Let's run through it.

[PatrickC]

Xelent:No that's voluntary you don't have to if you don't want to. 

 

Right, but if we don't, he will send us to the pit of fire.. Not much of a choice frankly, is it?

[Wesley]

Right, but if we don't, he will send us to the pit of fire.. Not much of a choice frankly, is it?

Just like "you can voluntarily choose to give me your money or not, but if you don't I'm going to shoot you in the head!"

 

Generally, this is called theft and not exactly the epitome of voluntarism.

[Omegahero09]

Mike Fleming: Which situation are you talking about? The hypothetical platform you are talking about? Or our reality? I agree with you on the fact that many evil people have used religion as a tool to achieve their ends: i.e. Hitler, the spanish inquisition, witch burning, etc. 

LovePrevails: I believe the bible to be true because it was written by 40 different men, over thousands of years and it lines up and is consistent. No I was not forced to go to church as a child. Often we opted out of churches because the doctrines they taught did not align with the bible. The disciplines I received commonly were time outs, the suspension of privileges, and spankings.All disciplines were established by agreements b/w my siblings and my parents. My father was a rational anarchist before we were born- nothing was forced on us as far as I remember it. We were free to challenge/negotiate with the parents about discipline, incentives, privileges, chore-jobs etc at any time. 

Xelent/Wesley:I've already told you I have not found the doctrinal hell to be true. 

 

I agree with you that if that were the case, I wouldn't be worshiping the judeo-christian god either. 

[PatrickC]

Just like "you can voluntarily choose to give me your money or not, but if you don't I'm going to shoot you in the head!"

 

Generally, this is called theft and not exactly the epitome of voluntarism.

 

Thanks Wesley.. Which therefore still makes Gods love conditional.

Edit - Well I don't get this, every time I attempt to write a new post, it attaches it to this one, as an edit.

[LovePrevails]

I believe the bible to be true because it was written by 40 different men, over thousands of years and it lines up and is consistent.  

 

How would it be possible to believe the bible given all these contradictons:

[PatrickC]

Xelent/Wesley:

I've already told you I have not found the doctrinal hell to be true. 

 

I agree with you that if that were the case, I wouldn't be worshiping the judeo-christian god either. 

 

Well who are you worshiping then?.. It sounds like a tailor made buffet of your choosing... This is like, hey meet my invisible friend for whom I've given all these pleasant attributes too.

[Omegahero09]

LovePrevails:I stopped after looking up the context of the two first points. Both passages were taken out of context and were labeled contradictions. I will provide the first to you but I'm not going to sit here and teach you the text- because that'd be exhaustive and boring. God's Everlasting Anger?

 

The book of Micah was written for and to Samaria and Jerusalem- Micah 1:1 "The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem."In the context given in the video Micah 7:18 is talking about God showing mercy to Jerusalem and Samaria. Jeremiah's context (like Micah and many books of the bible) is provided in the first verses: Jer 1:1-2 "The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign." So- Jeremiah is about the Lord and the kingdom of that time. The passage given in the video has it's own context Jer 17:1 "The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron..." so when God says He is angered against them forever, this is no different from when He was angered against the Jews in the old testament, when they went against His contracts which He made with them. In any case- this all still aligns correctly, but when taken from it's context you can say whatever you want with the bible- to include declaring contradictions. 

Xelent: The God of the bible- who I understand to be responsible behind I.D. Everything I'm telling you is what I understand to be true of the text, and if not I will state explicitly what is my opinion. I apologize to all who think I am trolling. Again- I opened this thread to run my principles against the gambit of atheism.  

[PatrickC]

 I apologize to all who think I am trolling. Again- I opened this thread to run my principles against the gambit of atheism.

 

The trouble is, it seems you make up those principles as you go along.

[Xtort]

It's interesting because I would argue that to not acknowledge the evidence of design and ignoring the laws of science to be delusional. Evolution is immensely flawed, and there are no other viable theories for the origins of the universe that I am aware of. I would argue that evolution and atheism take just as much faith if not more than most religions to believe as truth. Pardon me for finding this humorous- but I don't think it can be proven that there isn't a god. 

 

Order and consistency are not the same as design.  The way you evidence design is by identifying a designer.  Otherwise all you're observing are naturally occuring repeating patters based on naturalistic phenomenon.

 

For example, beaches are highly ordered phenomenon.  The sand is ordered from largest to smallest in a gradient pattern.  Yet this isn't because someone designed beaches to be this way, it's because of the laws of physics.

[Ray H.]

omegahero09,

 

Your argument is that scripture cannot be taken out of context and that it only applies to those it is explicitly addressed. Since you clearly believe that the Bible is relevant to your life, please, provide specific verses that form your beliefs and the verses that establish that these are explicit messages to you or a group of which you are a part.

[Kevin Beal]

[powder]

 

I apologize to all who think I am trolling. Again- I opened this thread to run my principles against the gambit of atheism.  

 

Ok omega, I'll take the bait.  I like religious debates, though I am fascinated that you would choose to have one in a place like this.

 

- You claim that your 'faith' or 'principles', I don't really understand what you mean by the word principles but you did use it, are based on a logically consistent interpretation of scripture.  Is that right?

 

- would you say that you have a more rational empirically based faith that uses correct interpretation of the bible?  

 

- I grew up with religious indoctrination and have spent many years studying the history of religion.  I would say that based on your claims the vast majority of christians, both past and present, have a different interpretation and you think they have got it wrong?  Is that right?

 

-  Have you studied the history of the christian movement up through to the renaissance?  Did you know that up until the last of the 'christians' who did not join the church of rome were wiped out they did not have the same belief as you and other modern christians who they all lumped into the category of the 'roman cult'?  In fact, what they believed was more different than modern christian belief is compared to the islamic belief system.  (historically the christians called the roman church the 'babyolonian/roman cult' and the church of rome called the followers of jesus's teachings 'heretics' and gave them specific names like 'bogomils' 'cathars', 'waldensians' etc based on the writings of the leaders of the crusades) 

 

-  Did you know that the king james bible, that all contemporary bibles are based on, was not the same as the scriptures used by the early followers of jesus or even the reformers?  how much do you know about king james, his family and affiliations?

 

-  I would be interested to hear your response to Ray H's questions above.  

[Lowe D]

@ omegahero

 

Have you ever noticed that Elohim is an evil spirit?  According to scripture he has committed at least one act of genocide, and many murders besides, and also commanded his people to commit murders.

 

He allowed his own son to be tortured, murdered, and sent to hell, for the benefit of the same people whom he had killed en masse, and abandoned to live with hardship.  He cared less for his son than for humans whom he did not like at all.

 

...

 

If you must worship somebody, why not worship the devil?  Scripture never describes the devil committing crimes against humanity, other than tempting Eve.  He wants to defeat Elohim, who is evil, and he shows the virtue of courage.

 

Even in the face of tyranny he stands up for himself, to the point of being cast out of heaven.  That's more courage than Elohim has ever shown.  Revelations says he'll fail, but Norse lore said the same of the Aesir, and you'd still have been wrong to side with their enemies.

[dinotrader]

Wesley: correction: the truth taught by the bible i.e. the truth as christians understand it.I don't believe in doctrine. I only believe in the bible. Doctrines are basically theories about the texts and our reality which are not based from within the text- only from some form of reasoning, guessing, or assuming. Examples of doctrine are: Trinitarian doctrine, doctrine of original sin, the doctrine of lucifer, the doctrine of hell, etc. Most churches are heinously incorrect in their teachings because their doctrines differ from what the text says. The Westboro Baptist Church for example apparently didn't read all the parts of the bible which tells christians to not be wrathful, or quick to judge, etc etc.  

I have found the book to be an incredible work, one that could not have possibly been forged, and one w/o error. And before we start looking to the text for errors that we google- keep in mind this is like going back through old newspapers from another country that are centuries old, and if you don't have the correct context in mind you can make those papers say literally anything you want. Hence doctrine. 

Pepin:I am a christian because I am a moral absolutist, and have realized there is no possible way that the world around us could have just happened- there is overwhelming evidence of a designer. Additionally I've found in my search for the truths of the world- that the bible and it's teachings is the only religion which I've found to be without flaw. 

Kevin:Literally- it would take the presence of another god to disprove my beliefs. I am not convinced that this world just formed out of nothing. The second law of thermodynamics counters literally all other theories of our origins and our universes origins. Thus it is my opinion that I.D. is the only rational and scientific explanation for the universes origin. This is of course tabling my personal experiences with prayer and anecdotes, which for future reference- I will not bring to this conversation of my own volition.  

 

O-Hero,

 

You quote the laws of thermodynamics. I hear many believers of Intelligent Design make this argument. That it is not possible to shake a box full of watch parts and come up with a watch, let alone a functioning one. Therefore if you encounter something which is "made" it must have a "maker". The laws of thermodynamics describe machines and non-living natural elements, and how heat and energy react with them. They describe things like why a power source is finite, and how it eventually is spent and transformed, the different states of matter, weather systems, and so forth. In reference to the universe itself, mechanical laws are only discussed in the most abstract sense. Living things are not "made". They are, well, living things.

 

The Earth resides, quite by happy accident, in an orbit called a Cinderella Zone - not too hot, not too cold - as it were. Neither the Earth nor the sun are perfect; both will eventually run their course and be destroyed by those thermodynamic laws of yours. Life exists here only because all of the elements necessary for life are here, and only for a brief speck of universal time. The majestic, slow cycle of forming suns and planets, and evolving life, is happening in uncountable billions of places all around the universe.

 

Primitive self-aware beings, lacking science, will always wonder how things came to be, and where the spirit goes after the body is lifeless. And so gods are made. Judaism and Zoroastrianism both came about in the 500 BC's - shall we not believe in the great and good god Mazda? In the end, the burden of proof lies with the declarer that a thing exists. It is not incumbent upon the doubter to prove that said thing does not exist.

[Kevin Beal]

You quote the laws of thermodynamics. I hear many believers of Intelligent Design make this argument. That it is not possible to shake a box full of watch parts and come up with a watch, let alone a functioning one. Therefore if you encounter something which is "made" it must have a "maker".

Not to mention that you can't shake a box full of god parts and get a god. His god then must have been created.

[Omegahero09]

So I've learned quite a bit from you all. Take this as a victory to yourselves.I love talking about this stuff, and if you would like to keep the discussion with me you may pm me. I hope you all are enjoying the fall weather. See you all on the boards.

[powder]

So I've learned quite a bit from you all. Take this as a victory to yourselves.I love talking about this stuff, and if you would like to keep the discussion with me you may pm me. I hope you all are enjoying the fall weather. See you all on the boards.

ahh, darn...  

[Culain]

Can I ask a single question before you go?

 

Was there anything said in this discussion that will at least make you second guess or change some of your original stances?

 

Regardless of whether any of us 'won', both sides can have a victory as long as they felt hat they learned something new.