seebs

So? It's still useful to me.

I am not sure I could argue this. I have known people who were just as bad, or worse, who came out of it okay. The message is still there, no matter how much we like to put our fingers in our years and yell "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" sometimes.

Too much baby in with that bathwater.

Obviously, some of us are wrong about at least some of our beliefs... Doesn't mean that we aren't right about any of them.

Johnny Skeptic

But you have said that it is God’s decision who he tells about the Bible, and now you are saying that it is a human decision whether or not to tell someone else about the Bible. Now which is it?

Whose fault is it that God refused to tell hundreds of millions of people about the Gospel message and allowed them to die without hearing it? Whose fault is it that God refuses to disclose additional information that would cause some people to become Christians who were not previously convinced?

Regarding predestination, there is not any credible evidence that the Bible writers who mentioned it were speaking for God and not for themselves. You have said that the Bible is inerrant, which you have never reasonably proven, and that the Bible all that we have. Those are not rational arguments. Please reply to my post #178.

Whose fault is it that one fourth of the people in Europe were killed by the Bubonic Plague? Whose fault is it that one million people died of starvation in the Irish Potato famine. Whose fault is it that Hurricane Katrina went to New Orleans?

militant agnostic

No. That would be Gods fault for sending us a "gospel message" that makes such nonsense out of history and easily testable subjects in science that only someone who believes things without studying them, holds double standards for evidence, narrow mindedly only ever reads and listens to people who already agree with him, and regularly make false assertions that are proven wrong yet never correct them could believe it.

All of those things are described in great detail as sinful in the Old Testament and New Testament. Therefore God would be requiring us to regularly engage in sin to believe it. And since the Bible claims that God does not lead us into sin we cannot believe it. If God decides to film flam on what he stands for to the point that we can no longer determine what he wants or what is and is not his word then that’s his fault not ours.

Or maybe they just refuse to give false witness.

No they wouldn’t. Maybe that’s the point though. If we do not judge greatness or worth by size or glory but by depth and spirit then we need only consider how little of the better things about humanity would even exist if we lived in a world with only to people, where nothing ever went wrong, and no one needed to think, create, or care to exist.

If we frame it in those terms than perhaps if an infinitely old and powerful being does exist that created the world to make something whose meaning was not set in glory of might and beauty then perhaps sin (not huge sins like genocide and rape, but the Christian concept of sin that is occasional moral failings) is just not all that important in the end game. If you we an all powerful cosmic being how much time would you spent being concerned about such trifles.

Roland

Christianity is a joke. It would truly be funny if it weren't so damn tragic.

Every Christian should be forced to watch "Brokeback Mountain" over and over again until they finally "get it." The Haggart scandal is just the latest manifestation of this insane attitude Christians have towards homosexuality - that of making gays hate themselves to such an extent that they are willing not only to drag spouses and children into their self-hatred but actively work to subvert equal rights for other gay people - all in the name of someone who was probably mythological to begin with.

It's sickening.

rhutchin

Now, if you could only get the Bible to take that position. It's not just homosexuality. It's any sexual activity that occurs outside the marriage of a man and a woman. People ought to be told that these things will prevent a person entering heaven. It is no joke. That is the real tragedy.

rhutchin

I guess you might have a point if the above were true.

Either way, they do not tell others and do not want to let others decide for themselves whether it is true or false.

I think it is.

rhutchin

It is God's decision whom He will save. God clearly instructs people to tell others about the Bible so that they will know what is going on. No one should have to stand before God and not know what is happening. The children of the Johnny Skeptics of the world should not stand before God and wonder why their father never explained these things to them.

It is your fault. You were given this information and decided not to tell others.

Well, perhaps you could provide credible evidence that they were not speaking for God. Do you know that they were lying?

Your fault.

JPD

Hurricanes are caused by JS alone or in conjunction with all non-believers?

It is interesting to know that my thoughts can influence the weather..........well it's not working.......no its constant...presumably whenever we experience freak weather conditions that will be the sign. If I hadn't had those thoughts and it still happened then others must have made up the deficit. It makes a great deal of sense

Perhaps you could explain how things would be different if everyone believed, or everyone didn't believe, in Biblegod.

JPD

The tragedy is that anyone could set their sights so low as to justify their beliefs through imagined terror on the basis of a record of other people's fantasies. In general, wise people do not tell others about places in their minds where weird things will happen to them after they die unless:

(a) They are insane, or
(b) Their income depends on it, or
(c) They wish to exercise control over the lives of others, or
(c) They have real evidence that this is actually what will happen. The evidence presented is the Bible, which has all the hallmarks of having been composed by people who fall into one or more of these groups.

It is quite possible that people genuinely believed the things they wrote - but our awareness is deeper and wider now. If Biblegod is real he must have known that the day would come when increasing numbers of people would find increasing numbers of verses beside the point. Or perhaps you can see humanity's collective intelligence dimming to such a degree that it accepts without question everything written in the Bible. A mentally challenged world that would be for sure.

rhutchin

Right is right. If a person is physically restrained from harming someone else, or coerced to “accept” another person’s rights does not mean that it is no longer “right.” Your direction on this is explained next.

Sure, it’s pragmatic. It should be. Your point seems to be that a person should be free to determine morality by what is right in his own eyes. Thus, a person can become a squatter on someone else’s property because he doesn’t think it is right for him to work for something that should be freely available to him. A person can determine that it is “right” to lie and scam a person if he has nothing and the other person has plenty and should not miss anything. If morality is a question for individuals, then there would be no real morality (i.e., everything that is legitimate to a least one person would be legitimate to all).

Who determines that you have been harmed. If you have $100 and another person has 0, then would it harm you to have to give that person $50 so that you are equal? Would you not be harming the person with nothing if you refused to give him $50. Sounds like you would approve of a commune type system where everyone shared whatever they produced with everyone else so that no one had more than another.

Try to persuade them that you were right?? Your position is that there is no wrong morality. You are right in what you decide is right and the person who believes the opposite is right in what he thinks. You cannot identify any “right” that all people must live by so there is no basis for you to persuade (much less compel) people to do anything. Try raising children using that philosophy.

Leviticus seems to identify certain sexual activities as more than just unclean. It even calls them abominations. How about those?

Would you say that rape is so immoral such that no one has the right to rape another person and that physical coercion can be used to prevent one person from raping another? Would rape be an exception to your rule that “if you're coerced into it, it's no longer ‘right’.”

It may be circular, but that does not make it wrong. A circular argument may not prove a point, but it does not invalidate the point.

If fornication refers to immoral sex, then immoral sex exists. The problem is not that there is no immoral sex. The problem is to identify the sexual activities that would be labeled as immoral sex. If you accept the idea that fornication exists, then you cannot say that there is no fornication.

OK. We have identified two forms of fornication.

We agree on another type of fornication

You personally believe that rape is not an expression of love. Cannot God say that any action that violates one of His commands is not an expression of love?