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Topic started on 8-4-2008 @ 08:51 AM by Ogre14t

I have a question about christ. Everyone agrees that if "hevan" exists, it's a wonderful, glorious place?

We know that if hevan exists, and we lead a good life, we'll go there?

Looking at these 2 facts, the question bothers me... what kind of sacrifice did christ make? He (supposedly) left a world that was out to get him, taking all sin with him, and went to a better place. Sounds to me like he treded up.

reply posted on 8-4-2008 @ 09:00 AM by lordtyp0

Im not Christian, but I think it goes like this:

When the judgment day comes-he acts as a scapegoat to those deemed worthy-ie: He accepts the punishment for people to allow them to move upwards-so to speak.

That is how I learned it anyway, and no, I have no idea how that fits into the crucification etc.. Perhaps the crucification was paying for the sins of the 'worthy' in advance, if so-it tosses a bit of a skew on how bad 'hell' is, not to mention free will as it could be inferred he knew everyone he was atoning for. (Hard to pay for something without knowing the volume etc.).

But, I'm not a christian, so hopefully some bible thumpers will respond soon

reply posted on 8-4-2008 @ 09:17 AM by forestlady

I went to Christian schools in elementary school and this is what they taught me:
The sacrifice is when he died on the cross.It was to redeem us for the world's past sins so we could all be saved and redeemed. That is why they call him the Savior.
Im not Christian any more, but I doubt that theology has changed much. Hope this helps.

reply posted on 8-4-2008 @ 09:43 AM by TheRedneck

As I understand it, it's a bit more complicated than that. The idea that if we lead a 'good life', we go to this wonderful place called heaven just isn't Biblical, although it has been taught as Biblical for centuries.

When Adam and Eve sinned (ate the one fruit they were commanded not to eat), they turned away from God. When this happened, they were forced to bear a curse that brought them down to the status of intelligent animals, rather than a higher being. For centuries, this curse worked against them and their children, leading to sickness, disease, labor, pain, hunger... all the evils that the Greeks attributed to Pandora's Box. Now, according to the laws God set down when he made the place, the penalty for this sin, the way to atone for it, was death. The problem was that if man died to atone for his sin, he was dead before the atonement was complete, so it did little good.

Since this was not what God wanted, he set a plan into motion to pay for that sin himself. He sent Jesus, who was not born of a man and thusly had no original sin (apparently the original sin was upon Adam and not Eve), to die in the place of man. That was the significance of the cross.

Think about it like this: A man goes wild on a gambling spree and runs up trillions of dollars of debt. He can never repay it. His children can never repay it. His grandchildren can never repay it. Just the interest is more than they can ever repay, so they keep gambling, making a bigger debt. Now along comes another man who can pay it. He doesn't owe the debt, he never did anything to cause the debt, but he decides to pay it anyway, out of love. All that is left is for the debtors to sign off that it's paid.

Now the debt is satisfied. But should the original debtors refuse to believe it, refuse to sign off that all is well, they will still be trying to gamble and pay off something that is already settled. They could be free of the worry and pain and gambling, if only they would listen to the next guy who said "Someone already paid it off" and sign the paper.

The cross was more than a simple trade-up as well. Jesus was crucified, a horrible experience. Crucifixion was not all that popular since it was so horrendous and painful for the victim. It was also much easier to just stone someone. A crucifixion was almost a party to celebrate the death of the victim; they were publicly ridiculed and shamed even by their friends and family. Those nails were not smooth and shiny; they were made by a blacksmith and were pretty crude. Three took His whole body weight, and the wounds were aggravated every time He moved. The process was slow and torturous, as He had to first be 'prepared'... that included whippings and beatings so severe that even the Roman soldiers started holding back finally. When He asked for water, He was given vinegar. Try drinking vinegar sometime when you are really thirsty; it just ain't the same as water.

When dead, according to the Bible, Jesus went into 'hell', not the burning pit of fire and brimstone, but the underground, to be further tormented by Satan and his minions. Apparently, Satan had done this many times with the earlier prophets. Only this time, Jesus defeated them, and was able to rise from the dead because of that.

So yeah, I guess you could say He traded up, but it was a long torturous trade. And yes, He was the scapegoat; he paid for the crimes against God that had ever been committed or that ever would be committed, and in return only asked for acknowledgment of the sacrifice He made. So, in closing, I personally owed more than I could ever hope to pay. Jesus paid the bill for me, and asked in return that I simply accept it as paid. I think I'm the one who really traded up.

Hope that makes sense and helps. [/Bible-thumping]

TheRedneck

reply posted on 8-4-2008 @ 12:04 PM by jmdewey60

Most of the time that I have spent trying to study salvation has been spent on the legalistic side, where the pure life of Jesus is granted to our account, as if we had lived it our selves.
The important thing to keep in mind when considering our salvation, through Jesus is this: 1) representative rightiousness. 2) substitutionary death.
I have only recently tryed to seriously understand the sacrificial aspect of salvation.
What I found is there really is not a sacrifice, as in a ritualistic form.
It is closer to murder.
The actual act of the murder is less important than the intent.
The intent of Jesus, in allowing himself to be murdered, was to save his followers, and the movement he had founded, from being crushed out.
Once the leader and cult figure of the movement was out of the picture, the authorities would not feel it neccessary to go through the trouble of hunting down and executing the followers.
The mechanism by which we, today, recieve the benifit of this sacrifice is difficult to understand.
First we have to look at how the life of Jesus benifits us.
It is acceptable to God in its perfection.
What about the death.
It is effective in its completeness.
Jesus did not just die in the same way that we all die, naturaly.
Jesus was cut off from God.
Jesus chose to die completly, as we would die, after we were raised from the dead and called to judgement and found guilty and left with no future place in God's creation.
So, just as Jesus' life was acceptable to God, by vertue of its purity and completeness, to be of use to be presented as the representation for mankind, the purity and completeness of Jesus' death makes it effective to turn away God's anger at the sins against His laws.
His death becomes the substitution for what would be our own punishment for our activities.

reply posted on 8-4-2008 @ 04:56 PM by TheWalkingFox

Well, it goes a little something like this.

Long, long ago at the dawn of mankind. God made a tree, and then pointed it out to his newest take on the basic primate model, and said, "this tree will make you smart and strong and powerful and enlarge your penis by two to three inches. But no touchie!"
God then sends one of his creations to tempt man's wife to eat the fruit from this tree anyway. Woman ate of the tree, got smart, and decided to test that two to three inches thing and shared with man.
God then jumped out of the bushes, and because God is apparently Ashton Kucher, basically went "y'all got punk'd!" and then cursed them with hardship, suffering, pain, and sin, and kicked them the hell out of his garden.
Fast-forward several hundred years. In this span of time, God has obliterated the whole of mankind at least once for practicing the sinful behavior he cursed them with, and had numerous occasions of more localized genocides. He even took time from his day to knock over a tall building and curse everyone trying to build it to never understand each other.

Okay, fast-forward a few more hundred years, we stopped a little early. There are three gods now that are all the smae guy, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Basically God got tired of his creations that he cursed with sin being sinful, and had discovered that killing and cursing and dooming them really didn't stop them. So what God did, he went and knocked up a virgin without her consent and imbued himself into the kid.
Thirty-three years later, this kid is grown up and being all saintly and stuff, but that';s not good enough. You see, he has to be sacrificed to aleive mankind of sin. So... He is.

So to recap. An immortal omnipotent being who lives in a state of eternal bliss plagued mankind with all sorts of sin and hardship and suffering because of an arguably bad decision by some primeval ancestors. After killing htem off for a while, he decides to knock a chick up so she will give birth to him, then God wanders around until he's killed - Of course, being an omnipotent, immortal being to begin with he doesn't actually die, just goes back to where he started. And then states that all sin is abolished (even though it's not) - And then decides all sin is abolished if people believe in him (which it isn't)

So... Really, it wasn't much of a sacrifice to do something you were going to do anyway in order to clean up a mess that you made in the first place, especially if you aren't actually losing anything and are, in fact, rewarding yourself for the sacrifice.

reply posted on 10-4-2008 @ 11:08 AM by TheRedneck

reply to post by TheWalkingFox

You asked for this...

Long, long ago at the dawn of mankind. God made a tree, and then pointed it out to his newest take on the basic primate model, and said, "this tree will make you smart and strong and powerful and enlarge your penis by two to three inches. But no touchie!"

Nope, sorry. God didn't say the tree would make anyone smart; that would be the serpent. And nothing was said about Viagra.

God then sends one of his creations to tempt man's wife to eat the fruit from this tree anyway. Woman ate of the tree, got smart, and decided to test that two to three inches thing and shared with man.

Again, God didn't send the serpent. And still no mention of Viagra.

God then jumped out of the bushes, and because God is apparently Ashton Kucher, basically went "y'all got punk'd!" and then cursed them with hardship, suffering, pain, and sin, and kicked them the hell out of his garden.

Exactly where does it say God was hiding in ambush? And exactly where does it say that God placed the curse on them?

God informed them of the curse they placed on themselves. If you do more than listen to some evangelical self-righteous idiot, you'll know that the Bible wasn't written in Old English. It was written in Ancient Hebrew. The original writings still exist, thanks to monks who devoted their lives to churning out copies by hand. So it can still be studied. The closest translation is that God said "Because you have done this, you are now cursed", not "Because you did this, I am cursing you." He also didn't tell them they would die, but rather that they had brought death into their reality. A semantic difference? I don't think so. I will die someday, but that is different from a mugger threatening to make me die now if I don't hand over my cash.

Fast-forward several hundred years. In this span of time, God has obliterated the whole of mankind at least once for practicing the sinful behavior he cursed them with, and had numerous occasions of more localized genocides. He even took time from his day to knock over a tall building and curse everyone trying to build it to never understand each other.

Again, God didn't place the curse. He didn't obliterate the whole of mankind; else we wouldn't be working these silly hunks of dirty silicon. As for localized genocides, that has been discussed in many other threads. Whether or not these genocides were justifiable is a matter that is open to debate. Could it be that the inhabitants possessed some genetic problem that could not be allowed to exist (Remember that the 'sons of God' had taken women to themselves)? Or could it have all been for a greater good? Before you jump too fast at that supposedly inhuman statement, remember the thousands upon thousands of people that were killed at the end of WWII in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That was almost a genocide in itself. Yet, without those deaths, the war would quite probably have been won by the Axis powers who were close to developing the same atomic bomb. I doubt they would have stopped after two cities, since they were open about their intentions of worldwide conquest.

Okay, fast-forward a few more hundred years, we stopped a little early. There are three gods now that are all the smae guy, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Nope, always was. The first mention of God in Genesis translates as 'Gods', indicating the Trinity.

Basically God got tired of his creations that he cursed with sin being sinful, and had discovered that killing and cursing and dooming them really didn't stop them.

Hmm, you must have missed the hundreds of verses that mentioned how God was always upset when He saw sin running rampant. And again, He didn't curse anyone with sin.

So what God did, he went and knocked up a virgin without her consent and imbued himself into the kid.

A pretty loose description, but slightly accurate (which is more than you have done so far

). Jesus was born of a virgin mother via the Holy Spirit, yes, but not 'imbued' into another child.

Thirty-three years later, this kid is grown up and being all saintly and stuff, but that';s not good enough. You see, he has to be sacrificed to aleive mankind of sin. So... He is.

You got one right! Clap, clap, clap!

So to recap. An immortal omnipotent being who lives in a state of eternal bliss plagued mankind with all sorts of sin and hardship and suffering because of an arguably bad decision by some primeval ancestors. After killing htem off for a while, he decides to knock a chick up so she will give birth to him, then God wanders around until he's killed - Of course, being an omnipotent, immortal being to begin with he doesn't actually die, just goes back to where he started. And then states that all sin is abolished (even though it's not) - And then decides all sin is abolished if people believe in him (which it isn't)

You know, that was awesome! I doubt you could have squeezed another misconception or misrepresentation into that. I don't even know where to start with a rebuttal, so I'll just go with a generalization.

It appears you have some serious issues with God. I really don't know what they are, but you remind me here of the child who grew up a miserly old man simply because Santa Claus didn't bring him a red wagon when he was younger. You look at the Christian religion as though looking at a palace and exclaiming "It's just a bunch of dead trees!"

I suggest you actually try reading the book with something akin to an open mind to what it says. A house is more than dead trees. A computer is more than dirty sand (doped silicon). A highway is more than a flat rock. And the Bible and Christianity is much more than that silly little synopsis you just penned.

So... Really, it wasn't much of a sacrifice to do something you were going to do anyway in order to clean up a mess that you made in the first place, especially if you aren't actually losing anything and are, in fact, rewarding yourself for the sacrifice.

Did you just confuse the Bible with the US Congress?

TheRedneck

[edit on 10-4-2008 by TheRedneck]

reply posted on 10-4-2008 @ 02:31 PM by Bigwhammy

reply to post by TheWalkingFox

Well, it goes a little something like this.

I know technically you are not an atheist, but there's another version of the tale.

reply posted on 10-4-2008 @ 03:01 PM by TheWalkingFox

Originally posted by TheRedneck
Nope, sorry. God didn't say the tree would make anyone smart; that would be the serpent. And nothing was said about Viagra.

Again, God didn't send the serpent. And still no mention of Viagra.

What is the serpent? Most Christians I have spoken with take hte serpent to be Satan.
What is Satan? The "head" fallen angel.
What is an angel? A being created with no purpose other than to servethe will of God.
Is there anything that exists outside of God ?According to the theology, no. A person can be apart from god according to themselves, but according to the Theology, God is still there.
The serpent, as Satan, is a servant of God, even if he chooses to not acknowledge it. See the book of Job for more on the God / Satan relationship. God exercises total control over Satan - the Adversary can do nothing against God's wishes.

Exactly where does it say God was hiding in ambush? And exactly where does it say that God placed the curse on them?

God did set the situation up for them to eat of the fruit in the first place. He created the tree, why? He showed Adam the tree, why? He sent the serpent to tempt Eve, why? He punishes them for all this, why?

God informed them of the curse they placed on themselves. If you do more than listen to some evangelical self-righteous idiot, you'll know that the Bible wasn't written in Old English. It was written in Ancient Hebrew. The original writings still exist, thanks to monks who devoted their lives to churning out copies by hand. So it can still be studied. The closest translation is that God said "Because you have done this, you are now cursed", not "Because you did this, I am cursing you."

God has no control over or responsibility for his creation? No matter the phrasing you use, when we take into consideration the infinite and omipotent nature of god, it is the same - He is cursing them. Everything that exists is in place because God put it there.

He also didn't tell them they would die, but rather that they had brought death into their reality. A semantic difference? I don't think so. I will die someday, but that is different from a mugger threatening to make me die now if I don't hand over my cash.

I understand this, and made no mention of it.

Again, God didn't place the curse. He didn't obliterate the whole of mankind; else we wouldn't be working these silly hunks of dirty silicon.

Okay, I thought I had mentioned the handfull of people on a boat.

As for localized genocides, that has been discussed in many other threads. Whether or not these genocides were justifiable is a matter that is open to debate. Could it be that the inhabitants possessed some genetic problem that could not be allowed to exist (Remember that the 'sons of God' had taken women to themselves)? Or could it have all been for a greater good? Before you jump too fast at that supposedly inhuman statement, remember the thousands upon thousands of people that were killed at the end of WWII in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That was almost a genocide in itself. Yet, without those deaths, the war would quite probably have been won by the Axis powers who were close to developing the same atomic bomb. I doubt they would have stopped after two cities, since they were open about their intentions of worldwide conquest.

The Bible tells us pretty clearly why these genocides were conducted. There's no mystery at all. Either the people offended god by some action - inhospitality and apostasy for Sodom and Gemmorah, for example - or they were simply living where the "favored" people wanted to live.

Nope, always was. The first mention of God in Genesis translates as 'Gods', indicating the Trinity.

And yet the Jews don't believe in a triune god.

Hmm, you must have missed the hundreds of verses that mentioned how God was always upset when He saw sin running rampant. And again, He didn't curse anyone with sin.

It was a kinda tortured sentence on my part. God was tired of seeing the sin that his sinful creatures were sinning with. When you read the later books of hte Old Testament, you see that God is downright neurotic and freaking out like a person with a five-pack-a-day habit being deprived of nicotine.

I'm just amking the statement that by th time the New Testament rolls around, he'd discovered that killing lots of people, and having other people kill lots of people, wasn't working that well.

A pretty loose description, but slightly accurate (which is more than you have done so far ). Jesus was born of a virgin mother via the Holy Spirit, yes, but not 'imbued' into another child.

Accuracy has nothing to do with agreeing with you

You got one right! Clap, clap, clap!

And yet there is still sin aplenty.

You know, that was awesome! I doubt you could have squeezed another misconception or misrepresentation into that. I don't even know where to start with a rebuttal, so I'll just go with a generalization.

Is God immortal? Yes.
Did God (or at least the way God set thigns up) drop the curse of sin on Mankind's heads? Yes.
Was Jesus God? According to Christians, yes.

Thus, god sacrificed himself to himself to allieve a situation he caused, a situation that, for some reason, still exists. If doing something to himself could cure this problem, couldn't he just as easily have reached out with his holy handi-wipe and wiped mankind clean of sin, without all the hullabaloo? If you say he couldn't do that, then isn't that placing restrictions on GOd?

It appears you have some serious issues with God. I really don't know what they are, but you remind me here of the child who grew up a miserly old man simply because Santa Claus didn't bring him a red wagon when he was younger. You look at the Christian religion as though looking at a palace and exclaiming "It's just a bunch of dead trees!"

I harbor doubts that your take on, say, Zeus would be any more flattering than my take on Yahweh. Does this mean that you have "issues" with Zeus? Nah. Simply that as someone who doesn't believe in Zeus, you feel free to pick and criticize and mock and roll your eyes to your heart's content. And really, a philanderer who likes doing his mistresses while shapeshifted into horses or swans or whatever?

I look at the Christian religion as more like a field long fallow, getting reclaimed by the forest it was carved out of. So you were kind of close, I guess. Of course I regard this as a positive thing.

I suggest you actually try reading the book with something akin to an open mind to what it says. A house is more than dead trees. A computer is more than dirty sand (doped silicon). A highway is more than a flat rock. And the Bible and Christianity is much more than that silly little synopsis you just penned.

I never claimed it was anything other than a hugely abridged version.

Did you just confuse the Bible with the US Congress?

TheRedneck

It'd be a pretty easy mistake to make, come to think of it.

reply posted on 10-4-2008 @ 03:03 PM by TheWalkingFox

reply to post by Bigwhammy

Looks pretty much like Christianity. Except for the Dinosaurs. those are actually tricks by hte devil. *Nodnod*

reply posted on 10-4-2008 @ 03:30 PM by Howie47

reply to post by Ogre14t

My perspective is this. Man became separated from th Law of God. The same Law that holds the whole Universes together. The Universe, automatically heals itself. By destroying any part that is (out of tune).
Christ's sacrifice put all those who accept His sacrifice, back in tune.
The healing process slowly grinds on toward it's completion. All those who receive Christ will be included in the restoration. All those who don't will be burnt up.

reply posted on 10-4-2008 @ 03:50 PM by AshleyD

Originally posted by TheWalkingFox
God has no control over or responsibility for his creation? No matter the phrasing you use, when we take into consideration the infinite and omipotent nature of god, it is the same - He is cursing them. Everything that exists is in place because God put it there.

Let me ask you this, Foxy. According to your animistic beliefs (of which I admit I am pretty ignorant), how does your deity/deities relate to everything that exists including disease and crime? According to your beliefs, is a supreme being (or multiple supreme beings- I do not know what you believe) a result of spiritual evolution and they did not always exist? Was it / Were they created beings or the creator? Are they omnipotent or omniscient? Why, according to your beliefs, do we have disease, death, decay and what Christians believe to be a 'fallen state?' I would enjoy hearing your thoughts.

reply posted on 10-4-2008 @ 04:36 PM by AshleyD

Originally posted by Ogre14t
Looking at these 2 facts, the question bothers me... what kind of sacrifice did christ make? He (supposedly) left a world that was out to get him, taking all sin with him, and went to a better place. Sounds to me like he treded up.

You're looking at it from a reverse angle. You're seeing it as He 'left a world that was out to get Him' and went to Heaven. However, you are forgetting what He did first: He left that Heaven to come here to a 'world that was out to get Him.' That, coupled with His death, was the sacrifice.

[edit on 4/10/2008 by AshleyD]

reply posted on 10-4-2008 @ 04:40 PM by Bigwhammy

reply to post by TheWalkingFox

It's really not even an accurate portrayal of atheism. Much like your gross misrepresentation of the Bible. A taste of your own medicine for a change. I want to address just one issue you raised.

Is there anything that exists outside of God? According to the theology, no. A person can be apart from god according to themselves, but according to the Theology, God is still there.
The serpent, as Satan, is a servant of God, even if he chooses to not acknowledge it. See the book of Job for more on the God / Satan relationship. God exercises total control over Satan - the Adversary can do nothing against God's wishes.

See this is one of those areas where a superficial understanding based on the world’s way of thinking will never lead to understanding. There is a profound theological difference between the sovereign will of God and the perfect will of God. You are confusing the two in a gross over simplification. The sovereign will is the expression of God’s will that focuses on the fact that God sovereignly ordains everything that comes to pass. In other words, there is nothing that happens that is outside of God’s sovereign will. This understanding of His sovereign will does not imply that God causes everything to happen. However, it does acknowledge that He must at least permit or allow whatever happens to happen. God can always decide to either permit or stop the actions and events of this world. Therefore, as He allows things to happen, He has “willed” them in this sense of the word. Your problem is you just stop there.

God’s permissive or perfect will is about God’s attitude and defines what he likes and wants for us. For example, God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked, he doesn’t wish anyone to go to Hell but for all to come to repentance, yet it is also clear that He most surely wills their death and some go to Hell. This expression of God’s will is revealed in the many verses which indicate what God does and does not take pleasure in. For example, in 1 Timothy 2:4 we see that God desires “all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,” and yet we also know that God’s sovereign will is that “no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him;” (John 6:44). Your problem is you are not distinguishing these two aspects.

There is also a third element Gods revealed or perceptive will. That is what he reveals in the Bible often as what we should or should not do. A superficial reading of scripture will always result in a tale as foolish as the one you wrote. That is what I, Ashley and orangetom were alluding to with that verse.

4The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.(1 cor 2:14)

reply posted on 11-4-2008 @ 08:04 AM by TheRedneck

reply to post by TheWalkingFox

What is the serpent? Most Christians I have spoken with take hte serpent to be Satan.
What is Satan? The "head" fallen angel.
What is an angel? A being created with no purpose other than to servethe will of God.

Most Christians do believe the serpent was Satan, in my experience. I am not one of those. It could have been Satan, or could have been listening to Satan. I am keeping an open mind to that point.
I actually agree completely with your definition of Satan and an angel. However, your premise assumes that an angel cannot rebel. While an angel may rebel, they do so in total defiance of God's laws. Obviously, an angel rebelled, or we would be discussing Lucifer instead of Satan.

Is there anything that exists outside of God ?According to the theology, no. A person can be apart from god according to themselves, but according to the Theology, God is still there.
The serpent, as Satan, is a servant of God, even if he chooses to not acknowledge it. See the book of Job for more on the God / Satan relationship. God exercises total control over Satan - the Adversary can do nothing against God's wishes.

Here again, you err in your premise that a being which is created to be a servant of God can do nothing outside of God's control. Revelation 12:7 states "And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,". so you attribute the war against God to God's control? Obviously, there must be something more to this. Perhaps the answer is in this:

God did set the situation up for them to eat of the fruit in the first place. He created the tree, why? He showed Adam the tree, why? He sent the serpent to tempt Eve, why? He punishes them for all this, why?

How about another verse? Genesis 1:27 will do. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

Now we all know that God is not some old guy with a white beard sitting on a cloud. God is a spirit. So that must mean that we were created in His image, not in the physical sense, but in the spiritual sense. That means we have free will the same as God. We are not sovereign as God is, but we still have free will.

Now how could we have free will if there were no way to exercise it? I could lock my daughter in irons in her room and 'ask' her not to go out tonight. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't go anywhere. Does that mean she is obeying me? No. I did not give her the freedom to obey me. Her actions mean nothing if not done by her own free will. The same goes for us with God. We had to have one thing we could do to disobey God and thereby turn from Him, otherwise we would not be free. God didn't want servants; He wanted companions. He had servants: the angels.

In writing that, I suddenly had one of those 'brain farts' that happen from time to time. Could it be that God did send the serpent, as a test? I suppose that's possible, but we still failed miserably. God did not fail.

God has no control over or responsibility for his creation? No matter the phrasing you use, when we take into consideration the infinite and omipotent nature of god, it is the same - He is cursing them. Everything that exists is in place because God put it there.

God has a responsibility for his actions, would you not agree? He gave man free will. Therefore if He had simply waved his hand and said "Oh, that's OK, don't worry", God would do the one thing I believe he cannot do: He would have lied.

Control over a creation is not applicable to man as though we were some sort of mechanical contrivance. A TV has no free will; it will respond to our commands. The same with a car, a computer (as long as it's not running MS software

), or anything we as humans have created. Think of the book/movie "I, Robot". The whole thing was about what would happen should a robot become sentient and develop free will. Would we still have control and responsibility for it? Or would it have to take responsibility for itself?

The Bible tells us pretty clearly why these genocides were conducted. There's no mystery at all. Either the people offended god by some action - inhospitality and apostasy for Sodom and Gemmorah, for example - or they were simply living where the "favored" people wanted to live.

We could debate this for the next 20 years and probably still not come to an agreement. It could be that God had mercy on people being oppressed in Sodom and Gomorrah; nowhere does it say people had not left harmed or that people had not been killed by the wickedness. It could be that the Israelites had a superior claim to the land that God had promised them. After all, if He created it, doesn't He, in the final reckoning, own it? Mention has been made that the inhabitants had 'angelic DNA', and therefore could not be allowed to poison the population of the planet. I really don't know; I know it happened, and I know that there was a reason. If you want to know that exact reason, I'd ask the One who did it. I am just a man... well, almost, a redneck anyway.

And yet the Jews don't believe in a triune god.

You'll have to talk to someone Jewish about that.

To be continued...

reply posted on 11-4-2008 @ 08:04 AM by TheRedneck

continued reply to post by TheWalkingFox

When you read the later books of hte Old Testament, you see that God is downright neurotic and freaking out like a person with a five-pack-a-day habit being deprived of nicotine.

I'm just amking the statement that by th time the New Testament rolls around, he'd discovered that killing lots of people, and having other people kill lots of people, wasn't working that well.

That reminds me, I need a cigarette. Thanks.

This is getting into pretty deep theology. God was not trying to kill people. Had He wanted to kill everyone, He wouldn't have given Noah plans to build an ark. I see God as trying to maintain some sort of order in His creation until He could manage to get Jesus into the picture. Remember that God has to follow His own laws. He cannot simply pull a string and make people do what He wills. Certain things had to happen, and until God managed to get them to happen, legally, according to His own laws He set down, He was limited in what He could do. Once Jesus was in the picture, as a perfect sacrifice and payment for the sins of man, God's laws were satisfied and things could become more peaceful between God and man.

That's horribly simplified, but hopefully you get the idea.

And yet there is still sin aplenty.

No argument here. That is self-evident.

Is God immortal? Yes.

Agreed.

Did God (or at least the way God set thigns up) drop the curse of sin on Mankind's heads? Yes.

No. God set things up to allow us free will. As holders of that free will, we dropped the curse on our own heads.

Was Jesus God? According to Christians, yes.

Yes, He is. But that is now irrelevant to your argument, since your second statement is false. As is the remainder of your paragraph.

I harbor doubts that your take on, say, Zeus would be any more flattering than my take on Yahweh. Does this mean that you have "issues" with Zeus? Nah. Simply that as someone who doesn't believe in Zeus, you feel free to pick and criticize and mock and roll your eyes to your heart's content. And really, a philanderer who likes doing his mistresses while shapeshifted into horses or swans or whatever?

I probably would snicker if I were to overhear someone talking about Zeus. I doubt I would feel compelled to walk up to them and snicker in their face, though.

That would simply be rude, not to mention impotent. I know of no one who has made a convincing argument to someone by directly attacking and ridiculing their beliefs. If anything, it serves to polarize people. Perhaps that is your agenda? To strengthen belief in Christianity?

TheRedneck

reply posted on 11-4-2008 @ 01:57 PM by Howie47

Is there anything that exists outside of God ?According to the theology, no. A person can be apart from god according to themselves, but according to the Theology, God is still there.

I found a simple answer this kind of question. It is this. (When your will is not in tune with God's will, and you refuse to adapt to God's will. Then God adapts to your will. Only problem with that is this. Only God's will can or will bring heaven, peace and eternal life. Our will, independent of God's; only brings hell, destruction and death. Consider the condition
of the human race and it's history. That is the proof of my statement.
So when and if we demand God go our way; and our way is hell and death.
God will accommodate our wishes. If we insist.
God will erase those names from the book of life. Their independent souls shall be burned in a fire. A fire that purifies and will leave only God. No more of that individual.

reply posted on 11-4-2008 @ 02:15 PM by jmdewey60

reply to post by Howie47

Do you think some people may have more than one chance at life?
I am starting to think so.
I heard an argument, once, against reincarnation.
It was that there are more people alive, today, than there has been, if you add up everyone who has ever lived, and are now dead.
Well, to me it is really a better argument in favor of reincarnation.
It means that every soul who existed before they had a chance to hear about Jesus and could make a choice to accept his sacrifice, can now be alive in the day of the internet and will have no excuse to give, at the finale judgement.

reply posted on 11-4-2008 @ 05:03 PM by Howie47

reply to post by jmdewey60

I don't believe in reincarnation for anyone that lived at least to the age
of accountability. Just my opinion.
How ever I don't know of any Bible doctrine that keeps souls that have died; from receiving salvation later. Jesus did preach to the souls held in chains in hell!

[edit on 11-4-2008 by Howie47]

reply posted on 11-4-2008 @ 05:10 PM by jmdewey60

reply to post by Howie47

Sorry to bother you about this.
It is just a stark explaination that you gave about the final end.
Even if I agree, basicly, with what you wrote, it is difficult to look at with out some sort of saddness and it makes me feel like streaching anything I can to midigate the horror.
Again, do not take this personaly.
You very well may be right.

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