He never ...

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You state that “an atheist is a person who believes that the murder of a single little girl -- even once in a million years -- casts doubt upon the idea of a benevolent God.” This sounds reasonable. Many Christians have similar doubts when faced with tragic events in the world or in their own lives. You comment, “It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Hurricane Katrina struck shared your belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God.” While obviously an exaggeration, apparent gratuitous evil is witnessed during natural catastrophes and begs for an explanation. Unfortunately, you will not accept the explanation Christians usually proffer, since it assumes the existence of God. Nevertheless, I will address this issue for the reader’s benefit.

We do not contest the existence of evil in the world. Yet, what is evil? In simplest terms, evil is to good as cold is to heat. Heat is a form of energy. The lack of heat energy we experience as cold. Similarly, evil is a privation of good. In order to create a world that would allow humanity the freedom to choose between good and evil, God had to allow the consequences of those evil actions to ensue. An example of this would be the 2001 drought in Sudan. The Khartoum government interfered with UN relief efforts so as to result in a higher rate of death among their own people. While a natural disaster initiated the problem in the Sudan, human choices led to unconscionable consequences. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans you wrote “God told no one of his plans.” Yet you have no way of knowing the truth of your statement. God very well may have worked instrumentally in the lives of many of his people to lead them to avoid this catastrophe. What God did not do was interject a spot on the five o’clock news warning the world of His plans.

While some cataclysmic events in nature may be direct, causal “acts of God,” others very well may be necessary by-products of the creation of a world suitable for life. Plate tectonics, while resulting in earthquakes and volcanoes, also play a role in the development of petroleum deposits. The water cycle brings us flash flooding and storms, but also distributes water to crops and cattle. The assumption that God could have created a world free of natural catastrophes if truly benevolent requires a level of omniscience only properly His.

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He is not the ruler of this world

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...exactly!!!
That was my point. Alot of people say "God this" or "God that"
The word God by definition doesn't answer to questions!!!
Why even say the word if you're gonna put limitations?

So, what exactly was the cross made of?
How was it assembled?
Did Jesus carry the whole thing or just the cross-member?
Trying to get up to date with my studies

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the belief is that it was just a stake, not a cross, the first cross ever displayed was for Tammuz, an idol, in Babylon

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Stephen Jay Gould, in his 1999 book Rock of Ages, coined the term non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) in an attempt to finally resolve the conflict between science and religion. He claimed that scientists had one set of tools that equipped them to study science and answer questions relevant to their domain of science. Theologians were similarly equipped to answer an entirely different set of questions. Since the scientific domain, or magisterium, and the theological magisterium studied a different set of questions, they needn’t overlap.
The magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty).
While this may sound like a pleasing solution to the problem, the fact remains that many of the questions faced by science and religion actually do overlap. You most likely would agree with Richard Dawkins when he says, “God’s existence or non-existence is a scientific fact about the universe, discoverable in principle if not in practice.” Dawkins, however, makes it very clear that he believes that God’s existence is not discoverable in practice. Of course, if no one who would even remotely consider the God hypothesis is engaged in research at most of our academic institutions of higher learning, God’s existence as a scientific fact will likely never be postulated. This does not mean that it cannot be postulated; only that such a consideration will have to wait until such time as science and theology can complement one another in the search for ultimate truth.

Secularists claim that the God hypothesis does nothing other than put an end to scientific inquiry. They assume that God is only used to fill in the answers to the questions that scientific knowledge hasn’t yet discovered. However, I would contend that such a God of the gaps mentality is not a legitimate use of the God hypothesis. Rather, the biblical God has very explicit attributes that may be explainable scientifically. Certain events documented historically in the Bible may be subjected to scientific evaluation. However, scientific materialism places detour signs that block potentially open roads of scientific inquiry into these arenas.

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....sounds like trying to put God "in a box"
Wonderful how the Living Word manages to do this:
I was coming here to post something. It's a daily devotion from Feb. 20th

Friday, February 20, 2009

Alpha and Omega

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End," says the Lord, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty."

— Revelation 1:8


There are some who follow Jesus because they want God to conform to their plans instead of them conforming to His.


Then those men, when they had seen the sign that Jesus did, said, "This is truly the Prophet who is come into the world." Therefore when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He departed again to a mountain by Himself alone. (John 6:14–15)
They wanted to take Him by force and make Him the king. They saw the Messiah as a political liberator. They didn't understand that before He will come to reign as Lord of lords and King of kings and establish His kingdom, He would first suffer and die for the sins of humanity.

Sometimes people are that way with God today. They expect the Lord to conform to their conception of Him. They expect God to conform to their plans. They decide, and He is supposed to cooperate.

It doesn't work that way. He doesn't conform to your plans. You conform to His plans.

The only thing that is going to turn us around, conform us, is a change of heart, a spiritual awakening, and that can only happen through prayer and the proclamation of the gospel.

Jesus Christ is not a means to an end. He is the end. He is the all in all. He is the Alpha and the Omega.

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one of my favorite "quotes" relates to that ... it says that if you want to make God laugh, just tell Him your plans! lol

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Ronnie VanZandt

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ty!