angelo

[QUOTE=Johnny Skeptic;5078898]Message to rhutchin: Do you have any idea why it is frequently possible to predict where God will reveal himself to people who become Christians? For instance, a far higher percentage of children who live in the U.S. become Christians than children who live in Syria. You said that some parents are not nice. However, in 3500 B.C., how were parents who lived far away from Palestine supposed to know anything about the God of the Bible? Why wasn't God interested in telling anyone about his specific existence who lived far away from Palestine? If the God of the Bible does not exist, that explains why geography and other secular factors determined how the Gospel message was spread. Why do a much higher percentage of women in the U.S. become Christians than men? Why does God discriminate against men? Why do a much smaller percentage of elderly skeptics become Christians? Why does God discriminate against elderly skeptics?

It is suspicious that the Gospel message was spread exactly the way that it would have been spread if the God of the Bible did not exist, meaning that no one would be able to hear the Gospel message unless another person told them about it, and that the Gospel message would be spread entirely by the secular means of communication, transportation, printing, and translation of a given time period.

If the Bible said that God will send everyone to hell, you would oppose it. Why?, because your emotional self-interest has caused you to accept promises that you believe will ultimately benefit you, and reject promises that you believe will ultimately not benefit you. This proves that you are not as concerned with what the evidence IS as you are with what the evidence PROMISES. [quote=That does not make any sense. Obviously, it is not possible to become a fundamentalist Christian without completely disregarding logic, reason, and morality.[QUOTE=Jonnyspectic]A blinkered view of the world helps enormously as well. You have to ignore every science paper ever printed as well if it does not agree with the good book. As far as evolution is concerned; it's the work of the devil who is decieving the world as we speak.
Evidence is only accepted if it agrees with the bible and rejected out of hand if not. There, you have a deluded idiotic thinking fundamentalist, christian.

rhutchin

One distinction is that people who spread the gospel are passionate about it. Extraordinary efforts are made to spread the gospel -- Southern Baptists spend $80 million a year to send missionaries around the world. The Wycliffe Bible Translators organization sends people to remote cultures to develop a written alphabet and dictionary in order to then translate the Bible into the native language. There is no material gain to the people doing these things. Would people be passionate in the absence of God or is God the source of that passion?

rhutchin

The claim is that God moved certain men to write, and these writings were then collected to form the Scriptures, so that the Scriptures are that which God has spoken, through His prophets, to men. Since God does not lie, and has no reason to lie, those Scriptures must be truth and therefore inerrant.

Dogfish

Is that different than what he said?

rhutchin

Knowledge can be gained because a person is the source of knowledge (God made all things, so He knows all about what He made) or through experiencing an event.

When Christ referred to "...that day and hour..." He was referring to judgment day and the experience of living through that time. This points to one distinction that Christ displays as a human. While He certainly must know all about judgment day because He is God, He will not know judgment day as a human because he will not be subject to judgment as humans will be. Judgment day is not for Jesus or the angels but for man alone. Thus, Jesus is telling people that they cannot conceive beforehand what it will be like to experience judgment day and that He will never know (or experience) what humans will on that day since He will not have to live that day as a human.

George S

The answer to your last question is embedded in the question. People have been quite dogmatic absent literal god-belief. Members of all religions that know they have the truth want to spread it around. They really believe it, strange as that is.

Some feel they are spreading morality, holding that the only way to be moral is by following god-given rules. Muslims are especially certain the rules in the Qu'ran are god-given and are of the opinion that non-believers should be converted ... or killed.

Modern Christian missionaries are by and large well intentioned.

The problem is that literal interpretation of the rules have led to Jihad, Inquisition, suicide bombers, Crusades, aggressive conquest of a god-promised land, assassinations, denial of life-saving medical procedures, and much, much more.

They often do it for themselves to make brownie points with their god.

When they propose god-given rules for people and claim that morality is impossible without them, they project their feelings that they themselves would be immoral without those rules to guide them. Their theory seems to be that since they would be immoral without rules, everyone would.

It is a theory that a god is the father of a family and all humans are children who simply must obey the parent even when the rules don't make sense. This is right and proper for a child, isn't it. A child has no choice but to accept the rules of the parent or parent-surrogate. This theory denies that adults are adults and moral agents who are free to know what is right and wrong by reason and logic (which suffice).

Passion does not indicate correctness. It only indicates arrogant conviction that there is only one way to be right -- my way.

rhutchin

Nope. Just expanding it to present the thinking behind the conclusion.

Dogfish

Pretty broad use of the word, "thinking", eh?

George S

Spin it as you will, but it literally says "my Father only" who is not himself.

Yeshua of Nazareth was an apocalypse preacher. The end is near! Repent!

All of what he said makes more sense when seen in this light. You are about to die, repent and just be nice while the little life you have remains.

He was neither the first nor the last to preach Apocalypse Now.

rhutchin

OK. Those are good points. However, passion is not necessarily arrogant conviction. Mormons can certainly be passionate about Mormonism and that which it teaches about family values because they have experienced in it their families. Passion can be a conviction that something is right and good because people have tried it and it worked. Jack LaLanne can be passionate about exercise because he knows, through experience, that it works.

People can also be passionate because they have something to gain. Muslims will blow themselves up because they think that they gain heaven by doing so. Salesman can be passionate because they want to make money.

Christians seem to be passionate for no real reason. They have nothing to gain and voluntarily forgo many of the world's "pleasures" for no apparent gain. The apostles faced ridicule and abuse and death to tell others about Jesus. Why?