Sue Sponte

Yes, that is what I was referring to. What is the foundation for your belief that there is a god as advanced by christianity. Your statement that this foundation is "vague at the best of times", quite candidly, is a refreshing admission. I appreciate the honesty.

You seem to be saying that you believed in the existence of a god as an initial premise, then have come to accept christianity as the religion that seems the best for you. Thus, from your perspective, the bible is not the foundation for your belief in god, per se, but it is the basis for your belief that christianity is the religion that best approximates your views of god. Have I got this correct?

I presume that you have reached the initial conclusion (i.e. that there is a god) based on a theological upbringing. True?

Kosh

Invisible Pink Unicorns work in mysterious ways. It can only be comprehended by those who have been touched by it's Holy Bronco. I know there's not evidence for it, but my personal relationship with the Invisible Pink Unicorn has convinced me that it's true. In fact, a long time ago, the IPU appeared to the father Buffalo Bill, who saw the IPUs ass, and he did proclaim "It is pink".

In the name of the Horse,the Colt, and the Holy Bronco, Amen.

Tercel

Copernicus,
I believe the question of God's existence boils down to the question of whether you believe "the ultimate" to have Purpose or not. ie whether you believe the ultimate controlling princple to have volition like a human, or volition like a landslide or a mathematical equation.
God, with a captial G, is not simply supposed to be some magical etheral being who somehow floats beside reality as some sort of "extra" entity that Occam's Razor would tell us should be discarded. Rather, "God" is the ultimate reality. If the ultimate is capable of willful decision: God exists. If not: not. The ultimate might have numerous other properties and we can happily speculate on what those are, or might be, to our heart's content but it is not them or their lack which makes God, God.

But when you say that atheists are skeptical of all gods and theists of all but one, I feel you miss the point: It's not like there's a plethora of Gods to choose from. I could just as well say that Theists believe in all Gods and atheists in all Gods but one: There is only one ultimate, by definition, and so only one God if it exists.

I would agree that the existence of God is not exactly "obvious", but I think it is "obviously likely" to anyone who looks at the question in the proper way.

Tercel

Sue,
Thanks, but I think you're taking a bit more out of my words than I meant to put it. I only meant to imply that people are complicated beings and very rarely can any conversion (be it from atheistic to thestic or vice versa) be pinned down to any one reason: Normally a hodge-podge of things play their part. I did not mean to imply that I think there's no good logical reasons to be a Christian.

The Bible is utterly unrelated to my belief in God: correct. My belief that Christianity best approximates my views on God comes from me comparing my views with various forms of Christian teaching, not with the Bible directly. So, I would disagree that the Bible is the basis for my belief that Christianity is the most correct religion.

? If you mean I believe in God because I was taught to believe, that is incorrect. I did grow up in a Christian home, yes, but in a society that is very secular: if I hadn't had Christian parents chances are I would know stuff all about Christianity - I certainly haven't had it forced down my throat!
My belief that there is a God stems largely from dispassionate logical consideration of the question. And a bit from my rather pessimistic and skeptical attitute that if God doesn't exist then, well, "life's a bitch and then you die" and nothing we do matters etc: Which is a fairly pointless attitude to adopt, so I don't. And a bit from my own spiritual experiences.

Greg2003

What are the Christian teachings based upon if not the Bible? Is there direct revelation to Church leaders? Can there be direct revelation to anyone? How do you discern proper teaching from improper teaching?

Why can't people make their own point to life? What is the point of life that you get out of believing in god? If you can share the same moral and ethical values as everyone else without believing in god, then isn't belief in god pointless?

Vinnie

Pointless?

*vinne goes into cardiac arrest*

I am going to put my thoughts down on what salvation is and what it means to know God. This was not originally written for skeptics so go easy on me. It was not written to prove these things to skeptics of course, not all Christians like my spin on the ransom theory, it works for me though Furthermore, what I argue is not based on the historicity of the passages I cite. For instance, I appeal to the Biblical exodus story but that does not mean I accept the Biblical account as completely or even mostly accurate.

Salvation and the Wounds of Existence

Salvation is the business the Church is in. But what exactly is salvation? I would call the salvation of a person their being reconciled to God and experiencing the freedom that relationship produces. Obviously, if you are to be reconciled to something you must have been previously separated for some reason. So what does salvation save us from? Why is there a gulf between us and God? The answer lies in the wounds of existence. Human beings are in a predicament from which we need delivering. Part of this condition is caused by the pain others inflict on us, part of it is caused by the pain we inflict on others and part of it is caused by the pain we inflict upon ourselves. The cumulative effect here is that we live outside the garden. We live east of Eden.


Nine Biblical Images of Salvation

1. Bondage and Liberation

Marcus Borg: "Salvation as liberation goes back to the foundational narrative of the Bible, the exodus story of Israel's liberation from bondage in Egypt. Bondage as an image of the human predicament in this story includes economic and political oppression: the Hebrews were literally slaves under the Lordship of Pharaoh. The image of our condition as bondage also has psychological and spiritual meanings in the Bible. For Paul . . . and the New Testament, we are in bondage to "the powers." "The powers" are cultural, spiritual, and psychological powers operating both within us and outside us. The powers include the domination system and the spirit of the age, and they produce in us not only bondage but a sense of powerlessness. Life under the powers is dominated existence.

What does bondage suggest as an image of the human condition? We are in bondage to many things. Our bondage can be the result of things that happen to us, or we can fall into it through our own acts. Cultural messages are deeply ingrained within us, as are belief systems that radically shape the way we see and live. People continue to be in bondage to economic and political systems--both the victims of such systems as well as those who benefit from them (though in quite different ways). We can be in bondage to wounds stemming from childhood. We are addicted to many things. We typically are in bondage to preoccupation with ourselves and our well-being. The list can grow very long.

Liberation from bondage is thus one of the central meanings of salvation. The story of the Exodus is a story about all of us and our need to be liberated from what holds us in bondage. Liberation is a central theme in the story of Jesus. According to Luke, Jesus' mission (then and now) is "to proclaim release to the captives, and to let the oppressed go free." The language of liberation also resounds in the writings of Paul: "For freedom Christ has set us free . . . therefore, do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." For Paul, God in Christ has defeated the powers, exposing and dethroning the other Lords of our lives." [The God We never Knew Pp. 158-9]

The idea of bondage and liberation ties in directly with the ransom theory. The ransom theory says that Jesus' life was a ransom paid for the sake of our salvation. In many circles this view has been scorned and largely rejected as naive. A ransom is something paid to a captor for the release of something or someone. In this case it is asked to whom did God have to pay or simply find it good to pay a ransom for us? To himself? God holds us captive? Surely that is false. To those who believe he is a literal being, what about a ransom paid to Satan? Does the enemy hold us captive and was Jesus' death a ransom allowing us to be freed from him? This cannot be seriously maintained either. The notion that God would need to or even should find it good to pay anything to Satan for our salvation is ludicrous and quite simply, bad theology. What about sin? Surely we were captives to sin before being liberated? As Richard Purtill wrote, "To say we were captives of "sin" is good New Testament language, but sin is not a personal agent who can be given a reason to release us." The objection against the the ransom theory then, is that there is no one to whom God could have paid a ransom to.

Unfortunately, this view is not easily dismissed by Christians who hold to the authority of scripture. In Mark 10:45 and Matthew 20:28 Jesus is the "Son of Man who did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many". As Mentioned by Borg, in Luke's inaugural address (4:18-19) Jesus is sent to "proclaim freedom for the prisoners" and to"release the oppressed." In 1 Timothy 2:6 Jesus is the mediator between God and man who "who gave himself as a ransom for all men". Hebrews 9:15, in the terms of sacrificial covenant, also says that Jesus "died as a ransom to set people free." As we saw above in Marcus Borg's discussion, the idea of bondage and liberation abounds in Biblical literature. We also see that the ransom theory has wide scriptural support. So the question remains? Who has us captive? To whom are we prisoners of?

One possible answer is actually right under our noses and was implicitly stated by Borg. Who has us in captivity? We do! We are our own captors and Jesus' death was a ransom which frees us from ourselves. We hold ourselves captive and God, through Jesus' death on the Cross, paid a ransom to us so that we might be released from ourselves. He wanted to liberate us from our own enslavement to sin and to reconcile us to himself. That is why Paul proclaims in Romans 5:8 that "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Through Jesus' sacrificial death God tells us that he loves us and by telling us that He loves us, He gives us good reason to release ourselves from captivity.




2. Estrangement and Reconciliation

Another Biblical image of salvation involves the concept of "exile". To be in exile to to be separated from something to which you belong. A husband who did things he regrets and finds himself sleeping out on the couch is in a state of exile. The man sleeping on the couch belongs next to his wife but instead he is in a place of grief and weeping. A place where he does not not feel at home because quite simply, he is not at home. Being in a state of exile gives one the feeling that they don't belong and it can alienate them. The notion of exile is depicted very well in verses 1 through 4 of Psalm 137

....................By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept ....................
....................when we remembered Zion. ....................
....................There on the poplars ....................
....................we hung our harps,
....................for there our captors asked us for songs, ....................
....................our tormentors demanded songs of joy; ....................
....................they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" ....................

....................How can we sing the songs of the LORD ....................
....................while in a foreign land? ....................

The exiles were not at home (Jerusalem). They were in a foreign land where they wept and remembered Zion. Exile is also one of the themes of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. They were expelled from the Garden of Eden and forced to live outside of the home they were intended to live in. We are in the same boat as we all live outside the manifest presence of God, east of Eden. Quite simply, we are estranged from God. Our relationship is not what it should be and we need to be reconciled. Our state of exile is something that happens to us through the activity of outside personal free agents and it is mainly something that we inflict upon ourselves. Our rebellion leads to this state of exile and our estrangement from God can be very strong. So strong that many people are not even explicitly aware of the fact that they are "sleeping on the couch" rather than where they belong. This goes to show us how deep the wounds of existence actually are. The man sleeping on the couch may get so used to it that the fact of his "exile" becomes numbed and "forgotten".

"Salvation as reconciliation is the experience of being reconnected to God. It involves the overcoming of our sense of separation from the one to whom we belong. It is to return to Eden, symbolically the place of God's presence, to "paradise restored." It is homecoming, In the exile story, the process involves a journey of return to "the holy land," which (like Eden) is the place of God's presence. Indeed, this is one of the central meanings of "repentance" in the Bible: to repent means to return from exile to God. But this journey is not simply something that we do or accomplish, for God invites, encourages, and empowers the return." (Borg, ibid, p. 160)

Reconciliation is a common Biblical theme. See Col. 1:20-22, Eph. 2:16, Romans 5:10 and 2 Cor. 5:17-20 which specifically tells us that "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God."


I'll post some more images later.

Vinnie

Vinnie

[QUOTE]Invisible Pink Unicorns work in mysterious ways. [quote]

But the laws of the universe and logic don't and they are quite clear that this is a logical impossibility. You can invoke divine or in this case horse-mystery if you can't understand something but not when that something is self contradictory and logically impossible. Everyone knows that

I am not going to ask what that means

Isn't your relationship evidence? Anyways, how do you explain other faiths and cross cultural religious experiences? Does the Holy Bronco comdemn Jews to hell for not believing in It?

BB is a liar then as it is logiccally impossible to see something that is invisible. I think some liberal revisionist members of the horse cult could help you with these difficulties

Vinnie

emur

Hi Vinnie,

I see you like Marcus Borg. I just finished "The God We Never Knew". Even preached a series on it as I was reading it. Borg's brand of Christianity is much better than the fundy/evangelical kind, IMO. It's also better reading than much of the bible, again IMO.

Now back to the subject at hand.

Mel

Vorkosigan

False One! Heretic! It is written "No man has seen the IPU!" right there on page .092 of the Holy Book of the IPU, or How to Seduce A Nurse Even If You Look Like A Warthog. The IPU speaks only to ME! And if you send me a check for only $15.95, I'll tell you a personal message from the IPU to YOU!

Colander of Truth

Matter of fact, if you send me a check for $39.95, I'll arrange for the IPU to reward you with ETERNAL SALVATION, or TRIPLE YOUR MONEY BACK.