IMO in my opinion
IMHO in my humble opinion

 

I'm curious, what SINS did a baby commit that it needs saved from? It seems to be a fundamental belief that we all had committed some sin by being born .... hogwash!!! If Christ died for your sins, why are committing them? It seems a little sacriligious to let some guy die 'cause you just have to sin.

Don't make sense : (

 

SFC:

I agree with you.

One problem we have is complicating Christianity. It's very simple actually. You either believe or you don't. You have your own reasons and thoughts on the subject, but ultimately every person will have to make a choice whether or not to follow Christ. They will have to think in their minds at least this:
When I die, where will I go, or will I go anywhere? That's all that can happen. There are no other ways of thinking. What happens after a person dies? Afterlife? Nothing? Reincarnation? Once you figure out which one of these you believe will happen, you'll know where you stand with Christianity Period

IMO I would rather not risk hell.

 

Oh, how I love propaganda...
SFC DAVIS, you are just like all the rest of the soapbox bible thumpers. You present theory as absolute fact, and threaten punishment for non-compliance.
I once knocked 4 teeth out of a guy like you, because he hopped off his chair, set down his bible, and told my sister she was "nothing but a two-bit ******* ***** who deserved to die."as I was escorting her into a clinic. He saw fit to tell her that based upon what he thought god wanted him to do. Did god want him to lose 4 teeth and get knocked unconcious? He sure didn't think so!
Nascar Nut, are you going to heaven? Tell me why. You know, when I was 9, I "accepted Jesus as my personal savior", but now I am who I am now. Am I going to heaven? Or does that exemption expire? Because I wouldn't have wasted my 30 minutes on that silly ritual and prayer if I knew it was going to have to renew it.
To the guy who's so offended, come off it. Christians have offended me thousands of times. I think your belief system is garbage...that's my opinion and I don't care if it offends you. Sorry...NOT.
BigD has put into eloquence what I have been unable to. BigD, can I buy you a beer next time I'm in whatever town you live in? Heck, I'll buy you a pitcher and we'll take your truck and splash mud on missionaries!
Yee haw.
Don't take this the wrong way, guys, but you are missing out on a whole lot of really fun stuff by rejecting sin. Besides, without sin, what would you fight against? So you christians owe me one for giving you a justification for all the problems supposedly not caused by god, because if not for the sinner, there wouldn't be the saved.
BDV, Master of Sin and Debauchery

 

If it is impossible to understand what God wants, how can you know the manner in which you should act to please him or worship him?

It is impossible to fully understand God. It is quite possible to understand God in a very limited way, as I do. Nobody has complete knowledge on anything. We are functioning on a limited basis. I have no idea what heaven is, or the nature of God. I stated in my "What I believe" thread the qualities of God but that's all I know. There must be much more beyond anyone's grasp.

The world doesn't revolve around man. The man is not the center of wisdom or knowledge, we are just eating tiny crumbs off the table of truth, some more, others less but we are all pretty ignorant.


-----------------

You presented a theory in this post, a rational argument, and you challenged everyone to live up to that theory.

I did. Not everyone, but mainly Christians. Although the challenge is just as valid for non-Christians as well. I want a Muslim to be a consistent Muslim who lives his faith. Not a token one.

The natural assumption would be that you are attempting to live up to your own ideals. You are much like a witness in murder case or a scientist, your credibility is the CORNER STONE of your post.

Maybe in practical terms, you are right, but theoretically the validity of the message does not depend on the credibility of the messenger. I could be a 12 year old boy, or a 90 year old woman, or anything in between and it wouldn't invalidate my ideas - if they are correct. If they are not correct, no person in the world could make them correct.

If you yourself do not live by your statement, then of what value is it?

But, you are absolutely right on the money here. I have no moral right to ask others to do something I do not do myself, for that would perhaps not totally invalidate the message, but cast some serious doubts about its truth. It's like the inventor of internal combustion engine who prefers to travel by horse. Doesn't inspire the masses about the invention and the change.

You are very demanding -- and you are right to be demanding. You should demand more than you have been getting from token Christians, you should demand tangible, real results, not lip service to ideals, and none of this "saved by Jesus" stuff (which doesn't mean anything).

 

Carpe_diem,

I believe there is no absolute truth, crumb or otherwise.

As for wisdom and knowledge, they are the inventions of man just as all concepts are.
I'm pretty sure you would agree that "reality" goes far beyond any concept we can formulate
One must remember not to confuse concepts with the realities
they only point to or approximate.

The rest of your statement I take no exception to.


BTW hope you are well.

 

.....for god so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son...that whosoever shall believeth in Him would not perish but have everlasting Life.....

 

Short 'n sweet. I like it.

Nascar Nut, are you going to heaven? Tell me why. You know, when I was 9, I "accepted Jesus as my personal savior", but now I am who I am now. Am I going to heaven? Or does that exemption expire? Because I wouldn't have wasted my 30 minutes on that silly ritual and prayer if I knew it was going to have to renew it.

Yes, I am going to Heaven. I know I'm going to heaven because of the verse above. I, too accepted Christ as my personal savior when I was 9. Are you going to Heaven, well, my personal thoughts are no. Again, because of the verse above. No, I personally don't believe you HAVE to renew your faith BUT, if you start to backslide and you get farther and farther away from GOD, then yes you should renew your faith. From the sounds of it, I wonder if you really gave your life to JESUS.

 

Sorry I took so long to get back to you.

Here is my take. You have got a pretty interesting view of truth and inspiration. Here it is. The Bible is TRUE as far as it is translated correctly. See unlike most Christians out there. I believe the Bible is subject to human imperfection. Orginally they were the words of God, but there is not one original document from any of the transcribers. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, anyone. All we have are copies. And it was a very common practice in midevil times, because of the translation from Aramaic and Greek that words were added or taken away or even mistranslated, and meaning was lost. God's word endures forever, but the Bible is a book, and is subject to corruption by men. Therefore, when I read the Bible, I pray to God for INSPIRATION to help me sort out the truth from the untruth. Obviously the Bible is not complete. It makes references to books that are not in it and all of Christ's life from age 12 - 30 is missing. There are many Christians out there who are probably hating me and I will probably here about it for calling the Bible flawed.

As far as truth and inspiration go. Just as you said truth is truth and does not need inspiration, but truth can be hidden amongst lies that appear to be truth. So we need INSPIRATION to show us the truth and once we have recognized the truth, we need to act upon it. Obviously, you and I have differing opinions on truth, otherwise we wouldn't be arguing. Now comes the inspiration part which I can't help you with. I could tell you til I die that it is true but it wouldn't do you any good. You are going to have to find out for your self

As far as the Old Testament goes. God told them what they need to do and if they did that they would be blessed and would be under his protection, but if they didn't bad things would happen. When they obeyed, they were happy and prosperous and did wonderful things, because God was aiding them, but once they stopped obeying them, he withdrew his protection and what happened. Everything you mentioned above. They were enslaved, raped, murdered, all manner of afflictions. All they had to do was obey, and they weren't all that hard of things to do. The ten commandments. Before those was the Law of Moses. Which was very strict and constituted harsh penalties for crimes such as stealing, rape, and murder. Much more harsh than todays laws. Personally, I think some of them should be brought back. Anyway, the Old Testament is there. You need to remember another thing. The Bible is a book of history. I tells what happened over a period of time. It has the words of God in it, but much of it is a chronological synopsis of what happened over a period of thousands of years, in and around Jerusalem. So there you have it.

I'll end with this:

"The more I delve into the relm of science, the closer I come to a belief in God."

Albert Einstein

 

This is an interesting point. Someone once told me this about faith. You take a step into the dark only to find that the path is lighted before you. Reading the Bible will tell you what you need to do. Now you have to do it. Then you will see the results. It's called exercising your faith.

 

I am a follower of Christ, but I am with you on this one. Little children do not have a mind to sin. They don't know the difference between right and wrong and therefore cannot be held accountable for their actions. However, eventually they grow up and do become accountable for their actions. The question is when does that accountability begin. You cannot sin if you don't know that it is wrong. A sin is a willfull rebellion against God and his law. You knew it was wrong but you did it anyway.

 

I believe there is no absolute truth, crumb or otherwise.

Why? Sounds like a really dogmatic statement.

Have you reached that idea because you want to, and are now just looking for evidence to support that worldview? Instead of considering evidence and following where it leads you, even if in the process you have to discard other irrencilable viewpoints?

As for wisdom and knowledge, they are the inventions of man just as all concepts are.

Knowledge is a sum of all truths. I make an absolute statement that the man does not know all truths. IMO, we don't even know a tiny percentage of all truths. Millennia from now, mankind will surely know more. But our knowledge will always remain incomplete and will always progress from one truth to another, adding more info.

I'm pretty sure you would agree that "reality" goes far beyond any concept we can formulate One must remember not to confuse concepts with the realities they only point to or approximate.


I agree and that's exactly the point. Just because we don't understand God, or don't know who or what God is, or why, or where, or anything on the matter, doesn't matter God, whatever the nature of God is, doesn't exist. I am the first to confess: If God is an alphabet, I am only struggling to understand the first letter, hoping to read someday (which I probably never will). Maybe someday I will learn that God doesn't exist and discard that idea, and invent my own religon and ethics. But thus far, the more I study, the more I am convinced otherwise.


It's like this, just because we don't know some ancient extinct dialect of Chinese, doesn't mean it didn't exist. The truth is greater than our knowledge, as you point out.

 

I apologize for the length, but this cannot be explained in any shorter length:

Before we can discuss the existence of a thing, we must define it. Christians have endowed their God with all of the following attributes: He is eternal, all-powerful, and created everything. He created all the laws of nature and can change anything by an act of will. He is all-good, all-loving, and perfectly just. He is a personal God who experiences all of the emotions a human does. He is all-knowing. He sees everything past and future.

God's creation was originally perfect, but humans, by disobeying him, brought imperfection into the world. Humans are evil and sinful, and must suffer in this world because of their sinfulness. God gives humans the opportunity to accept forgiveness for their sin, and all who do will be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven, but while they are on earth, they must suffer for his sake. All humans who choose not to accept this forgiveness must go to hell and be tormented for eternity.

These attributes of God are related by the Bible, which Christians believe to be the perfect and true Word of God.

I intend to show that the above concepts of God are completely incompatible and so reveal the impossibility of all of them being true.

Perfection seeks even more perfection

What did God do during that eternity before he created everything? If God was all that existed back then, what disturbed the eternal equilibrium and compelled him to create? Was he bored? Was he lonely? God is supposed to be perfect. If something is perfect, it is complete--it needs nothing else. We humans engage in activities because we are pursuing that elusive perfection, because there is disequilibrium caused by a difference between what we are and what we want to be. If God is perfect, there can be no disequilibrium. There is nothing he needs, nothing he desires, and nothing he must or will do. A God who is perfect does nothing except exist. A perfect creator God is impossible.

Perfection begets imperfection

But, for the sake of argument, let's continue. Let us suppose that this perfect God did create the universe. Humans were the crown of his creation, since they were created in God's image and have the ability to make decisions. However, these humans spoiled the original perfection by choosing to disobey God.

What!? If something is perfect, nothing imperfect can come from it. Someone once said that bad fruit cannot come from a good tree, and yet this "perfect" God created a "perfect" universe which was rendered imperfect by the "perfect" humans. The ultimate source of imperfection is God. What is perfect cannot become imperfect, so humans must have been created imperfect. What is perfect cannot create anything imperfect, so God must be imperfect to have created these imperfect humans. A perfect God who creates imperfect humans is impossible.

The Freewill Argument

The Christians' objection to this argument involves freewill. They say that a being must have freewill to be happy. The omnibenevolent God did not wish to create robots, so he gave humans freewill to enable them to experience love and happiness. But the humans used this freewill to choose evil, and introduced imperfection into God's originally perfect universe. God had no control over this decision, so the blame for our imperfect universe is on the humans, not God.

Here is why the argument is weak. First, if God is omnipotent, then the assumption that freewill is necessary for happiness is false. If God could make it a rule that only beings with freewill may experience happiness, then he could just as easily have made it a rule that only robots may experience happiness. The latter option is clearly superior, since perfect robots will never make decisions which could render them or their creator unhappy, whereas beings with freewill could. A perfect and omnipotent God who creates beings capable of ruining their own happiness is impossible.

Second, even if we were to allow the necessity of freewill for happiness, God could have created humans with freewill who did not have the ability to choose evil, but to choose between several good options.

Third, God supposedly has freewill, and yet he does not make imperfect decisions. If humans are miniature images of God, our decisions should likewise be perfect. Also, the occupants of heaven, who presumably must have freewill to be happy, will never use that freewill to make imperfect decisions. Why would the originally perfect humans do differently?

The point remains: the presence of imperfections in the universe disproves the supposed perfection of its creator.

All-good God knowingly creates future suffering

God is omniscient. When he created the universe, he saw the sufferings which humans would endure as a result of the sin of those original humans. He heard the screams of the damned. Surely he would have known that it would have been better for those humans to never have been born (in fact, the Bible says this very thing), and surely this all-compassionate deity would have foregone the creation of a universe destined to imperfection in which many of the humans were doomed to eternal suffering. A perfectly compassionate being who creates beings which he knows are doomed to suffer is impossible.

Infinite punishment for finite sins

God is perfectly just, and yet he sentences the imperfect humans he created to infinite suffering in hell for finite sins. Clearly, a limited offense does not warrant unlimited punishment. God's sentencing of the imperfect humans to an eternity in hell for a mere mortal lifetime of sin is infinitely more unjust than this punishment. The absurd injustice of this infinite punishment is even greater when we consider that the ultimate source of human imperfection is the God who created them. A perfectly just God who sentences his imperfect creation to infinite punishment for finite sins is impossible.

continued in the next post.................................

 

Continued..................
Belief more important than action

Consider all of the people who live in the remote regions of the world who have never even heard the "gospel" of Jesus Christ. Consider the people who have naturally adhered to the religion of their parents and nation as they had been taught to do since birth. If we are to believe the Christians, all of these people will perish in the eternal fire for not believing in Jesus. It does not matter how just, kind, and generous they have been with their fellow humans during their lifetime: if they do not accept the gospel of Jesus, they are condemned. No just God would ever judge a man by his beliefs rather than his actions.

Perfection's imperfect revelation

The Bible is supposedly God's perfect Word. It contains instructions to humankind for avoiding the eternal fires of hell. How wonderful and kind of this God to provide us with this means of overcoming the problems for which he is ultimately responsible! The all-powerful God could have, by a mere act of will, eliminated all of the problems we humans must endure, but instead, in his infinite wisdom, he has opted to offer this indecipherable amalgam of books which is the Bible as a means for avoiding the hell which he has prepared for us. The perfect God has decided to reveal his wishes in this imperfect work, written in the imperfect language of imperfect man, translated, copied, interpreted, voted on, and related by imperfect man. No two men will ever agree what this perfect word of God is supposed to mean, since much of it is either self- contradictory, or obscured by enigmatic symbols. And yet the perfect God expects us imperfect humans to understand this paradoxical riddle using the imperfect minds with which he has equipped us. Surely the all-wise and all-powerful God would have known that it would have been better to reveal his perfect will directly to each of us, rather than to allow it to be debased and perverted by the imperfect language and botched interpretations of man.

Contradictory justice

One need look to no source other than the Bible to discover its imperfections, for it contradicts itself and thus exposes its own imperfection. It contradicts itself on matters of justice, for the same just God who assures his people that sons shall not be punished for the sins of their fathers turns around and destroys an entire household for the sin of one man (he had stolen some of Yahweh's war loot). It was this same Yahweh who afflicted thousands of his innocent people with plague and death to punish their evil king David for taking a census (?!). It was this same Yahweh who allowed the humans to slaughter his son because the perfect Yahweh had botched his own creation. Consider how many have been stoned, burned, slaughtered, raped, and enslaved because of Yahweh's skewed sense of justice. The blood of innocent babies is on the perfect, just, compassionate hands of Yahweh.

Contradictory history

The Bible contradicts itself on matters of history. A person who reads and compares the contents of the Bible will be confused about exactly who Esau's wives were, whether Timnah was a concubine or a son, and whether Jesus' earthly lineage is through Solomon or his brother Nathan. These are but a few of hundreds of documented historical contradictions. If the Bible cannot confirm itself in mundane earthly matters, how are we to trust it on moral and spiritual matters?

Unfulfilled prophecy

The Bible misinterprets its own prophecies. Read Isaiah 7 and compare it to Matthew 1 to find but one of many misinterpreted prophecies of which Christians are either passively or willfully ignorant. The fulfillment of prophecy in the Bible is cited as proof of its divine inspiration, and yet here is but one major example of a prophecy whose intended meaning has been and continues to be twisted to support subsequent absurd and false doctrines. There are no ends to which the credulous will not go to support their feeble beliefs in the face of compelling evidence against them.

The Bible is imperfect. It only takes one imperfection to destroy the supposed perfection of this alleged Word of God. Many have been found. A perfect God who reveals his perfect will in an imperfect book is impossible.

The Omniscient changes the future

A God who knows the future is powerless to change it. An omniscient God who is all-powerful and freewilled is impossible.

The Omniscient is surprised

A God who knows everything cannot have emotions. The Bible says that God experiences all of the emotions of humans, including anger, sadness, and happiness. We humans experience emotions as a result of new knowledge. A man who had formerly been ignorant of his wife's infidelity will experience the emotions of anger and sadness only after he has learned what had previously been hidden. In contrast, the omniscient God is ignorant of nothing. Nothing is hidden from him, nothing new may be revealed to him, so there is no gained knowledge to which he may emotively react.

We humans experience anger and frustration when something is wrong which we cannot fix. The perfect, omnipotent God, however, can fix anything. Humans experience longing for things we lack. The perfect God lacks nothing. An omniscient, omnipotent, and perfect God who experiences emotion is impossible.

The conclusion of the matter

I have offered arguments for the impossibility, and thus the non- existence, of the Christian God Yahweh. No reasonable and freethinking individual can accept the existence of a being whose nature is so contradictory as that of Yahweh, the "perfect" creator of our imperfect universe.

 

If God is perfect He`ll lead me to a one-speed wiper motor for my `65....Its raining and I need a miracle...!!!