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[Thought2Much]

everyone has sinned except christ...

That's exactly the answer I was hoping you'd say. Congratulations because you have fallen into one of the debating traps I was taught by my atheist opponents decades ago! LOL

 

Yeah, you're a freaking fundy allright. You cite that freaking garbage which, by reference, can also include innocent children. Well pilgrim, hate to break it to you but you're merely citing almost a singular verse which Isaiah allegedly said and was quoted by Paul and others. Maybe Isaiah was having a 'bad hair' day? Nope because if you went on from that SINGULAR verse in Isaiah and read the REST of the chapter you would see that he was speaking ONLY about Israel and that he even made allowances, later, for righteous Jews!

 

And regarding Christ as being sinless - then why did he challenge the person who called him 'good teacher' by saying ONLY one person was good - god. Also, that verse put in about him being without sin was put in centuries later by the orthodoxy to push his alleged diety.

 

I'll be all eyes to see your response now.. (G)

 

Can you point out one single verse showing Jesus sinned?

 

Yup.

 

When Jesus cast the demons out of Legion, and he sent them into the pigs. He didn't have to send them anywhere after they were cast out of Legion, but he knew before he cast them out that they wanted to go into the pigs. As God, he knew exactly what the pigs would do when the demons entered them. Someone owned those pigs. Did Jesus compensate the owners of the pigs? No. That is willful destruction of someone's property and source of income. That's a form of theft, no?

 

Oh, but anyone who owned pigs was probably just a yucky Samaritan, or something, so I guess it didn't matter anyway.

 

 

 

EDIT: This is just the first one that came to mind for me. There might be others.

 

I could argue Jesus was not crucified yet, thus the old law was still in effect and eating pork was forbidden for jews. Also, why could the pigs not have been wild?

 

A Jew in Palestine wouldn't have owned pigs, but a non-Jew could have. Not everyone in Palestine at the time of Christ was a Jew.

 

Oh, and someone owned the pigs:

 

¹¹ A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. ¹² The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” ¹³ He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

¹⁴ Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened.

 

That's a lot of pigs, and that's a lot of money for someone to lose like that.

 

You might want to actually try reading the Bible sometime before you dig yourself into a hole like that again.

[LivingLife]

No the pigs were property or would have been as he was in gentile territory.

 

As for other sins, claiming to be god, working on the sabbath, all of these would be sins but he gets a pass with the sabbath is for man and not the other way round and his claim of god gets a pass as the folk see it as god incarnate so meh. If he really existed, he would have been under Jewish laws.

 

But the myth goes back further. The was no OS, no exodus, no Moses, no commandments so whatever else follows is moot.

[antix]

OK, good points. I do have a serious philisophical issue with the Bible and would like to start a new thread if that is acceptable

[antix]

everyone has sinned except christ...

That's exactly the answer I was hoping you'd say. Congratulations because you have fallen into one of the debating traps I was taught by my atheist opponents decades ago! LOL

 

Yeah, you're a freaking fundy allright. You cite that freaking garbage which, by reference, can also include innocent children. Well pilgrim, hate to break it to you but you're merely citing almost a singular verse which Isaiah allegedly said and was quoted by Paul and others. Maybe Isaiah was having a 'bad hair' day? Nope because if you went on from that SINGULAR verse in Isaiah and read the REST of the chapter you would see that he was speaking ONLY about Israel and that he even made allowances, later, for righteous Jews!

 

And regarding Christ as being sinless - then why did he challenge the person who called him 'good teacher' by saying ONLY one person was good - god. Also, that verse put in about him being without sin was put in centuries later by the orthodoxy to push his alleged diety.

 

I'll be all eyes to see your response now.. (G)

 

Can you point out one single verse showing Jesus sinned?

 

Yup.

 

When Jesus cast the demons out of Legion, and he sent them into the pigs. He didn't have to send them anywhere after they were cast out of Legion, but he knew before he cast them out that they wanted to go into the pigs. As God, he knew exactly what the pigs would do when the demons entered them. Someone owned those pigs. Did Jesus compensate the owners of the pigs? No. That is willful destruction of someone's property and source of income. That's a form of theft, no?

 

Oh, but anyone who owned pigs was probably just a yucky Samaritan, or something, so I guess it didn't matter anyway.

 

 

 

EDIT: This is just the first one that came to mind for me. There might be others.

 

I could argue Jesus was not crucified yet, thus the old law was still in effect and eating pork was forbidden for jews. Also, why could the pigs not have been wild?

 

A Jew in Palestine wouldn't have owned pigs, but a non-Jew could have. Not everyone in Palestine at the time of Christ was a Jew.

 

Oh, and someone owned the pigs:

 

¹¹ A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. ¹² The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” ¹³ He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

¹⁴ Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened.

 

That's a lot of pigs, and that's a lot of money for someone to lose like that.

 

You might want to actually try reading the Bible sometime before you dig yourself into a hole like that again.

 

Thanks I need to re read the NT and actually read the OT in its entire form.

[sjessen]

No the pigs were property or would have been as he was in gentile territory.

 

As for other sins, claiming to be god, working on the sabbath, all of these would be sins but he gets a pass with the sabbath is for man and not the other way round and his claim of god gets a pass as the folk see it as god incarnate so meh. If he really existed, he would have been under Jewish laws.

 

But the myth goes back further. The was no OS, no exodus, no Moses, no commandments so whatever else follows is moot.

 

Wasn't there a place in the NT where they eat grain they aren't supposed to? But Jesus says it is okay for them to break the law.

 

Yeah, when a Christian reads the Bible assuming Jesus is God, you excuse one hell of a lot of stuff. But when you read it objectively and critically, it looks a whole lot different.

 

Edit: I just looked that verse up and it was some of the disciples who harvested grain on the Sabbath because they were hungry. Jesus defends their actions, but the book doesn't say that he took part. IDK, he is not really perpetrating the crime, but he is complicit. If it isn't technically a sin, it's close to it. Especially when, as Jesus says, thinking evil is just like committing the crime.

 

Edit2: I just re-read your post, LivingLife, and got to thinking maybe this is the occasion you are referring to when you say, "working on the sabbath".

[LivingLife]

No the pigs were property or would have been as he was in gentile territory.

 

As for other sins, claiming to be god, working on the sabbath, all of these would be sins but he gets a pass with the sabbath is for man and not the other way round and his claim of god gets a pass as the folk see it as god incarnate so meh. If he really existed, he would have been under Jewish laws.

 

But the myth goes back further. The was no OS, no exodus, no Moses, no commandments so whatever else follows is moot.

 

Wasn't there a place in the NT where they eat grain they aren't supposed to? But Jesus says it is okay for them to break the law.

 

Yeah, when a Christian reads the Bible assuming Jesus is God, you excuse one hell of a lot of stuff. But when you read it objectively and critically, it looks a whole lot different.

 

Edit: I just looked that verse up and it was some of the disciples who harvested grain on the Sabbath because they were hungry. Jesus defends their actions, but the book doesn't say that he took part. IDK, he is not really perpetrating the crime, but he is complicit. If it isn't technically a sin, it's close to it. Especially when, as Jesus says, thinking evil is just like committing the crime.

 

Edit2: I just re-read your post, LivingLife, and got to thinking maybe this is the occasion you are referring to when you say, "working on the sabbath".

Yes, I cite stuff from memory and this was the incident. Jesus also partook so he was complicit to the "crime" - he was hungry.

 

This whole gospel is anyway a set up to move from the sabbath to the new pagan sabbath Sunday. The gospels IMO are not a historical rendition of what transpired and that is why there are so many contradictions. The Hellenic mindset of Paul led to the gospels by his followers which came later. Paul was anyway a charlatan as no pharisee could also be a Roman citizen. He was what we would term a defector or a plant. He has far more Hellenic roots than Jewish roots. We do not know who the authors of the gospels were and these have a lot of other pagan concepts in them. Some of it is probably what he said but you really have to sift through it. You have to understand Jewish culture of the time to see where the paganism crept in.

 

Been there done that and not going to search for my old notes online. Done debating this topic to the Nth degree. If my summaries are not enough of a prompt to search it out for yourself, then so be it. I didn't think I would still be discussing any of this 8 years later.

[TrueFreedom]

Though my current opinion is that a literal would-be messiah named Joshua (Y'shua/Jesus) existed, what we have in the NT is a Greco-Roman Pauline invention. No early writings about Jesus in Hebrew or Aramaic have survived. Some sayings attributed to Jesus only make sense in Greek.

 

Jesus taught his followers to keep the law. Paul taught his followers to have faith.

 

James carried on with Jesus' teachings. Paul fought with him over "works" and circumcision.

 

Jesus' disciples stayed in the Jewish communities which eventually died out. Paul created a global religion.

 

As a nod to the mythicists, I will concede that we have no reliable historical sources even mentioning Jesus (though we do for John the Baptist and other would-be messiahs).

[mcdaddy]

Yeah I'm a mythicist but admittedly I'm in the minority. But I think we're growing.

 

It just makes the most sense to me.

[Ouroboros]

Can you point out one single verse showing Jesus sinned?

He worked on sabbath. It is a sin, unless you want to discredit and dismiss cherry-picked parts of the Old Testament.

[Ouroboros]

Yes, that is wierd that there is a blood sacrifice requirement

What's weirder still is that pagan religions had blood sacrifices to pacify the gods thousands of years before Christianity. Even human sacrifice. The reason was that life energy (or soul) was the only gift you could give the spiritual gods. You can't give physical objects to god, but you have to give something non-physical, like a soul or spirit. So what kind of soul is worth more than an animal soul? Human soul. What kind of soul is worth even more than a human soul? A god soul. What god soul is worth the most of all god souls? The soul of the son of a god. Funny how there is a rationalization for it if you look at pagan religion.

[Ouroboros]

OK, good points. I do have a serious philisophical issue with the Bible and would like to start a new thread if that is acceptable

That's very acceptable, especially you, because I feel you're a lot more honest and serious about these things than most Christians who come here. Kudos to you for being so sincere.

[Legion]

Human beings have had linguistic acumen for several 100 thousand years. So we've been bombarding each other with truths and lies through language for quite some time. I figure that we have such large brains, in part, because we've been trying to adapt to each other as cognitive social animals. Thus I figure that after another several 100 thousand years, we'll be pretty damn bad ass, maybe even almost immune to bullshit.

[Vigile]

Can you point out one single verse showing Jesus sinned?

He worked on sabbath. It is a sin, unless you want to discredit and dismiss cherry-picked parts of the Old Testament.

 

He also said to lust in your heart is to commit adultery in reality. So, either he was all man and lusted like the rest of us, or he was all god, and thus did not experience what the rest of us experience, or he was asexual, which means he didn't experience what most of us experience.

 

Bottom line, he established ground rules for what is sin and what is godly behavior that literally no human being could measure up completely unless there were something very abnormal about them, so if you read between the lines, he had to have sinned too.

[raoul]

You didn't answer the question. By saying he came for everyone you are inferring 'everyone' had the need for salvation. But yet he referred to some as already righteous. Once more - were there people that were righteous without the need for a savior, the cross, the blood, and all the other psychologically disturbing crap the xtian church pushes down our throats today?

 

Everyone sinned except christ, therefore he had to come for everyone. Although the righteous he refers to are the ones truly seeking God, everyone has sinned.

There's lots of ways to attempt to interpret this. I had always read it as irony. He said it in response to the Pharisees who were challenging him eating with tax collectors and prostitutes. It's like saying to them "you have your own reward", which is their self-righteousness. The repeated theme of the Pharisees is a maligning of them as all clean on the outside yet full of rot on the inside. "I didn't come for you since you are so righteous already".

 

This said however, I find the whole doctrine of blood shed for sin remission to be only meaningful to those who imagine God as some primitive deity that needs to be appeased by blood sacrifices. Don't you find that a bit odd of a way of understanding God? I always had.

Yes it's odd and sickening to say the least. Especially when you read the commands in the ot about sprinkling of blood on the alter, the priest's clothes, etc.

[Thought2Much]

Can you point out one single verse showing Jesus sinned?

He worked on sabbath. It is a sin, unless you want to discredit and dismiss cherry-picked parts of the Old Testament.

 

He also said to lust in your heart is to commit adultery in reality. So, either he was all man and lusted like the rest of us, or he was all god, and thus did not experience what the rest of us experience, or he was asexual, which means he didn't experience what most of us experience.

 

Bottom line, he established ground rules for what is sin and what is godly behavior that literally no human being could measure up completely unless there were something very abnormal about them, so if you read between the lines, he had to have sinned too.

 

I have said before, and still maintain, that the bit about having lustful thoughts about someone is the same as actually having sex with that person was just hyperbole on the part of Jesus, the same as can be found when he talks about cutting out your eye if it offends you. I think that Christians have needlessly built up this amazing guilt trip over having "impure thoughts" because of that one exaggeration.

[LivingLife]

Yeah vagin-eye-tits is a disease all male xians suffer from, dreaming of pussy they may not touch

[Vigile]

 

I have said before, and still maintain, that the bit about having lustful thoughts about someone is the same as actually having sex with that person was just hyperbole on the part of Jesus, the same as can be found when he talks about cutting out your eye if it offends you. I think that Christians have needlessly built up this amazing guilt trip over having "impure thoughts" because of that one exaggeration.

 

Depends on your theology though as there's no baseline to measure it against. I'm pretty sure you could make a strong case via literal translation if you were so inclined. IMO it's like trying to analyze Harry Potter though.

[sjessen]

I have said before, and still maintain, that the bit about having lustful thoughts about someone is the same as actually having sex with that person was just hyperbole on the part of Jesus, the same as can be found when he talks about cutting out your eye if it offends you. I think that Christians have needlessly built up this amazing guilt trip over having "impure thoughts" because of that one exaggeration.

 

Depends on your theology though as there's no baseline to measure it against. I'm pretty sure you could make a strong case via literal translation if you were so inclined. IMO it's like trying to analyze Harry Potter though.

 

The preacher in my church took it literally--the part about impure thoughts, not gouging out your eye.

[Thought2Much]

I have said before, and still maintain, that the bit about having lustful thoughts about someone is the same as actually having sex with that person was just hyperbole on the part of Jesus, the same as can be found when he talks about cutting out your eye if it offends you. I think that Christians have needlessly built up this amazing guilt trip over having "impure thoughts" because of that one exaggeration.

 

Depends on your theology though as there's no baseline to measure it against. I'm pretty sure you could make a strong case via literal translation if you were so inclined. IMO it's like trying to analyze Harry Potter though.

 

The preacher in my church took it literally--the part about impure thoughts, not gouging out your eye.

 

Of course he did, because they all do.* If they didn't, their congregations would drop by at least half. If they can convince everyone that even thinking about sex is a sin, then they can convince people that they have to be forgiven of that sin. Let's face it, most of the other sins are pretty easy to avoid, such as murder, theft, and having idols of other gods on your lawn. Telling everyone that having "impure thoughts" is a sin? Now that's how you rope everyone in.

 

 

 

*At least, every preacher I have ever heard speak on the subject ever has done so.

[Antlerman]

I always took the part about committing adultery by lusting in your hearts as Jesus' way to illustrate that these self-righteous had no right to judge others because they supposedly kept themselves "pure". It was a way to deflate them, not to condemn everyone alive on the planet. I knew this even as a Christian, until someone turned it into I should experience guilt every day of my life, "O' wretched man that I am!", BS.

[freeasabird]

I have said before, and still maintain, that the bit about having lustful thoughts about someone is the same as actually having sex with that person was just hyperbole on the part of Jesus, the same as can be found when he talks about cutting out your eye if it offends you. I think that Christians have needlessly built up this amazing guilt trip over having "impure thoughts" because of that one exaggeration.

 

Depends on your theology though as there's no baseline to measure it against. I'm pretty sure you could make a strong case via literal translation if you were so inclined. IMO it's like trying to analyze Harry Potter though.

 

The preacher in my church took it literally--the part about impure thoughts, not gouging out your eye.

 

Of course he did, because they all do.* If they didn't, their congregations would drop by at least half. If they can convince everyone that even thinking about sex is a sin, then they can convince people that they have to be forgiven of that sin. Let's face it, most of the other sins are pretty easy to avoid, such as murder, theft, and having idols of other gods on your lawn. Telling everyone that having "impure thoughts" is a sin? Now that's how you rope everyone in.

 

 

 

*At least, every preacher I have ever heard speak on the subject ever has done so.

 

Somewhat related, this line of discussion/theology gets me thinking about these churches that say same sex attaction is ok as long as you don't act on it. Theologically speaking they could not be more wrong as Jesus says the thought is equal to the act. So if these people physically can't help the thought, then it can be considered nothing else than NORMAL behavior. For isn't it only a sin if it's something you can control with effort? Isn't it supposed to be unforgiveable to sin over and over for the same things?

[Guest end3]

I don't know....I think a person's thoughts are not far from their actions. Lustfully considering someone elses wife probably doesn't help you make good and life-giving choices for that couple.

[mcdaddy]

If you have a hot wife, how many guys wanna tap that? Virtually every last one, xians included.

 

How many act on it?

 

Virtually none.

 

By virtually I mean the vast majority.

[Thought2Much]

I don't know....I think a person's thoughts are not far from their actions. Lustfully considering someone elses wife probably doesn't help you make good and life-giving choices for that couple.

 

And I say that's a load of bullshit. I make all kinds of decisions throughout my entire day that negate my baser instincts and idle thoughts.

 

Plus, there's a huge difference between idly wondering what it would be like to suck on Karen in accounting's tits, and planning dinner alone with Karen while telling your wife that you have to work late that night. If you can't see the difference, then you're an idiot.

[Ouroboros]

I don't know....I think a person's thoughts are not far from their actions. Lustfully considering someone elses wife probably doesn't help you make good and life-giving choices for that couple.

Have you ever been angry with someone and wished him or her to be hurt? Well then, you're guilty of assault and battering, or perhaps even attempted murder.

 

Have you ever thought about how you hate the government and taxes? Oh shit, you're a terrorist!

 

Is every author who writes a thriller or murder mystery also guilty of actual murder? Perhaps we should arrest all writers!

 

Sorry. But it's bullshit thinking.

 

You can look at it the other way. Have you ever had a good thought about someone, like helping them for instance? Well then, you're a good samaritan and you don't have to do anything since thinking it is the same as doing it.