There is a large home, and inside are a Father his child and other guests. The child calls out from a downstairs room, "Daddy! Come down I need you!!" The Father, upstairs, hears the boy, but rather than answer himself, he has several guest write down notes,"Take these down and have someone read them to the child." The messengers do as they are told and take the notes to another of the guest. "Read these to the boy as an answer from his Father." On one of the notes is written: Call on my name and believe I am upstairs and I will tend to your needs. So the messenger says to the boy,"Your Father says that if you will accept him as your personal need tender and confess his name he will tend to you." Then another of the notes is read,"Only believe in the name of your Father and he will tend to you." Then another note is read,"Obey my directions and I will tend to you." The final messenger says to the boy,"When you have believed that you Father has tended to your needs, you will know you your name is written in your Fathers 'people I'm going to tend to their needs book'." The boy calls out again, "Daddy!!"

If the boy did not believe his Father was there, would he have called on his name in the first place? And if he failed to get a direct response from his Father how long would he continue to believe his Father was there and still loved him?

There is a large swimming pool and a child is happily splashing and playing having a wonderful time. He doesn't even realize that he is drifting toward the deep end. All of the sudden he is in over his head and drowning. He calls out to the lifeguard whose image is blocked by the brightness of the sun. "Help!" The lifeguard seeing him in peril calls over a bystander,"Write this down." So the bystander takes down a few notes. It then goes to a panel who decides which of the notes should be passed on. He takes them to another bystander and says,"read this to the drowning boy." On the note is written,"If you will call on the name of Lifeguard and confess that he died and came back to life then you will be rescued." So the messenger says to the drowning boy,"If you will accept the Lifeguard as you personal Lifeguard and confess that he died and came back to life so you wouldn't drown he will dive in and save you." The drowning boy screams, "Help!!!"
If an evil man will rescue a drowning person regardless of what that person believes why would God require a belief in a certain hard to believe event to save someone?

Lets say you have a best friend. You are always in contact speaking to each other on a daily basis. Then your friend dies and you are devastated. A few days later he startles the undertaker by sitting up on the autopsy table. He walks out the front door of the morgue to the amazement several people. You read about the story in the newspaper and seek to speak with your friend again. You are convinced what you hear is true because of the eyewitness testimony. You begin to get anxious and excited knowing you will get a chance to resume your friendship. Days go by and the story grows in popularity. Many people are talking about the man who died and came back to life. You are sure your friend will contact you, but you are wondering why he hasn't yet. Days turn into months you scream out his name into the air because you don't know any other way to contact him. You were sure he would contact you by now. Months turn into years and years into decades, but still you haven't seen or heard from him. How long will you believe the story? If you still believe the story how long will you believe he is still your friend?

How can a person have a personal relationship without a dialog?

Anyway – I scanned over your site and saw the baby pictures, which is wonderful. If you'd like me to comment on something, just let me know.

I feel your pain re packaged content management, which is almost never either intuitive or logical. I posted from 2 IP's, so I'm guessing it kept the two from home vs. the two from work, or vice-versa, perhaps. Bummer, because I remember there were other arguments in that one that I purposely wanted to revisit. For what it's worth, though I recall some harsh disagreement, I enjoyed talking to you and felt like we did hit some kind of common ground.

Gimme a holler if they pop up, or just to chat.

EDIT: Actually, I found all of the comments in the current database after all. For some reason Intense Debate does not have them anymore – perhaps there is a way to re-sync the comments with ID…

Hey there. So, I was rehashing some old arguments and whatnot when I returned here. You and I had a lengthy conversation in this thread a few months back, but I'm surprised to find it's either gone, or I can't find it. What happened to it?