rhutchin

In John 10:10, Jesus contrast Himself with the thief. If you do not see yourself as a thief, then you must see yourself as Christ (obviously stealing His identity) and portraying yourself as having the truth (which you clearly try to do). It is you who misrepresents the Bible and that makes you a thief in contrast to Christ who is the truth and which you (as a thief) reject.

Wayne Delia

Are you familiar with the way Mafia protection rackets work? That's pretty much what they do. The problem doesn't exist until the Mafia shows up to create the problem, and the "protection" is bought with a bribe or a kickback to a local enforcer in the same way that God extorts belief in order to "protect" people from His own threat of hell.

Exactly. That's the huge con job of the Church: convince the rubes that they've got some sort of urgent, unfalsifiable, dire problem - then, by a happy coincidence, sell them the solution that only the Church can provide. It's a textbook example of a scam.

Exactly. You can't even demonstrate God exists, much less that I've offended him by failing to uncritically accept anything His believers prattle on about Him. Much of what you've proposed is ridiculous on the face of it, and your credibility is severely impaired if you still think you're a Christian after two of the four criteria you posted disqualify you from being a Christian. Even in karate, we are trained to react only to threats that can be demonstrated to actually exist. Yours is simply an empty death threat from your invisible sky-buddy.

WMD

rhutchin

When God saves a person, He does not make the person perfect nor does God immediately remove the person from this life. It would be nice if He did. Instead, God leaves the person with his old nature and desires. Consequently, those whom God saves need encouragement and support to study to learn about God and to reject the ways of the world and do that which God instructs in the Bible. I do not know why God does it this way.

rhutchin

Proverbs 25:2 tells us that, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.� Sometimes, people like Bishop Ussher fail to search out all the possible explanations for that which the Bible says or fail to reconcile their interpretation which other evidence in the Bible. Was Ussher misled by Satan? Yes, in the sense that we all tend to be lazy in our study of the Bible and Satan encourages that laziness.

Anyone can be mistaken. The Bible contains mostly historical texts, and while it’s purpose is not to provide astronomical and geological knowledge, it does speak accurately when it provides information touching on these areas. For example, it refers to a great earthquake in the reign of Uzziah, so we know that, geologically speaking, there was an earthquake. There is abundant room for human scientists to research the earthquake and discover that which they can. Same for any scientific endeavor. A good scientist could consult the Bible to provide direction for his research.

The difference between the 4 billion year age of the universe (or whatever that age is estimated to be) and the 4,000 BC date or the 11,000 BC date all rest on the basic assumptions that support those ages. All these estimates begin with the same statement, “If we assume that…�

I am not aware that Christ passed on His healing powers to any other than the apostles (and Paul and perhaps a few others) but they are dead now, so it would not hurt to study germs. However, the profession of medicine would be more effective if both Doctors and patients appealed to God for help in times of distress.

rhutchin

The exciting part of this is that unbelievers get to find out if it is a scam when they die. That makes dying an adventure (maybe that is why people commit suicide; they get so excited, they can't wait to find out).

Wayne Delia

That's the part that I identified as "unfalsifiable". Why is your God so afraid of me He can't challenge me until I'm dead?

It does beg the question of why most Christians don't actually commit suicide, since they think they've got it so good after they're dead. Most likely, Christians have sufficient doubt of the whole scam which prevents them from offing themselves.

Atheists, on the other hand, hold to the position that this life is all we have, since we withhold belief in gods or afterlives of any kind. So, it stands to reason that atheists would want to maximize the length and quality of this life. Committing all sorts of unspeakable actions such as rape, murder, etc. would open the risk of criminal punishment or family retaliation, which does not correlate with optimizing the quality of life, so if that's what you'd imagine you'd do if you didn't have the threat of hell to stop you, it wouldn't apply to actual atheists, since (for the most part) we don't do that.

While all this is an interesting digression, have you made any progress on identifying the faults you've found in Bishop Ussher's Biblical calculation of the date of creation? (You HAVE found some faults, haven't you?)

WMD

Wayne Delia

When you were a Calvinist (that is, when you were a Christian) you used to claim that the only people who were saved were on the list of "The Elect," which was formulated before any of those people were even born. Here, though, you are claiming that imperfect people can still be saved, which is just plain crazy, since the only material difference would be whether a person holds a particular belief. I understand some confusion or bitterness on your part would be expectable since the criteria you posted disqualified you from being a Christian, but none of this is making any sense lately.

WTF??? It would be nice if God, having saved someone who has already been tabbed for salvation since before he was born, would kill the person He saved at the time of saving him? That would essentially be equivalent to saying it would be nice if God killed more people.

So, in a practical sense of behavioral aspects, God is really irrelevant? It all hinges on accepting that one particular belief, and doesn't matter at all what a would-be "saved Christian" does, or fails to repent doing? Damn. "By their fruits ye shall know them," and the bottom line is that the one belief in Jesus is all that's necessary, while the actual fruits could be rotten to the core.

Sort of like the "special class" where the kids were taken in the "short bus" at school? They need all sorts of encouragement and support also. Again, this is a big departure from your former days as a Calvinist, in which you said that those who were saved were already on the list of "The Elect," and there was nothing anyone on the list could do to get off the list, while there was nothing anyone NOT on the list could do to get on the list. Now, all of a sudden, people on the list need encouragement and support for some reason, as if what God knew about who was on the list had the possibility of being wrong. Again, WTF???

My guess is that your ideas about Christianity are confused with bitterness since the list of Bible criteria you posted disqualified you from actually being a Christian. Or it could be something else, who knows?

WMD

Wayne Delia

Proverbs 25:2 is wrong, then, because there's no glory whatsoever for God (or anyone) to intentionally conceal anything that's supposed to be taught or discovered. In fact, if God was a secondary school teacher, He'd be fired if that was His philosophy of teaching.

Then it should be a piece of cake for you to identify exactly where Bishop Ussher made his mistake. But, I notice, you failed to do that.

Can you identify exactly how Satan misled Ussher, or exactly where Ussher made his mistake(s)? No, you can't, and you've actually brought up a possible reason here that you can't: you tend to be lazy in your study of the Bible, and Satan encourages that laziness. How long have you been a minion of Satan?

Sure. Including Ussher. The question is, exactly where did he go wrong? He put a shitload of effort into calculating the age of the universe based on dates and lineages given in the Bible. Your disagreement with his conclusion is probably based on conjectures of stuff left out of the Bible, which Ussher didn't need to rely on. You can't bear to admit you're wrong, so you need to pretend Ussher was influenced by Satan while you can't identify exactly what the problem is with his calculations - hell, you haven't even read Ussher's method.

You want to take a stab at identifying the location of the pillars of the earth? The Bible refers to them in Job 9:6 and Psalm 75:3, in reference to the cause of earthquakes. Why didn't the photos of the Earth taken during the Apollo space missions show any such pillars? Maybe the Bible isn't as accurate as you think it is.

It also refers to a zombie-producing earthquake and a solar eclipse during Passover, but the eclipse couldn't be possible at all because at the time of the month during Passover, the moon is usually full. Solar eclipses don't happen at a full moon, because the moon is on the wrong side of the earth. Rather, a solar eclipse occurs at a new moon. Bible's wrong.

While earthquakes are a significant physical phenomena, they are not by any means mysterious, supernatural, or extraordinary. One thing is for certain - earthquakes are not caused by physical pillars shaking the earth. Science is the Bible's worst enemy, and the "God of the gaps" theories ("We don't understand how X happens, therefore God did it") result in a constantly-shrinking God as we learn more and more about how phenomena X happens.

Absolutely! For example, consider the medical problem of leprosy. The Bible provides an excellent treatment involving the blood of live and dead pigeons. (If the Biblical leprosy treatment was applied, the condition obviously would not get better, as pigeon blood is not an antibiotic, but it could actually get worse by promoting a secondary infection.)

Yet the scientific estimate (closer to 13.5 billion than 4 billion) are remarkably consistent, reliable, repeatable, and useful, based on physical evidence such as the red-shift patterns of stars and the background radiation of the so-called "Big Bang." The Biblical estimates flat out don't work, are not reliable, nor repeatable, nor useful, and require the assumption of "Assume what we are about to claim is true, then go look for evidence yourself." That's why the young earth estimates are laughed off the stage.

Perhaps the Bible you are using does not have the passage Mark 16:17-18, in which Jesus says that Christians would be distinguished and identified by their abilities to heal any illness.

Christians shouldn't have to, unless Jesus was lying in Mark 16:17-18.

That's not practical from an insurance standpoint, as malpractice suit awards are already through the roof. A doctor who relied on standing around and mumbling prayers to God while their patients deteriorated and died would be put out of business very quickly. Furthermore, it is a huge roadblock to such medical services as emergency responders. Suppose you're in a car crash, extracted with the Jaws of Life, and the paramedics on the scene all start to hold hands and pray, while you're struggling for breath. Wouldn't it be better if they actually applied first aid for you? My experience is that it's easy for the Christian apologist to make a rhetorical fool of himself by claiming to rely on God in prayer and faith, but when a medical crisis happens to him or his family, all of a sudden the faith in God and the promised miracle healing abilities flies out the window in favor of real, tangible, effective first aid and surgical treatments.

WMD

Ubercat

Who the hell said anything about encouraging the unsaved? Certainly not me. I was stating that you are incapable of encouraging the saved. If you think you know me better than I know myself, I certainly can feel justified in telling you about yourself.

-Ubercat

Ubercat

Are you referring to the salvation of having been chosen before time began? You must repent to be saved. You can't do that unless god first reveals your fallen and hopeless state to you. Repentance is a part of christian salvation. Brought about by god, but it's still there. If you want to deny that repentance is part of salvation, then I have no argument with you. You're obviously not even close to pretending to be a real christian, so why argue with loonies that just make crap up?

(jebus butt sniffin' christ, what's wrong with me? Next thing I'll be arguing about WHAT king it was that couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again.:huh: )

-Ubercat

p.s. Keep on making up insulting garbage about my motives. It's par for the course with you.