Johnny Skeptic

Message to rhutchin: How do you account for the fact that the people who God chooses to be the elect all come to God by means of entirely secular factors? In Kosmin and Lachman's well-documented 'One Nation Under God', the authors show that the chief factors that determine religious beliefs in the U.S. are geography, family, race, ethnicity, gender, and age. Obviously, God typically prefers to choose people who live in certain geographic areas, who live in Christian families, who are of certain races, who are of certain ethnic groups, who are female, and who are of certain ages. Or, the more likely conclusion is that he does not exist. In the U.S., a much higher percentage of women are Christians than men. Maybe God plays favoties regarding gender just like he does regarding who he reveal himseslf to. Or, maybe a higher percentage of women profess to be Christians than men do and are not really Christians. If this is true, then women who profess to be Christians are much less certain that they are among the elect than Christian men are. Or, maybe there are actually a much higher percentage of men who are Christians, in which case God would again be showing favoritism. Doubt and uncertainly do not indicate that God is doing his job properly.

These embarrassing situations are to be expected if the God of the Bible does not exist. For many centuries the spread of the Gospel message was significantly limited by the prevailing means of communication, transportation, printing, and translation. Even today, many people have not heard the Gospel message. It is not likely that a loving, rational God would choose the elect in a manner that is directly proportionate to, and completely dependent upon, secular human advances, which gives many people the impression that he does not exist.

Last, but not least, no decent person is able to will himself to accept a God who shows favoritism, who kills people, including babies, even though the Bible says that killing people is wrong, who refuses to do everything that he can in order to help ensure that as many people as possible go to heaven, and as few people as possible to to hell, and endorses unmerficul eternal punishment without parole. Rhutchin, if it one day turned out that the one true God is not the God of the Bible, and he offers skeptics a parole, you would be quite pleased, especially if YOU were among those who were paroled. You would consider that God to be merciful. Another possibility is that if it one day turned out that the one true God is not the God of the Bible, he might choose to only send to hell people like you who endorse eternal punishment without parole. In other words, you would be given mercy according to how merciful you are.

May I ask why you consider lying to be worse than injuring people and killing people with hurricanes, and allowing people to starve to death?

Johnny Skeptic

Actually, the hundreds of millions of people who died without hearing the Gospel message because God did not want them to tell them about it were at a decided disadvantage. Regarding "Kinda puts people you know at a disadvantage", do you mean that some people will not become Christians because I refuse to tell them about the Gospel message? If that is what you mean, if a person dies without hearing the Gospel message who would have accepted it if they had heard it, they most certainly could not fairly be held accountable for not becoming a Christian.

Is God any better than Attila the Hun was? I wonder. Attila killed lots of people, including babies. God kills lots of people, including babies. If Attila had somehow acquired vast powers, and had the ability to send people to heaven and hell, he probably would have done so according to his own standards, just like God. If Attila had had the ability to heal people, he would have healed some people, but not everyone, just like God, with at least one notable diffference; unlike God, he would have consistently healed his own followers as a reward for their faithfulness, or prevented them from getting sick. In addition, unlike God, Attila would have killed his enemies, not his enemies AND his faithful followers.

rhutchin

We have two analytical methods in play here. The first relates to the understanding of the Hebrew language (and other languages) in which the OT was written. There are instances where a person must be familiar with the Hebrew language in order to respond to problem passages. I believe one of these areas relates to numbers. From what I understand, the Hebrew language uses letters to stand for numbers. How this works, I don't know but it would be an area where knowledge of the language would be needed to sort out the problems with passages involving numbers.

The second relates to the logical argument being made and the ability of the reader to understand that argument despite the grammatical problems that may exist. In such cases, I do not see that knowledge of the language is a necessity.

It was only an illustration to make a point about your comment and not specifically about Till. I view your comments as generic in nature unless you make them specific.

rhutchin

If you ask any dozen different people about anything, you tend to get a dozen different varieties. So what? The issue comes down to the underlying assumptions of the Bible (whatever they are) and incorporating those assumptions into our understanding of that which the Bible says.

I have no problem accepting the underlying assumptions of the Quran, Bhagavad-Gita, etc. I don’t know all those assumptions. However, my position is that those assumptions should guide our understanding of those documents.

Not really. That God is the source of the information in the Bible is an underlying assumption. That assumption would require that the verses be infallible (not that they are). I do not see where I am ignoring alleged contradictions.

I think it should. That does not mean that we cannot have an underlying assumption to start the process off. The underlying assumption does not have to be true to be an underlying assumption.

My claim is that we take the text at face value and the text tells us that God is the source of the text, so we can take that as an underlying assumption even where any portion of the text does not begin “Thus saith the Lord...”

rhutchin

They have nothing to do with the subject of the thread and complicate the discussion on 2 Peter.

Make a New Thread and as I have time, I will respond (if you make it interesting).

rhutchin

What is a Christian then?

rhutchin

No. People go to hell because they sin. That sin prevents them from entering heaven. Regardless what a person believes about 2 Peter 3:9, that belief does not determine whether they can enter heaven.

Ignostic Morgan

:devil: :Cheeky: :Cheeky: :banghead: :devil3: Theodore Drange has composed the argument from nonbelief[ see his "Nonbelief and Evil] that since so many do not believe in a god that there isn't one. Part of this nonbelief is that the Buy-bull is full of contradictions with itself and reality . The contradictions show that no Yahweh influenced the authors.There are unfullfilled prophecies. Ask Bahshir Assad if Damascus is still standing. And there are the ethical defects .

aa5874

Rhutchin, you are propagating non-scriptual information. Your information is erroneous and mis-leading.

People do not go to Hell because they sin, according to the scriptures.



Mark 16:16 'He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

Acts 2:21, 'And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Romans 10:9, ' That if thou shall confess with mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shall be saved.

Ephesisans 2:8-9, 'For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works lest any man should boast'

Rhutchin, unless you are perfect, you will continue to sin. So, by your own admission you will go to Hell, regardless of your belief.

Johnny Skeptic

My post #51 most certainly is relevant to 2 Peter 3:9 as far the issue of whether or not there is a rational basis for belief in Christianity is concerned. In post #51, is said:

In other words, even if you are right about 2 Peter 3:9, you have won the battle over that Scripture, but lost the war over whether or not there is a rational basis for belief in Christianity. You HAVE discussed this issue as the EofG Forum in a thread that YOU started, but which you have conveniently VACATED.

Regarding 2 Peter 3:9, and Calvinism, which is a related issue, you have enough opponents within the Christian church, and even within fundamentalist Christianity, to call your interpretation of 2 Peter 3:9 into question. Consider the following from an Arminian web site:

http://www.crivoice.org/arminianism.html

The Calvinist teaching of "irresistible grace" argues that there is nothing whatsoever a man or woman can do to keep from being saved if he or she were already chosen. The grace of God is totally irresistible. Those elected by God will be saved. They can't help it and they can't resist it.

Arminians believe that Christ died for all men, and thus He granted common grace to all so that "whosoever will" may be saved, not just those picked beforehand. Most Christians today lean toward the Arminian approach that anyone may be saved and a person can refuse God's grace.

Johnny: If I cannot help from being saved if God has chosen that I will be saved, then my choice does not have anything to do with my salvation, and yet you are asking me to make a choice, are you not? It is a certainty that no decent person is able to will himself to endorse God's favoritism, not only regarding who he chooses to reveal himself to, but also his favoritism regarding his preferences to choose the elect primarily based upon 1) where people live (geography), 2) peoples' families being Christian (family), 3) the color of a person's skin (race), 4) the ethnic group that a person is a member of (ethnicity), 5) what a person's sex is (in the U.S., a much higher percentage of Christians are women than men), and how old a person is (age). These factors are discussed in Kosmin and Lachman's 'One Nation Under God.' When people get old, they seldom change their minds regardless of what they believe. If old people are less able to change their minds, that means that God usually has something against old people becoming part of the elect. To what factors do you attribute the fact that in the U.S., the percentage of young people who are religious has dropped significantly during the past few decades. A Gallup Poll showed that in the age group category 18-29, 61% approve of same sex marriage. In contrast, in some third world nations, where people have less money, are less educated, and are more gullible, the percentage of young people who are Christians has increased. This is because Christian missionaries bait people with food, medical treatment, and education. If skeptics were as well-organized and well-funded as Christians are in third world nations, the results would be much different. In the U.S., and in many other countries, skepticism, liberal Christianity, and Islam have made significant gains during the past few decades. It is interesting to note that God is much less able to choose the elect in Muslim countries. The greater the opposition to Christianity in Muslim countries, the less God is able to choose the elect from those countries. Or, God never chooses to do anything because he does not have free will.

The logical and rational conclusion is that the God of the Bible does not exist, which is the best conclusion, or that no God who is worthy of being worshipped would go out of his way make it appear that entirely secular factors are ALWAYS involved regarding who becomes a Christian. If the God of the Bible does not exist, we would have EXACTLY the situation that we have regarding the primary factors that determine religious beliefs. No man would EVER become a Christian unless a human being wanted to tell him about Christianity. God would NEVER tell anyone about his specific existence himself. The existence of the God of the Bible is virtually impossible.