Open Letter To Christians

[Redbeard The Pink]

"Good gifts" are used in place of "The Holy Spirit" In non Trinitarian bibles. Such as the Mormon version of the bible and the one the J/W's use. The translations you are using are known as contextual or doctrinal translations. They bend the orginal texts to fit a given demonational teaching rather than truly represent how the orginal greek presents, as with the case of a literal translation which most bibles are. Doctrinal bibles have to omit the Greek words like "ἅγιος/hagios"= Holy and πνεῦμα pneuma =Spirit which if you click on the link is clearly apart of Luke 11 which means my translation is indeed more accurate.
http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm...onc_984013

Ok, first off, the translation I was using is the New International Version, which is a Trinitarian text and which is used by plenty of christian churches and denominations who aren't Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, or anything else that you would define as a heresy of christianity. While some people like other modern translations better, it's pretty comparable to other current translations of the bible.


Now, I don't know if you meant for this to happen, but your link goes to the King James Bible, which is an older text that was commissioned by an English King for a particular time and country (Medieval England) and a particular denomination (the Anglican Church). It is considered one of the least useful and most suspect English translations of the bible by a broad base of both laymen and clergy alike. If you're seriously calling the translation of the NIV into question and the standard you're holding it up against is the King James Version, you need to try again.

That's the thing pinky The Holy Spirit is THE Good gift God offers. Why? Because the Holy Spirit literally provides absolutely anything we can need and or want to establish and maintain our belief. It is through the Holy Spirit that "Prayers, and even our petitions get answered.

Or maybe he's just talking about good gifts in general, as the context of the passage seems to suggest. Maybe your translation is wrong and mine is right. Any attempt to prove one or the other would essentially be appealing to authority, as both explanations of the passage are (apparently) widely accepted. Besides, all I have to do is claim that I have received a recent revelation from god that says the "good gifts" translation is the right one. Who's to say I'm wrong? You?


As far as your prayers getting answered, that happens because of some combination of confirmation bias, self-fulfilling prophesy, and random chance. You send those prayers up, accept any outcome as "god's will," and act like it's proof of miracles when completely mundane events just happen (by chance or by human design) to line up with whatever you prayed for. It's the same mechanism that makes fortune telling work.

Ah... no. What I have does is provide an accurate exegesis of Luke 11 and Mat 7 concerning the common verses they share by compiling the teaching and providing a singular biblically based doctrinal truth, by citing book chapter and verse as well as providing an on line/verifiable link to the orginal text and it's meaning. What you did was try and baffle me with conjecture and unfounded speculation about what you think my approach was based on nothing.

Do you see the difference?
Me= explaination based on three points of verifiable refrence.
You= flash in the pan explaination based on what you think about the bible, citing nothing.

Ah...no. What you've done is started squibbling over which translation is the best one to use and how much context is needed to understand the verses in question. I quoted all of Matthew 7 and picked apart each parable, destroying your claim that the "context" is the key to understanding this quote. It isn't. The key to understanding this quote, according to your other arguments, is to decide what's the best translation to use, and that's a game for theists to play. To me, it all says the same thing, and it's all a fictional story.

But, do you see how their explaination does not include the whole context of the complete passage? They would have to literally ignore everything said from verse 15 to the end of the chapter concerning what Christ said about forgiveness or pretend that the context provided by verse 15 to the end of the chapter is indeed about forgiveness and then verse 19 Christ suddenly breaks away from his teaching on forgiveness and then tells everyone to just wish in groups to get what you want from God, then in verse 20 goes right back to speaking about forgiveness..

How target locked one have to be to not see that everything said in that block of text is about forgiveness? Take the verse denotations out of the text and read through again. Does it make sense that Christ mid stream stop his teaching about sin and forgiveness and the out of the blue in a single breath teach how to get wishes granted by praying in twos, and then next breath go back to teach forgiveness following up a parable on the subject?

Sorry no. you and your 'scholars' got it wrong.

For somebody who's accusing me of not citing things, you're having a lot of trouble with this whole "context and quotations" thing, aren't ya? Everything said in that block of text is about forgiveness, huh? Let's look at Matthew, chapter 18 (NIV again because Google likes it):

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The Greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven

18 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
Causing to Stumble
6 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. 7 Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come! 8 If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.
The Parable of the Wandering Sheep
10 “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. [11] [a]
12 “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off?13 And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. 14 In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.
Dealing With Sin in the Church
15 “If your brother or sister[b] sins,[c] go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’[d] 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
18 “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be[e] bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be[f] loosed in heaven.
19 “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”
The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.[g]
23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold[h] was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.[i] He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

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So, as you can plainly see, this "block of text" is talking about several different things. The last block is about forgiveness, but that's its own passage, separate from the one where the contentious verse appears. The passage where the verse actually appears seems to be describing how to handle church members who won't listen when told of their sin. The passages before that talk about removing sin-causing obstacles from one's life, how Jehovah wants no one to wander or perish, and coming to god with the humility and faith of a child.


What the whole chapter is talking about is an instance where the disciples were arguing about who would be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and Jesus proceeds to tell them what the criteria for greatness in heaven are. This passage is about what must be done to get in good with god and get what you want from him. Forgiveness is mentioned, but it's far from the focus if this story. The focus is actually celestial self-service.

Have you stopped to consider that maybe the reason your faith failed is because you were wrong on too many critical issues that God could not support your understanding of Him? After all why would God positively reinforce something He does not want you to understand or believe?

So when you were old enough to test your faith you rightly found out that your understanding of God does not exist...

The reason my faith failed is that my critical thinking skills progressed to such an extent that I could no longer justify believing claims with no evidence. Furthermore, I was exposed to convincing evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was a purely fictional character who never walked Earth. In order for christianity to be even remotely plausible, Jesus has to have at least lived, leaving it up to faith whether he did miracles or rose from the dead. If he wasn't a real person, though, the test is no longer whether you can believe in something that is unlikely, but whether you can believe something that runs directly contrary to evidenced reality.


What that means is that god wants us to believe he exists in a world that he deliberately invented to point to the idea that he is fictional. He isn't just asking us to believe something that is improbable, but something that is shown to be untrue by the evidence in the universe that he himself built. If he's working that hard to seem fictional just so we'll have to take him on faith, then fuck him. It's much more likely, though, that he doesn't exist at all, and that christians are guilty of a host of mental gymnastics (like I used to employ) to make these beliefs seem reasonable. They are not.


So yeah...while it's cute of you to try to say that my unbelief somehow equates with a lack of understanding of scripture, the fact is that the more I understood about scripture and how it conflicts with the observable world, the more I realized how fictional it all had to be. It was like piecing together the non-existence of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy when I was a young kid. The evidence just lined up, and I stopped believing because I knew it wasn't true. I had been lying to myself all my life, just as you are lying to yourself now.