Christians - Fess Up To Your Beliefs

[chefranden]

A. The first think the kid does is get with his buddy and say heck, dad was a wuss in his day, let's go do Satanic Drive, because we know better than him.

 

And sure enough, the kids tore out the transfer case on the stump that they didn't see, so they hid the truck from dad.

 

Dad, hearing about the incident from the grapevine, says, "OK, son, no more truck for you".

 

B. So what is dad supposed to do?

 

1) Fix the truck and let them continue to drive, no charge?

 

2) Teach them responsibility and have them fix the truck themselves?

 

 

If you have time Tea, let's not jump to the ending, I will get there. Please just answer the question honestly.

 

A. You mean dad doesn't know the kid will do this if he gives the kid a truck? Doesn't he know anything about adolescent psychology? Come on he knows this is going to happen.

 

If he's not comfortable with this, why give the kid a truck in the first place?

 

B. You are leaving out the magic. Your dad with the truck doesn't have any magic. Are you saying that if dad could give the kid a cookie that supplied wisdom, and responsibility that he would withhold said cookie from the kid?

 

You are not comparing apples with apples here.

 

Edit: I would have given my kids 2 cookies.

[chefranden]

...I feel sorry for those 'adults' that would use their age as a trump card anyway. The way I plan to do it, I'm going to be hanging on to my youth for as long as I can...

 

Well, as me olde man useta say, "You can't know what you don't know."

 

Too bad End and I won't be here in another 40 years when you go "oh".

[Mriana]

End seemed to miss my question as to what "satanic" means. It was a serious question, not an off the wall smart remark because I, even though I was raised around Evangelical relatives all my childhood, I truly do not know what that or demonic means. One person's demonic is another person's... well I don't know, but it would take too long to explain and as I said, I don't have a clue as to what you mean, End.

[chefranden]

What is it that God is to be to everyone? And the whole point is forgiveness? Let's change it to a new Cannondale or whatever. The kid just spit in dad's eye. The dad was trying to provide happiness for the kid. How is that it is the dad's fault? "You didn't make me where I would listen".

 

Well he didn't.

 

In fact the kid can't listen even if he wants to. Any listening the kid might do is filthy rags.

 

You make a nice gasoline engine and then get mad at it for not running when you withhold the spark plugs.

[Ouroboros]

It's fascinating that every time a weakness in God's character is brought up, the Christian explanation is to compare God to a human father with all the limitations which comes with being a faulty and finite human. Does this comparison mean then that God is human, since God has the same restrictions and faults as humans? It must be.

[Guest end3]

It's fascinating that every time a weakness in God's character is brought up, the Christian explanation is to compare God to a human father with all the limitations which comes with being a faulty and finite human. Does this comparison mean then that God is human, since God has the same restrictions and faults as humans? It must be.

No Hans,

 

Just trying to put it in a context that is more "graspable". Obviously, the literature by itself is not getting across. But you are right, most human examples to relate are flawed.

[oddbird1963]

It's fascinating that every time a weakness in God's character is brought up, the Christian explanation is to compare God to a human father with all the limitations which comes with being a faulty and finite human. Does this comparison mean then that God is human, since God has the same restrictions and faults as humans? It must be.

 

Just trying to put it in a context that is more "graspable". Obviously, the literature by itself is not getting across. But you are right, most human examples to relate are flawed.

 

 

I don't think the problem is in our grasp. The weakness may be in the points you are trying to justify.

 

I know fundies tend to endorse torture of prisoners more than the other types of christian denominations, but what they really excel at is the ability to torture a nice simple analogy. The analogy of a father is nice insofar as it goes. But I too have noticed that rather than present us with better reasoning, they try to stretch a word picture to the point of absurdity. Analogies are typically meant only to have very limited correspondence to the things to which they are supposed to be compared.

 

An analogy is like a rubber band. The more you try to stretch it to fit the concept you are discussing, the weaker it gets and the more likely it is to break. (Anybody catch the irony here?)

 

Extended analogies: good in works of literature (maybe); bad in reasoned discussions.

[Ouroboros]

It's fascinating that every time a weakness in God's character is brought up, the Christian explanation is to compare God to a human father with all the limitations which comes with being a faulty and finite human. Does this comparison mean then that God is human, since God has the same restrictions and faults as humans? It must be.

No Hans,

 

Just trying to put it in a context that is more "graspable". Obviously, the literature by itself is not getting across. But you are right, most human examples to relate are flawed.

So then, lets look at the story you gave and compare it to the Christian God (or at least what most Christian theologians consider to be the Christian God):

 

A. The first think the kid does is get with his buddy and say heck, dad was a wuss in his day, let's go do Satanic Drive, because we know better than him.

 

And sure enough, the kids tore out the transfer case on the stump that they didn't see, so they hid the truck from dad.

 

Dad, hearing about the incident from the grapevine, says, "OK, son, no more truck for you".

God, if he is omniscient, omnipresent, and perhaps prescient, he would know beforehand that it would happen. He would know when it happened, without hearing it through rumors. And he would even be there, when it happened and allowed it to happen because he wanted to teach the "son" a lesson.

 

God would be in essence culpable of conspire to the resulting situation, since he knew it would happen, and could prevent it.

 

God would also know that the son would lie and hide the truck. So God would not be surprised to know this, because he would have known it from eternity past already.

 

B. So what is dad supposed to do?

God would only do what he know from eternity past that he would do, which would be whatever he know he must do. He can't do anything else. He can't make a choice, since he already know before the Universe was created what he will do. His future and actions are carved into rock-solid-stone.

 

1) Fix the truck and let them continue to drive, no charge?

Why not? That's what he does with serial killers. Just let them go on and kill yet another innocent. God doesn't interfere with human actions, since it would violate the "prime directive" and invalidate free will.

 

2) Teach them responsibility and have them fix the truck themselves?

God doesn't talk to people, so no one really learns responsibility through God's instructions. And if God sends a tsunami to teach us, it's hard for us to know if he did it for the truck we broke, or the house we burned down, or for the food we spilled on the floor. Besides, this is what we do anyway, we learn our lesson by thinking about it, and then modify our behavior, but nowhere do we hear God coming down on a cloud and explaining the things for us, which a real father would do.

 

So... nah, God isn't a father. He's perhaps an imaginary father, but only a bad one.

[Ouroboros]

I know fundies tend to endorse torture of prisoners more than the other types of christian denominations, but what they really excel at is the ability to torture a nice simple analogy. The analogy of a father is nice insofar as it goes. But I too have noticed that rather than present us with better reasoning, they try to stretch a word picture to the point of absurdity. Analogies are typically meant only to have very limited correspondence to the things to which they are supposed to be compared.

The problem is that religion (like Christianity) has based most of their theology on allegories and ideas, which leads to stretching them beyond the original purpose. The "father" idea was perhaps semi-good in the beginning, but over time the Church put more and more of different emphasis on different aspects of fatherhood and applied it to God, and eventually you describe a human God incompatible with the philosophical God.

 

An analogy is like a rubber band. The more you try to stretch it to fit the concept you are discussing, the weaker it gets and the more likely it is to break. (Anybody catch the irony here?)

 

Extended analogies: good in works of literature (maybe); bad in reasoned discussions.

It can be used in reasoned discussion too, but it has to be applied to things which are somewhat real. It has to be something we can relate to and understand. To apply images of butterflies to explain anxiety before an exam, works because it contains two real things we know something about. But to apply stories about pixies to dwarf society will not work at all, since both pixies and dwarfs are imaginary things, and we can modify them both to fit anything we want to say. And in this case, we do know about fatherhood, kids, and cars, but we do not know God's character or personality, so to use a human imagery to explain some unexplainable thing we can't know about, is just that... imaginary.

 

I could use the allegory of a father doing a BBQ in the backyard to feed his hungry children, to explain God's wrath and reason to why he sends people to Hell. In the end, it doesn't mean anything, since we don't know God that way. We don't know God to be a father. We don't know God to be a mother. We don't know the difference of God being a large-sized plasma TV or an ectoplasm goo swimming in ether-space.

 

So allegories work, but not on God.

[Guest end3]

It's fascinating that every time a weakness in God's character is brought up, the Christian explanation is to compare God to a human father with all the limitations which comes with being a faulty and finite human. Does this comparison mean then that God is human, since God has the same restrictions and faults as humans? It must be.

 

You ask a good question....if we are in the image of God, what is that image? Doesn't seem like anyone wants to go there when reasonable answers to the questions posed are put forth.......most drop the conversation in favor of the standard rhetoric.

 

If you haven't already, (and it appears you haven't), please go read the first four pages to this thread and we can talk.

[Tealeaf]

Your analogy is flawed in that it doesn't take into account everthing god is supposed to be to people and that the whole point is forgiveness.

 

What is it that God is to be to everyone? And the whole point is forgiveness? Let's change it to a new Cannondale or whatever. The kid just spit in dad's eye. The dad was trying to provide happiness for the kid. How is that it is the dad's fault? "You didn't make me where I would listen".

 

The point is that the preservation of the bike is so that the kid can keep riding.....happiness. There would be no worth in the dad just continuing to fix the bike for the kid. Have you never met a child that had everything, how bratty they can be?

 

Wellllllllll, the kids fucked up, s there HAS to be BRUTAL punishment so they learn their lesson; don't fuck with daddy.

 

You got it partially right....the kids made a mistake, and there has to be a punishment so they can learn. And the lesson? Adam, you will have to work for your Cannondale. Eve, I am multipying your birth pains so you will remember the significance of bringing good vs bad into this world. Snake, I am dropping you to the ground, as you are the "lowest".

 

Notice how in option 2, you mention 'doing something for themselves'. That's great advice except....the bible teaches nothing of this.

 

Are you sure????

 

The only thing the bible advises one do is to accept Jesus. Why? Because if they don't, they bloody well burn forever. Great message there.

 

Let me introduce you to the word repent.

 

Main Entry: 1re·pent

Pronunciation: \ri-ˈpent\

Function: verb

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French repentir, from Medieval Latin repoenitēre, from Latin re- + Late Latin poenitēre to feel regret, alteration of Latin paenitēre — more at penitent

Date: 14th century

intransitive verb

1: to turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of one's life

2 a: to feel regret or contrition b: to change one's mind

transitive verb

1: to cause to feel regret or contrition

2: to feel sorrow, regret, or contrition for

 

It is used numerous times in the bible.

 

This is all reasonable stuff T....

 

What?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

 

Ok....so first you go and filter through the stuff in my response you have no explination for, as if I never said it....

 

Then you quote bible stories as if they were to make sense; disregarding the point I made and pretending it doesn't stand.

 

And then you go on a zombie trance to say the same old BS....and you literally put a definition; I should repent for my imaginary crimes so I can recieve my imaginary, planned forgiveness.

 

Are you not able to comprehend what it means to say something and have no evidence, reason or point to back it up? You are simply saying this stuff based on nothing more than the idea that it's written in an old book so it must be true. Not that it makes sense anyway....

 

You STILL fail to acknowledge or grasp my OP point. I think you simply do not want to. It's part of the indoctrination.

 

It does not make perfect sense end3. You're talking to someone who has not been fed this crap from childhood and has not fucked up in there life as such to resort to the comfort of self-sustaining, effortless, absolute truths.

 

I find it quite saddening peoeple can be this deluded in their thought process. It really is the worst and hardest drug to crack, yet it's the most widly availiable and socially acceptable drug. (well, this level of it is not so mainstream acceptable in Canada)

[oddbird1963]

 

So allegories work, but not on God.

 

 

I can appreciate your point.

[Guest end3]

What?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

 

Ok....so first you go and filter through the stuff in my response you have no explination for, as if I never said it....

 

Then you quote bible stories as if they were to make sense; disregarding the point I made and pretending it doesn't stand.

 

And then you go on a zombie trance to say the same old BS....and you literally put a definition; I should repent for my imaginary crimes so I can recieve my imaginary, planned forgiveness.

 

Are you not able to comprehend what it means to say something and have no evidence, reason or point to back it up? You are simply saying this stuff based on nothing more than the idea that it's written in an old book so it must be true. Not that it makes sense anyway....

 

You STILL fail to acknowledge or grasp my OP point. I think you simply do not want to. It's part of the indoctrination.

 

It does not make perfect sense end3. You're talking to someone who has not been fed this crap from childhood and has not fucked up in there life as such to resort to the comfort of self-sustaining, effortless, absolute truths.

 

I find it quite saddening peoeple can be this deluded in their thought process. It really is the worst and hardest drug to crack, yet it's the most widly availiable and socially acceptable drug. (well, this level of it is not so mainstream acceptable in Canada)

 

Just trying to explain the story as well as possible. I am sorry it doesn't make sense to you. Good luck.

 

END3

[Guest Davka]

End3, you don't seem to be grasping the core argument here.

 

1 God is omniscient. He knew what would happen before he created anything.

 

2 God created everything.

 

3 Therefore, God is responsible for everything that happens to his creation.

 

It's really quite simple.

[Guest end3]

End3, you don't seem to be grasping the core argument here.

 

1 God is omniscient. He knew what would happen before he created anything.

 

2 God created everything.

 

3 Therefore, God is responsible for everything that happens to his creation.

 

It's really quite simple.

 

When Abraham is about to kill Isaac....the Angel of the Lord tells him to stop, and then says, "Now I know" that.....

 

Gen 22:12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only [son] from me.

 

So what can we take from this?

[Ouroboros]

When Abraham is about to kill Isaac....the Angel of the Lord tells him to stop, and then says, "Now I know" that.....

 

Gen 22:12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only [son] from me.

 

So what can we take from this?

What we can see is that God does not know the future. He can perhaps estimate it or do a fairly good guess, but he can't know. He admits that his knowledge is bound by time by using the word "Now".

 

But being a God that does not have prescience (knowledge of the future), would bring us to another question: God is supposedly superior in mind and capacity, so he should be very able to predict human behavior and response to the situations he puts them in. He would be able to figure out, but not necessarily know, what the most likely outcome would be. So a very skilled God would be able to play chess and fairly accurately predict that A&E would fall. Considering that he created the curiosity in them, and for no good reason put a tree to test them with in the garden. It's just a huge test. Life is just God testing us like lab rats.

[Guest end3]

When Abraham is about to kill Isaac....the Angel of the Lord tells him to stop, and then says, "Now I know" that.....

 

Gen 22:12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only [son] from me.

 

So what can we take from this?

What we can see is that God does not know the future. He can perhaps estimate it or do a fairly good guess, but he can't know. He admits that his knowledge is bound by time by using the word "Now".

 

But being a God that does not have prescience (knowledge of the future), would bring us to another question: God is supposedly superior in mind and capacity, so he should be very able to predict human behavior and response to the situations he puts them in. He would be able to figure out, but not necessarily know, what the most likely outcome would be. So a very skilled God would be able to play chess and fairly accurately predict that A&E would fall. Considering that he created the curiosity in them, and for no good reason put a tree to test them with in the garden. It's just a huge test. Life is just God testing us like lab rats.

 

Thank you Hans,

 

As we continue to examine and search, even I find ideas that are inconsistent with what is held as "true" through orthodoxy. Is it possible that God gave absolute free will to humanity and that meaning He retains no knowledge of a human's choice? Maybe....and maybe we are wrong. But, here's the kicker, I am starting to grow weary of the crowd that takes the standard fundamentalism, God is omni-everthing in this case, from both sides and make it a stand to run down someones throat.

 

Who knew how that one phrase means so much in the interpretation of God? Not I.

[NotBlinded]

I know fundies tend to endorse torture of prisoners more than the other types of christian denominations, but what they really excel at is the ability to torture a nice simple analogy. The analogy of a father is nice insofar as it goes. But I too have noticed that rather than present us with better reasoning, they try to stretch a word picture to the point of absurdity. Analogies are typically meant only to have very limited correspondence to the things to which they are supposed to be compared.

The problem is that religion (like Christianity) has based most of their theology on allegories and ideas, which leads to stretching them beyond the original purpose. The "father" idea was perhaps semi-good in the beginning, but over time the Church put more and more of different emphasis on different aspects of fatherhood and applied it to God, and eventually you describe a human God incompatible with the philosophical God.

 

An analogy is like a rubber band. The more you try to stretch it to fit the concept you are discussing, the weaker it gets and the more likely it is to break. (Anybody catch the irony here?)

 

Extended analogies: good in works of literature (maybe); bad in reasoned discussions.

It can be used in reasoned discussion too, but it has to be applied to things which are somewhat real. It has to be something we can relate to and understand. To apply images of butterflies to explain anxiety before an exam, works because it contains two real things we know something about. But to apply stories about pixies to dwarf society will not work at all, since both pixies and dwarfs are imaginary things, and we can modify them both to fit anything we want to say. And in this case, we do know about fatherhood, kids, and cars, but we do not know God's character or personality, so to use a human imagery to explain some unexplainable thing we can't know about, is just that... imaginary.

 

I could use the allegory of a father doing a BBQ in the backyard to feed his hungry children, to explain God's wrath and reason to why he sends people to Hell. In the end, it doesn't mean anything, since we don't know God that way. We don't know God to be a father. We don't know God to be a mother. We don't know the difference of God being a large-sized plasma TV or an ectoplasm goo swimming in ether-space.

 

So allegories work, but not on God.

 

Indeed.

 

I think Dionysius The Areopagite says it well:

 

"DARKNESS becomes invisible by light, and specially by much light. Varied knowledge (αἰ γνώσεις), and especially much varied knowledge, makes the Agnosia to vanish. Take this in a superlative, but not in a defective sense, and reply with superlative truth, that the Agnosia, respecting God, escapes those who possess existing light, and knowledge of things being; and His pre-eminent darkness is both concealed by every light, and is hidden from every knowledge. And, if any one, having seen God, understood what he saw, he did not see Him, but some of His creatures that are existing and known. But He Himself, highly established above mind, and above essence, by the very fact of His being wholly unknown, and not being, both is super-essentially, and is known above mind. And the all-perfect Agnosia, in its superior sense, is a knowledge of Him, Who is above all known things."

My linkhttp://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/dio/dio25.htm#fn_61

 

IMO, complete faith carves no images in matter or mind and it's there that God can be said to be "found". The true meaning of agnostic.

[NotBlinded]

When Abraham is about to kill Isaac....the Angel of the Lord tells him to stop, and then says, "Now I know" that.....

 

Gen 22:12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only [son] from me.

 

So what can we take from this?

What we can see is that God does not know the future. He can perhaps estimate it or do a fairly good guess, but he can't know. He admits that his knowledge is bound by time by using the word "Now".

 

But being a God that does not have prescience (knowledge of the future), would bring us to another question: God is supposedly superior in mind and capacity, so he should be very able to predict human behavior and response to the situations he puts them in. He would be able to figure out, but not necessarily know, what the most likely outcome would be. So a very skilled God would be able to play chess and fairly accurately predict that A&E would fall. Considering that he created the curiosity in them, and for no good reason put a tree to test them with in the garden. It's just a huge test. Life is just God testing us like lab rats.

 

Thank you Hans,

 

As we continue to examine and search, even I find ideas that are inconsistent with what is held as "true" through orthodoxy. Is it possible that God gave absolute free will to humanity and that meaning He retains no knowledge of a human's choice? Maybe....and maybe we are wrong. But, here's the kicker, I am starting to grow weary of the crowd that takes the standard fundamentalism, God is omni-everthing in this case, from both sides and make it a stand to run down someones throat.

 

Who knew how that one phrase means so much in the interpretation of God? Not I.

Kenosis...

 

Christianity says, "Creation is never from nothing, but out of God himself, creation is an act in which God communicates his own reality. In creation, God gives of himself." Points of contact By Amy Golahny

 

Even Christianity understands that God is immanent in creation. They just see God as a Being and the non-being as not important. Certain understandings in Buddhism and Hinduism see no difference between God and man. In Hinduism, God is seen as all the actors in creation playing hide and seek with itself. God is creation and we are God. Buddhism sees no difference between being and non-being, only different states of consciousness to appreciate the emptiness.

 

"According to Nishida (1870-1945), the Japanese great thinker of this century, absolute, be it emptiness or God, cannot be a particular being opposed to other beings. "Yet when related to that which is objective to it, it is not the absolute, but merely relative as well". What is truly absolute is what is not merely transcendent to everything else. Emptiness can be such an absolute because it expresses itself through self-determination that negates itself as other. So given this kenosis, or self-emptying, emptiness is identified with all of the things of the world, including ourselves, which it contains paradoxically within itself, within its own serf-negation, within its own kenosis. Emptiness, therefore is not a being, it is all forms of existence. The true absolute does not oppose the relative, the true emptiness as formless does not oppose its forms; and the true god does not oppose the world, accordingly "A God merely transcendent and self-sufficient would not be a true God", in St. Paul's words "God must always empty himself'. That God is transcendent and at the same time immanent is the paradox of God. This is the true absolute"- said Nishida."Sunyata, Emptiness and Self-emptying, Kenosis

 

I guess what I'm getting at here is this could be a reason why God doesn't appear as omniscient. In Christianity, he gives up being God so man can be God only they limited this to Jesus alone. In Hinduism, God is all the divine actors. God gets so involed with the play, that forgetfullness occurs. When one plays a game, they don't want to know the outcome because if they did, it would already be past and there would be no fun in continuing.

 

Just some thoughts...

[Ouroboros]

I guess what I'm getting at here is this could be a reason why God doesn't appear as omniscient. In Christianity, he gives up being God so man can be God only they limited this to Jesus alone. In Hinduism, God is all the divine actors. God gets so involed with the play, that forgetfullness occurs. When one plays a game, they don't want to know the outcome because if they did, it would already be past and there would be no fun in continuing.

 

Just some thoughts...

Just as Jesus could be God made into man, infinite made into finite, transcendence made into experience, we, humanity and even animal life, could be God made into that exact same thing.

 

We are God's experience.

[NotBlinded]

I guess what I'm getting at here is this could be a reason why God doesn't appear as omniscient. In Christianity, he gives up being God so man can be God only they limited this to Jesus alone. In Hinduism, God is all the divine actors. God gets so involed with the play, that forgetfullness occurs. When one plays a game, they don't want to know the outcome because if they did, it would already be past and there would be no fun in continuing.

 

Just some thoughts...

Just as Jesus could be God made into man, infinite made into finite, transcendence made into experience, we, humanity and even animal life, could be God made into that exact same thing.

 

We are God's experience.

Absolutely. The only difference between these theologies (in this area) is that while Buddhism and Hinduism see this Ground of Being completely emptying itself into all there is, the monotheistic religions hold that God is both transcendent and immanent. The latter being dualistic in a subject/object dichotomy.

[Guest Davka]

As we continue to examine and search, even I find ideas that are inconsistent with what is held as "true" through orthodoxy. Is it possible that God gave absolute free will to humanity and that meaning He retains no knowledge of a human's choice?

 

Well, that's certainly another way to read things. But be careful, because this is the road I went down which eventually led me to non-theism.

 

Let's say that God somehow suspended omniscience (or perhaps that god never was omniscient in the first place). OK, where does that leave us? There aren't a whole lot of choices:

 

1 God created human beings as a pure gamble, knowing that we could choose to disobey him? Hmm. A 'loving father" who gambles with his children's eternal souls. Something doesn't smell right.

 

2 God did not know precisely which human beings would sin or when, but he knew that eventually someone would sin. This brings us right back to where we started: God created humans knowing in advance that to do so was to condemn the vast majority of mankind to Hell. Not very nice.

 

3 God really had no idea what would happen, and did not even think out the possible consequences of sin beforehand. Seems unlikely, especially since he warned Adam and Eve about the consequences of eating the fruit.

 

I honestly cannot think of any other scenarios. And they all pretty much stink. If you can think of another solution, please tell us.

 

 

Maybe....and maybe we are wrong. But, here's the kicker, I am starting to grow weary of the crowd that takes the standard fundamentalism, God is omni-everthing in this case, from both sides and make it a stand to run down someones throat.

 

Well, most of us were tired of this argument a long time before we walked away from belief, so join the club!

 

The problem is that God as described in the Bible is irrational, capricious, and exhibits behavior which we would call sociopathic in a human being. Christians have historically tried to reconcile this by saying "we're too small to understand god." But if that's the case, then we're also too small to discern between religions. If we're going to excuse god's behavior on the basis of human limitations, how are we to know that the Christian interpretation of God is correct, as opposed to the Jewish or Muslim interpretation? If we're accepting a book on blind faith, why this book and not another?

[Tealeaf]

Just trying to explain the story as well as possible. I am sorry it doesn't make sense to you. Good luck.

 

END3

 

Good luck? Still with the arrogance eh.... It just bleeds from your type. As if it were me who needs to learn the story....

 

I'm sure you know what a coward is. Well, how does it feel to be one? Over and over again you've been too scared to look at my points and consider that 'hey, maybe this really doesn't make any sense and I'm just you know....making it up as I go along'

 

Making things up seems to be your entire course of imput at this point. Even now you're starting to 'change your view of god' or so you say. Why so much trouble for something that is so easily imaginary?

[Tealeaf]

End3, you don't seem to be grasping the core argument here.

 

1 God is omniscient. He knew what would happen before he created anything.

 

2 God created everything.

 

3 Therefore, God is responsible for everything that happens to his creation.

 

It's really quite simple.

 

Yes, there is that massive, gaping hole in the entire idealogy.

 

But it still doesn't get right to the point of the core Jesus complex.

 

Given everything attributed to god, what Jesus is supposed to be and what his purpose is....none of it makes any sense! It's not that it can't be figured out. It's that when you be honest about it and put all the dogma and scripture together, you get a nonsensical, pointless, circular, spaz-fest that really doesn't solve anything, even in it's own imaginary realm of solving imaginary problems.

[NotBlinded]

Good luck? Still with the arrogance eh.... It just bleeds from your type. As if it were me who needs to learn the story....

 

CSI reveals at least two bleeders present. This really is an interesting thread underneath the crimson puddles. If only we didn't have to keep mopping them up to get to the ideas!

 

Phanta