Johnny Skeptic

I look forward to reading comments from readers.

mountainman

The Bible as you know is a composite series of texts.
There are two basic layers, the old one and the new.
The old one was sourced from King Ptolemy's LXX
The new one was bound to it under Constantine.

I have no idea what God's agenda might be, other
than the opening of billions of flowers each day,
and the sparkling of billions of galaxies each night.

Perhaps if we take more responsibility for our own lives
and seek to unravel our own conditioning, we may
become more enlightened in the deep and meaningfuls
associated with our existence.

Best wishes,



Pete Brown
The Infinite River

Boro Nut

Presuming you mean agendums:

1 - To grow one flower per drop of rain.
2 - To light a candle in the darkest storm (bit pointless - see lighthouses)
3 - I forget the chorus

Boro Nut

Toto

God's agenda - one take

Toto

OK, you wanted some Biblical references. God's Agenda

Why has God's agenda gotten stuck on procedural motions and fillibusters? 2000 years, and people are still not convinced!

Johnny Skeptic

If an intelligent being created the universe, including humans, it ought to be obvious to everyone that he is deliberately withholding information that would convince everyone that he exists, that he is moral, and what he wants people to do with their lives. No rational, moral being ever does anything that he does not intend to benefit himself or someone else at present, or in the future. It most certainly could not benefit a moral creator to deliberately withhold information from people that they would accept if they were aware of it. In addition, it most certainly could not benefit humans to have the truth withheld from them.

It is utter nonsense for Christians to claim that skeptics are not seeking the truth. If the universe was created by an intelligent being, skeptics most certainly want to know about it. 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences are non-Christians. It is a given that all of that 93% would like to know everything that they can know about the nature and secrets of the universe.

Christians have the mistaken assumption that if they can reasonably prove that Jesus rose from the dead, that is sufficient grounds for people to become Christians. If Elvis Presley had predicted that he would rise from the dead, and rose from the dead, would Christians worship him? Of course they wouldn't. All that it takes to raise a person from the dead is power. Morals have nothing to do with it. The same is true of prophecy. If Elvis Presley was able to predict the future, would Christians have worshipped him? Of course they wouldn't? Assuming that a version of the God of the Bible exists, his character is the fundamental issue. The God of the Bible provably does not have good character according to his own standards. If God does not feel obligated to live according to his own standards, then he has no right to insist that anyone else live by his own standards. The Bible says that killing people is wrong, but God has killed lots of people, including some of his most devout and faithful followers, and babies, not to mention innocent animals. Hypocrisy is not an admirable trait for a God or a human. If the God of the Bible exists, and is loving, in order to harmonize his existence and his love, we will have to redefine the word "love". If you love someone, you will provide food for them. James says that if a man refuses to provide food for a hungry person, he is vain, and his faith is dead. One million people died from starvation in the Irish Potato Famine because God refused to provide them with food. The majority of those people were Christians. God did not derive any benefits from refusing to feed those people, and the people who starved to death most certainly did not derive any benefits from starving to death. A loving God would be committed to providing people with spiritual AND tangible benefits. One of the tangible benefits would most certainly be food.

Christianity has always been in disarray. Christians conquered the largest colonial empire in history by far under a single religion. For about 90% of the time since Christianity was founded, the majority of Christians endorsed slavery and the subjugation of women. Pascal said that only Roman Catholics will go to heaven. John Calvin endorsed killing Christians who disagreed with his theology. Christians have fought many wars among themselves. Martin Luther did not believe that the book of Revelation belonged in the Bible. Today, there is not a well-establish consensus among Christians regarding whether or not the Bible is inerrant.

When teenagers run wild without parental supervision, their parents are usually considered to be partially to blame. It is utter nonsense for anyone to conclude that if a truthseeking man reads the Bible, that is all the supervision that he needs. History has proven that the Bible IS NOT all the supervision that a truthseeking person needs. Many of today's Christians celebrate the "advances" that have been achieved in Biblical scholarship by Christians such as William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, J.P. Moreland, and N.T. Wright, but there have not been any advances at all regarding reasonable defenses of God's character. If the God of the Bible exists, he is evil, or he is mentally incompetent. Attila the Hun did not kill his own followers, but God does.

Jedi Mind Trick

Hello Johnny…

I was taught that God’s agenda in creating was that he wanted freewill creatures who would willingly fellowship with him.

Johnny Skeptic

That is fine as long as God wishes to clearly reveal his existence and will to everyone. Since he obviously do not wish to accomplish this, the Bible is fraudulent.

Jedi Mind Trick

But you see, that's where the story gets complicated. One creature used its freewill to break fellowship with a holy god, that creature would be Lucifer. He weaved discord amongst the angelic hosts and one third followed Lucifer in his rebellion. Freewill creatures broke the bond of fellowship… Now, as I was told, God condemned Lucifer immediately but Lucifer, it was implied, made an appeal before all creation, impugning the absolute righteousness of God. Lucifer, before a fallen and un-fallen creation protested along the lines “how can a good god condemn to eternal fire any creature that he made?” So God, with his righteousness being challenged before all creation, decided to test Lucifer’s protest. God would then create an inferior creature, one that did not have all of the blessings and advantages of the angelic hosts, especially not those of the anointed cherub.

He would take this inferior creature, place it at a disadvantage, and provide for it a test to see whose way it would choose. Will the creature, named Adam, choose God’s way or will he choose his own selfish way. If the creature chose God’s way god would be vindicated, if it chose its own way God’s righteousness would still be in doubt. All of creation watched on the day that Lucifer took up the form of the serpent, or rather, “the shining one” the nachash and set out to deceive and incite Adam to rebellion.

We all know what happened next… Adam failed and Lucifer triumphed, but it doesn’t end there. Now the situation is worse than it was before, God’s righteousness is still in question and Adam has also fallen, along with all his offspring (each thing reproduces after its own kind and Adam is a fallen kind) he has become sinful. God then hints at his hidden purpose “I will put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the shining one; you shall bruise his heal and he shall crush your head.” God chose to do more than vindicate his righteousness, he chose to do that and at the same time reveal his mercy. He would send the second Adam, who would be a man in all points as we are, but this Adam would choose God’s plan even unto death.

This Adam would also be free from the curse of the first Adam in that he had no human father from which to receive the sin nature; he was virgin born, therefore he was spotless in that regard. However, he was also 100% human, as human as the first Adam and just as limited, in and of himself. His life was a life of testing and temptation and he passed all of the tests flawlessly because he relied upon the spirit of God, even unto a death that was not meant for him. He was a perfect and flawless human in the eyes of God; a man who was above the sentence of death that surrounded him on a daily basis as he mingled with the cursed.

The second Adam lived a perfect life and then laid down his life, that he had every right to keep, as a sacrifice to ransom those of the first Adam’s race who would of their own freewill also choose God’s way over the way of the self; each one then becomes exhibit “A” in the trial of Lucifer and a vindication of the righteousness of God and an example of his mercy to all of creation for all eternity.

In the end, the reason God does not clearly reveal himself is that he is requiring faith as the path to him. To accept Jesus by faith is to choose God’s way over the self appointed way. It is to abrogate the self willed way in deference to God’s prescribed way. It is like choosing the tree of life over choosing the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

This is what I was taught was the purpose for mankind and God’s full agenda. I have, I’m sure, imperfectly recounted all that I was taught as a fundamentalist but this rendition is very close, I can assure you. I know that you asked for biblical reasons but as you should know this is a matter of doctrine, as are all teachings, therefore, there are biblical texts that my former teachers used to justify every bit of what I said above.

Gamera

You're assuming God is something outside the texts we have. Epistomologically, all we know about the God of the Hebrew texts are derived from the Hebrew texts. They are multifarious, depending on the narrative and the characters involved. But one can assemble a metanarrative (based of the redaction of these texts as a canon). Basically, the texts support a metanarrative whereby God is attempting to teach the preeminence of love in human and divine relationships, to a rather recalcitrant mankind, steeped in selfishness and violence.

That's certainly how the Christian texts interpret the Hebrew narratives they "inherited" and there is merit in that interpretation.