Johnny Skeptic

Message to Bfniii: I notice that you conveniently avoided replying to my post #172 even though you replied to other peoples' posts. Why is that?

bfniii

i don't see a reason why it should. do you?

one reason why is because christians believe that once a person is truly saved, they are always saved. a person cannot lose true salvation. a person cannot unbind what God has truly bound. in that regard, what consideration should the saved have with hell? their life is now centered on their relationship with Jesus.

christians are concerned with hell in that they don't want anyone to go there, hence missions.

bfniii

our definition of good does not apply to God. true morality comes from an absolute source.

thank goodness. i sure wouldn't want a God who was so limited and impotent that His level of morality was on par with our own and who was so transparent that we didn't need Him. that would remove much purpose from the human race.

as i have said, there has never been a promise of a life free from pain, suffering and even death. it is sophistry to say that these people who had to have been guilty of something at sometime in their lives, didn't deserve this punishment.

again, it is illogical to compare one person's pain to another's. if we were identical robots that acted in perfect symmetry to everyone else, then such comparison might be valid.

gratuitous evil. ok.

no one? no one at all? that just cannot possibly be true. what about construction? infrastructure that was destroyed must be rebuilt. now construction workers are in demand. there are ecological considerations too. events like this do have beneficial side effects as well as unfavorable ones. what about physicians or biologists? any time there is an outbreak, they are in demand. it's just too simplistic to make such a claim.

i am not trying to minimize or rationalize suffering by anyone. as john donne said "europe (mankind) is the lesser". but i am merely pointing out that gratuitous evil is not completely devoid of meaning. if we believe that, then we lessen the human condition.

and you've spoken to God about this? i don't think you have. therefore, you can't possibly know this to be true. i would imagine that gratuitous evil is an excellent measuring stick to see how we handle uncertainty, loss and limits.

i happen to do so often. it's only natural.

that's not necessarily true of everyone.

were we captured by God? john broussard and i have differentiated in this thread that christians are indeed not slaves.

i'm sure that there would be some people who would want to know if there is more out there.

symmetry noted. God provides that desire, the mechanism and then delivers on the execution.

actually, He provided the means to choose. we choose and He holds us accountable. so He sets up the rules and then plays fair. in that sense, He is respecting OUR right(s).

Jesus' appearance is not the only factor involved in a person getting saved. there are other factors (teleological, ontological, cosmological, etc) that all play a part. if your requirement of the appearance of Jesus had been met, it still wouldn't have been good enough for some people. that's human nature. the people who want to be free from absolute moral consequences will never be satisfied no matter what "proof" appeared to them.

why do you feel that it is necessary to have recorded such? it's obvious someone knew about it.

it's understood.

yet we know these sources. how is that?

what would that prove?

people are free to reject it. what is your objection here?

that's certainly not all we have.

good thing this isn't a court trial.

human proxies are not the only evidences we have as previously noted.

John A. Broussard

So Christians believe that there is a hell reserved for people who have not been converted.

Is that correct?

Thank you.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to Bfniii: There is not sufficient evidecne that God was good 2,000 years ago, and there is not sufficient TANGIBLE evidence that he is good today. Regarding miracle healings 2,000 years ago, today, millions of Christians disagree as to what constitutes a miracle healing. There are not any good reasons at all for anyone to believe that it was any different back then. Regarding the feeding of the 5,000, the texts do not make any mention that anyone but the disciples knew about the supposed miracles. You said that someone must have know about the miracle. Well, following your own same line of reasoning, someone must have known about all of the claims of miracles found in all religious books.

All four Gospels made second hand, third hand, or possibly even fourth hand claims about the miracle, but they might have all shared a single common source. The Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition says that 90% of Matthew is borrowed from Mark, and that 50% of Luke is borrowed from Mark. In addition, that is only the "obvious" borrowing. Further, we don't know how many people accepted the claim. If the vast majority of people rejected the claim, wouldn't that suggest a reasonable possibility that maybe the claim was not true?

Logically, there is no automatic correlation that can be made between the ability to rise from the dead, the ability to predict the future, and goodness.

In the NIV, John 10:37-38 say "Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." The verses cite “tangible� evidence of Jesus’ power.

More “tangible� evidence comes from Acts 14:3 and Matthew 14:14. Acts 14:3 says "So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to do miraculous signs and wonders.� Matthew 14:14 says "When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick."

We need compassion in tangible ways today just as much as people did back then. Where is tangible evidence of God's power and compassion in tangible ways today? An unusual healing can happen to anyone, not just to Christians. Today, there is no indication that tangible good things and bad things are distributed by divine intent. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that 1) God used to be compassionate in noticeably tangible ways but is not interested in being compassionate in noticeably tangible ways today, or that 2) he never was compassionate in noticeably tangible ways, or that 3) he does not exist.

Jack the Bodiless

I know this was addressed to Sven, but it ties in with your earlier claim that fundamentalists "study history and archaeology".

Why do you imagine that archaeologists speculate that marine fossils on mountaintops are evidence of a global flood?

Archaeologists are educated people. They know history, they couldn't do their jobs otherwise. They know there was no Flood (and, if there HAD been, they would certainly have found evidence of it by now). And, while they probably don't spend much time on mountaintops (as human remains and artifacts are rarely found there), they should know enough basic geology to know where those marine fossils actually come from.

spin

As we are rambling, I must say that it seems meaningless to predicate god with the notion of good. That he cannot be. It's like calling someone tall, just using that person as the only scale.


spin

Sven

Interesting. You first say this:
and then that:
So you agreed with what I said. Only that I used "god-just" and you used "supernatural morality".
That's exactly the point: For judging god, you use/need a different morality than for judging humans. You first said that this wrong, and afterwards agreed with me.


[snip]

Umm, you just repeated what you said, you did not answer my question. So again: If he uses injustice for good things, it would actually not be injustice, but justice, no?

I'm talking about the overall picture. Is it justice or injustice?

Oh, nice dodge. We actually don't have to discuss this, because it's irrelevant anyway. So you say.

See, that's called "unknown purpose defense". It never worked and will never work.
As long as we don't have all the information, there's no other way than to judge with the information we have. And given this, my statement is still true. The only way you have around this is simply to assume that more information would change the picture.

See above. *shrug*

Well, let's take it slowly:
(1) If god apparently acts just, you call this just.
(2) If god apparently acts unjust, you still call this just in the long term - because you are certain that there's a greater good behind it.

In short, regardless what god does, you'll call him just. That's why the word has lost its meaning.

Newsflash: This already happened.

This guy certainly has too much time on his hands.
Or you are making bad jokes.

Yes. So what? The stance of the Smithsonian on this is a fact, and it does not agree with you. *shrug*

What exactly don't you understand about:
A global flood would have left highly visible evidence none of which exists, although devout creationists looked fervently for it in the 19th century
?

Jack already tackled this, so I only add this: :rolling:

Sven

Well, yes. Nice that it's already two of us who have understood bnfiii!

And does. Luckily, this means that we are both the pinnacle of being just - or have you ordered a genocide recently?
:rolling:

Well, if one happens to loose ones brain in the middle of the discussion (I'm close to it if I have to read more of this crap), this certainly can happen!

bfniii

this would lend support to tyre having lost it's national identity once nebuchadnezzar deported the monarcy. whatever was left was dissipated by the persians and alexander.

so basically he swept away whatever was left. after that, tyre was completely different than it had been before (new buildings, new people, etc).