Still hearing new ideas

[Wertbag]

I've been hanging around the eternal debate for 30 years now, and sometimes it feels like I've heard every argument from both sides, and its just a never ending loop of the same tired apologetics followed by the same counter arguments that have been raised a million times.  The number of times I've heard "well you believe the universe came from nothing!" or "the gospel writers died for their beliefs, they wouldn't have done that if it wasn't true!" is so tragic its almost comedic at this point.  But every so often I hear an idea that I hadn't considered before, often a simple thing but one that opens up new lines of thinking.  

 

The first one was in a discussion about Noah's Ark, when one commentator pointed out that if the Ark took 120 years to build, then the wood used in the first steps of construction were that old by the time it was ready to launch.  Non-treated wood, left exposed to the elements for over a century, and that is going to be the skeletal frame of your boat?

 

The second was the discussion on God's hiddenness, with one Christian saying the old line "God doesn't want to create robots, showing himself would mean worship without love", and a commentator replied "So what about Satan?"  I thought that was a great point.  If you are going to claim Satan is trying to do everything that God doesn't want, and that he is lose on this earth with all of his supernatural powers, then why wouldn't Satan just appear?  If doing so is a direct conflict to God's will, and it would create worship without love that apparently God doesn't want, then it's the ultimate slap in the face.

 

It doesn't happen often, but every so often I still get little prompts to think of the subjects in new directions.  They can lead down a rabbit hole of new thoughts and other ideas flowing from them.