[Splendour]

Quote: The power of upbringing is still important and plays a vital role in what one believes as he grows older. There's no other way to explain why ANY reasonably intelligent and educated person still believes there is an invisible sky god lurking around somewhere. In fact, there are many very intelligent and educated people who still do. Why?

Because childhood indoctrination is extremely powerful. It is very hard to shake and altogether abandon an all-encompassing world view after years and years of having your whole life formed around such beliefs.


Well I for one had almost no childhood indoctrination. Yet I managed to believe in God. I raise you the book of Isaiah. Written more than 800 years before Jesus. It pretty clearly indicates there is an Old Testament approach to God and a New Testament replacement of that approach not that the new approach negates Old Testament teachings. You pretty much have to read the whole book because this replacement theme weaves in and out among Israel's current affairs and it takes a pretty good biblical history knowledge to know what those old Israelites were concerned about.

See this excerpt from The Message: Isaiah 66:18

18-21"I know everything they've ever done or thought. I'm going to come and then gather everyone—all nations, all languages. They'll come and see my glory. I'll set up a station at the center. I'll send the survivors of judgment all over the world: Spain and Africa, Turkey and Greece, and the far-off islands that have never heard of me, who know nothing of what I've done nor who I am. I'll send them out as missionaries to preach my glory among the nations. They'll return with all your long-lost brothers and sisters from all over the world. They'll bring them back and offer them in living worship to God. They'll bring them on horses and wagons and carts, on mules and camels, straight to my holy mountain Jerusalem," says God. "They'll present them just as Israelites present their offerings in a ceremonial vessel in the Temple of God. I'll even take some of them and make them priests and Levites," says God.

Pretty interesting Isaiah can predict Christianity 800 or 850 years before Christ.

Many in this forum say "well its possible to speculate and then have the future fullfill it". Yeah, I can see that point of view if it only happened one time, but it doesn't happen only one time. These things happen a lot more than 1 time, but you have to be reading with an open mind the whole sweep of the bible to spot them.