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I'd just like to add one more thought to this discussion, courtesy of Kiss frontman Gene Simmons (as quoted in the July 2002 issue of Esquire):
"I think Christians are wrong. They're wrong because you're not judged by your actions, you're judged by your beliefs, which is to say that if you're Hitler and right before you die, you say, 'Jesus, I'm sorry,' you get a better chance of going to heaven than the millions of people you killed."
I know, I know. Everytime I try to stop I get sucked right back up in it again.Quote:
Originally posted by Master of 7s
Feh! All this intellectual bickering back and forth means nothing at the end of all these things. CV, help me remember. Where is it written that we are not to argue the Word of God?
Here's a verse:
Matt 7:6
"Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
I know the specific verse you're talking about, but I can't seem to find it. Oh well, point taken. ;)
You are 100% correct. And I thanks you for your concern. :DQuote:
Not trying to be a smartass, but honestly, shouldn't our actions be a better barometer of our faith rather than our words?
"But someone will say to you "You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without your works and I will show you my faith by my works" James 2:18
I make no concessions when it comes to my faith in Jesus and I don't dispute with people who choose not to believe, but if my actions don't speak louder about my faith than any words can, my faith is pretty much pointless.
"What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked snd destitute of daily food and one of them, 'Depart in peace, be warmed and filled' but you do not give them the things which are need for the body, what does it profit?
Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead" James 2:14-17
Do I imply that your faith is dead? Of course not, I don't know what works you do in the Lord's name anymore than you know mine. However, there comes a time to put away foolish disputes and live what you know to be true.
I think it's pretty obvious you, Nick and burgundy love a rousing debate as much as the next guy, Lord knows I've enjoyed reading the posts. But sometimes ya just gotta agree to disagree and say "Whelp, this is going nowhere. Been nice fightin' with ya.":bang:
I am done with this. I've said it in the other thread as well, but I'm going no further. God is the only one who can open your eyes to His truths, guys. Not me. So, if you're truely seeking, ask God for what you seek. I've told you how and why I believe, and that is all I have been charged by God to do.
Thanks for giving me the chance to share, everyone. And thanks to everyone else who shared along with me, christian or otherwise. :)
CV - fair enough. The "created with age" argument is an interesting one and one I've not heard before.
well, here we go.
if science could disprove creation there wouldnt be a debate at all. trouble is it cant. as for the world-flood and noahs ark, logic disproves that. there probly was an arc where noah and his family and livestock lived during the flood. to noah, as all he had ever known (most ancient people were born, lived, and died without traveling much at all) was covered by water, all the world must have been covered by water, and as every major religion, and every culture has a world flood myth, and as there is some evidence of a catastrophic flood, then its safe to assume that the world-flood was based on an actual ancient flood.Quote:
Science proves beyond the shadow of a doubt the flood and creation never happened
did it cover all of planet earth ? no.
yea, most of it was improved, as the entire work in which this quote is a section was dedicated (25 volumes) to proving a roman emperor (it escapes me right now which one) was the messiah. then suddenly he 180's and says that Jesus is the messiah. the lines ive bolded are believed to have been added by the monk who transcribed it.Quote:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, (9) those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; (10) as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.
There is debate among scholars as to the authenticity of this quote since it is so favorable to Jesus.
why do you say that ? you said he was a political revolutionary, he wasnt.Quote:
do you want to shoot yourself in the foot again???
you then supplied an exhaustive list of "contradictions" in the bible, most a first-year theologian could answer, as they're fairly simple.
rather than pick out all of them one by one, ive gone by to pick out a few, i think CV also linked to a site which explained your "contradictions" anyway, here we go.
there are two answers to this. one, the sketchier one, is translation errors through the multiple sintex (sp?) that the bible has been translated through. the other, is as follows :Quote:
(GEN1:26) God said "LET US MAKE MAN IN OUR IMAGE ACCORDING TO OUR LIKENESS" ,
(GEN3:22) God said "MAN HAS BECOME LIKE ONE OF US" .
at about the time God revealed himself to Abraham, Abraham being the ver first Jew/Chritstian/Muslim, it was widely accepted among basically everybody that there were multiple Gods who controlled each part of nature. so, when God first started to lead Abraham, its likely that for some time Abraham thought God just one of many Gods, and as those peticular Genesis verses, as they are from the first and much older Genesis story (more on this later) were probably from around this time, as a result the writer of the first Genesis story may have still had a vestigial polytheistic mindset.
however, all of this is utterly pointless. if your trying to prove that the bible isnt sure wether or not the religion of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims is a monotheistic or a polytheisitic one ... well thats just plain ridiculous.
a perfect example of where the bible appears to contradict itself, but in context of the time it was written, it most definitly does not.Quote:
(GEN7:17, 8:6) The flood was on the Earth 40 days and nights
(GEN7:24, 8:3) The flood was on the Earth 150 days CONTRADICTS
here's the short explanation : in early times the phrase "40 days and 40 nights" was not an exact measurement but an exaggerated saying meant basically to say "it was a long time"
it would be the same as if i wrote a book today, in 2002, where the saying "in a minute" is used to say something happened quickly. in my book i spend one line saying "i'll be back in a minute" and in another line saying "it took me 15 minutes"
then, 3000 years later, where "in a minute" is seen as meaning "in one minute" and not "shortly", the people would see it as contradictory.
only fundamentalists believe the story of Babel to be historically acurate. of course languages develope on their own, just think of how many have developed in the last 400 years or so.Quote:
(Genesis 11:1,6-9) In the days of Babel, generations after the Flood, the world had one common language. God "confused the tongues" to create many.
(Genesis 10:5) Prior to Babel, the Bible speaks of many "nations", each with its own language
in the bible, and in ancient times, the longer someone was said to have lived meant the more prosperous and succesful of a life they had, not necessarily the exact number of years they were on the planet.Quote:
(Genesis 11:26,32) Terah lived 135 years after begetting Abraham (he begat Abram at age 70 and lived 205 years total).
this verse has long been debated over, but for another seeming contradiction over the name of the place where they wrestled, which im surprised you didnt mention.Quote:
(GEN32:24-30) Jacob saw and wrestled with God
course its pretty obvious that like many things it shouldnt be taken literally.
many of the passages that concern "seeing" god are thought by scholars to mean seeing a sign of god/seeing a vision of god/seeing god in nature or in some other way.Quote:
11.Who has seen God?
in the bible "saw" doesnt necessarily mean "he looked at God in physical form with his eyes"
he of course didnt go through with it, it was a test, and when God saw that Abraham was going to follow Gods will, God told him he could untie Jacob.Quote:
(GEN22:1-2) God commands Abraham to sacrifice his own son.
image making refers to idol making, for the purpase of the worshipping said idol. they werent planning on worshipping the cherubim.Quote:
(Exodus 20:4) Image-making forbidden
(Exodus 25:18) God commands the making of two cherubim.
this is another pretty famous verse for scholars to squabble over. again, not to be taken literally - unless you believe that God and Abraham sat down together at a table and talked things over. probably included to show a more human and relateable side to God. course the only person who knows for sure is the person who wrote it.Quote:
See Genesis 18:23-33, where Abraham gets God to change his mind about the minimum number of righteous people in Sodom required to avoid destruction, bargaining down from fifty to ten. (An omniscient God must have known that he was playing with Abraham's hopes for mercy--he destroyed the city anyway.)
maybe i didnt explain what i was trying to say well enough. so as not to repeat it, i was basically saying that the aspects of Jesus death which seem crude to us were meant so as the simpler people of that time could understand it, however now in 2002 it still has meaning as we can start to look past the crude physical side and more towards the theological message that was being conveyed.Quote:
3) If you are calling Christ's death a show meant for a certain time or a certain mindset, you are diminishing the importance of the Cross and not giving God a heck of a lot of credit for foresight. Christ died for us all. Look at my previous posts for a discussion on blood sacrifices
maybe you were thinking of me, i think i mentioned ive taken quite a few theology courses and am taking some now. most of them are basically all history though, which is why i can say with a good deal of confidence anything which deals with the bible's historical side, but on the deeper theological side its kind of touch-and-go.Quote:
Are you a theology major, then, or am I confused with someone else?
i love James.Quote:
"But someone will say to you "You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without your works and I will show you my faith by my works" James 2:18
here's another good one "every man should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry" - my favorite bible verse evar. just thing for a minute how different society would be if people followed that one.
My point, Eric, is that the Bible won't get you very far if you take every word literally in the light of modern knowledge.
agreed, which is why many times throughout various posts i've said that it isnt supposed to be taken literally.
part of understanding the bible is understanding the people who it was originally written for.
The Bible seems far too specific to possibly be construed as something not to take literally. C'mon, it even plots out genealogy. I don't see how a page-long paragraph consisting of "...and Dick beget Jane and..." could not be taken literally.
*edit*
Not to say that deeper meaning can't be read into many passages, but the fact that deeper meaning must be read into it to get past the obvious falsehoods and numerous contradictions pretty much proves that it's only good as a moral compass and nothing more. In other words, a nice fable filled with nice morals to accompany the nice little stories. Disregarding the massive amounts of injust carnage, stonings, incest, dung-spreading, etc. :)
YIKES!!! ICHABOD??????
Um....you DO know what that name means right?:confused:
A serious question:
I do music at school, and my teacher is very Christian. He knows his stuff like CV here, and he doesn't mind debating over the validity of his religion.
Do you think that he would get offended by this song?
WARNING: This may be offensive. Keep in mind that all religious references in this song are most likely metaphorical, and aren't supposed to be taken literally
Judith by A Perfect Circle:
you're such an inspiration for ways that i will never ever choose to be
oh so many ways for me to show you how your savior has abandoned you
fuck your god
your lord your christ
he did this
took all you had and
left you this way
still you pray never stray never
taste of the fruit
never thought to question why
it's not like you killed someone
it's not like you drove a hateful spear into his side
praise the one who left you broken down and paralyzed
he did it all for you
oh so many ways for me to show you how your dogma has abandoned you
pray to your christ to your god never
taste of the fruit
never stray never break never
choke on a lie
even though he's the one who
did this to you
never thought to question why
it's not like you killed someone
it's not like you drove a spiteful spear into his side
talk to jesus christ as if he knows the reasons why
he did this all to you he did it all for you
The rest of the album by A Perfect circle is un-offensive, and is really good. I don't know whether or not I should burn a copy of it without this song so I can play it when he's around.
...big fiber?