If that is all you have to live for, isn't that pretty sad? Thankfully we live in a Universe which does have a Creator, and He is personally interested in and interactive with His creation. Our lives have meaning and value and are eternally significant.

You don't need religion of any kind to spread compassion and unity. We can teach that to people without all of the metaphysical juju, and without burying the good messages in a minefield of misogyny and xenophobia.

Also how about we learn to do good things for the sake of goodness, which is it's own reward, instead of the threat of eternal punishment.

So, his contention is that his God made a mistake and now needs to revoke his promised eternal blessing from the Jews? Interesting.

Also, denying Christ's divinity doesn't make one a Christ hater. They may LOVE Christ the man. Get your accusations straight and try again.

Good to know where the right is headed, though. Coming in 2018, religious war with Israel, how they've changed.

When I was an agnostic I was resigned to die a meaningless death. That is all the hope this view of the world offers; one day you will die and it won't matter. You will be gone and after a certain amount of time no one will even remember you were here.

Thank God for Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and rose from the dead on the third day. Death is a punishment for sin, it is not something we need to accept as the natural order of things. Jesus Christ defeated death and by repenting of our sins and putting our faith and trust in Him as Lord and Savior, we can be forgiven of our sins and have everlasting life.

Death is not the end and we will all one day stand in front of God and account for our lives. Your choice is to either pay for your own sins or to let Jesus pay for them for you. Both choices are eternally significant.

Shinyblury might be better at weighing on some of this now .

I agree, the entire old testament seems at odds with Jesus's teachings....unless you interpret murder of infidels as somehow loving them to death.
With how many different christian churchs there are in every single town having a slightly different view it's hard to give a singular answer. I'd hazard the most common explanation though is that the old school laws basically demonstrated one thing to humanity, every last one of you by rights deserves death. Everybody is, by God's standards, inadequate and the penalty is death.
That's why his statements about the laws still being in full effect don't jibe with his teachings of love and acceptance, and no where does he, or God, or any prophet say his death erases God's laws that I find
Continuing what I think is the most common explanation, Jesus message was that the 'spirit' of the old school laws was to encourage humanity to love god and fellow man without exceptions. Strictly following the letter of the laws was to miss the point entire. Also, the punishment for failing to live up to the standard of universal love for God and fellow man was death, fire, brimstone and all the nasty old testament sentences.

So taking those as axioms you have God's law for humanity was and always had been love for him and each other. God's punishment for failing that measure, even in the least, was and always had been death and eternal damnation.

Again, I can't say all Christians are universally agreed on what to do from that, but I would say that the majority again follow Jesus teachings that the punishment for those that fall short was to be left to God and not to humans. As in, no more going around killing each other for breaking the law in letter or in spirit. Evangelicals are probably also universally agreed that ALL of humanity fails to meet the morality bar and thus was doomed to death until Jesus was killed. Jesus having met the bar of perfection required by the law, was thus payment through his death for the rest of humanity. So Evangelicals for the most part then take the entirety of the Bible as a message telling them they should go out and love God and everyone and in the humility that they are but for the grace of God equally deserving of damnation.

I know re-reading that it reads more like a sermon than anything, but it's also the most concisely I could manage to fit in how I understand most evangelicals to read the bible.

Spoiler Alert - there is no escaping eternal death, no matter what your redeemer of choice might say third hand. Everything has to end. No green pastures, no eternal smell of grandma's cookies you remember as a child, no eternal torture for child molesters, no eternal bliss or eternal suffering, nothing.

I have accepted that truth into my heart and will have everlasting death.

Don't most of you know, especially those who grew up in Christian homes, that Christians are commanded by the Lord Jesus Christ to proselytize?

Mark 16:15

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation

Christians who don't proselytize are actually in disobedience to the Lord.

Second, what kind of people would Christians be if they didn't proselytize? Knowing that people all around them are headed towards eternal death, and keeping the only way to escape it to themselves? Penn Jillette understands this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6md638smQd8

I understand why people are uncomfortable being proselytized to, especially when people yell at them or try to make them feel bad. That isn't the way you're supposed to do it. The bible says to speak the truth in *love*. If you don't fundamentally care about the person you are talking to and have a genuine concern for their soul, it isn't going to be fruitful.

Ha! I told my son this last night.
These videos will be the damning evidence when we are tried for our abuse and sentenced to an eternity of servitude to our robot overlords.

Well, we can deduce the qualities of what is eternal by the fact that the Universe had a beginning. Since time matter space and energy had a beginning, it necessarily means that the cause of the Universe is timeless, spaceless, unimaginably powerful, and immaterial..already you have two of the primary attributes of God..omnipotence, and omnipresence. You can also deduce a few more from there.

Basically what I am saying is that God is a rational explanation for the existence of the Universe since He is better explanation for the evidence. It makes less sense for a Universe to spontaneously be caused by either nothing or something eternal without a mind behind it.

That's really interesting, although I can't say I understood everything you said. If there were absolutely nothing, of course there would be no energy fields to generate anything. Where ever something comes into play, some force or dynamic, we aren't talking about nothing anymore.

I'm curious what you think about this paper:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4658

God is the best answer for why the Universe had a beginning, including a beginning to time itself, for many different reasons. I'll get to those a bit later, just wanted to hear what you thought about the paper.

I'll ask another question though: If something is eternal isn't it perfectly stable..doesn't that have to be the case? Why would it suddenly generate a Universe for no reason?

Even if we accept your binary premise, there's still no reason to believe that the "something eternal" would be a god.

Actually, matter does appear and disappear from and to nothing. There are energy fields that permeate space, and when their potential gets too high, they collapse and eject a particle. Similarly, particles can be destroyed or decay and upon that event they cause a spike in the background energy fields.

One of the essential functions of a collier is to compress a bunch of crap into a tiny spot, so that when enough decays in that specific spot it will cause such a local spike in energy that new particles must subsequently be ejected (particles that are produced at some calculated energy level - different energy levels producing different ejections).

*This is at the subatomic level. Large collections of matter don't just convert to energy.

I know plenty of people roll eyes at that, but the math upon which those machines are built are using the same math that makes things like modern lithography machines work (they manipulate tiny patterns of molecules). You basically prove the math every time you use a cell phone (thing with modern micro chips).

...

But that's beside the point. If there ever was 'nothing', the question isn't "whether or not god exists to have made things" - it's "why do things exist". God could be an answer. As could infinite other possibilities.

...

Personally, eternity is the answer I assume is most likely to be correct. Because you don't have to prove anything. The universe need not be static - but if something was always there (even just energy fields), then there is an eternity in one form or anther.

Background energy and quantum tunneling are a neat concept (referring to metastability). Because you can have a big-bang like event if the background energy level tunnels to a lower state, expanding a new space starting at that point, re-writing the laws of physics in its area of existence. Meaning that our universe as we know it can simply be one of many bubbles of expanding tunneling events - created at the time of the event, and due to be overwritten by another at some point. Essentially a non-permanent local what-we-percieve-as-a-universe, among many. (I'm avoiding the concept that time and space are relative to each bubble, and there is no concept of an overarching time and place outside of any one event).

(All this comes from taking formulas that model measurements of reality, globing them into larger models, and then exploring the limits of those models at extreme values/limits. ... with a much lagging experimental base slowly proving and disproving elements of the model (and forcing model refinement upon a disproval, so that the model encompasses the new test data))

-scheherazade

Why is there something rather than nothing is the essential question, which Ricky Jervais dodged.

There are only two choices: either there is something eternal or everything spontaneously was created from nothing, which is impossible.

If there is something eternal, that opens a whole host of new questions.

tbh, as much as a I think you put it very eloquently, the response will still be "but why does it matter".

It is interesting that Ken Ham apparently can't begin to face the possibility that he might not exist for eternity. I mean really, surely here is a man who believes in God because the idea of an end is too terrifying and inconceivable. On some level I wonder if he doesn't know that his feeling is irrelevant to the reality. How fitting then that he resides in a museum of deception and delusion.

Au contraire, I'd say the far right is VERY radical. Look how loudly the crowd chanted "let him die" at the one Republican debate, look how they cheer the idea of carpet bombing. Look at the abortion clinic bombing and the bombing of the Olympic Park in Atlanta... all Christian done, in the name of Christ.

Global warming is settled in the science.

Who cares if gay marriage is a sin? You are not sin free, so who are you to judge them for their sin? Who are you to say that their sin is so horrible they don't deserve equal rights under the law when it doesn't harm anyone but themselves?

And I never specified you as a homophobe, and I don't really care about one's fears or anything else, but it is the prejudiced in your (talking the royal your, as in radical right, not you specifically) heart, to judge them as illegitimate and not deserving of being treated the way you would want to be treated, though Christ said to treat them with love and compassion. The Right turns their back on them... As they turn their back on thousands of women and children trying to escape horrible conditions where women are being raped and children being raped and forced into war and radicalization, because radical right Christians hate Muslims so much, they would rather see those women raped, than help them.

I also said you can disagree with them being gay. You can say it is a sin, but to deny them human decency because they sin differently than whatever sins you do, is not a valid reason to be cruel to them. That is when you cross the line, when you say you won't sell them a cake at their wedding for being gay, despite your own sins, when you say they shouldn't be married or adopt kids, despite your own sins... that is when you cross the line.

The Right do want to screw the poor. Half the people who work for Walmart qualify for food stamps, despite the fact Walmart makes enough to pay them all living wages and give them benefits and much more, but they are so pissed at the poor needing food stamps, they want to end that program so they can love on the rich people who own and operate Walmart more... it's a fucked up priority system, when you choose wealth and success over needy and poor. Jesus and the Bible were very clear on what side they were on, and today's radical Right ignore that and have taken on a false Reconstruction message, which has in many radical right circles been further misaligned with the prosperity gospel.

And, I will judge God for His people, when He doesn't speak to your hearts and minds and even puts an iota of human decency and concern, or conviction in your hearts, for the needy the poor, the foreigners who need our aid, for this planet and the its welfare for our future children's sake. I rather God damn me and my children to Hell, then be around the like of Republicans for all eternity, people who would rather see my children die, than have their tax dollars go to help them just because none of the jobs I am capable of getting provide sufficient health insurance.

I have NEVER seen the sort of Love that Christ preached and showed in today's far right Christians... And I speak that as a former far right Christian, and thinking I was showing the love of Christ... but step out side, and see what it looks like to the world. Be in the world but not of it. See what your witness is to a hurt and dying world and see that those on the right are the ones turning people off Christianity. There's a reason that Christianity is loosing ground, because the lack of love from those that are most loudly saying they are Christian, and saying everyone must be Christian or else...