Ed

Fraid not, a study done by Dr. Donald Lutz found that the most cited source in the Founding Fathers letters and writings was the Bible.

Yes, but they were appointed by the people, not by a king or etc. The leaders were equivalent to legistlatures. A Bill of Rights could be derived from biblical principles quite easily, ie You shall not murder = Right to life and etc.

Non sequitor.

I have already done the first, and second is irrelevant because I am referring to the basics of historic orthodox Christianity not to any particular denomination.

secular spoon

Pfffsh. According to both christian and secular sources they identified 34% of citations coming from the bible. Not that I can access the publication online but I found a quote :

As usual the research I did was shoddy, but damn ed.. it only takes a 2 minute google search. I'd be interested in knowing if the above is correct.

Could you do me a favour and retype the evidence? You might've done it somewhere in these 18 pages but I'm certainly not wading through them again.

lpetrich

Is it possible to demonstrate that without begging the question?

Maybe the most quoted single source, but its quotations are dwarfed by quotations of other sources. Furthermore, where does the Bible explicitly present the social-contract theory of government? I mean something like what is described here:
(Acts and selection of certain people to perform certain tasks...)
No, they were selected by church officials -- they were appointed, not elected.

A single leader is NOT equivalent to a legislative council. And why in the hell is the Senate called the Senate and not (say) the Sanhedrin?

That's being rather selective about "biblical principles" here, because parts of the Bible command the exact opposite, like genocide. Furthermore, where does the Bible support:

* Leaders elected for limited periods of time, the election being by votes
* Legislative bodies that vote on proposed laws
* Members of those bodies being elected in the fashion of the leaders
* Freedom of religion, as opposed to only being allowed to practice only some alleged One True Religion
* Freedom of speech and of writing
* Fredom from unreasonable searches and seizures
* Trial by jury (not that I think that juries are the bee's knees, just that I wonder where juries are in the Bible)

With such fallacious "arguments" as a specious "Law of Resemblance".

Whatever that's supposed to be, and whatever sects qualify as representing that.

Ed

See my post about a fulfilling life above.

Ed

No, God just inspired her to fill the gap.

It depends on what you mean by "female-friendly", ie not everything you want is necessarily good for you or "user friendly".

It may be good for women to be mods and admins, but it may not be good for them to be leaders in the church. We are comparing apples and oranges. Just because someone has a different role does not make them less than full citizens. Is your boss a full citizen and you are not?

See above about what we want is not always necessarily good for us, ie fame for causing people not to accept reality.

No, she was praising the high divorce rate in American society.

Jack the Bodiless

I am still waiting for you to provide an additional "ought". You have still not provided an extra reason why a Christian "ought" to care, other than reward/punishment and an "innate moral sense".
...What question?
In other words: we supposedly have an instinctive desire to do so. An innate moral sense.

And the third reason is... ?

Ed

I think you are confusing free will with freedom of conscience and religion. Free will means that the person has the ability to make choices whether they have very negative consequences or not. The bible plainly teaches that humans have free will to choose to obey God or not. Freedom conscience means that a person can choose what to believe or not to believe about God and not face any consequences in the temporal realm. Because ancient Israel as a nation was held to a much higher standard than other nations they were not given freedom of conscience. Those who did not obey God or even believe correctly about God had to be purged out of the hebrew society and out the promised land. In the NT with the coming of Christ, greater grace was given to man. So God no longer wanted to represent himself through a spiritually pure physical nation, but instead thru a spiritually pure spiritual group called the church. Because of this physically coercing belief in the true God is now a sin. As shown by the actions of Christ and the apostles, our role models for Christians.

From God's perspective natural and supernatural consequences are basically identical, since God is the ultimate cause of both.

See above about your confusion concerning free will and freedom of conscience.

A being that can create an entire universe is quite capable of creating robots.

Jack the Bodiless

Correction: the authors of the Bible recognize the obvious fact that we have this ability. They had no choice but to accept this.

...But they sought to prevent people from choosing to disobey, by threatening dire consequences if they did.
Neither were "heretics" in medieval Europe. There is no such doctrine in the Bible: again, the authors had to work with the problems caused by God's actual nonexistence, they needed political power to enforce compliance.

I am STILL restraining my pet dragon to allow you to live, Ed. You haven't thanked me yet.
OK, please provide the chapter and verse where this is made clear.
Being hacked to death by religious fanatics isn't a "natural consequence" of failing to worship God.

Would you like to argue that the 3,000 victims of 9/11/2001 died as a natural consequence of America's failure to adopt Islam?
As an argument, this fails on several levels.

1. God, being fictional, can't actually create anything. This also limits his ability to turn people into robots.

2. The ability to create a Universe does not imply the ability to turn people into robots. Are we compelled to worship and obey the Big Bang?

3. As already explained, the Hebrew word "bara" also means "to separate by cutting", and this is consistent with its usage in Genesis: God separated the heavens from the Earth, god separated humans from clay (by scooping some up and shaping it), and so forth. Furthermore, it was the Elohim that supposedly did this, not YHWH (no, they're not the same).

4. In the Bible, YHWH's ability to actually influence minds is very limited, confined to a few instances of "heart-hardening" of one person at a time. God never demonstrates any power to alter the minds of a large group, but he nevertheless alters minds just enough to destroy the notion that he has an ethical prohibition on doing so.

lpetrich

Deborah?
Of course, she could have done so on her own initiative.

So what?

Why not? Will "the church" lose virility?

(CoaS and QoS...)
At least in your opinion of what "reality" is.

I'd like to see what she originally said. And if divorce is such a big sin, shouldn't divorcees like Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich have been purged from the Republican Party?

Ed

Can you demonstrate otherwise? I seriously doubt it.