Romans 1:20

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For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, [even] his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse: (ASV)

Pro

These verses are often used by inerrantists in an attempt to claim victory in debates: "even YOU know that God exists, because Romans 1 says so, you're just being stubborn and prideful". It is often impossible to get the inerrantist to see the obvious circularity of this argument.

For the rest of us, this is clear proof of the NON-existence of their conception of the Biblical God. According to them, Paul is claiming that we have a "God-sense", an intuitive God-given knowledge that this being exists, so that we are "without excuse" for claiming otherwise: as many of us do not have this, the Bible is wrong, therefore the God of the inerrantist doesn't exist.

The usual excuse, that we have "suppressed" this knowledge, obviously doesn't apply to the former Christian who searched for God in vain, or the former Christian who believed that they WERE "in contact with God" but lost this belief without desiring to "suppress" it, or the non-Christian who simply never felt the urge to believe in the first place. And yet many inerrantist Christians will argue that it is impossible for a "True Christian" to deconvert, purely because of their misplaced faith in Paul and Romans 1.

To anyone undecided about the existence of the inerrantist concept of God, this should be the clincher. If you don't KNOW that he exists: he doesn't. --Robert Stevens 09:08, 19 Apr 2006 (CDT)

Con

This verse has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. It's about morality (God's attributes). Everyone can see right from wrong - this is a sense that everyone has. --Austin

The fact that all atheists and agnostics and people from other religions have this suppressed knowledge of God is evidenced through a survey done in cognitive psychology where age groups, up to age 10, 11-12, 13-17, etc. were tested for belief in God, and there were different types of families that each age group came from: atheistic evolutionists, theistic evolutionists, and creationists. All children up to the age of 11/12 believed in God, which is about the age when 7th grade biology teaches evolution.

Neutral

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