God is who He is and will remain so, regardless of all our beliefs and theories. Would you rather believe there is a God, and find out when you reach the other side that there isn't, or would you rather believe there isn't, live your life irresponsible, then get to the other side, and find out there is a God?

Everyone's relationship with God is a personal one; maybe you are confusing that with everyone having a personal God. There is only one God, and it is only through His son, Jesus, that we can approach God. Jeasus is the link between God and humans, a link that was broken when Adam and Eve disobeyed, Jesus repaired our relationship with God by taking our sins upon himself, so that we can have eternal life if we accept His gift, Jesus became the link to God. That is why the Bible says "No one comes to the Father except through Jesus", so when we pray, we ask or thank God in the name of Jesus. The scriptures, also, say that "There is no name recognized as the savior of mankind in Heaven, except the name of Jesus." The Bible is the word of God, written by the hands of God inspired men, but, every word approved by God himself. And, no, I am not a zealot, which is the name given to ancient people who believed everything was a sin and were very judgmental, nor have I ever thumped a Bible in my life. I am just another mortal who has a strong faith, but does not judge anyone, God has not appointed me as anyone's judge. We will all answere to the same God, and we all have our own, personal, relationship with him.

God was the creator of both Einstein and Darwin, their theories and belief system, they aspired to was their own. Right or wrong, but their own. And God will be the one to determine whether any of us got it correct, but the only thing required of us is to accept Jesus as the savior, our defender before God, when Satan tries to accuse us, and to try to live, as best we can by the lessons and teachings of Jesus. If we do that, and really love each other as ourselves, do unto others as we would have them do unto us, then we have fullfilled God's requirments for having eternal life. If everyone just kept the first commandment, all the others would follow natural. As Jesus told the Jews, it isn't about rituals, don't depend on rituals to get you into Heaven. He did not condem rituals if people feel comfortable doing them, but He just said we should not depend on them as a way to win favors with God. In fact, there is one ritual Jesus requested of us, the Holy Communion; He said "Do this in memory of me." Just accept the gift of His son.

"Puny humans", Eriol?!? God created us in His image, just a little below the Angels, and, honey, there is absolutely nothing puny about God! Some of us may be born less strong physically than others, but they are still created in His image spiritually, as we all are.

God created us in His image, just a little below the Angels, and there is absolutely nothing "puny" about God! Some people are born weaker, physically, than others, but they are still created in His image spiritually, just as we all are.

Oops! Sorry about the double post, I thought the first one didn't post.

If you don't want the "Cold comfort" of being "Left behind", then do what you need to so as not to be left behind, join those who will be caught up by Jesus, to be safe from what will take place on the earth. But do it for the right reasons.

For proof of eternal life, look no further than the cause and effect in the perfect asnd diacritical death of Jesus Christ on the cross. GBY (http://www.the2keys.com).

Mr./Ms. "star3":

Unfortunately, we only have a few accounts of God's supposed creation of the world - all in one book, the Bible. Science cannot be conflated with "arrogance." Logic and intelligent retrospection are the only pragmatic tools we have to deal with the future; the intangible and (tentatively) fictional are most likely to bog us down in the patterns of history. When one steps back and looks at Creationism, it must be realized that this viewpoint has no more textual or scientific support than, say, the titanic "beginnings" stories of Greek mythology.

I much agree with Mr./Ms. "Storm76591" - we must all formulate our own beliefs concerning spiritual matters. It remains impractical to impose our personal faiths on others. However, it is equally unwise to use pure religion to make scientific or legal decisions of any kind. The tried and tested laws of the universe of must be our bases for objective judgment; I'm quite sure that Galileo, Einstein et al. would have advocated such a policy.

Achnacon,

"You say that my arguments have been taken, sometimes verbatim, from other sources. I sense you already feel obliged to cut me down to size so I'll resist the temptation to say great minds think alike. Instead I'll say simply that other minds have obviously arrived at similar conclusions to my own."

"I sense you already feel obliged to cut me down to size;" suggests an emotional attachment to your "arguments." I am without an emotional attachment. Knowledge, by experience, is not an argument nor is it confused with power and popularity behind an 'opinion.' That other's have "arrived at similar conclusions to my own" suggests an end to the questions you've purported as if man's superiority and intelligence has been measured against all things.

"Here are a few more thoughts for you to have a go at. Interesting to see if you can find any of it verbatim on the web or in print." Your questions are replete over centuries, within books, on the web. I cannot fill your void. You are asking that I prove to you your own argument.

"But what kind of creator would infest the animal world,"

"What kind of creator would create a balance in the natural world which results in life being so short and brutal,"

"If God exists, why does he hide from us?"

"Why should God demand only that his followers have faith?"

"Why should he exclude those of his creations who have questioning minds?"

"If God existed why would he not reveal himself?"

And last but not least; " But if the role of God has been reduced to that of the cosmic sower of seeds, the detonator of the big bang, then surely his significance to humanity is reduced to irrelevance?" That your question(s) is subjective, it is reduced, as all things outside of man's control still begs the question of man's responsibility to mankind;humanity. It begins with/in you and as I stated before, I am not here to convince anyone based on my experience, nor have I introduced anything regarding religion, God or the Bible. A remains A.

I've had a wonderful day, thank you.

Untold billions of humans (and other critters) have lived on this planet, and no one returns after death to describe the experience? Probably because when that last synapse fires, it's over for one's consciousness.

Untold billions of humans (and other critters) have lived on this planet, and no one returns after death to describe the experience? Probably because when that last synapse fires, it's over for one's consciousness.

Untold billions of humans (and other critters) have lived on this planet, and no one returns after death to describe the experience? Probably because when that last synapse fires, it's over for one's consciousness.

Mr. D'Souza was born with a smart brain and got a top notch Ivy League education. So he certainly *should* be able to combine his own creative, rigorous thinking with the factual evidence he'd researched, and wind up drawing enough fascinating conclusions to fill a book! But he didn't do any such thing. Instead, he chose to crank out a book-length, anti-intellectual, aggressively illogical piece of trash.

I've saved the funniest fallacy for last: The book's main "conclusion". If you guessed that this "conclusion" is really just a naked unsupported assertion you guessed right.

But Mr. D'Souza's preference for propaganda over intelligent debate, his contempt for the intelligence of his readers becomes clearest when you discover that his book "logically concludes" that there is exactly one specific set of religious beliefs and rules that is correct (Roman Catholicism, as it turns out) and that all other formulations are incorrect. Best of all, this is the very same religious tradition he was raised with as a child!

Fab, formulate whatever you're comfortable with, but it won't change the truth, or cause God to change to accomodate your formulor. Some humans have the idea that THEY can decide the way things are or were, which God did not give us that ability or power; human's ideas are merely that----ideas, God's plans and how He created the universe and us, is all documented in a book He left us, a book which, also, gives us a plan for happiness and how to obtain eternal life, plus He gave us a brain capable of thinking and understanding, and one of the most important things He gave us is freedom to choose our own course of life, and our own way of thinking, which will, by our free choice, determine our eventual fate. Very simple facts, accept or not accept; it's your free choice to choose your fate.