Faith or Fact?Is God a matter of Faith...or a matter of Fact? Some hold that God is merely a matter of opinion. Believe or don't it won't matter anyway. Others choose to believe in a God rather than to believe that we came from a literal nothing. And so they put their hope in God....at least when they remember to. Others may say they believe in God, yet act as if they don't. Some think that man made God, instead of God made man. Some may think that God is synonymous with Santa Clause. Who magically flies around the world in one night delivering presents to kajillions of sleeping children all the while never being seen and without leaveing sooty footprints on the carpet. Some believe that God exists whole heartedly. So...is God a matter of Faith? Or is God a matter of Fact? My AP Biology II teacher once asked something like: "If your faith told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?" What he refered to as faith was schizophrenia. I have faith that the sun is going to rise.Why you ask? Because I have seen it. It has done so all of my life. I have faith that if I do jump off of a bridge, the forces of gravity are going to pull me down. Why? Because I have experienced the effects of the force of gravity. Gravity is not a mental state of mind. I tried to fly when I was younger. Guess what happend. I landed on the ground. And even after trying multifple times, I still didn't fly. I have faith that if I jumped off the swing set trying to fly today, I would still fall to the ground, this time with more pounds to pull me me down. Faith is not a voice in your head telling you what to do. Myself just like every other reasonable person has questioned their faith. How do >I< know that God exists? It is not in-human to wonder if God is real. And so I ask: What is your faith in God built on? If you have no faith in God, then I ask, is there a reason apart from philisophical babblings to put any sort of reasonable, logical faith on? I have faith that the sun rose this moring. But I have a reason to tell you that I have faith it happened. And I have faith that gravity is pulling me down right now. But I'm not exacltey floating around in space now am I? I want more reason to have faith in God than, 'Wait here while I go get my preacher.' And I want more reason to have faith in God than 'His love works in my heart, I just know He's real'---Good luck convincing anyone with those statements. Maybe the reason that so many people don't want to be converted is because there are so many people who can't even tell why they believe in God. I dare say the people who can't tell you why they believe in God, however, don't look for it either. If you want to know why I believe in God. Keep reading. And you'll find some reasons that you probablly haven't heard from your friend or their preacher. As a christian, I want to show you evidence of my faith. So think about this. How do we know about God? No not your 3rd cousin's twice removed preacher. Keep thinking.....yeah, that's the one....the dirtly old book on your Grandma's coffee table. The Bible. So isn't it logical to assume that if God is real, then there has got to be something more to the Bible than good morals and fairy tales? Job, a guy in the Bible, said talking about God, "He stretches out the North over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing."(Job 26:7) So what! you may say. Keep reading. The people of Jobs time, not being advanced scientifically as we are, believed that the earth was suspended on the back of 4 elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle. Others believed that the earth was suspended on the shoulders of an un-naturally strong man. Even in Native american stories we see the falsities of what the earth is. So to the point. How did Job know that the earth was literally hanging on nothing? How could he have without the inspiration of the God who made it all? Isaiah, another dude in the Bible, said referring to God, "It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,.." (Isaiah 40:22) You may have read about this in a history book sometime in the past. But people once believed that the earth was flat. And they believed that in comparitively recent history. The Hebrew word that Isaiah used for circle literally refers to something that has roundness, or sphereically. Isaiah would not have known that the earth was not flat unless guided by the creator of it. He would have had no reason to think that it was not flat. In the book of Job, (same guy from earlier) God asked Job, "Hast thou ( or- Have you) entered into the springs of the sea? Or hast thou walked in the recesses of the deep?"(Job 38:16) Another word for recesses is a trench. In earlier years it was thought that the seashore was the same as the beach, but extending from continent to continent. If they could not see that far into the water, why would they believe differently? It was not until 1873 that a team of British scientists in the Pacific ocean found a recess 51/2 miles deep. Later another team found one deeper. How did the book of Job say that there were recesses of the deep, when recesses of the deep were not found until centuries after the Bible was completed? Psalm (another Bible book) 19:5-6 says that "His (<the sun) going forth is from the end of the heaven, and the circuit unto the ends of it; and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." It was once thought that this verse teaches that the sun revolves around the earth, an understandable thought. However, it is not teaching this. It was somewhat recently discovered that the sun is actually moveing through space. It is not stationary as once thought. The sun is estimated to be moveing through space at about 600,000 miles per hour. And in an orbit so large that it would take an estimated 200,000,000 years to complete simply one orbit. So how did the writer of the book of Psalms know that the sun has a circuit? Lucky guess? Moses told the Isrealites that "Life of the flesh is in the blood." That's found in Leviticus 17:11-14. Years and years after the Bible was written people bled to death because of leache treatment. Leaches literally being used for ill founded medical treatment killed humans for loss of blood. The Hemoglobin in blood cells make life possible, due to the oxygen that's carried. Finally science catches on and decides that takeing the blood from sick individuals has the capacity to kill them. In the Old Testament of the Bible, circumcision was to be performed on the 8th day of a baby boy's life. The 8th day wasn't simply a random number of symbolism. So why was it the 8th day instead of some other day? In 1935 it was discoverd that Vitamin K. was the substance in foods helps prevent hemorrhaging in baby chicks. Vitamin K makes the production of prothrombin in the liver possible. If Vitamin K. is not present then prothrombin won't be likewise. Therefore there will be hemorrhaging without these substances present. In other words, the blood won't clot right without them- causeing the baby male under question to bleed to death. Only on the 5th through the 7th days of a baby males life will Vitamin K begin to be made. Now it is only on the >8th< day that the percentage of prothrombin exceeds 100%. Literally the best day to give a baby male a circumicission without the modern prothrombin injections we have today. So did Moses have modern scientific and medical knowledge that we have today? Or was he God inspired? What about the global flood of Noah's time? A man named Edward Suess published a study of the geologic framework of all countries. The research he conducted led to his discovery that all land surfaces had been under water. Even mountains. What about Noah's ark? Could all of those animals fit aboard the ark. The measurements for the ark are found in the book of Genesis 6:15. A taxonomist, Ernst Mayr lists 17,600 animal species. Including mammals, reptiles, ampibians, and birds. Think of a sheep as the average size animal. A sheep is bigger than a dog depending. We used to have some. I've seen them. It has been calcuated that 522 box cars would fit on the ark. Taking sheep as the average animal size, 240 sheep will fit on one 2 level boxcar. Do the calcualtions yourself. All of the animals that the Bible says would fit, will fit. And space for food, and Noah and his family would be left. The list goes on.... A big thing in schools is evolution. But if evolution were true, there would be evidence of it in the fossil record. If evolution was true, the lower you go in the fossil record, the fewer fossils you would find and with progressively simpler organisms. There is no evidence of evolution in the fossile record. The fossil record is preserved tangible history of the past. Why then does it argue for God instead of against him? There have been many attempts to justify evolution with fossils. Deeming them the "missing link". All have been proved false. Please do more research yourself. Is my faith based on something logical? I believe it is. I recommend the book -INVESTIGATING Christian evidences- Or use the computer. It's right in front of your face. If you're in a library on the computer, then take advantage of it. And take advantage of the library. Ask for books to be transferred to that branch. "If there ever was a time when nothing at all existed, then there would be absolutley nothing today. It is an axiomatic truth that if nothing exists, then "nothing" will be the case ---always, for nothing simply remians nothing. If there is absolutley nothing but nothing, nothing and something, applied to the same object, at the same time---are mutually exclusive terms." Wayne Jackson- "Since it is the case that something does not exist, one must logically conclude that something has existed always. Let us state the matter again: If nothing cannot produce something, and yet something has existed always....The question then becomes this, 'What is the "something" that has been in existence always?" WJ- ...God. much of the material discussed was taken from www.newtestamentchurch.org/html/Christian_Evidence/Science_in_the_Bible.htm There is an plethora of evidence backing God and the Bible. And backing my faith. The website cited even has something about Numerics in the Bible. Check it out and let me know what you think! My faith rests on fact. The evidence points one way. Just take a few more minutes to look at the evidence. You decide. -Don't dismiss the idea of God, simply because YOU haven't investigated the matter- Edit: I realize that one can have faith without haveing any proof. Such was the case with myself once upon a time. However, I'm glad that there is evidence for God. |