(January 18, 2017 at 4:54 pm)Godschild Wrote:  We see the Bible totally different, you believe it's influenced by other religions and secular thinking, I know it to be the word of God himself.

GC

Perhaps people see it that way because it was influenced by other religions and secular thinking? That's regardless of whether or not it's the "word of god himself"..a silly and irrelevant proposition. Obviously, feel free to believe that it's the word of god if you wish, but if that's the case then god must have been a big fan of ANE mythologies and hellenic philosophy. Additionally, what could be attributed to human error in the text in any factual appraisal of it's origins, becomes an issue of your super duper awesome god not knowing his own shit in your fanciful understanding of it's origins. / shrugs.

Quote:I know for a fact that God exists and that there are no other gods.

No.  You desperately want to believe in such childish shit and waste your life telling yourself its true over and over.  Its a shame but lots of religitards waste their lives and you are not important enough to worry about.

(January 12, 2017 at 5:42 am)Tazzycorn Wrote:

(January 11, 2017 at 2:24 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: Now let me explain what it says in the bible, it says he lost his power by her cutting his hair.

But also, the whole story is just stupid, I am struggling to understand how a grown person can even for a second find it convincing.

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Isnt satan working for god as his jailor!
Isnt it supposed to be an angel who sends people to hell!

The whole Satan rebelling against god thing is an invention of later christianity, largely popularised by people like John Milton (which is ironic given his hardline protestantism, sola scriptura and all that). Hell, or its equivalent isn't mentioned in the OT (in fact the jewish equivalent of hell, Gehenna, was likely invented in response to the christian version) so there's nowhere for Satan to rule. And if you look at the gospels, everything he does to Jesus is what yhwh tells him to do.

The Samson and Delilah story is used to illustrate the 2nd Commandment in Exodus 34:14-16.  When Delilah cut off Samson's hair it represents the break between the Israelites and their deity and the pain and suffering they endured as a consequence. Over time the Israelites' restored their bond with their deity and regained their strength and vanquished their enemies.  That's a theme that's repeated countless times throughout the  biblical fairy tale.  

All of the biblical stories are designed to illustrate the Ten Commandments and the consequences of breaking them.

(January 20, 2017 at 4:11 am)Godschild Wrote: The God of the OT and the God of the NT are the one and same. When God said He was unchanging He meant from the beginning of time and forever. Christ said He was the alpha and the omega, meaning He has always been and will always be, never ending and never changing. Christ, the Father and Holy Spirit are the God of the OT one and the same.

They're not the same to the Jews.  They're not even the same to many Christian denominations (Jehovah's Witnesses, for example) that teach that they're two separate people and that the Holy Spirit is not a person at all.  And there are many passages that can be used to advance those ideas.  This is what I mean about the divergence between religions and even within religions.

Quote:He doesn't force us nor make us jump through hoops, He only says to believe. Then all one has to do is trust ie. have faith He will change us according to what the scriptures say.

This is an example of the saying that "when you believe, then you will see."  God doesn't need anything from us in order to reveal himself.  He hides in spite of knowing that keeping humanity in the dark will cost many of them the chance at heaven, to say nothing of the awful things they do to one another in the meantime (and sometimes in his name).  Due to his vast power, he cannot be doing it out of cowardice.  If he is not imaginary then he is capricious and cruel.

Quote:I already know these things to an extent and I want reject God, I have rejected what He has said many times it's called sin.

But sin is part of a condition visited upon humanity.  You don't reject god by sinning any more than you rejected your parents when you disobeyed them.  To reject them would mean turning your back and walking away from them, wanting nothing more to do with them.  That is how Adam and Eve (and Satan, etc) rejected god.  They did not simply stumble and decide not to accept correction.  They willfully defied god and turned away from him.

Quote:The whole of Sodom and Gemorrah, Judas and all those who were destroyed by the flood. A few examples.

Surely Judas knew that betraying Jesus meant his death, didn't he?  If he knew for certain that Jesus was God and that he offered salvation from suffering and death, he understood that he was damning himself by his action.  Otherwise, we must believe that after three years of following God around and watching and hearing him, he nonetheless thought it a good idea to hand him over to his enemies.  What would drive a person to such an act in light of what he must have known?

Quote:I was referring to the atheist rejection of God and the hundreds of millions of Christians. The other religions are not my concern in this part of the discussion. I should have explained my thought better, sorry. He shows His love for you in many ways, you refuse to recognize them. Your life for starters, not forcing you to accept Him or what He did through Jesus, He could turn you into a little robot but, you would find ways to complain about that, no doubt.

I would need to believe that God existed in order to reject him.  I find the claims and arguments for his existence unconvincing once I decided to challenge my presuppositions.  For God to be real I would need to acknowledge more than just the ways he shows love.  I would need to acknowledge that he allows suffering, that he sometimes inflicted it himself, and that he threatens to inflict it for an eternity to a great many people.  I understand that the response will be to shift the blame, but that doesn't make the argument more compelling in light of the qualities that God possesses.  I'd like for there to be a God --and for that God to be loving and kind and caring-- because I think that'd be amazing and wonderful.  But as the song goes, we can't always get what we want.

Quote:Tell me how is God to transcend who He is when He is perfect, God is completely moral and who He is is the law, He is the righteous God. He can't transcend His own perfect self. That's not logical, it's delusional thinking. That whole primes is an atheistic made up lie.

I can only judge God by the standards that we use to judge behavior.  If we put him above such considerations then he becomes unpredictable because his actions lack motive and context in the way that ours do.  If I decide to kick a child in the head without cause or warning, it's easy to judge that I've done something bad.  If God decided to take the same action, he has done something good because he is god and any analysis is thrown out.  Why would you assume that an eternity with such a being would not have moments of terror?  You assume he will only do 'good' things, but everything he does is good.  You will say that arbitrarily harming others is against his nature, but his nature is such that arbitrarily harming others is good.  This concept of God --that his actions can only be good because he transcends human morals-- should scare those who believe in him.

Quote:We can go on like this until one of us leaves this forum or dies, as for my part you will never change my mind and as for your mind and heart that's for God to do, all He requires of me is to wittnes. I enjoy our conversation and I thank you for the civility you have shown. If you want this to continue please reply, I'm not sure when I will answer the screen bothers my eyes and I may take a few days off after tomorrow.

No problem, GC.  As always, my interest is in what others believe and why they believe it.  I am not concerned with changing your mind, you seem like a good and decent person and that strikes me as the most important qualities to have.  I tend to check the forums every other day now because I'm busy, so there's no need to rush to respond.  Take care!

(January 21, 2017 at 10:29 am)Tonus Wrote:

(January 20, 2017 at 4:11 am)Godschild Wrote: The God of the OT and the God of the NT are the one and same. When God said He was unchanging He meant from the beginning of time and forever. Christ said He was the alpha and the omega, meaning He has always been and will always be, never ending and never changing. Christ, the Father and Holy Spirit are the God of the OT one and the same.

They're not the same to the Jews.  They're not even the same to many Christian denominations (Jehovah's Witnesses, for example) that teach that they're two separate people and that the Holy Spirit is not a person at all.  And there are many passages that can be used to advance those ideas.  This is what I mean about the divergence between religions and even within religions.

Quote:He doesn't force us nor make us jump through hoops, He only says to believe. Then all one has to do is trust ie. have faith He will change us according to what the scriptures say.

This is an example of the saying that "when you believe, then you will see."  God doesn't need anything from us in order to reveal himself.  He hides in spite of knowing that keeping humanity in the dark will cost many of them the chance at heaven, to say nothing of the awful things they do to one another in the meantime (and sometimes in his name).  Due to his vast power, he cannot be doing it out of cowardice.  If he is not imaginary then he is capricious and cruel.

Quote:I already know these things to an extent and I want reject God, I have rejected what He has said many times it's called sin.

But sin is part of a condition visited upon humanity.  You don't reject god by sinning any more than you rejected your parents when you disobeyed them.  To reject them would mean turning your back and walking away from them, wanting nothing more to do with them.  That is how Adam and Eve (and Satan, etc) rejected god.  They did not simply stumble and decide not to accept correction.  They willfully defied god and turned away from him.

Quote:The whole of Sodom and Gemorrah, Judas and all those who were destroyed by the flood. A few examples.

Surely Judas knew that betraying Jesus meant his death, didn't he?  If he knew for certain that Jesus was God and that he offered salvation from suffering and death, he understood that he was damning himself by his action.  Otherwise, we must believe that after three years of following God around and watching and hearing him, he nonetheless thought it a good idea to hand him over to his enemies.  What would drive a person to such an act in light of what he must have known?

Quote:I was referring to the atheist rejection of God and the hundreds of millions of Christians. The other religions are not my concern in this part of the discussion. I should have explained my thought better, sorry. He shows His love for you in many ways, you refuse to recognize them. Your life for starters, not forcing you to accept Him or what He did through Jesus, He could turn you into a little robot but, you would find ways to complain about that, no doubt.

I would need to believe that God existed in order to reject him.  I find the claims and arguments for his existence unconvincing once I decided to challenge my presuppositions.  For God to be real I would need to acknowledge more than just the ways he shows love.  I would need to acknowledge that he allows suffering, that he sometimes inflicted it himself, and that he threatens to inflict it for an eternity to a great many people.  I understand that the response will be to shift the blame, but that doesn't make the argument more compelling in light of the qualities that God possesses.  I'd like for there to be a God --and for that God to be loving and kind and caring-- because I think that'd be amazing and wonderful.  But as the song goes, we can't always get what we want.

Quote:Tell me how is God to transcend who He is when He is perfect, God is completely moral and who He is is the law, He is the righteous God. He can't transcend His own perfect self. That's not logical, it's delusional thinking. That whole primes is an atheistic made up lie.

I can only judge God by the standards that we use to judge behavior.  If we put him above such considerations then he becomes unpredictable because his actions lack motive and context in the way that ours do.  If I decide to kick a child in the head without cause or warning, it's easy to judge that I've done something bad.  If God decided to take the same action, he has done something good because he is god and any analysis is thrown out.  Why would you assume that an eternity with such a being would not have moments of terror?  You assume he will only do 'good' things, but everything he does is good.  You will say that arbitrarily harming others is against his nature, but his nature is such that arbitrarily harming others is good.  This concept of God --that his actions can only be good because he transcends human morals-- should scare those who believe in him.

Quote:We can go on like this until one of us leaves this forum or dies, as for my part you will never change my mind and as for your mind and heart that's for God to do, all He requires of me is to wittnes. I enjoy our conversation and I thank you for the civility you have shown. If you want this to continue please reply, I'm not sure when I will answer the screen bothers my eyes and I may take a few days off after tomorrow.

No problem, GC.  As always, my interest is in what others believe and why they believe it.  I am not concerned with changing your mind, you seem like a good and decent person and that strikes me as the most important qualities to have.  I tend to check the forums every other day now because I'm busy, so there's no need to rush to respond.  Take care!

Jesus was always flapping his jaws about how he could call fire down from heaven and how he could summon up thousands of angels in an instant so Judas wanted to put him to the test.  And when Jesus couldn't, or wouldn't, do those things to save his hide Judas realized that he had been lied to for the past three years.  He then decided to kill himself for being a fool.  He thought he would be better off dead than alive and having to listen to more lies.

(January 24, 2017 at 5:15 am)Godschild Wrote: The Israelites of the OT believed in the coming messiah.

But they don't believe that Jesus was it, and therefore do not recognize him as god.

Quote:The Jehovah's Witnesses is not many denominations.

They are one of many.  And although they have modified the Bible for their own convenience, the reason they and other denominations claim that Jesus is not god is because there are sufficient verses in the NT to support the claim.  Possibly even more than support the reverse.  This is one of the problems with the Bible, that it leaves many details open to interpretations that are sometimes contradictory and quite important.

Quote:First off you've made this statement on other occasions and yet haven't given any biblical proof or proof of any kind that there is any truth to this statement.

I'm not sure which statement you are referring to.  I say that God hides because he does not reveal himself plainly, as the Bible claims he did in the past.  There is no reason to think that he is prevented from doing so, therefore I can only assume that he is concealing himself.  If he were to reveal himself it would not force my decision, it would inform my decision.  Why would God leave out such a crucial piece of information when my eternal soul depended on my choice?

Quote:That is what I said in an earlier post and I said it because you were saying the opposite. An example of this is when you said Adam and Eve rejected God by sinning.

Adam and Eve were not bound by sin; they were perfect.  The only rule that God gives them is not to eat from a specific tree.  The fruit does not appear to have been poisonous and its only effect was to give them more knowledge, so the rule was designed to show their acceptance of God as their sovereign.  Instead, they decided to follow the suggestion of a lowly snake over the command of God.  Hence, they rejected him.  He was no longer their God-- the serpent was.

Quote:You're right it takes a willful act of rejection and never returning to God and this is what Satan and the fallen angels did. Adam and Eve did not do this, the evidence for this is God's seeking them out after they had sinned against Him. He knew what they had done, yet He called out to them as a parent to a child, wanting them to come out of hiding and face Him. He made them cloths to hide their nakedness, this is the first deaths that occurred in God's creation. God himself had to take the lives of the animals it took to make their clothes, the first blood split because of sin God had to do it and He also personally split the last blood for sin. Ironic, no it was the plan that had to be because of sin. You really think God would have done this for them if they were going to reject Him, no and why blood had paid for their sin, now you know why there was a requirement of blood for sin and why it's referred to as the covering. You might not see this as a story of the beauty and heart of our loving God but, I do. This story is why the whole Bible has to be true.

I see it as a moral fable, or multiple moral fables mashed into one.  We can see the effects of Adam and Eve's rejection of God in two ways-- he curses them and removes them from the garden and into a life that will be painful and difficult, and he does not remove their death sentence.  His other actions are more human than godlike and open up some other questions, such as why nudity was such an issue that even God decided he had to kill animals to provide them with loin coverings.

Quote:By the way the Bible never says Adam and Eve willfully turned away from God forever, that's something you have either been taught or made up yourself.

It's not difficult to reason it out, as I've been doing.  He gave them a rule with very dire consequences, and they broke it deliberately.  I see that as a rejection of God.

Quote:Do you really believe Judas would have turned on Jesus if he knew these things,

I think your explanation is pretty good, but let's assume that Judas felt that Jesus was not the messiah and decided to betray him for this reason.  We still have three years of witnessing Jesus perform miracles and give talks that left crowds awestruck.  Judas either saw or heard of Jesus resurrecting the dead, healing the blind, feeding multitudes with a few fish and loaves, turning water to wine, and so on.  He either saw or heard of the time that Jesus read the thoughts of the Pharisees and healed a paralytic man!  Why did it apparently take the events of Jesus' crucifixion to finally open his eyes?  It's one of the stranger things in the Bible, that a man who saw and experienced the things he did nonetheless sold out Jesus.  How many people do you know that would spend three years with Jesus and not be absolutely convinced that he was God?

Quote:How can you say those things without coming to know God. When one comes to believe, God will reveal the most wonderful being, himself! He will give you the understanding you need, He will show you the truth of who He really is, you want have to rely on your own false perceptions or what others tell you, be they Christian or otherwise. I could explain to some degree why God allows many things that seem distasteful to us but, I'm sure you've heard many of them and besides who better to help you understand than God himself, the omniscient One.

I 'knew God' in the manner you described for many years, and knew many people who also did.  To know God in this manner is to put aside any reasoning or thoughts that might cast doubt on his existence.  And that never made sense to me, even as a worshipper of God.  How can anyone not know God?  How can reason or logic not lead us straight to God?  Yet so many theists that I knew felt that 'to think for yourself' was dangerous and might lead away from God.  The only way this is possible is if God does not exist.

Quote:God is above our judgment, as I have quoted from the Bible before, what right has the clay to tell the potter what it should be. What right has the vessel to say to the potter why would you treat me so. The answer is an obvious one, none.

What this proves is that God is above our judgment due to his power.  God is absolute power and thus can do as he pleases and we have no recourse but to accept it.  That is different from claiming that all he does is good, but it works out in the same way.  But to recognize this is to recognize the scary part of it, which I mentioned before.

Quote:I do not assume that heaven will be anything other than the most awesome and peaceful place to live, I k own it will be because it is promised and God has been truthful with me always. I do not have to doubt, God has never given me reason to doubt.
You say it would be good to know a loving God but, how can you if you are going to always stand in judgment of Him. You can't find something you are judging, it takes all your time to criticize Him for who He isn't and refuse to allow Him to show you who He is.

A righteous, just, and loving God would invite judgment; he would have nothing to fear from it.  A God that follows the moral precepts that he gives to us would be easier to trust than one who does as he pleases and expects me to accept that under the threat of eternal pain.  God is not bound by our morals and laws, so he could decide to make heaven less than awesome and we would be helpless to do anything about it.  Not only that, if we even thought that his actions were questionable he might send us to hell.  You trust that God will act a certain way, but God's nature means he is not limited in any way-- he would still be 'good' if he did things that you don't expect him to do.

[quote='Tonus' pid='1487367' dateline='1484477949']

I haven't forgotten about our conversation nor am I avoiding it, it takes a while to answer all the things you bring up and the light from the screen bothers my eyes still. I'm answering only the short post to me because I can do that fairly quickly. I'm going to try and answer your post tomorrow sometime.

GC