sonofone

Hey John I thought I did answer the question by stating that I do not have an opinion that falls outside of what the scriptures state.I'm sure you are aware that the scriptures teach that Jesus is the way to God and life eternal and anyone not found believing and accepting of him will be banished in hell.

Now there are some of my Christian brothers(Universalist) who believe God will save all,that is every human being who ever lived.I have neither ruled this possibility in or out as of yet.On face value I find this thinking to be faulty,but the jury is still out.

As for arguing,or reasoning my cause for faith in God.I'm certainly not Paul or any such great Christian leader,so I stay in my lane so to speak.I don't find debates helpful,for the purpose of changing a persons mind.I think debate can either be a healthy exchange of ideas,or a meaningless exercise in oneupmanship.Besides John there are no new arguments here to hash out.In the end we will all walk away believing what we believe,some for the better,and unfortunately others for the worse.

I prefer the route of healthy exchange.In every post I choose to respond to I offer the best of what I have or have come believe to the discussion.As in this case I stated that even as a Christian I do not hold the bible to be inerrant.

I would imagine but correct me if I'm wrong that if you could successfully prove that the bible is flawed than,what basis would exist for continued belief in it as it would have been proven to be unreliable.

For me it matters not that the bible has some flaws.It still holds out to be the word of God for me.Not perfect but certainly good enough to get me where I'm going.

Johnny Skeptic

If God plans to send non-Christians to hell for eternity without parole, I would never be able to accept a God like that. Mercy and eternity in hell without parole are not compatible, and would be an example of a Bible contradiction, which would be the same thing as lying. The Bible says that God does not lie. Even one lie in the Bible would be sufficient to discredit Christianity, and there is good evidence that there are many lies in the Bible.

No amount of faith can justify God sending non-Christians to hell for eternity without parole.

No being is loving, fair, and perfect simply because he declares that he is loving, fair, and perfect.

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. That does not make any sense. Obviously, it is not possible to become a fundamentalist Christian without completely disregarding logic, reason, and morality.

Of course, you will come back with your faith argument, to which I will reply that all theists have faith, and that there are not any good reasons why your faith is more reliable than anyone else's faith is, in which case why are we having these discussions?

I am pleased that faith is all the evidence that you have since most of the undecided crowd will not be convinced by your feelings of peace which might be nothing more than emotions. It is customary in debate forums to present evidence other than faith. If lots of theists from many religions were making posts at this forum, and the only evidence that any of them used was faith, how would that be helpful to anyone?

angelo

Charles Darwin in his youth intended to join the priesthood. He very slowly lost his faith as the realization of his discoveries took their toll on his beliefs. At his death he was at best agnostic by his own words.

George S

I highly recommend cherry-picking the good out of the Bable (Bible, Koran, Torah -- for convenience). The problem with this is that good philosophy can be found in much more than the Bable. When you do this you are not taking the Bable as true but judging its truth against a higher personal morality. Fantastic! Welcome to humanism.



There is every reason to believe (study all Bart Ehrman has written on textual analysis -- in particular his book:Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, and Misquoting Jesus and Early Christianities(brush up on your Greek)) that Yeshua was a "The END is near" preacher.

It was the end of the Age of Taurus (astrology) and the beginning of the Age of Pisces and the next is the Age of Aquarius. Yeshua and the folk theories of the day subscribed to astrology.

sonofone

John I can understand your frustration in dealing with people like myself who hold out faith as their defining source for truth.In a forum such as this I feel this is the most appropriate source to draw from,first because it truly is my source and second there are no arguments I am aware of I could reason that would convince you or anyone else that I have the correct view.

Unlike many Christians I hold out no expectation or false sense that my mission is to save you and others like you.I encourage you to do as I am doing,make your best choice possible.I hope for your sake that the choice you make serves you well in the end,just as I do for myself.

So I've placed my bet and the money is already laid down,now we will just have to wait and see who if any will crap out:devil1:

George S

Hey, sonofone, I don't think anyone has yet to refer you to a site that is the best, in my opinion, to understand just what the issues are in taking the bible literally. http://www.members.aol.com/ckbloomfld/

McKenzie ran a newsletter as a dialog with Christians who promote biblical inerrancy. He uses the Bible itself to demonstrate (it would take one hours upon hours to read it all) that it is inconsistent. He takes the words of the Bible literally and then proceeds to demonstrate (from 1983-1998) just how illogical this is. See also his The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy.

Johnny Skeptic

Regarding "So I've placed my bet," therein lies a tale. I would never be able to accept a God who insisted that I make a bet without providing me with better evidence, and who refused to demonstrate that heaven and hell exist, and who delivered his threats through questionable human proxies, which, if he does not exist, was an obvious necessity, and who inspired a book that provably and needlessly contains lies and deceptions. How many lies and deceptions should it take to discredit a source?

I previously posted the following:

When a man sacrifices logic and reason for the sake of perceived emotional self-interest, he has lost his only means of discovering lies and deceptions. Such a man will be the captive of being influenced by the factors of geography, family, race, ethinicity, gender and age, the factors that are mentioned by Kosmin and Lachman

Logically, if no Gods exist who have revealed themselves to humans, people who make up religions have no choice except to require faith and claim that their Gods require faith. No rational God would ever do anything that he did not intend to benefit himself and/or someone else. If a God exists, he would have nothing to gain from refusing to appear in front of everyone in the world, and humans would have much to gain if he did. In other words, if no Gods exist who have revealed themselves to humans, everything that we find is exactly what we would expect to find under that scenario. On the other hand, if a loving God exists, we do not find what we expect find. The world that we live in is proof enough that a loving God does not exist.

Regarding the Bible, millions of people died without knowing anything about it. How did the Bible benefit those people? Obviously, it did not benefit them at all, which presents Christians with a problem. Inspiring texts presumes that whoever inspired them wants people to have access to them. It also presumes that if the Bible is very valuable to humans, and God wanted people to have access to it, he would not have mimicked a naturalistic universe by causing the Gospel message to be spread entirely by the secular means of communication, transportation, printing, and translation of a given time period.

Of course, you will always revert back to your faith arguments, to which I will always reply that all theists have faith, and that there are not any good reasons why your faith is more reliable than anyone else's faith is, in which case why are we having these discussions? What is the point of having discussions that always end up in the same place with nothing accomplished? The only reason that I can think of is that you are trying to reassure yourself that you made the right choice, in which case you have lots of doubts. The Bible discourages having lots of doubts. If your feelings of peace is as unquestionable as you claim it is, you should have few or no doubts. The fact that you are making posts indicates to me that your feelings of peace are not as unquestionable as your claim they are.

I would like to make a suggestion. Before you post your reply, please be aware that no matter what you say, nothing will change. We will always end up right back where we always end up, you using faith as evidence, and no one being able to corroborate whether or not your beliefs are false based soley upon your personal feelings.

If Christian preachers and missionaries used your approach, the Christian church would be much smaller than it is today. Such being the case, I wish that all Christians were like you, admitting that Bible contains false claims, and that feelings can be used as the main means of corroborating the Bible. So, by all means, please do not change your approach. You are an asset to skepticism. Thank you very much for your help.

sonofone

Hey John glad I could contribute my part. I come here for the same reason I go to other forums to both learn and be heard. I joined in on this post because I agreed with you when you stated that the bible does have it's flaws.I of course did not need you to point this out to me as I was already aware of this.

As for other Christians using logic or reasoning to persuade men to come to Christ,I beg to differ.Paul preached Christ and him crucified.The bible states that it is through the foolishness of preaching that men like my self come to know God.In fact the scripture state that not not many wise,or noble are found in this walk as this wisdom I take hold of is foolishness to the wise.

I really do enjoy conversing with you,in fact even more so now that I know you are a fellow brother in Christ who has simply lost your way.I say this not to belittle you.I just believe that anyone who has ever really truly named the name of Christ has been sealed.I have to believe that deep down in the recess of your spirit you still experience that part of God that you know to be real even though it defies your logic.

I love you brother and those like you and my hope and prayer is that you would make the best choice,the right choice.For me this choice is Jesus.:angel:

Johnny Skeptic

But the Bible says that God is perfect, and that he inspired the Bible. If the Bible contains even one error, God is not perfect, meaning that Christianity has been discredited.

On the contrary. First of all, since you admitted that the Bible contains errors, you cannot be reasonably certain what Paul said. Second of all, even if Paul said what the New Testament says he said, what he said might not have been true. Third of all, some scriptures show that some people who were not convinced by faith alone were convinced by faith plus tangible, firsthand evidence. Consider the following Scriptures:

John 2:23 Now when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did.

John 3:2 The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.

John 10:37-38 If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.

Lest some Christians claim that today, we have the Holy Spirit as evidence, in the NIV, Acts 14:3 says “So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to do miraculous signs and wonders.” Acts mentions a number of other tangible miracles that the disciples performed. In addition, today, unlike it supposedly was back then, there are not ANY eyewitnesses around who saw Jesus perform many miracles, and who saw him after he rose from the dead. Surely there was much less need of any additional confirmations back then than there is today.

But you cannot get away with claiming that the Bible contains errors and also claim that you have good evidence which parts of the Bible are true, and which parts are false.

Same as before. In addition, you do not have any idea which writings originally comprised the Bible, and how many times the originals have been changed.

You still seem unable to anticipate that we will always end up with you having only a faith argument, and me telling you that all theists have faith, and that there are not any good reasons why your faith is more reliable than other theists' faith is.

You are obviously not aware that the only reason that you are a Christian is because of chance and circumstance. Under certain different conditions, there is not way that you would have been a Christian.

No God who wanted to communicate with humans would primarily use copies of copies of ancient texts without supplementing that evidence with lots of personal appearances all over the world, and he certainly would not mimick a naturalistic universe by causing the Gospel message to be spread entirely by the secular humans means of communication, transportation, printing, and translation of a given time period.

It is important to note that the secular factors of geography, family, race, ethnicity, gender, and age regarding why people believe what they believe is reasonable proof that if a God exists, he does not have anything to do with why people believe that they believe.

Will you please tell us what you believe God is trying to accomplish?

Why do you suppose that God inspired James to write that if a man refuses to give food to hungry people, he is vain, and his faith is dead?

If the Bible said that God will send everyone to hell, you would oppose it, and you most certainly would not be quoting 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. That does not make any sense. Obviously, it is not possible to become a fundamentalist Christian without completely disregarding logic, reason, and morality.

sonofone

John you stated that you once considered yourself a Christian and now you are agnostic.There are people who are of differing faiths from which they have been taught or once prescribed, yourself included.So while I understand the argument for being a Christian based on natural conditions,only true faith will sustain you.

So I believe, in spite of my natural conditions,not because of it.If this were not true,I suppose you would still be a Christian yourself.As for believing in God because of the promise of heaven,this becomes inmaterial once true faith is realized.It's no longer about heaven or hell or rewards or punishment,but rather Love.

The bible is true for me in spite of the fact you or I may be able to find flaws with it.People like yourself and others have gone through it and picked it apart mercilessly and yet it still contains the power to save and transform lives mine included.

As for miracles and signs they were prevalent in that day,however Jesus performed them and many said he did them by the power of the devil.So regardless of any other external witness to the truth of God without faith it is impossible to please God.This is the way to God through Christ,it begins and continues by and through faith.

As for stating Gods plan why should I bother since anything I say is based off a book for which you and I both agree has flaws, only you have determined that this renders it totally unreliable.I respect your opinion,so again it goes back to where it all began.Your choice,so choose well.