God - a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions."
Great thinker Epicures pondered the possibility of such a god to exist and came up with this:
"The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so, cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are both able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can, but will not, than they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, then they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, how does it exist?"
Do you follow?
If God is the creator of everything, He must have created evil, right? But you will say to me "God gives us free will." But does He? According the Bible, God is omniscient. Does it not also in the Bible state that God gives us free will? How can this be when God is omniscient? If he knows every single thing that happens in the universe now and infinitely into the future - how do we have free will? Clearly we do not.
Also, take a moment to think about prayer. In Matthew 7:7 Jesus says:
"Ask and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened..."
So what of the starving children in third world countries praying to God for food? What of the people of a nation caught in the midst of a war praying for safety and peace? How about the millions of lives destroyed by cancer?
If a group of Christians were to get together and pray sincerely and wholeheartedly for a cure for all cancers, should this prayer not be answered? According to Jesus, it will be done. That is a selfless prayer that will affect many lives in the most positive of ways. Not to mention, God would have then performed a miracle to which we all bore witness to - defeating any claims that God is not who He says He is.
In Matthew 17:20 Jesus says:
"For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you."
If this were true, couldn't Christians cure diseases? Fix the economy? End world hunger? Create world peace? Why not?
Lastly, going back to the definition of God, you see that He is defined as the "originator and ruler of the universe". According to religious logic, the universe can't exist unless it has a creator, no? A Christian will say "Nothing can exist unless it is created." But that statement is very much a contradiction leading us to wonder "Who created God?" A Christian will say "God is the one thing that doesn't need a creator. God is timeless and has always existed." But how can it be that everything must have a creator, while God must not?
Please, Christians and believers alike, argue your points intelligently. I look forward to a great discussion!
KC