mentioned in the talmud as Yeshua Ben Pantera, son of Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera. I've seen his dads gravestone and nowhere does it say " here lies a god"

There are other indications he [jesus] was a sicarri, knife wielding zealot assassin and a leading light in the fourth philosophy anarchist movement. Kind of interesting that a whole religion was built on an illegitimate child of a roman soldier who grew to become an anarchist/terrorist assassin and was crucified for his crimes. The story goes his 4th philosophy buddies bribed the guard to look away at his crucifixion. He was seen out and about for a few weeks but eventually succumbed to blood poisoning from those pesky Romans using rusrty nails. Makes more sense than magic.

See the books of
Sara Reinke - Pantera
Robert Eisenman – James, the brother of Christ,
Hyam Maccobys – The Mythmaker,
Danial Underbank – Judas the Galilean: the flesh and blood Jesus
Paul Cresswell – Jesus the Terrorist

Also
Josephus – The last couple of books of Antiquities of the Jews for background and War of the Jews books 3 to 7

None of that is convincing as it's all very much after the fact and responding to or documenting the claims of Christians in the first place. It's hearsay based on hearsay. All we really have are mythological stories about a phantom that's barely fleshed out in the stories. We know next to nothing about this character and the miracle rubbish is safely put aside.

 

[ChristineM]

None of that is convincing as it's all very much after the fact and responding to or documenting the claims of Christians in the first place. It's hearsay based on hearsay. All we really have are mythological stories about a phantom that's barely fleshed out in the stories. We know next to nothing about this character and the miracle rubbish is safely put aside.

Its certainly more convincing than the bible stories of a magic man. With hard evidence to back up the Talmud story, a carved headstone is pretty hard. The rest, who knows.

 

[Twilight Hue]

. ...The Bible says that we must accept by faith the fact that God exists>"

That pretty much takes care of every character in the Bible. None of them required any type of faith in its narrative.

But I agree. You certainly do need faith because that's all there is.

 

[gnostic]

Atheists always claim they have to have evidence that God exists, but history shows us different. Once you provide the evidence, then end up forgetting like that which happened to Jesus Christ or they want even more evidence such that every atheist must be convinced.

Then the Bible says otherwise. The existence of God cannot be proved or disproved. The Bible says that we must accept by faith the fact that God exists:

"Jesus performed countless miracles, yet the vast majority of people did not believe in Him. If God performed miracles today as He did in the past, the result would be the same. People would be amazed and would believe in God for a short time. That faith would be shallow and would disappear the moment something unexpected or frightening occurred. A faith based on miracles is not a mature faith. God performed the greatest “God miracle” of all time in coming to earth as the Man Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sins (Romans 5:8) so that we could be saved (John 3:16). God does still perform miracles—many of them simply go unnoticed or are denied. However, we do not need more miracles. What we need is to believe in the miracle of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ."

Does God still perform miracles?

Lawrence Krauss is a professor of physics at Arizona State University. He said evidence for God would be as follows.

"Now, it would be easy to have evidence for God. If the stars rearrange themselves tonight and I looked up tonight—well not here, but in a place where you could see the stars, in Arizona, say,—and I looked up tonight and I saw the stars rearrange themselves say, “I am here.”

The Craig - Krauss Debate at North Carolina State University | Reasonable Faith

Later, another atheist responded that he would not accept the stars rearranging themselves because people south of the equator would not be able to see this.

Thus, the only way I see to convince atheist is pain and suffering. If they knew God brought this upon them, then they would have to believe. It's like they brought it upon themselves. You asked for it. You got it. Of course, this is what I think happens in the afterlife. The existence of God cannot be proved or disproved in this life.

I have a video on pain and suffering. Maybe this is one of the methods.

So now you want to switch tactic, using fear tactics to make atheists believe and convert?