Hi Judi,

The list was and is thought provoking.

1. Jesus spoke the the "path to heaven was narrow, while the path to hell was broad." But it is an established fact that one cannot earn a place in heaven. Only through the excepting of the blood of Christ jesus and seeking the forgiveness of sin can anyone enter heaven. We trully must work at maintaining our relationship with Christ and separating our relationship with the world.

2. God did use a donkey to speak, and Satan used a snake.

3. I believe the world itself is older then 6000 years. However, I only believe man has been on the earth only about that long. If calulations are correct, man's time on earth has benn short.

4. Jesus openly admitted His Deity. Over and over He admited He was God's son.

Paul was not a self appointed Apostle. He was converted, and then spent time with the Apostles, and sent out to spread the word. (short version of a long process)

6. It was because of sin that death first came into the world. God's plan was one of man living in the garden that He Himself created. But because of sin, the garden was taking away, and along with that life as it was meant to be. The good news is, we no longer have to fear death because of Jesus dying for our sins. We will once again be blessed with eternal life.

I think one of the biggest lies of hell is that you can accept Christ and keep living as you always have.

Now according to Oprah, "we our gods within ourselves and don't need a personal savior."

myths or truth?

1. we don't have to give up our old ways to serve God...

2. we don't need Christ to get to heaven, we are our own god and can get there on our own merits...

Hope this is what you had in mind...

Good start, Michael! It is what I wanted and is not at the same time. I want to be able to answer these questions primarily for an atheist/agnostic, particularly when they believe the Bible to be full of myths and how we can "know" this is from God.

For instance, how do we explain the donkey and the snake? ventriloquism for the donkey? possession for the snake? So, why would God or Satan do that? Is it just a stupid mythological story that was made up to explain something else?

Here's what I want us to look for . . . (I'm sure boothby will join us soon). Ask and answer typical questions brought up by atheists/agnostics about God and the Bible. You're welcome to search the internet and bring your own questions and/or answers. Does this make sense?

Also, if you give an answer, let us know where you got the information from. We want this to be as scholarly as possible.

May I join this thread sounds very interesting?

I will behave myself promise.lol

one question are verses allowed?

Absolutely!! Verses may be used, but only for explanation purposes and NOT page fulls. If you need to, reference a website, rather than using up a lot of thread space. If yu need help with that, then send me a PM and I'll walk you through it.

Also, please use the "Quote" button as appropriate.

I am waiting for boothby to join us, but I think he got lost, so I will send him another PM. Be ready for hard-hitting questions, and please use periods and commas, and check your spelling. It's often irritating to be figuring out what someone said, much less responding to them, if their spelling and grammar are horrific. I'm not saying yours are, just pointing this out for all that respond. : - )

Hello, I've just discovered TeeBeeDee and I'd like – if I may - to comment on at least Judi's fascinating question number 6. The problem of how one reconciles evil in the world with a God Who is all powerful/knowing/etc and all good seems to be one of the most difficult of all issues in theology. As I’ve thought about this in my studies and at my baby’s graveside, it seems several ideas may be useful.

St Augustine has argued that evil is not something for if it were it would be good for god created everything and everything was good. So he called evil a privation – an absence of good. In the light of the 15 centuries that have since passed, I might want to develop his idea a bit and say that evil is good disordered. Evil is not a thing, but it is the mixing up of the way things should be. In Scripture, sex is good but its timing must be right. Taking a knife to a person is evil, except when in the orderly hands of a surgeon.

A second point flows from number one and that is that evil is insane. If we think of evil as breaking God’s desire, then given Who God is, it must be a truly insane act. As a dear professor, Roger Nicole, was fond of saying, pat of the essence of evil is that it cannot be understood. That doesn’t mean it cannot be explained, but it does me it is always crazy in some sense.

A third idea is evil helps us grow as St Irenaeus was fond of reminding us. I am a deeper person for having had the awfulness of life come upon me. Not a pleasant teacher but an effective one. To some extent this seems to offset evil – but only partially.

Fourthly, if the God of Scripture is true, all believers will ultimately receive infinite rewards. If this is so, no finite amount of evil – and by its nature evil must always be finite, would even diminish this unlimited blessing. As such, there is no evil one should not endure give the ultimate good result.

Fifthly, evil seems to be necessary for freedom. If we are to truly worship, we must be truly free but we cannot be truly free unless we can reject God. There seems good reason that the deity did not put a fence around the Tree in the Garden – for finite persons to be truly free to worship they had to be truly free to do evil.

Finally it seems that God is not fair. If He were fair there would be no original sin and we would all live or die on our ability to keep His law. It is only through His unfairness to us through grace and His unfairness to Jesus through the death on the cross that we have any hope of heaven.

The above does not seem complete and it does not (at least yet) wipe away all my tears, but it may be somewhat helpful in holding on to God in the midst of chaos. Thank you for allowing this small contribution.

Blessings, Bruce

Bruce, welcome to TBD!! Thank you for responding to this thread. It is slow getting started, but it's summer and there is also a lot going on in other discussions that is distracting those that would normally get over here.

Of course I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your baby. What a truly sad experience for any parent! I will be starting a thread, or a number of threads soon, on "Suffering". I hope you will join us, as I believe you may have much to contribute.

The Tree of Good and Evil was not a magical tree, did not give any particular powers, but was a "test" for Adam and Eve. God made them perfect, placed them in a perfect environment with everything they could ever want. They were extremely intelligent, had doctrinal and other lessons taught to them daily by God Himself, and He only gave them that one commandment. Eve was deceived, Adam knew what he was doing. Sin entered the world through Adam's seed because of it.

But just as Satan thought he won, God promised in GEN 3:14-15, "And the Lord God said to the serpent [Satan], "Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly shall you go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life; and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel." This was the first promise and prophecy regarding Jesus Christ and the cross.

Satan had no idea what God was up to with this promise, but as an extremely intelligent creature, he knew it wasn't going to be good!

EVIL:

"Evil is the policy of Satan as the ruler of this world. Evil is the modus operandi (method of operation) of Satan from the time of his fall throughout the angelic revolution and down to the point when he became the ruler of the world. Evil is Satan's failure to produce a system of good in mankind and society that would bring in a pseudo-millennium. Evil is Satan's system by which he administers the rulership of this world. Satan cannot restrain sin; therefore, he parlays human good into sin and evil." Bob McLaughlin @ gbible.org

God is "fair", Bruce, to be otherwise would go against His divine attributes. He is a "Just" God and a "Perfect" God. To have Perfect Justice, one has to be "fair".

Not a problem!! : - )