Starboy

Tarnaak, in the first century it was easy to con the population with holy writings because most people couldn't read or write. In the twenty first century people are more literate and they understand that just because something is written in a book it doesn't make it so. In this day and age the bible can be considered at best to be only a set of claims regarding the supernatural. People who pass off such claims with no evidence and insist they are "truth" are con artists. You can waive around your unsubstantiated supernatural constructs from the first century all you like but that doesn't mean that you have said anything at all that makes sense for this time and place. You see Tarnaak, everyone, including the religious has stopped using such constructs to understand our surroundings some time ago. The only people who buy that BS are folks like you and they mostly only buy it on Sundays.

Starboy

Tarnaak

Then we have several billion con artists running around now don't we.... Problem is, which ones do ya believe or not believe.
Personally, I dont trust the ones that are "Sunday Christians", but then again, who am I to judge...

Beliefs are a culmination of enviornment up to the point of ones age. I believe because my life has convinced me.

In Scripture it says that God finds ways of getting his message to the people. I see quite a numbers of "non-believers" on these boards.

With anything, I know that if I want to form an opinion I check it out. If what I find agrees with what I've heard then my belief is confirmed. If it doesn't then my belief is changed. Its a process of learning about a subject. Some subjects are due some attention, some subjects are due a life-time of attention. Compare the benifits of a subject and that subject will tell you the time one should dedicate to the study of it. Point being, if a decision is going to effect you for a day, spend little time on it, if a subject is going to effect you for an eternity.....

It made sense to me to think this way AT FIRST and this is hind sight;
"If I say I believe and there is no God, then I have lost nothing. If I say I don't believe and there IS a God, I have lost everything."

I'm pretty sure I heard it from someone else, but it made sense. Since then God has been Gracious to me. That's why I believe

See ya in a couple of days...

Peace
James

Spaz

I've heard that before, and what I still don't know is why? Will the unholy and unperfect rub off on god? Being perfect that's impossible. It seems more likely that somebody said once that they aren't compatible, and people were like "mmmkay" and didn't question why, because I'm certain you don't have an answer for it that doesn't raise another why.

Starboy

Tarnaak, you can believe anything you want, that is your right. When you start presenting your beliefs as “truth” with no substantiations other than your feelings then that is fraud.

Let me ask you if this makes sense – you go into an emergency room and they give you a form and instead of asking about your medical history they ask you if you have been going to church every Sunday or if you have taken the name of god in vain or if you have been in contact with demons. Would you take such an emergency room seriously? No you wouldn’t. Why is that? Because such things have nothing to do with reality as we understand it today. In the first century people thought such things were part of reality but today we know better. Anyone that shovels the bible’s BS as reality or “truth” deep down knows better and is selling people nothing but a bill of goods that doesn’t exist. Shame on you Tarnaak and the billions of other poor suckers.

Starboy

Tercel

In what way do you consider this "out of context"?

I am well aware of all this, I simply disagree with you. I also disagree that you can reasonably title your conception of God as "a God of Grace and Mercy".

Well I truly believe I am a Christian. (You seem to have missed that somewhere along the line) Given that I have spent several years studying the teachings of different branches of Christianity, I find it unlikely that I am mis-informed.
Heres some reading for you, to expand your knowledge of other Christian viewpoints:
On Eastern Orthodoxy
Theories of the Atonement
A speech on the atonement and afterlife

Tarnaak

It's like trying to mix water and oil, It just dont work. That is God's Law. It is apparent in all the has been created. There are Laws governing everything here on the earthly realm, so there are Laws governing the Spiritual Realm. We just don't have any reference to those Laws in the Spiritual Realm except that it is a Holy place and nothing unholy can remain there.
(I mean outside of the Scriptures)

Tarnaak

I will be reading these over the next few days (or more) as I am always looking for the truth and if I find it thus, Thanks!
Question though; What does the Othodox faith use a refernce? You quote Scriptures, but like Jerimiah (you are quoting about Scribes that are known to not be Spirit led and that is why it is said of them) you seem to cut and paste to make your point without using the full context of what your referring to. Just curious...

Tercel

To the Orthodox, the ultimate authority (apart from God Himself of course) is the Church (rather than the Bible, which is the Protestant ultimate authority). This seems logical as it was the Church that wrote the Bible and decided on its books and interprets it etc not vice versa. We are also supposed to obey the spirit not the letter, which makes squabbles between inerrantists about exactly what a verse says because they think every word is the Word of God, quite laughable. Also, people almost certainly become Christians for whatever reasons and then value the Bible because the Christian Church teaches it. Comparatively few people read there way through every bit of ancient literature, then say "it's clear to me that the Bible and only the Bible is the Inspired Word of God" and subsequently become a Christian.

Virtually everyone quotes verses that look like they support their point. Whether or not they actually do is sometimes difficult to decide.
In this case, I don't see the problem. There is no real context to Jeremiah's statement, so it can hardly be "out of context". I would also note that some scholars theorise that Jeremiah was responsible for writing the D source (ie Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Sammuel, Kings) and that he wrote it in response to (and against) the P source (ie Some of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus). This would make a lot of sense given Jeremiah's statement against the Scribes who tampered with the law.

Tenek

You can't tell me that He is loving and forgiving to all. If He really cared He would leave out the blind faith and uncertainty.

If you left out all the crap about loving God you'd have a half-decent system. The theological requirement is the problem. God created me flawed, then He doesn't care to even *try* to fix it, all I get is some irrational system to avoid Hell by a) dodging responsibility b) surrendering reason and c) likely making me even *worse* than I was before.

If you want mercy, at the very least go for destruction. Imagine what you would think of me if I refused to do anything for someone in constant pain, day in, day out. A year and a half ago my dog was having some sort of major problems - quite bluntly, lying on the floor convulsing. I took her to an animal emergency centre with my mother and watched the vet give this suffering creature a lethal injection. It would have been a million times easier to do nothing at all, but sometimes, *compassion* and *empathy*, two qualities your God seems to lack entirely, dictate that ending suffering is better than prolonging existence out of either some sadistic pleasure or buck-passing.

I find my own thoughts rather interesting at this point. To wit, my perception of God is giving me exactly the sort of self-destructive thought and emotion that you claim will send me to Hell. Rather nice, isn't it? Religion becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Tercel

Can and did.

Why? Why would He be overly worried about your belief or lack of it? A little uncertainty never hurt anyone... not knowing the precise truth allows you more freedom in what you choose to as you get to decide what's true for yourself as well as how you'll act on it.

I choose to take that as a compliment.

I don't think God did create you flawed. Sure you're body's probably not a perfect superman, but it's only the real you that counts, and that becomes whatever you make it into. Being "flawed" gives you the opportunity to learn and grow as a person. God did what He could to "fix" us by becoming one of us and sharing in our condition. But He can't magically fix whatever we choose to make ourselves short of destroying whatever we've made ourselves into. I doubt you'd like that option...

As a liberal rationalist and someone who values reasoned logical argument very highly I object most strongly to (b).
I have no idea how you arrive at (a), and I certainly don't think (c) is true - how can accepting that life is ultimately meaningful, that people really matter and trying to love others going to make you worse?

Personally I see no problem with annihilationism. I think God might in his mercy, destroy those in this condition. However, I recognise that I'm outside the traditional church teachings in this regard. Also, I'm not convinced that it is certain that non-existence is really better than suffering or even if non-existence is possible.