RPS

I do.

You might want to consider Lincoln's advice: better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt.

Nope. God gives us choices, I believe, and repects us enough to honor them. As Karl Barth said, hell is having your own way and being stuck with it.

No, they were poor questions. I don't think I choose to be a Christian any more than you choose to an atheist -- it's who I am and is a consequence of a number of predicate choices I have made and continue to make.

I meant orthodox as in traditional or accepted rather than Eastern or Greek Orthodox (smells and bells), though had I grown up in a different place I would have fit in nicely with Orthodox theology.

achristianbeliever

Well then I have no reason to say anything on it. I'm sorry but I need more motivation than curiosity to reveal something that no doubt will get some to laugh at me.

congradulations

Wow I told you more about myself then I thought I did.

I gave an answer. The Apostle's creed. If you don't like it tough.

steamer

The Christian god, the one described in the bible, is one that punishes dead non-Christians for sin. Christians are not punished. Perhaps you ought to read the book which contains the actual description of the thing you claim to love.

I do not think that your god or your hell exists outside of your imagination. This doesn't change the fact that you claim to love this thing that requires all dead non-Christians to suffer for eternity. What you claim to love says something real about you. You love something evil. Is there some reason I shouldn't consider you and all Christians to be low-life scumbags because of their love of evil?

RPS

Many interpret it that way.

You probably could be more condescending, but you'd have to work at it. Oh, and I have read it, a number of times. Fundamentalists and fundamatheists hate the ideas of interpretation and context. It keeps the targets clearer. But most (reasonable) people correctly see such an outlook as silly and largely irrelevant.

I think weak atheists are gutless wimps who are unwilling to take a stand and looking to duck any and every proof burden. So what?

You remain clueless about who requires what as well as what Christians in general and this Christian in particular believe.

It does say something about me. But your statement, based upon erroneous assumptions, says much more about you than it ever could about me.

Lots of reasons, but since you are so sure you know what I think without bothering to find out if it's accurate, why should I bother explaining them to you?

funinspace

Notice the words "probably" peppered in there, it was allot of intuitive guessing. I wonder why that is even necessary...

Man I can just feel that Christian luv, and it smells like sour fruit… It does make me wonder why you are even here. Maybe you'll enjoy these verses just as much as 1 Peter 3:15:

1 Cor 1: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2: And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3: If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4: Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5: it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6: it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 7: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8: Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. <snip> 13: So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

steamer

But not you I take it? Since “god’s word” is so easily misinterpreted, perhaps you wouldn’t mind sharing your enlightened view of heaven and hell and explain how you came to be so enlightened and why we ought to assume that you are privy to what this “god” truly meant?

You love a torturer and a criminal. What does this make you? Oh yes, a Christian, you said so already. Tell me, is it a sexual thing? Does it arouse you to imagine your invisible buddy causing great harm to others for crimes no greater than your own? Will you now feign sadness for those poor souls you imagine to be suffering eternally? Can you really lose all empathy for you fellow man so easily in favor of your pathetic imagined relationship with your invisible magic buddy?

Both of us agree that god is imaginary as we can both imagine one. It is only you that baldly assert the existence of something you only imagine. If you do not like that I make no assertion and therefore have nothing to prove, too bad.

I know you love the torture-god described by the bible. I know this by your own admission. Apparently your enlightened interpretation of the bible is somehow different than other torture-god worshippers, but since you haven’t the backbone to let it stand up to scrutiny...

Indeed, you love a god of torture, nothing more. You seek imaginary rewards for doing nothing and seek imaginary punishments of those that disagree with your delusions.

Give me one reason. Would it be empathy? Why should I empathize with you though when you have no empathy for those you pretend are being tortured by your imaginary god?

RPS

Are you always this quick?

Everything written is subject to interpretational problems. Checked out any constitutional law lately?

I don't claim to be enlightened, nor do I claim to be privy to what God truly meant. If you want to know what I think, which is always tentative, I think that Hell is separation from God by one's own choice -- no torture involved. The opposite of life isn't torture -- it's death.

Blah, blah, blah.

How long have you been beating your wife?

Interesting equivocation, but equivocation nonetheless.

Add reading comprehension to your list of weaknesses.

steamer

Indeed all Christian interpretations of god are just what they imagine they are.

Bullshit. You imagine your own reward and anothers demise for crimes no greater than your own. It is a pathetic bit of self-deception to claim someone chose to believe or not believe in what you only imagine. It's idiotic and shows a personality quite unconcerned with the demise of his fellows. In other words, you are a low-life scum.

Honest of you not to feign sadness.

Why do you avoid the question? Can you really lose all empathy for you fellow man so easily in favor of your pathetic imagined relationship with your invisible magic buddy? Is it really so difficult for you to yourself for exactly what your pretended relationship has made you? I can understand why this would be, I can empathise with how it must make you feel.

Not at all. God is imaginary since both of us can imagine him. Only one of us is making the assertion that god is something more than imagination and that one is you. You have the burden of proof.

How many different gods can be interpreted from the bible? I'd say one for each reader. The bible clearly describes a torture god. Do you really need examples of this storybook god's cruelty? If you do then I think it is you that suffers a lack of comprehension since you've claimed multiple readings of the fairy tale.

achristianbeliever

because its fun to watch you.

Darn I thought that was chinese food I was smelling.

Probably I will because watching you quote them is amusing.

What do you want me to cry or something? I found the question lacking as you can clearly tell from my first post of, "uh all of them?" If you have a specific doctrinal question to ask me go ahead and I'll answer. But don't ask me something general like, "What doctrines do you believe" cause I'm not gonna answer the way you like. That's a promise. You want to know how I feel about a certain doctrine ask me.

funinspace

achristianbeliever, in case you couldn't figure it out that last post was figurative kicking the dust off my sandals and walking off stage….I have no interest in game players.