Butters

Exactly. It’s really that simple.

That’s right also. You can only watch them go around in circles for so long!

mdarus

This seems like a new thread. It sounds interesting but I don't want to highjack the thread.

John A. Broussard

Right!

And simple-minded, too.

As Tertullian said, "I believe, because it is absurd."

Education seems to be an antidote, at least to some extent, to faith. Polls show that the more education one has, the less likelihood there is that one will believe in god.

Similarly, studies of scientists indicate a far greater proportion of atheists than in the general population.

None of the above is proof of anything--just very suggestive.

Benni72

There are inclusivist and universalist versions of Christianity that claim that a non-Christian can be a beneficiary of Christ's sacrifice and thus saved, even nowadays. The argument in question doesn't seem to refute these versions.

John A. Broussard

The Catholic Church says that only Catholics can be saved, but really good non-Catholics are Catholics and don't know it.

A sub-belief of the above is that Catholics are saved because of their religion, Protestants in spite of it.

The Mormons go one better and baptize non-believers after their deaths. They got into trouble recently with survivors of the Holocaust who resented having their dead relatives being sent to a Mormon heaven.

Christianity is wonderful.

lenrek

Interesting discussion, but this is more BC&H discussion than EoG discussion. Thus, thread moved.

Bobinius

You haven't shown anything. What you presented had nothing to do with Jesus as the necessary way of salvation. You claim that Jesus is not necessary for salvation, which makes Christianity false. You did not present any man believing in Jesus Christ God before him. It is just your post-factum interpretation. The Old Testament does not view the path for salvation 'only through' Christ. They had the Laws and the works.

The OT (before Christ) says that Abraham is saved by works

James

2:21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?

2:26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

'Anticipatory faith' is non-sensical. It is an anachronistic interpretation of the faith of the jews, the faith in God. Someone cannot have faith is the Christ - god who was crucified for our sins and was risen in the 3rd day before this happened.

Anyway, tell me: the chinese, the egyptians, the etruscs, the greeks etc had 'anticipatory faith' too? Their eternal tornment rejects the existence of the perfect God of Christianity.

No, it is just the faith in Jesus Christ, a man from Galilee, born out of a Virgin,
being God, who made miracles and thought, was crucified and came back after 3 days. It was impossible for people to have faith in this before it actually happened. And I am not talking only about the Jews here: they were not the only people on Earth B.C.

Good, I already adressed this point.

If premise 2.1 and 2.2 are false, then it means that it was possible to be saved without Jesus-god dying for our sins. This means Christianity is false. It was not necessary for God to send his son to die for our sins. Good. Refuting Christianity.

You are saying that belief in the Jesus Christ, Son of God, that lived and died is not necessary for salvation. Only the faith in a coming Messiah. That is not Christianity. You are the one making a Straw Man out of Christianity. Ask any priest. And look at John 14:6. Premise 1 comes from there.

Of course, he is the only way through the father by believing in aliens.

He is a man: that means incarnate. He is the Son of God. If you don't believe that Jesus is God, you still call yourself christian?

Luke 8:28

When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don't torture me!"

The Bible says he is the Son of God. He was a man. If you are trying to malform the message you need to deny these two. By arguing that Christianity is false.

Luke 9

20 "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Peter answered, "The Christ[a] of God."

21 Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone.

22 And he said, "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life."

23 Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.

In order to heal your malformations about what Jesus could possibly mean there (it is so mysterious, I know)

John 3

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

It is pretty clear that faith in Jesus, in this particular man, the one and only Son of God is the mean for salvation. Not the faith in some abstract futuristic messiah. That makes Jesus' sacrifice nonsensical. You don't have a case. Just malformations in order to rescue you from the conclusion.


Those requirements are necessary. Do you understand what that means? It is impossible to be saved without them. Faith in the Christ that died and raised it's as simple as can be. But before his existence no one believed in him: he did not exist yet. And forget the Jews, take care of the Chinese for example.

Decypher

I believe that there is a theory that God has a knowledge of what everyone would do in any possible circumstance. God knows that certain people will reject Jesus whatever, and these are the people that are born outside of the opportunity to learn about him.

The argument is obviously sick. It involves God creating people that he knows will certainly burn in hell for all eternity. And perhaps aborted babies and children that die fall into the same category? Also, its not clear that such knowledge would be possible to have.

Bobinius

God cannot know what I would do in any possible circumstance. It implies God knows contradictory things. God knows only what is true, and this means he knows what I would do in the actual world. He knows some people will never hear about Jesus and his message, which means they burn eternally, but still wants to create them.

The argument is not 'sick' dude. God is, and the christian doctrine. Deal with it. If you don't like the conclusion, refute it logically, not based on emotionalism. [Thank you for the new categories, very usefull ].

Clivedurdle

Isn't the death and resurrection and the concept of being washed in the blood of the lamb, with the concept of Melchizadek, about the xian doctrine that Christ's death and resurrection are eternal for the whole universe?

Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross is a very powerful modern expression of this.

http://www.revilo-oliver.com/Kevin-S...the_Cross.html

Yup, the xians do claim everyone! Islam does the same, saying the prophets were talking about Allah.

My mum used to say that anyone who hadn't heard the gospel would be asked to repent at the gates of heaven and therefore the point of xianity was that a taste of heaven was available now for those who believed. Doesn't quite match my memories of bible studies in musty back rooms in cold horrible churches!