Of course it is, ask dexter, he'll tell ya. In fact he'll tell you everything you want to know about God. It's simply AMAZING how much this man knows about something he considers to be a fairy tail.
Christianity and Religion
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Of course it is, ask dexter, he'll tell ya. In fact he'll tell you everything you want to know about God. It's simply AMAZING how much this man knows about something he considers to be a fairy tail.
Since prophecy determines a lot of things that almost eliminate free-will from being a choice available to all I would think that the one time free will is fully under the control of all involved is after the Great White Throne event where everybody from all of mankind is assembled and offered a drink of living water, they have the choice to accept it or not. (discounting that the alternative is so horrible that it is clearly a stacked deck but the choice is there all the same)
Re:21:3-7:
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying,
Behold,
the tabernacle of God is with men,
and he will dwell with them,
and they shall be his people,
and God himself shall be with them,
and be their God.
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 he that sat upon the throne said,
Behold,
I make all things new.
And he said unto me,
Write:
for these words are true and faithful.
And he said unto me,
It is done.
I am Alpha and Omega,
the beginning and the end.
I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
He that overcometh shall inherit all things;
and I will be his God,
and he shall be my son.
lol discounting that the areas I have covered with him is a canned version that somebody else promoted. Nothing wrong with demanding proof and fortunately that comes long before any judgment comes down. Just for the fun of it (on a Christian only forum) I let two well known pre-tribbers have a thread to themselves and it lasted about 6 posts before they came to a standstill as to what to say next. Then I started to mention the holes I though was there and away it went for a few pages. (with nothing really being resolved)
I still can't believe you made me laugh, brings up visions of that 'hell has frozen over' theme. There will be an OMG if it happens two more times so considered yourself warned.
That's precisely my point. If it doesn't make sense, why would anyone believe it? The logic of an all-knowing, all-powerful god knowingly creating us flawed then holding us responsible for it eludes me. Here's what it all looks like to me:
There was a magic tree whose fruit was forbidden. There was a talking serpent that duped a gullible woman into eating it anyway. She duped her equally gullible partner into eating it, though she paid much the greater price for it. As a result of this we're all cursed with an evil spell on our souls called original sin. Some thousands of years later a guy comes along to fix this, but the authorities don't take kindly to meddling revolutionaries so they nail him up on a piece of wood, where he dies. Three days later he's been reanimated by supernatural forces, and the message gets out that his death can remove the evil spell and let us live forever, he'll be the scapegoat for everything we've done and ever will do wrong, if we accept him as lord and master, believe the right things, and follow the proper rituals.
That sounds like a fairy tale, and not a very good one.
and here you are argueing that the "fairy tale" doesn't make sense and isn't logical. I'm curious, do you also make the same argument concerning other things you consider fairy tales? Like, oh I don't know, cinderella?, Snow White?
Think of it this way. God is the ultimate perfectionist so in light of that the end of Ge:1 saw creation being made as 'good' and then it is 'run as is' for 6,000 years (or so) and then all the parts that failed to function perfectly are 'repaired' so that the 'perfected version' can run for 60,000,000 years (or so) without one part failing. We do something similar except the perfecting part takes a lot more than one trial run and we never gain perfection even with 600 repair cycles.
The part that makes it appear as fiction, and not very good fiction' is you have a miss-mash of doctrines from various sources that all have a certain amount of errors. It wouldn't be that way if you read and though all on your own.
Had not intention of commenting in this discussion but decided to take a change.
Let me first say I am a christian! However as far as I am concerned all the bibles and versuses were written by men saying what they wanted people to believe. None of them ever new Jesus or his apostles, but they signed their names to their own words. Religion was created by man to control as many people as possible. There is no way the atrocities commited by religions can be attributed to the teachings of Jesus.
One of my problems with the bible are that Jesus talked in paraboles that only certain men could understand. Jesus was supposed to be an intelligent person, well he would have spoken to the people in a way that everyone would have understood him instead of needing someone else to transulate and explain. This is the first example that the people who wrote the bible really believed we were all idiots.
I have great faith in God but take man's bible with a ton of salt.
Let me first say I am a christian! However as far as I am concerned all the bibles and versuses were written by men saying what they wanted people to believe. None of them ever new Jesus or his apostles, but they signed their names to their own words. Religion was created by man to control as many people as possible. There is no way the atrocities commited by religions can be attributed to the teachings of Jesus.
One of my problems with the bible are that Jesus talked in paraboles that only certain men could understand. Jesus was supposed to be an intelligent person, well he would have spoken to the people in a way that everyone would have understood him instead of needing someone else to transulate and explain. This is the first example that the people who wrote the bible really believed we were all idiots.
I have great faith in God but take man's bible with a ton of salt.
Faith and belief and like oil and water. You use logic as the basis of all events. Other believe there is more to this life than the one we presently have.
A US Physicist -Para phase here as memory is off a tad- Stated than man is but a puny member of Gods plan. That would go to the individual. But as we are aware 1 person can effect change for untold millions.
So you live your life according to logic, fine with me.
I live mine with logic, science, facts and belief that we all have a purpose.
I have the utmost respect for what you base your beliefs upon, and I would ask for the same respect in return.
CASE OF THE MISSING MESSIAH
The brief outline of the story of this Talmudic Jesus is indeed like a short summary of the Galilean’s career: he was born with an accompaniment of certain supernatural manifestations, went to Egypt, became learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians, returned to Palestine, wrought many miracles among the populace through his Egyptian arts or sorcery and magic, incurred the hostility of the orthodox priesthood, was tried and condemned, was given forty days 265
for partisans to come and clear him, and finally stoned to death and his body hanged on a tree. The date of his birth has been placed by the best calculations of scholars at about 115 B.C. It will be seen at once that if this Talmud figure was the Jesus to whom the Gospels could be claimed to refer, or even the prototype of the Gospel Jesus, the dating would throw off base the entire structure of the Nazareth historicity, and would invalidate a thousand "proofs" of the latter based on dates, sequences of events and arguments grounded on and affected by such considerations. The dating of the Christian calendar would be over 100 years off the true.
We may start with the statement made by Massey (The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ, p. 2) that in the Book of Acts Jesus is stoned to death and his body hanged on a tree. This establishes a fairly strong point of identity between the two Jesus characters.
Massey declares that this Jewish Pandira was the only Jesus known to Celsus, the author of The True Logos, which was destroyed by the Christians. Celsus says of him that he was not a pure Word, not a true Logos, but a man who had learned the arts of sorcery in Egypt. Massey sums the case when he says that
"here is the conclusive fact: the Jews knew nothing of Jesus, the Christ of the Gospels, as a historical character, and when the Christians of the fourth century trace his pedigree by the hand of Epiphanius, they are forced to draw their Jesus from Pandira! Epiphanius gives the genealogy of the canonical Jesus in this wise:--Jacob, called Pandira, Mary--Joseph--Cleopas, Jesus."
The name Pandira is related to the French panthère, "panther," which was credited with being the "nickname" of Jacob, the alleged grandfather of the Talmud Jesus, and this Jacob was said to have been a Greek sailor. "Jehoshua ben Pandira" then means "Jesus, [grand]son of the Panther." That this Talmudic genealogy is found in Epiphanius instead of the long Jesse-David lists appended to the several Gospels is significant of much.
Massey states that Pandira was stoned to death in the city of Lud, or
The brief outline of the story of this Talmudic Jesus is indeed like a short summary of the Galilean’s career: he was born with an accompaniment of certain supernatural manifestations, went to Egypt, became learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians, returned to Palestine, wrought many miracles among the populace through his Egyptian arts or sorcery and magic, incurred the hostility of the orthodox priesthood, was tried and condemned, was given forty days 265
for partisans to come and clear him, and finally stoned to death and his body hanged on a tree. The date of his birth has been placed by the best calculations of scholars at about 115 B.C. It will be seen at once that if this Talmud figure was the Jesus to whom the Gospels could be claimed to refer, or even the prototype of the Gospel Jesus, the dating would throw off base the entire structure of the Nazareth historicity, and would invalidate a thousand "proofs" of the latter based on dates, sequences of events and arguments grounded on and affected by such considerations. The dating of the Christian calendar would be over 100 years off the true.
We may start with the statement made by Massey (The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ, p. 2) that in the Book of Acts Jesus is stoned to death and his body hanged on a tree. This establishes a fairly strong point of identity between the two Jesus characters.
Massey declares that this Jewish Pandira was the only Jesus known to Celsus, the author of The True Logos, which was destroyed by the Christians. Celsus says of him that he was not a pure Word, not a true Logos, but a man who had learned the arts of sorcery in Egypt. Massey sums the case when he says that
"here is the conclusive fact: the Jews knew nothing of Jesus, the Christ of the Gospels, as a historical character, and when the Christians of the fourth century trace his pedigree by the hand of Epiphanius, they are forced to draw their Jesus from Pandira! Epiphanius gives the genealogy of the canonical Jesus in this wise:--Jacob, called Pandira, Mary--Joseph--Cleopas, Jesus."
The name Pandira is related to the French panthère, "panther," which was credited with being the "nickname" of Jacob, the alleged grandfather of the Talmud Jesus, and this Jacob was said to have been a Greek sailor. "Jehoshua ben Pandira" then means "Jesus, [grand]son of the Panther." That this Talmudic genealogy is found in Epiphanius instead of the long Jesse-David lists appended to the several Gospels is significant of much.
Massey states that Pandira was stoned to death in the city of Lud, or
Christianity:
"Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there." (Matthew 12:9)
Religion:
"Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, 'Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” (Matthew 12:10 NIV)
Christianity:
"He said to them, 'If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.' Then he said to the man, 'Stretch out your hand.' So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other." (Matthew 12;11=13 NIV)
Religion:
"But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus." (Matthew 12:14 NIV)
Another biblical example of the incompatibility of religion and Christianity.
Nonsense, you present a libel.
Bishop John Shelby Spong(9am) - "From a Tribal God to a Universal Presence: The Story Of The Bible" - YouTube
Bishop John Shelby Spong(9am) - "From a Tribal God to a Universal Presence: The Story Of The Bible" - YouTube
By the way, how is the Bible seminar going?
Bishop John Shelby Spong, "Why Christianity as We Know It is Dying" - YouTube
I can respect you as a person, but I cannot respect beliefs I'm convinced are false. I will respect your right to hold them, I will not deride you personally for them or call you names or pile sarcasm and scorn upon you as some do, that's not how to have a discussion, but the beliefs themselves I feel bound to challenge.
Let's get this right. First there was nothing and out of the blue everything appeared from nothing and you came out of the everything that came out of nothing but it's impossible for there to be a God that made everything from nothing for you to criticize?
And you say we have silly beliefs?
Oi vey, talk about mashugana.
And you say we have silly beliefs?
Oi vey, talk about mashugana.
I really don't think that it is an either/or subject. I think that the truth lies somewhere else. The Big Band theory has as many holes in it as the creation theory and both require the use of magic. As far as the Big Bang goes, someone or something had to initiate the magic. The Big Bang is no different than the god theory. Both are too simplistic.
His religion is Physics which is based on possibilities and probabilities which still relies on faith.
The straw man fallacy means misrepresenting a claim and criticising that rather than the actual claim.
What was misrepresented? Is that not the Big Bang and your existence in a nutshell?
Does God believe in you?
Does God believe in you?
I didn't make that claim, and no, that is not an accurate characterization of what science *does* claim. Moreover, even if science's current claims turn out to be wrong, which I think is highly probable in certain details, that doesn't mean religion's claims must therefore be right.
I don't believe so.
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