Forums → WEPR → The Religion Debate Thread
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And I'm assuming you think that means his guts could not have spilled out after falling? The source explains that it doesn't need to explain how it spilled out so it shouldn't be a problem.?
You, from a week ago:
"First of all, he didn't trip and fall. He fell after being hanged. His guts and everything fell out because he was decaying."
Clearly, then, you did not understand the passage, because the phrasing was archaic and the message unclear.
God said I will make a helper because He was going to make Eve.Then there was no point to parading a bunch of animals around for him to reject and no point to including that line at all.
No I didn't mean that the Jewish leaders insisted that Jesus be silent, but rather that the Jewish leaders pushed him on to talk and so He went silent.He still didn't go silent. Pilate ends the conversation at John 18:38.
I don't deny that those quotes are in the Bible, but I disagree with the authors commentary about them.Fair enough. It really doesn't make for a very good message of peace and love, though.
The only scientific way I can think of is by looking at the lives affected by those scriptures. If those lives are truly changed then it is true.1 That is not even remotely scientific.
2 How do you determine whether a change is caused by any specific thing?
3 What type and amount of change is needed to qualify as life-changing? Getting stoned to death by angry zealots is presumably more significant than understanding a movie reference, for example.
4 How do you even quantitatively define the change in a person's life?
5 In what sense does influence = veracity? Should we guage the truth of Star Wars by the number of fans who flock to it? How about KKK literature by the people it indoctrinates?
Other than that, other explanations involve divine revelation of some sort.Did you receive such a revelation?
A lot of the books in the Bible claim that they are inspired too so we have that little piece of evidence if it means anything.Yes. We have evidence that a story author claims in his story that the story is a true story. So?
We just have to trust that it's good.Really? Why?
When we sin, we choose the world in many cases. Therefore we are enemies of God. And on the cross, Jesus took the wrath we deserve for being sinners/enemies of God.You did not support your assertion. You just took the opportunity to restate your assertion.
The people in Africa or in the Philippines who speak different languages and have their own translations of the Bible know God like the people with English translations.Really?
Because He gave us a choice and we chose wrong.We've been over this. Every time you bring the argument back to this, you refuse to acknowledge part of your claim because it's impossible to support in its entirety. How about you just pick any three and give up on the fourth because He cannot be all of these:
Too bad Mormonism isn't a Christian denomination. It pulls from outside sources for their faith and denies one or more of the fundamental biblical truths.1 No true Scotsman. Mormonism is founded on a belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ. It is therefore Christian by definition.
2 There are no fundamental biblical truths.
Not for the major doctrines in the Bible though.That doesn't really answer any part of his statement, so I'm just going to ask: In what way?
Because it's a legitimate factor.Not if it's irrelevant, as you claim.
Like in the case of Mark, archeological facts. The more knowledge we have, the more we can discern what is true.Meaning that, by your own admission, we have no sound reason to believe any of these stories to be true accounts.
The Catholic Church was never really the "inspired" people.All catholics would have to disagree, there. What makes your claim more valid than theirs?
Maybe his audience already knew they were the same. There isn't much confusion when you read both Exodus and Deuteronomy.Yes, there is. That's the whole point of bringing it up. You only managed to resolve that confusion by assuming that the name refers to the same mountain, just as you resolved confusion over the death of Judas by assuming that his hanged body fell onto the field.
That's still the writings which are in the OT.Yeah, because someone (probably some uninspired Catholics in the Vatican) decided to pick out a bunch and call them canonical. The point is that your claim that Jesus and his disciples ignored, and therefore invalidated, the apocrypha is groundless and unsupportable.
But as I've said before, the translation proccess was not inspired.Well, why the heck not? Shouldn't the Word of God be a bit more secure against tampering and general incompetence?
Because He wants to test us so we can see how much faith we have. I don’t think it would be a sin if Adam chose an animal though.1 He's supposed to know that already.
2 If Adam chose one of the animals, God would not, in fact, "make him an helpmeet".
Does that mean there are no contradictions or... what are you trying to say exactly?It means that, according to "John" Jesus refuses to answer one thing (19:9) and then goes on talking (19:11). According to "Mark" (and, consequently, Matthew) He only said one thing (15:2) during the whole discussion.
Although you don't see much love in this picture, you see another one of God's traits. Here, God is showing his wrathful side. Eve made a wrong choice and she suffered the consequences. That's not to say God did not show Eve mercy and grace. She was given clothes later in the chapter that were significantly better than fig leaves.Him doing something vaguely nice as a token gesture does not negate the effect of His vindictive reprisal. A merciful god would not be so easily swayed to act against its creation.
Again, God displays his hatred towards sin. And again He shows mercy when He saves a flawed man and his family.Notice how God is only upset with man, yet He decides to destroy "both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air". Again, a merciful god would not be so easily swayed to act against its creation.
This is not a message a love, but it doesn't have to be because it's an interaction between two humans. I actually don't know how human inflicted curses and blessings work in the Old Testament so I don't know the meaning of this particular passage. It doesn't show anything about God from what I see.God act's on his behalf to enact the curse at 27, but sure, we can ignore this one.
We have established that God will punish people for their sins unless He is merciful to them. I guess his love overrides his wrath. In this case, God doesn't show mercy towards Pharaoh, but He shows mercy to Abram. This supports a loving message because God saves Abram from the consequences of his sin (lying), but we still get to see his just characteristic when He punishes Pharaoh according to his sin.This does not support a loving or just message. He brings plagues upon the man and his household because he believed a servant of God who lied to him. There is no justice in that, and I dare say you know it.
She was punished because she looked back because was worried about all of her possessions back home. God gave her a way out but she cared more about what she had more than what she was receiving from God which was salvation.1 So she was worried about her livelihood. That's giving a very charitable interpretation of what could as easily mean "glanced back to see what all the commotion was behind her", and it still demonstrates His total lack of compassion toward someone who the angels were trying to save.
2 Despite her understandable reservations, she did not go back, making this reprisal at the very least premature.
These chapters detail the plagues God inflicted on Egypt when Pharaoh didn't let his people go. It describes Pharaoh's heart being hardened by himself and by God. Whenever his heart is being hardened, it is not wrong to say God was hardening it each time. God hardened Pharaoh's heart by letting Pharaoh harden his own heart. It makes the distinction between God and Pharaoh in order to show that God's plan was taking place despite Pharaoh's stubbornness.1 Despite? It's integral to His plan that the Pharaoh resists.
2 Here you're trying to absolve God of responsibility by distorting "hardened Pharaoh's heart" into "letting Pharaoh harden his own heart", but that is not what the text says. As you conceed that God was involved in hardening it, God is still to blame for hardening it.
3 This time, the plagues weren't inflicted only on the Pharaoh, or even just his household. The entire kingdom, all of its citizens, all of the livestock, and at least a good chunk of the local wildlife suffered because of this.
God can be both jealous and loving. Just as He is just and loving. His love overrides his jealousy when He wills it.You missed the point. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children means punishing people for things their parents did, and this goes not only for them, but also for their own descendants three generations further down the line.
This is not a message a love but rather it is the law. This Mosaic law was made to distinguish the Israelites from other nations.Why does God's law demand this kind of cruelty?
In other parts of the Bible, you will find examples of God's love.That remains to be seen.
This is assuming the man did not rape her most likely. The next verse says 17 If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins.The father would probably not want to give his daughter to a rapist.Oh, okay. So, according to God's law, a man is legally entitled to rape virgins at his leisure, provided that he pays off their fathers for depreciating their exchange value. Is God really that depraved, or did this just not occur to Him?
Also, Deuteronomy 22 clearly does refer to rape (the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her), and in this case, God's law decrees that the victim be stoned to death if she doesn't scream audibly enough to be saved when raped in an urban area.
Here, the people disobeyed God by making an idol to worship. He decided to discipline them.1 They did not disobey Him. Only Moses was privy to that rule He had just finished making up.
2 It was Aaron, a holy man chosen by God, who made the idol and they worshiped it because he told them to. He apparently redeems himself in God's eye by helping Moses slaughter 3000 of the people he misled.
So basically if someone sinned but didn't know it was wrong, he is still guilty of it and is subject to the punishment. This is just because He did something wrong against God. You can't add anything except the grace of God to diminish a crime.That is not just, because it is God's obligation to ensure that all people know and understand His law. A competent god would know better than to punish its people for something they cannot have been aware of.
God punished Nadab and Abihu for disobeying his command. That's really how He ought to deal with all of us, but He grants all of us the grace to live.Which command? He demands that offerings be burnt on His altar, yet when two of His priests light a fire to burn the offerings on His altar, He incinerates them and His prophet forbids anyone from mourning their death.
If a man sleeps with a woman who is married, they will not die because she was under the authority of another man, but they will still be punished.No. If a man has his way with a slave woman set to be someone else's wife, she will be punished. He just has to give a ram to the priests and he is forgiven.
On a similar note, in Numbers 12, when two people correctly point out that Moses has gone against God's law, Moses gets away scot free and the male accuser is scolded. The woman is struck with leprosy until Moses has God forgive her.
The Lord ain't messin around when you blaspheme his name.
It's up to you if you want to believe it or if you want to investigate the cause further. In many cases, however, you will find that the only explanation is the grace of God.Show me any such case.
They would be more loving. You would see it in their interactions and reactions to others. People affected by God's love are not necessarily more outgoing, but they are more patient and forgiving for a start. They might also refrain from their other regular sins more like procrastinating for example.So now you're saying it isn't enough to "truly change lives"; it needs to change them personally in a positive way? Should we not then dismiss all of the scripture that promotes the opposite (slavery, mysogeny, warfare, genocide, animal cruelty, collective punishment, child abuse)?
Exactly. They got something going for them. But you have to examine their faith further to see if their way is the truth.Why? Because they don't claim to be receiving commands from a tyrannical cosmic overlord?
No, because that's not how you gauge the truth of my faith either. If you see any kind of positive change, that is a good sign, but it is not the determining factor of the truth. Like Socrates said: "if this is the doctrine that corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person." You should be able to discern positive changes.If it isn't a determining factor, why should it even be a factor? Also, your quote has no apparent relevance.
That is what I put my faith in in the first place. Naturally I would assume it's God.Why?
This might be circular reasoning, but I have other evidences about my faith. If my faith is confirmed, then God is confirmed. Does that make sense?Only if your faith is confirmed by God being real, but that's tautological. Otherwise, no.
The difference is that God gives us a whole collection of 66 books that tells us about who He is and what He does for us.Poorly, as has been demonstrated.
He saves people all the time and we see it everywhere in the Bible and in real life. You just have to look for it.Were that the case, we would have nothing to discuss here. The fact is that we do not see it. Only you see it, and only because it's what you want to see.
However those practices do not correspond with the clear doctrines of the Bible.That's right! Almost none of these denominations, for example, uphold the doctrine of putting people to death for minor infractions. This is a particularly glaring omission, since Jesus himself was calling people out on it in Mark 7.
You know there are other churches in Africa right?Just as you know that no surfeit of unrelated churches will negate the existence of these ones.
No I didn't. I still exclude benevolent. God knows what He's doing and everything is accounted for.For that to be true, the world cannot be screwed up at all. Yet we've established that the world is screwed up enough to be in need of fixing. So, are you discarding the claim that it's screwed up, or the claim that it isn't His fault?
"For example, Mormons reject belief in the Trinity" Either they believe in more than one God or Jesus is not God because the Trinity is real.We've been over this: The trinity holds that God is three entities who exist simultaneously, permanently, and independently. According to "Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith", which that article cites, Jesus is the son of God, split off from Him and later rejoined. Therefore, it is one of several nontrinitarian denominations of Christianity.
Right now, I'm wondering which denomination you're beliefs are founded upon. Presumably some form of protestantism other than lutheran and anglican?
By saying that you need to work for salvation means that you are undermining God's grace.In what possible sense?
The thing is, why would they talk about something unless it was relevant to their teachings?Because it coincides with Jesus's word.
Why would Jesus reference a book that is contrary to his word?To dispell confusion about which books are true to God's will.
And how did you come up with that conclusion?Thus:
- God makes sure that his message is conveyed exactly how He wants it when He wants it.
- God's message is not conveyed in a manner that allows most mortals (atheists, other religions, other denominations) to attain physical and/or spiritual wellbeing.
- Therefore, God does not want His message to be conveyed in a manner that allows most mortals to attain physical and/or spiritual wellbeing.
That's why let's not reference the New World Translation. We don't even know the specific people who worked on that translation.Good point. How much do we know about the 47 people who translated the King James bible?
Being a "true Christian" means you are a disciple of Christ.I like how this definition conforms exactly to each denomination from the perspective of the same denomination.
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You have to trust that Jesus lived and died and rose again so that you are forgiven. And you have to accept Him as your Lord and Savior.
It is only evidently flawed because people pick and choose scriptures that agree with their beliefs. That includes the early church but over time I think the Protestant branch did a good job of determining the canon considering everything.Which was accomplished by picking and choosing scriptures that agree with protestant beliefs.
No, we know that Mt. Horeb and Mt. Sinai are the same.Uh, no. You only assume that they are the same because only by being the same can they have the same role in both stories.
Read other sources.Which ones?
By their works and their testimonies. The people who translated the translations I read are credited (unlike the NWT) so real scholars can check their academic credentials.Right, so we can reasonably suppose that they didn't make many more mistakes than most concurrent translators. Unfortunately, that doesn't make any of them right.