it is man himself the inventor of all Gods spend just a minute looking at the stars tonight and tell me God made all that so we can spend eternity on our knees serving him.
The frightening[which is actually lack of imagination]aspect of a God--
is that when we look--we should also enquire.
So like our friend with his evolution must be wrong--the answer to the star service dilemma--is nobody was born to kneel.
So why be so ignorant of what inhabitants of other planets might be evolved to.
An expanding Universe perhaps...

So many ideas on this subject.

I will only answer a couple of points – ‘IT does however take a lot more blind faith to believe their is not a God’ – how does that work? If I see no proof, I do not believe.

‘if you want to know if God is there, ask Him if He is’ – tried that in my most desperate times. No reply. Maybe I had the wrong number. That certainly cured me of any beliefs.

‘the God of the bible did create the stars and the sun and the moon’ – never heard of physics? The birth and death of stars etc has been clearly detailed by the scientific community.

‘we come up with pathetic alternatives such as evolution in order to explain our existence’ – what rubbish. It’s a case of, if science can’t explain it, it must be supernatural.
Creationism vs evolution. Why did God make flies? Cockroaches? Sharks? Seperate races (unless he wanted to watch conflicts)? Why are the fossils older than God's Earth?

As I said to door-to-door holies, ‘I won’t be disappointed when I die, I know that nothing waits for me”.

BELLY..... just after I had presented the Gospel to my extended family one time.. (at their request)... they began to discuss things..and one point arose.. 'The Bishop of this area.. was driving along one day, and killed in an accident... why did God let that happen"?

This is the point where we try to "invent" a God of our convenience.
I imagine either the bishop or some other driver did a silly thing or there was a mechanical failure and life took its course.

Yes, there are times when God for His own reasons intervenes dramatically in human affairs, but most people don't see them, and the reason is.. they occur at the coal face of the kingdom of God..
in direct connection with evangelization of the world.

Looking at individual anecdotes and seeking to draw from them evidence for OR against God's existence if pretty futile.

Instead.. we should focus on what God did in Christ, and the testimony thereof.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH & SAFETY... INVENTED BY ...GOD :)

Or.. 'God the first Unionist' ? :) I found this today in Deuteronomy.. thought you might like it:

Deut22:8 When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.

Not bad eh :)

JohnJ: Tragedy – war, famine, disease, death, global warming, natural disasters – very present and visible in our world but NOT the work of a righteous and wrathful God? How satisfactory are these explanations: fate, bad karma, bad luck, mother nature, a fickle deity/deities, human error, or consequences? The world is a very confusing place in the absence of faith in a God in whose image we were created (the interventionist God mentioned above).

AK47: Proof of God’s existence can be found in the great variety and complexity of His creation, from the micro to the macro; the logical nature of the world and yet apparent chaos; the deep longing in our hearts to know Him and the nagging question that keeps popping up (thanks Belly!); the fact that where human society exists there also exists a yearning to explain the spiritual.

EasyTimes: God’s divine purpose for His people is not that we simply live and die. We are designed for relationship with our Creator, and with each other.

Belly: “…man has many Gods” & Palimpsest: “…Having lots of Gods would fix this”

Belly, I think we agree that all people were created equal, even if we can’t agree on by whom.

Accepting the existence of one true God, precludes any other contenders. One persons claims are blasphemous to another, mutual exclusiveness appears to condemn most of the human race. On the other hand, many thousands of people, followers of Hinduism, for example, worship many Gods, without being subject to the judgement of any.

Trendy pluralists, under the guise of tolerance and peaceful coexistence, claim that all paths lead to the same God. A conciliatory position which keeps theology at arms length, so that adherents are unable to recognise that this supposition is equally unattractive to both monotheists and polytheists. (Baha'i's 'oneness of religion' aside)

It is my sincere hope that we can accept all people, regardless of belief, while being able to choose and practice our own beliefs openly. This is not to be confused with acceptance of all beliefs.

Boazy,

"CONSTANTINE.. started the problem of 'manipulation of the masses'.... by legalizing Christianity and once it became fashionable to be 'Christian' it also became fashionable to be BIG Christians... top dogs.. king pins.. and that is the beginning of DEPARTURE from the sound new testament prinicples of humility in leadership.. "First shall be LAST" said Jesus.. "He who would be first among you must be servant of all"...how hard is it to grassssp this :)"

Interesting that as a Christian you think that masses are now manipulated although I guess there are some clear examples in recent history. I have always seen this as an aberation rather than the rule. You sound negative toward Constantine. Don't forget that he stopped Christians from being fed to the lions. You make it sound like Christianity generally went wrong a few centuries in just because it wasn't oppressed. The idea that Christianity went wrong in the early centuries is ironically very similar to the Muslim view.

Have you answered the last sentence in ET's King Herod paragraph addressed to you?

ET,

Many people thirst for truth and understanding. I guess if you are not interested ... to each their own.

palimpsest,
The evidence there is but one God is the fact the universe is a cosmological unity. It all started from one mind behind the design. There are not conflicting sciences in understanding the universe, though extremely diverse it operates as a unity.

EasyTimes,
It is important we recognise our lives have value in our living historical setting. Living has little to do with the afterlife and it is more about the present. God is revealed in the living not in the dead. The character and attitudes of the living remains frozen at death. It forever cannot be changed.

katieO,
I might mention Professor FF Bruce was no casual researcher, he was head of the Department of Biblical History and literature in Sheffield University whose credibility is second to none. Any serious scholar of Biblical texts will have copies of his research on their shelves.