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just wondering, are you referring to me??? im not a Christian, and all i said is that the Old Testament is nothing more than the ORAL HISTORY and FOLK LORE OF THE JEWS...but i know you dint take my quote out of context, did ya?Quote:
Originally posted by Melf
I, for one, can't help but laugh when Christians criticize the Jews. That's like someone calling their mother a whore. :confused:
FOLK LORE?!Quote:
Originally posted by MrKasualUltra2000
just wondering, are you referring to me??? im not a Christian, and all i said is that the Old Testament is nothing more than the ORAL HISTORY and FOLK LORE OF THE JEWS...but i know you dint take my quote out of context, did ya?
Looks like someone is in desperate need of a homework assignment.
Go read Tacitus and Josephus.
Both are secular (non-relegious) historians who give identical accounts of the OT events in the Bible. Josephus even admits Christ was resurected as it pertains to the NT.
EDIT: Not to mention all of the archeological discoveries that 100% validate the events in the OT.
The historical and archeological societies around the world recognise the events in the OT as fact. They can prove names of rulers, times that the rulers reigned, the breadth of the ruler's kindom, and locations of buildings, peoples, and other such information.
You don't have a leg to stand on, MKU2000. The OT is a valid historical account of valid historical events. And the reast of the world not only thinks so, but knows so.
Where does that leave you?
If you want to substanciate an argument against the existence of God, you'll have to do better than historical arguments.
I usually do not like the quote-counterquote treatment, but it is the best way to proceed sometimes (with a summary immediately following):
I am no more mad at God than I am mad at Sephiroth for killing Aeris in FFVIII. The reason I sound passionate about this subject has to do with Christianity and other religions being another form of injustice and counterproductivity. Unfortunately, paternal theistic belief systems are such that it can be extremely difficult to snap people out of it, so to speak.Quote:
Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
Nick, you seem mad at God, or in pain.
Do you admit He is there and are spiting Him because of frustration?
It also upsets me that many Christians (and if you take personally anything that does not apply to you, that is your own fault) disregard or diminish secular achievement which they perceive to be in opposition to Biblical cosmology. Whenever a school board votes to exclude Darwin from a curriculum he clearly belongs in, I get riled up. Whenever a politician tries to pass a constitutional amendment "protecting" school prayer, I get riled up. Whenever the President and members of Congress appear on T.V. and explicitly invoke
God's name, it bugs me.
I am upset with people who believe I am going to Hell. God would never do anything unjust, right? Well, IF He is sending me to Hell, that must mean I deserve Hell, right? Well, I know I do NOT deserve Hell. No one does. No one. If you tell me that you deserve to breathe the sulphrous stench of the infernal afterlife for even a minute because of the sins of Adam, I will tell you to think about what you just said.
I realize that the Bible says God is Love. It also says that one day he will look at the MAJORITY of people that have existed throughout history and say, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."Quote:
Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
Pardon me for sounding like I'm patronizing you, but He loves you, and your family. In spite of what you think the Bible says.
Tell me another one.
Why did Jesus die? To fulfill the sacrifice ritual "once and for all," as Paul repeatedly states. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. God set up this crude system of atonement wherein slaughter garnered favor in His eyes. Then, He changed His mind and sent the Lamb to spill His blood at Calvary. Again, does this make sense in anyone's mind but God's? It sounds exactly like what a bunch of nomads and simple people would have made up to amuse themselves and keep their children in line. And here we are, millenia later, and some of us are still accepting it as fact and leading our lives around it.Quote:
Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
Why do I love God?
Because He gave His only Son for me.
Because if I confess His Son before other men, His Son, in spite of my sin being the reason for His death, will confess me before His Father. (This is what gets me the most.)
Because the Holy Spirit in me leads me to love Him.
God delighted in the aroma of the sacrifice. God took pleasure from death. Finally, He was made Flesh and killed Himself to appease His bloodlust "once and for all." He also relieved you from having to kill the lamb to please Heaven.
Witness: "But the firstling of a cow, or the firstling of a sheep, or the firstling of a goat, thou shalt not redeem; they are holy: thou shalt sprinkle their blood upon the altar, and shalt burn their fat for an offering made by fire, for a sweet savor unto the LORD."
Either God liked the burning flesh or He liked the fact that the person was giving one of his prized animals in tribute. But, as the poulation grew, it was not one sacrifice for every person. Rather a sacrifice covered multiple people. Why did God send Jesus? Was it so that each and every human being would be once again responsible for making a personal sacrifice? Was it? Did not God forsee the population explosion? Rezo made a hell of a point last week about God having license to do whatever He saw fit, make as many mistakes as He wanted, and say in retrospect, "It is all perfect, because it is My plan."
Dude, you are going on autopilot here. I presented specific points in my previous post about the unjust actions of the "Almighty" God. Don't read to me out of a tract.Quote:
Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
And look at what you have to do become one of His children! You don't have to live up to a standard! You don't have to change what you do or who you are, as He will do that for you. The absolute only thing you must do is accept His Son, Jesus Christ, as the pure and holy sacrifice for your sin. . . . Don't be angry at God for damning your family to Hell . . . be angry at your family that the only thing they had to do was believe in Christ and love Him and they would have been saved!
Read this:
"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."
And this"
"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee."
How will the people in Heaven be at perfect peace worshipping the bully that threw the vast majority of their species into damnation? You say the peace of God is spiritual in nature, that it cannot be compared to transitory peace we have on earth? Well, the soul is immortal, and it is immortal souls that will supposedly be suffering in Hell. I can understand how someone can be in Heaven singing praises to God while his father or son lies dead. "Dad had a chance, but he refused to believe, so now he is dead." But how can there be peace with the conscious awareness that Dad is at that moment being tormented for the sins of Adam?
Why would I believe in Him?Quote:
Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
Here, then, is my question for you:
Why don't you love God? Why, when it is as simple as accepting Christ as your pure and holy sacrifice, would you not come to Him?
Love God or suffer?
Love God . . . or suffer?!?
How is God better than a rapist who forces Himself on you?
He set up a flawed system for salvation, so He came to Earth to commit suicide for you because of His love? But, should you choose to think it over, and you die before making a choice, God will sear your soul in evelasting fire forever?
Since you disregarded much of my previous post, let me repeat this: ". . . I will not worship a Being that tortures innocent people because they don't love Him. Maybe it makes sense to God, but God is putting our asses on the line, not His own."
That is my Gospel.
Please try to answer my concerns. Don't give up, little trooper.
I'm gonna have to call you on this one. I've seen Nick win over an entire crowd and even get concessions from some pretty hard-edge preachers with my own eyes.Quote:
Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
Nick and Thugg would lose. I've had a one on one with Nick before and he failed miserably. I chose to stop the debate because he wasn't making sence and chose to select certain points from my posts, rather than make an attempt at cracking my posts as a whole.
Thugg, though I like the guy, would stand no chance either.
They have never met a Christian the likes of me before, I gaurantee it. And nothing their minds can concoct will prevail.
To Nick and Thugg: Nyah! :p
Then, it\'s heresy. According to Revelations.Quote:
Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
The Gospel of Thomas does exist, but not in the Bible.
You\'re ignoring the fact that Rezo\'s using human philosophy to disprove human theological truths.Quote:
Originally posted by LittleEric Rezo is trying to use Human philosophy to dissprove Theological truths, for that reason and that reason alone his argumants are inherently flawed, though i will concede that the \"God cant create something greater than himself, therefore is limited\" thingy was neat, i havent heard that one before, but when did God say he couldnt create something greater than himself ? anyway im sure there is a better \"answer\", or more appropriately a \"response\", but ill have to ask one of the scholarly types next time im in church.
If God is indeed on a plane so much higher than us, and He created us without the capacity to understand him, how then can He hold us accountable for our ignorance?
That may be true, but all it establishes is that the story existed at that time, not that it was true. Do you believe that Zeus and Athena and all of them visited the heroes of the Iliad? Do you believe Biblical stories of Creation and the Flood which have been proven beyond a scientific doubt to be untrue?Quote:
Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
Homer\'s Iliad weighs in a a whopping 650 manuscripts to translate from, all saying the same thing.
That is 100% wrong.Quote:
Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
EDIT: Not to mention all of the archeological discoveries that 100% validate the events in the OT.
your rational is obviously swayed by your superstitous tendencies...Quote:
Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
Looks like someone is in desperate need of a homework assignment.
Go read Tacitus and Josephus.
Both are secular (non-relegious) historians who give identical accounts of the OT events in the Bible. Josephus even admits Christ was resurected as it pertains to the NT.
EDIT: Not to mention all of the archeological discoveries that 100% validate the events in the OT.
Quote:
Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
FOLK LORE?!
Looks like someone is in desperate need of a homework assignment.
Go read Tacitus and Josephus.
Both are secular (non-relegious) historians who give identical accounts of the OT events in the Bible. Josephus even admits Christ was resurected as it pertains to the NT.
EDIT: Not to mention all of the archeological discoveries that 100% validate the events in the OT.
first of all, i think you my friend should do your homework, you cant believe everything you read at the Christian bookstore....what archeological discoveries do you speak of???
and yes Josepheus did speak briefly of A JESUS, not Jesus of Nazarteth however, back then ,Jesus was a name like Joe is in current times, extremely common. and what was also common in those times was men spreading the word of God across the countryside doing magic tricks and speaking against the government and Roman occupation, if anything the Jesus of your Bible was a political revolutionary not the saviour of mankind...Jesus always referred to himself as the Son of Man...meaning IMO he represented the potential of all of us to be one with God, like the sect of the Essenes who are famous because of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
cmon Veg, your samrter than that, you got to read between the lines, everything has a deeper meaning in the NT and if you think those books havent been tampered with to create a New Roman Empire by the first Council of Nicene in Rome you are a godamn fool and arent worth my typing time.
every culture has a tale of a great flood, every culture has a story of a son of God, half man, half divine, coming to save humanity, there is no doubt that certain historical events are recorded in the Bible, such as the Persians rescuing the Jews from Babylon, etc... what has Jesus done??? Where is he now, is he in the ghetto, is he in Africa where whole villages are dying of AIDS, is he in Iraq stoping the US bombs from dropping, get real buddy...i dont need proof give me a fuckin break. youi think he is gonna magically come out of the sky and save us...hahahaha.
seriously dude, i think your rigorous faith and belief is awesome and there is no doubt that your Christian morals and good will for others will take you far in life, but i ask you what are doing personally to please your creator, how much of your income do you give to charity and how much do you spend on games, dvds, music, etc...
are you going to foreign countries to spread the gospel or just jumping on internet message boards and talking out of your ass. would Jesus want you in Church playing the bass or out talking to the homeless? to me that is more important than arguing over the validity of any religious text which is more than 2000 years old.
I don't doubt CV's dedication and charity at all. He is a good guy, I think, but so are a lot of atheists. The question is, do those homeless people need to swallow the Gospel along with that free food at the soup kitchen?
I would rather stay away from getting personal here and stick to a discussion of religion, as was Phoenix's intent when he started this thread. Be mindful of your tone, and if I get out of line, call me on it.
you talking to me? did i not state his faith will help him in life???Quote:
Originally posted by Nick
I don't doubt CV's dedication and charity at all. He is a good guy, I think, but so are a lot of atheists. The question is, do those homeless people need to swallow the Gospel along with that free food at the soup kitchen?
I would rather stay away from getting personal here and stick to a discussion of religion, as was Phoenix's intent when he started this thread. Be mindful of your tone, and if I get out of line, call me on it.
my intent on the post was if people worried less about if Jesus was real or was right and instead went outside and lived like him, only then would the world change for the better, not that Chrisitians should kick the Gospel to the homeless.
You've really given me an opportunity to toot my own proverbial horm here...so I'll be as humble as possible.Quote:
Originally posted by MrKasualUltra2000
seriously dude, i think your rigorous faith and belief is awesome and there is no doubt that your Christian morals and good will for others will take you far in life, but i ask you what are doing personally to please your creator, how much of your income do you give to charity and how much do you spend on games, dvds, music, etc...
are you going to foreign countries to spread the gospel or just jumping on internet message boards and talking out of your ass. would Jesus want you in Church playing the bass or out talking to the homeless? to me that is more important than arguing over the validity of any religious text which is more than 2000 years old.
I am a good guy, as Nick has suggested. And I do what I know God instills in my heart. Whether it be ministering on the streets of Chester, sharing my faith on a message board, or tithing every pay-period.
Why do I do it? Not because the Bible tells me, but because God inspires me to do it. Does the Bible command to do those things? Sure. But that is simply a coinsidence. I do it because God "tells me to." Just as He's told me to share my faith on this message board, in the manner and tone I've taken. Will it save someone? Maybe. But that doesn't concern me. What concerns me is that I please God. Why? Because I'm driven by His love for me. Not the love that is written about in the Bible. Not the love that my pastor speaks about. But a real, personal love that I feel in my heart and all around me every day.
When I say "God loves you" you invalidate it as words in a real old book. But what you don't realize is that I'm not speaking the words from a book, I'm speaking them from experience.
I don't arbitrarily believe the Bible. Had I picked it up at any point in my younger years, I'd have made my best effort to debunk it. But I know God's love for me. I feel it. And that's why I belive the Bible. I believe it because I know it's true. Because I've experienced what it speaks of on a daily basis. The Bible doesn't influence what I think of God. What I feel from God influences what I believe about the Bible.
You're mixing that last point up.
I'm not trying to prove the Bible to you...I'm trying to prove my experiences to you. Experiences that you've confused with words in a book. Are the words and my feelings similar? Identical! But rest assured my feeling came first.
That is why I know the Bible is real. That is why I've devoted my life to glorifing God. That, unfortunatly, is also why nothing I say will change your mind. You'll have to experience it for yourself first.
Do they need it? Well, that\'s up to them. But they at least deserve the chance to deside for themselves. All I do is give them that chance.Quote:
Originally posted by Nick
I don\'t doubt CV\'s dedication and charity at all. He is a good guy, I think, but so are a lot of atheists. The question is, do those homeless people need to swallow the Gospel along with that free food at the soup kitchen?
Please don\'t bring up City Teams. I disagree with a few practices of theirs, and would rather not get started. On the whole, their ministry is sound...but there are some things I\'d do differently.
And thanks for vouching for me. ;)
most of this is geared towards Nick, with some towards MKU afterwards.
this is another point where i disagree with a lot fellow Christians. maybe i should start my own religion. anyway-Quote:
I will not worship a Being that tortures innocent people because they don't love Him. Maybe it makes sense to God, but God is putting our asses on the line, not His own.
i think that the people who go to Hell aren't innocent people, and the people who go to heaven are.
i think that God knows a person better than they know themselves, and if over all, in their deepest subconscious (sp?) if they are a "good" person, then he wont damn them to hell.
however i also believe that some people simply are wicked, for whatever reason, and God knows it, and he punishes them accordingly.
so your mother who dies at 65 and has never gone to church a day in her life - many would say she burns, i say this is pigheaded, and very insensitive.
when i get into this debate with my mother, she always quotes the line from Jesus "I am the truth and the light, no man gets to heaven but through me" i say thats all well and good, but maybe there was more to that then meets the eye.
maybe Jesus was saying you have to be "born again" or "saved", but maybe he was also saying that you just have to be an innately good person, and maybe some are good, some are bad, and maybe the good people do "know" Jesus, even if they have never physically heard of him.
so back to your mother, she has never been to chuch in her life, but maybe thats no fault of her own, maybe she was just never approached with the opportunity and never fully understood what it meant, and if she is one of the innately "good" people, then i have to believe that she would have taken the chance to become a Christian had she fully understood everything it means to be one, and i have to believe that even though she never took this opportunity., her inherent goodness saves her, Jesus knows she is good, even if she doesnt know him, and he wont damn her to hell. and i think you're right that Jesus shouldnt damn innocent people to hell, because i think he doesnt.
to validate this, i always ask about the trillions of people who lived and died before modern technology had a chance to spread the word of God which was at the time limited to a group of religious nomads in the middle east.
i always ask what of the Azteks ? the Mayans ? the Native Americans ? all of Asia ? the rest of Africa ?
trillions of people over uncounted centuries populating every corner of the world, are we to believe that every single person who hadnt heard a whisper of Christ up until the very recent inventions which allow for quick traveling of the world, are we to believe that all of them were sent to hell ?
they never had the opportunity to listen in the first place.
this is why i believe that god just knows if a person is good or not, this is why i believe many people from all the major religions have a place in heaven, God knows if they're good, and if they'd "want" to know him should they have the chance, and because of that they are saved.
well yea nick, it does sound like something a bunch of nomads and simple people would come up with.Quote:
God set up this crude system of atonement wherein slaughter garnered favor in His eyes. Then, He changed His mind and sent the Lamb to spill His blood at Calvary. Again, does this make sense in anyone's mind but God's? It sounds exactly like what a bunch
of nomads and simple people would have made up to amuse themselves and keep their children in line. And here we are, millenia later, and some of us are still accepting it as fact and leading our lives around it.
thats of course why God made it that way. to explain :
does god mention subatomic particles in the bible ? does God mention that the water pouring out of Jesus' side was a natural occurance after the plasma in his blood had seperated ? does God mention planets ? no on all counts.
Nick, the bible was written for a certain group of people at a certain time.
Likewise, the practices and rituals of God were for a certain group of people at a certain time.
does this mean that in 2002, we can get nothing from the bible, and that Jesus death has no meaning for us ? no.
it simply means that we have to look deeper. we have to look past the rituals and the sacrifices and the touchy-feely aspects that were meant for the "simple minded" people of the time, so that they would have a way to comprehend what God was trying to do.
Jesus as a final sacrifice worked fine for Paul, it worked fine for the people of the year first century A.D., because that is what they could understand, which is why God designed it that way, but he also wants it to have value for us in the year 2002, and it does, because now we can look past the sacrifice and the "crude system of attonement" and start to realize more what everything meant in a deeper, more contemporary theological frame of mind. something the simple minded nomads couldnt do. which explains perfectly why everything was done the way it was - the tangible physical aspect of sacrifice and attonement worked for simpler people, and the underlying themes of love, consequence, and forgiveness at a price work for us in 2002.
agreed, his posts have a lot of emotion behind them and are therefore very convincing, anyone who would say otherwise is kidding themselves.Quote:
I've seen Nick win over an entire crowd and even get concessions from some pretty hard-edge preachers with my own eyes.
Josephus mentions a Jesus. agreed, Jesus is a common name.Quote:
and yes Josepheus did speak briefly of A JESUS, not Jesus of Nazarteth
Josephus mentions a Jesus at the time we are told by many other sources that Jesus lived. agreed, there were other Jesus
Josephus mentions him a worker of miracles. agreed, there were cheap magicians around this time who impressed people (of course, Jesus works were so far different in every way from the works of the other magicians you mentioned that comparing them is kind of ridiculous, if you want me to go into further detail of why then i will)
Josephus mentions that Jesus can sway large groups of people with his voice and leads crowds. agreed, there were other demagogues at this time.
Josephus mentions Jesus' trial before pontius pilate. agreed, others were tried before pontius pilate
Josephus mentions Jesus sentence and it being carried out. agreed, others were sentenced.
my point MKU, is this : all of these things probably happened, but how many people do you really beleive were named Jesus, lived during the exact same time period, performed unique miracles, was a demagogue, and was sentenced by pontius pilate at the time we are given to not one but two punishments, which was extremely rare at the time and is also mentioned of our Jesus of Nazareth ?
Josephus' Jesus is the Jesus of Nazareth in question. i know it, theologians know it, scholars know it, and secular historians know it.
im not trying to be in anyway rude here so please dont take it as such, but even though that may be your opinion, it is factually wrong.Quote:
Jesus always referred to himself as the Son of Man...meaning IMO he represented the potential of all of us to be one with God
"son of man" has a very specific meaning, and Jesus taking it as his title had very serious implications - it was one of the things that got him executed.
any Jewish man could take the title "son of god". it was common, and respected because in truth, all were the son of God.
however, "son of man" was a title which has its ruits in old testament prophecy, and for someone to call himself the son of man meant basically that they were claiming to be the mesiah prophesized about. it was a very serious claim to fame.
kind of thing that gets you flogged, then crucified.
you guys know your stuff. much respect.