Originally posted by {Kontofosho}:


If men are rewarded for faith in god without evidence



Most Christians, me among them, believe that God has revealed himself to us in several ways, one of those being His Creation. To me, a physicist by training, when I look at the complexity of human life, or some the quantum physical principles that govern our universe, I see God. I don't believe that these things came out of nothing, there has to be some guiding hand behind physics and the universe in general.

God has also revealed Himself through scripture, which I take to be the divinely inspired Word of God. It was influenced by man, as evidenced in the Gospels or the letters of Paul, but it was divinely inspired through the Holy Spirit. So, if you believe these things, and have faith in God, your faith is not without evidence for God.

Originally posted by {Kontofosho}:
why is it that we were created divinely with a natural tendency towards skepticism? If our god loves us as we are told in the Bible, why would he condemn so many from the start.



I believe God created us with a free will, or as you put it a natural tendency towards skepticism, because He did not want robots that would blindly accept His existence and obey Him no matter what. He wanted someone He could talk to and commune with, and who would worship Him out of their love for Him, not just because He said they should. Look at Genesis 3:8, God walking in the garden and looking for Adam. This is why we were created with a free will.

As for the condemning part, we as humans did this ourselves by disobeying God. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, then they condemned themselves to a life of separation from God, that at first was only reenabled through the Jewish law, then later through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. God does not want to see us condemned. There are several instances in the Old Testament of God's prophets saying "Repent and turn from your ways or I will destroy you" to Israel. They were His Chosen people, and yet He exiled them from the land He had promised them because they did not obey Him.

As Sigma said, the skepticism we have is a healthy one, because if we actually investigate answers to the questions we have, whether from the Bible, God, or someone who believes in God, we find the Truth and answers to our questions. However, there are some things that we cannot explain because of our limited human minds. God is an infinite being and we are finite, so we can't understand and will not understand until we are in heaven with God.

Andrew

Andrew 1992 Toyota Celica GT Formerly Mines SVT