A Question of Christian Theology (3 Viewers)

[theism]

Hi guys.

i'd like an update of what's happened so far.

 

[Omar-Comin]

Haven't read the whole thread but the perception that non-believers are condemned straight to hell is false. Research it, and the fact is God accepts everyone and when everyone dies they can make their own choice whether to reciprocate or not. Look up "William Lane Craig"(theologian) on youtube which includes his famous debate against Peter Atkins(prominent for writing several popular chemistry textbooks and also a professor at Oxford).

Reading this made me think, what kind of person can produce these utterly wrong and frightfully constipated thoughts?
Then i saw it in your sig,
A UWS student.

 

[mirakon]

Reading this made me think, what kind of person can produce these utterly wrong and frightfully constipated thoughts?
Then i saw it in your sig,
A UWS student.

Reading this made me think, what kind of person can produce these utterly wrong and frightfully constipated thoughts?
Then i saw it in your username,

Omar-Comin

 

[Stringer Bell]

Reading this made me think, what kind of person can produce these utterly wrong and frightfully constipated thoughts?
Then i saw it in your username,

Omar-Comin

Copied his response because your vegetable mind cannot compose anything other than potato and carrot thoughts?

 

[VicerExciser]

in b4 somebody named McNulty posts

 

[mirakon]

Copied his response because your vegetable mind cannot compose anything other than potato and carrot thoughts?

I'm surprised you're foolish enough not to notice the difference. His is an insult, mine is a fact. The posts are different. You just don't understand it because you lack subtlety, something probably everyone else has noticed.

 

[theism]

please guys lets have some mutual respect

 

[Bereie]

mirakon your post made no sense anyway. A username does not give any hint as to what the content of their posts are going to be. A mistake you've made before, I believe. Anyway keep going because I'm enjoying seeing you get ripped apart by characters of The Wire.

 

[mirakon]

mirakon your post made no sense anyway. A username does not give any hint as to what the content of their posts are going to be. A mistake you've made before, I believe. Anyway keep going because I'm enjoying seeing you get ripped apart by characters of The Wire.

Yeah, but neither does a person's Uni, which was what he was having a go at.

 

[Scorch]

The idea that God, after murdering, slaughtering, raping, pillaging and generally condoning war-crimes and persecution at his will in the Old Testament, can then turn around any blame us for something that is really his fault anyway (the fact that we're evidently imperfect: he made us that way. He's omniscient, remember? So he knows absolutely everything about the universe and his creation apparently) is absurd.

God and your fairytale guilt trips can go fuck themselves while we focus on things that people can support with evidence and I'll just grant some respect to the Gods that don't damn me to hell for something that is their fault when they have [a] already murdered their way through the Near East with impunity and encouraged blind faith and idiocy by apparently, in his 'grand plan' providing no evidence of his existence at all.

 

[theism]

The idea that God, after murdering, slaughtering, raping, pillaging and generally condoning war-crimes and persecution at his will in the Old Testament, can then turn around any blame us for something that is really his fault anyway (the fact that we're evidently imperfect: he made us that way. He's omniscient, remember? So he knows absolutely everything about the universe and his creation apparently) is absurd.

God and your fairytale guilt trips can go fuck themselves while we focus on things that people can support with evidence and I'll just grant some respect to the Gods that don't damn me to hell for something that is their fault when they have [a] already murdered their way through the Near East with impunity and encouraged blind faith and idiocy by apparently, in his 'grand plan' providing no evidence of his existence at all.

Christianity does not demand blind faith.

as for your other arguments.. if you want answers,
read over this thread, and that other 'Does God exist' one.

You seem to have a misunderstanding about hell which is pretty prevalent in todays modern society.

Hell is not a place that God uses to blackmail you.

Instead think of it from this perspective.

God loves you, and respects your decision that you make in this lifetime.
if you choose to reject him and basically tell him to take a hike
God will go 'fine, you've made that decision. i will have to respect that.. i'll put you in a place where there is no me for eternity',
which is effectively hell.

it really isn't like 'WUT YOU DIDNT BELIEVE IN ME? YOU GO TO HELL@!!!!'

 

[Scorch]

Christianity does not demand blind faith.

as for your other arguments.. if you want answers,
read over this thread, and that other 'Does God exist' one.

You seem to have a misunderstanding about hell which is pretty prevalent in todays modern society.

Hell is not a place that God uses to blackmail you.

Instead think of it from this perspective.

God loves you, and respects your decision that you make in this lifetime.
if you choose to reject him and basically tell him to take a hike
God will go 'fine, you've made that decision. i will have to respect that.. i'll put you in a place where there is no me for eternity',
which is effectively hell.

it really isn't like 'WUT YOU DIDNT BELIEVE IN ME? YOU GO TO HELL@!!!!'

Of course is demands blind faith. How fair is it for God to demand that I believe in him or go to hell (and yes, that's the choice, no matter how you, without scriptural support, try to make up ways to make it sound nice) when he refuses to provide any evidence for his existence? He works in ways that apparently eliminate every trace of evidence that he exists because theists are able to provide no proper scientific evidence to support their claims (and as the people making such claims, they have the burden of proof).

Essentially, he is saying "believe in me without proof of my existence in the slightest or go to hell". That's called blind faith in the absolute.

There is no misunderstanding. In fact I understand the scripture and theological position better than you, evidently, because your revisionism of the scripture and Bible is inaccurate and illogical.

 

[Name_Taken]

An athiest cannot find God for the same reason a thief cannot find a policeman.

 

[theism]

Of course is demands blind faith. How fair is it for God to demand that I believe in him or go to hell (and yes, that's the choice, no matter how you, without scriptural support, try to make up ways to make it sound nice) when he refuses to provide any evidence for his existence? He works in ways that apparently eliminate every trace of evidence that he exists because theists are able to provide no proper scientific evidence to support their claims (and as the people making such claims, they have the burden of proof).

Essentially, he is saying "believe in me without proof of my existence in the slightest or go to hell". That's called blind faith in the absolute.

There is no misunderstanding. In fact I understand the scripture and theological position better than you, evidently, because your revisionism of the scripture and Bible is inaccurate and illogical.

read over these and then get back to me

Is Christianity based on blind faith? - Faith Facts

actually here is also a good article Jesus - The Life of Jesus Christ - Is Jesus God


also consider examining the amazing historical accuracy of the gospels. you don't have to read them as religious texts, but read them simply as history.

then ask yourself, does the historical evidence supporting the life of Jesus Christ point to him being a lunatic - if so reject him, or does the evidence point to the fact that Jesus Christ was who he claimed he was, if so accept him.

as for your comment on scripture and theology, you must understand i have no way of gauging how familiar you are with said texts, thus I tend to explain very generally.
but since you're more familiar than most, from this point forth i will take it upon myself to gauge responses accordingly

 

[Scorch]

read over these and then get back to me

Is Christianity based on blind faith? - Faith Facts

actually here is also a good article Jesus - The Life of Jesus Christ - Is Jesus God

The only source given in either of those links is the Bible. This is a logical absurdity as you are still only placing your blind faith in the Bible, with no supporting evidence from other sources. It's blind faith.

also consider examining the amazing historical accuracy of the gospels. you don't have to read them as religious texts, but read them simply as history.

No. The gospels are not amazing in their historical accuracy. They contradict each other and history.

According to Matthew, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1). According to Luke, Jesus was born during the first census in Israel, while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:2). This is impossible because Herod died in March of 4 BC and the census took place in 6 and 7 AD, about 10 years after Herod's death.

Matthew says that Herod, in an attempt to kill the newborn Messiah, had all the male children two years old and under put to death in Bethlehem and its environs, and that this was in fulfillment of prophecy.

This is a pure invention on Matthew's part. Herod was guilty of many monstrous crimes, including the murder of several members of his own family. However, ancient historians such as Josephus, who delighted in listing Herod's crimes, do not mention what would have been Herod's greatest crime by far. It simply didn't happen.

While it is easy to dissect the gospels further, there are several conclusions we can draw.

1. The gospel writers contradict each other.

2. The gospel writers rewrote history when it suited their purposes.

3. The gospels were extensively edited to accommodate the evolving dogma of the church.

4. The gospel writers misused the Old Testament to provide prophecies for Jesus to fulfill.

then ask yourself, does the historical evidence supporting the life of Jesus Christ point to him being a lunatic - if so reject him, or does the evidence point to the fact that Jesus Christ was who he claimed he was, if so accept him.

The only historical evidence outside the Gospels (which are, as stated above, inaccurate and untrustworthy) are several lines in Tacitus and Josephus. These sources simply state that he existed and several rudimentary details.

Tacitus, the Roman historian, writes:

Nero fastened the guilt of starting the blaze and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians [Chrestians] by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius 14-37 at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

That passage is possibly one of the most detailed and credible ones that we see, and one of the view that scholars believe has not been tampered with by later Christians (as opposed to that of Josephus, which was shamelessly tampered with by the later Church with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer). The only historical details of Jesus were that he lived in Judea around that time and was executed.

So the reality of the matter is that there is no external evidence to support 98% of what the Gospels say about Jesus' life and even the Gospels don't agree on much of Jesus' life. In fact many of the remnants of the biographical content (such as genealogies that place Joseph as Jesus' father instead of God, tracing him to the house of David) are there that were changed at will by the writers of the Gospels in order to adapt to the dogma of the Church.

The only thing that, as I said, distinguishes the New Testament from other lesser-known religious scriptures about similar sage-characters and cult-myths is that it had a better PR office and a lot of luck. It has even less evidence regarding its central figure than many others, however.

 

[Ferox]

The idea that God, after murdering, slaughtering, raping, pillaging and generally condoning war-crimes and persecution at his will in the Old Testament, can then turn around any blame us for something that is really his fault anyway (the fact that we're evidently imperfect: he made us that way. He's omniscient, remember? So he knows absolutely everything about the universe and his creation apparently) is absurd.

I suppose a Christian (or Jew for that matter) would point out that in the context of the OT, God is perfect, hence any killing by him is justified. Furthermore, in the context of the OT, dying earlier isn't really seen as much of a punishment; in fact, one person was "received by God" (died) at a young age because God loved him.

Or, you know, you could take it all out of context.

As for your second point, a Christian would say that God made man with free will, which is more perfect (godlike) than without free will. There's no reason man cannot be perfect, he simply choices not be be. Hence any imperfections became purely and squarely man's fault, not God's.

 

[nikolas]

read over these and then get back to me

Is Christianity based on blind faith? - Faith Facts

actually here is also a good article Jesus - The Life of Jesus Christ - Is Jesus God


also consider examining the amazing historical accuracy of the gospels. you don't have to read them as religious texts, but read them simply as history.

then ask yourself, does the historical evidence supporting the life of Jesus Christ point to him being a lunatic - if so reject him, or does the evidence point to the fact that Jesus Christ was who he claimed he was, if so accept him.

as for your comment on scripture and theology, you must understand i have no way of gauging how familiar you are with said texts, thus I tend to explain very generally.
but since you're more familiar than most, from this point forth i will take it upon myself to gauge responses accordingly

I can't imagine any serious skeptic being convinced by anything here, these sites are preaching to the choir.

 

[Scorch]

I suppose a Christian (or Jew for that matter) would point out that in the context of the OT, God is perfect, hence any killing by him is justified. Furthermore, in the context of the OT, dying earlier isn't really seen as much of a punishment; in fact, one person was "received by God" (died) at a young age because God loved him.

That would be a highly, highly flawed argument for obvious reasons. I hope you're not serious. So because God is perfect, he can act however the fuck he likes, murdering and butchering as he does in the Old Testament, and we cannot question it because he is perfect? No. Perfection cannot be constantly in and of itself regardless of the actions of said perfect being.

Were a Christian to argue thusly, it would be an absurd supposition to somehow justify the fact that the basis for their religion is violent and intolerant even by the standards of the first millennium BC.

As for your second point, a Christian would say that God made man with free will, which is more perfect (godlike) than without free will. There's no reason man cannot be perfect, he simply choices not be be. Hence any imperfections became purely and squarely man's fault, not God's.

God is omniscient, apparently. Playing by the rules of the Bible he knew that we would have fallen from the garden of Eden. Also, why did he create flawed humans and then create the Devil to tempt us? That's really just the height of irresponsibility, to be honest.

Again, were a Christian to say that it would be a logical absurdity.

 

[theism]

The only source given in either of those links is the Bible. This is a logical absurdity as you are still only placing your blind faith in the Bible, with no supporting evidence from other sources. It's blind faith.

the amount of historical evidence for the new testament is embarrassingly wealthy.
ill post more in about a weeks time.

i must thank you for your thought out post though.

According to Matthew, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1). According to Luke, Jesus was born during the first census in Israel, while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:2). This is impossible because Herod died in March of 4 BC and the census took place in 6 and 7 AD, about 10 years after Herod's death.


Matthew says that Herod, in an attempt to kill the newborn Messiah, had all the male children two years old and under put to death in Bethlehem and its environs, and that this was in fulfillment of prophecy.

This is a pure invention on Matthew's part. Herod was guilty of many monstrous crimes, including the murder of several members of his own family. However, ancient historians such as Josephus, who delighted in listing Herod's crimes, do not mention what would have been Herod's greatest crime by far. It simply didn't happen.

While it is easy to dissect the gospels further, there are several conclusions we can draw.

BIBLE STUDY MANUALS: THE BIRTH DATE OF JESUS CHRIST
not sure how good that is though.

1. The gospel writers contradict each other.

2. The gospel writers rewrote history when it suited their purposes.

3. The gospels were extensively edited to accommodate the evolving dogma of the church.

4. The gospel writers misused the Old Testament to provide prophecies for Jesus to fulfill.

i will have to disagree with you here.

this article for example.
although it is written about how long Jesus' Ministry was, it is quite fascinating how accurate the gospels were, written nearly 2000 years ago.

Question: "How long was Jesus' ministry?"

Answer: According to Luke (3:1), John the Baptist began his ministry in the 15th year of Tiberius’ reign (29 AD). Jesus began His ministry shortly thereafter at the age of thirty (3:23). Incidentally, this indicates that Jesus was probably born around 1 BC (please note: there was no year zero – 1 AD immediately followed 1 BC). This contradicts the popular date of 4 BC for Herod the Great’s death since Jesus was born while Herod was still alive. Recent scholarship, however, has discredited the popular view in favor of 1 BC; or more specifically, sometime between the January 9th lunar eclipse of 1 BC and the Feast of Passover a few months later. This tentatively corroborates Luke’s account.

Regardless of the questions surrounding the date of Herod’s death, the dates of Tiberius’ reign have been confidently established. They give us a firm basis upon which we can approximate what year Jesus began His public ministry: around 29 AD. As for the end of His ministry, we know that it culminated with His crucifixion, resurrection and ascension.

According to the Gospel accounts, Christ was crucified the day before Passover, was “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:38-40), and was resurrected before sunrise on a Sunday. In order for Christ to have been crucified the day before Passover and resurrected on a Sunday three days and three nights later, Passover would have had to fall on a Friday, whereby Christ was crucified on a Thursday.

For example, Passover of 30 AD fell on a Thursday (April 6th). To be crucified the day before Passover (Wednesday) and resurrected on Sunday, Jesus would have been in the grave Wednesday afternoon, Wednesday night, Thursday day, Thursday night, Friday day, Friday night, Saturday day, Saturday night, Sunday morning before sunrise. That is four nights – one too many. So 30 AD doesn’t work. Plus, according to John’s Gospel, Jesus attended at least three annual Feasts of Passover throughout the course of His ministry: one in John 2:23, another in 6:4 and the Passover of His crucifixion in 11:55-57. So one year (29 to 30 AD) just isn’t enough time.

Based on the dates provided by Sir Robert Anderson in his The Coming Prince (Kregel: Grand Rapids, p. 104), we used the Rosetta Calendar online calendar conversion service to establish which days of the week Passover fell upon between the years 29 AD (our starting point) and 37 AD. Here are Anderson’s dates and their respective days of the week (please note that these are Julian rather than Gregorian dates):

Passover of 29 AD fell on a Sunday (April 17th)
Passover of 30 AD fell on a Thursday (April 6th)
Passover of 31 AD fell on a Tuesday (March 27th)
Passover of 32 AD fell on a Monday (April 14th)
Passover of 33 AD fell on a Friday (April 3rd)
Passover of 34 AD fell on a Tuesday (March 23rd)
Passover of 35 AD fell on a Monday (April 11th)
Passover of 36 AD fell on a Friday (March 30th)
Passover of 37 AD fell on a Thursday (April 18th)

Using this range of dates and assuming that Christ was in the grave for three days and three nights and resurrected on Sunday, we can narrow down the year of Christ’s crucifixion to one of two possibilities: 33 or 36 AD. A prophecy from the book of Daniel seems to favor the earlier date of 33 AD.

In Daniel 9, Gabriel tells Daniel that “Seventy sevens have been decreed for your people… From the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there will be seven sevens and sixty-two sevens; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary and its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.” (9:24-26)

Seven sevens + 62 sevens = 69 sevens. 69 seven-year periods would pass from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem until the coming of the Messiah. The Messiah would be “cut off” and the city and temple would be destroyed again. A 70th seven-year period would follow.

While the prophecy does not specify what the sevens are, the immediate context implies that they are years. Daniel’s prayer in verses 3-19 focuses on the fulfillment of a 70 year period – the 70 years of Babylonian captivity as prophesied by Jeremiah (25:11). The 70 sevens prophecy was delivered to him in response to this prayer. 70 years fulfilled; 7 times 70 still to come.

Scholars generally agree that this prophecy is according to the ancient 360-day calendar employed by both the Hebrews and the Babylonians (Daniel being written in Babylon during the Babylonian captivity after the fall and decimation of Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar). 69 x 7 years = 483 years. 483 years x 360 days = 173,880 days.

Persian Emperor Artaxerxes Longimanus (who ruled Persia from 464-424 BC) issued the edict to rebuild Jerusalem on the 1st of Nissan in the 20th year of his reign (that is, March 5th, 444 BC; see Nehemiah 2:1-8). 173,880 days from March 5th 444 BC ends at March 30th 33 AD. Here’s the math:

March 5th 444 BC to March 5th 33 AD = 476 years (1 B.C. to 1 A.D. is one year, there is no year zero). 476 x 365.24219879 days (which is the length of one year according to our modern calendar) = 173,855 days. March 5th to March 30th is another 25 days. 173,855 days + 25 days = 173,880 days.

March 30th, 33 AD was exactly 5 days before Passover on April 3rd, 33 AD. According to John’s Gospel, the Triumphant Entry took place 5 days before Passover: “Then, six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was who had been dead, whom He had raised from the dead. … Now a great many of the Jews knew that He was there; and they came, not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead. But the chief priests plotted to put Lazarus to death also, because on account of him many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus. The next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, and cried out: ‘Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD! The King of Israel!’" (John 12:1, 9-13)

The day after six days before the Passover equals five days before the Passover. March 30th was the Triumphal Entry, the day upon which Christ presented Himself to the nation of Israel as their Messiah, the first time in His entire ministry that He allowed Himself to be publicly proclaimed as the Messiah (Matthew 21:8-16; Luke 19:37-40; cf. Matthew 16:13-20; Mark 8:27-30; 9:9-10; Luke 9:18-21; John 6:14-15). He was crucified four days later, the day before Passover. Within one generation Titus razed Jerusalem and destroyed the temple.

Based on these points, we believe that Jesus’ ministry lasted about three and a half years, from sometime around 29 AD until the spring of 33 AD.

it's very interesting.
also links up to that luke account above.

historical details of Jesus were that he lived in Judea around that time and was executed.

so you believe that Jesus did indeed exist?

was he Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?

In fact many of the remnants of the biographical content (such as genealogies that place Joseph as Jesus' father instead of God, tracing him to the house of David) are there that were changed at will by the writers of the Gospels in order to adapt to the dogma of the Church.

mm the gnostic gospels/accounts.
they were destoryed because obviously they weren't accurate.
they were hearsay.


ill add more/reply in a bout a weeks time.
ive gotta pack.

but i do appreciate your posts though.

 

[Ferox]

I agree, the childhood sections and the Gospel of John were largely based on Tradition, and aren't very good historical sources. Of course Jesus' public ministry up till his crucifixion is quite well documented for its time, and, really, no one doubts he existed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus

Now, whether Jesus performed miracles and rose from the dead is quite another question.