(June 5, 2012 at 9:22 am)YahwehIsTheWay Wrote:

(June 5, 2012 at 9:17 am)RaphielDrake Wrote: *I'm* making shit up now am I? I'm just quoting a common interpretation of that passage. The fact of the matter is there is no indication in the Bible at any point that "God" is a divine organization as opposed to a singular being or a Trinity. If you don't consider conjuring up that unfounded explaination to be "making shit up" then you've got a very skewed perspective on what that is.
Third Best Christian? Is that meant to be ironic? What happened to the First and the Second? They couldn't make it because they're both in brain dead comas?

Sorry, I wasn't clear. When I said "you're", I was speaking as in "when you do this (use the ad hoc as a believer) you're just..." See also my link for further explanation.

I should have said "we're". Again, sorry for the confusion.

And to answer, Mrs. Betty Bowers is America's Best Christian ™. Pastor Deacon Fred is 2nd. I'm vying for third place. I can't compete with them.

My apologies, I'm used to having my statements retorted with what essentially translates as "You're wrong and I'm right because I say so."
I thought this was a similar instance, I was mistaken.
P.S. I just looked at Mrs Betty Blowers site and its fucking terrifying.

(June 4, 2012 at 10:33 pm)Godschild Wrote: Great! So I can live a life of depravity and sin and then, just before I die, I ask "God" for forgiveness and I get to spend eternity in paradise right beside Mother Theresa. Sweet!

Quote:It doesn't work the way you meant it, you left out of your thought process repentance, and you all say we do not think things through.

Of course it works the way I meant it. I can live a life of depravity and sin, and if I sincerely repent before I die, I will be welcomed into heaven! This is what believers have told me in the past. I have even asked them if Hitler would have been allowed into heaven if he sincerely repented before he died and the answer I get is always yes.

(June 5, 2012 at 9:32 am)RaphielDrake Wrote: P.S. I just looked at Mrs Betty Blowers site and its fucking terrifying.

It sounds like you've been poe-ned.

Poe's Law:
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.

Poe-nage, a variant of Pwnage, or Poe-ned, variant of pwned, is where someone does fall prey to a Poe and mistakes it for the real thing.

P.S. Here's your winking smiley from me:

(June 5, 2012 at 10:10 am)YahwehIsTheWay Wrote:

(June 5, 2012 at 9:32 am)RaphielDrake Wrote: P.S. I just looked at Mrs Betty Blowers site and its fucking terrifying.

It sounds like you've been poe-ned.

Poe's Law:
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.

Poe-nage, a variant of Pwnage, or Poe-ned, variant of pwned, is where someone does fall prey to a Poe and mistakes it for the real thing.

P.S. Here's your winking smiley from me:

I didn't mistake it for the real thing, it obviously isn't. The sketch the FBI sent of an islamic terrorist was Jesus. (Hilarious by the way, didn't see it coming.) I was just commenting on the fact her face is everywhere with that same smile.
Shes a scary lady.

(June 5, 2012 at 8:47 am)RaphielDrake Wrote:

(June 4, 2012 at 11:37 pm)Drich Wrote: Answered in verse 30. You guys love to pick and choose the bible apart and have made very compelling arguments in the tiny little corners of the bible you focus on. However your arguments come completely unraveled when placed in context. Try reading your passages in a context that include verse 30.

They're not "little corners" you patronising, grossly misinformed little man. The references to God as a singular individual undeniably make up the bulk of the Bible.
John 10:30, New International Version "I and the Father are one."
Explain the evidence you drew upon to translate this into "I and the Father are in a special organization called God" as opposed to some type of poetic symbolism.

I've done this already. I shown and you have confirmed the seperate nature of God, and verse 30 shows that the Father and the Son are one. That "one" refers to God. Even if you can not or will not comperhend the meaning of this passage, the Jews Christ was speaking to did understand Him to say that He was God, as the Father is God. Read verse 31, 32, and 33. Christ unmistakable refers to Himself as God. And the Jews wanted to stone Him for saying it because they only understood God being a single person to that point. So again if The Son is God, as the Father is God, but both have been shown to be seperate, and yet they are one as God, then God is not a persons name, but state or title.

We also know this to be true because of the words used in the greek to communicate "God" is theos:
2) the Godhead, trinity

a) God the Father, the first person in the trinity

b) Christ, the second person of the trinity

c) Holy Spirit, the third person in the trinity

The Doctrine of the Godhead is what i have broken down and explained here. In that God is a title and not a name. (It's nothing new, just an new way at looking at things)

(June 5, 2012 at 10:27 am)Drich Wrote:

(June 5, 2012 at 8:47 am)RaphielDrake Wrote: They're not "little corners" you patronising, grossly misinformed little man. The references to God as a singular individual undeniably make up the bulk of the Bible.
John 10:30, New International Version "I and the Father are one."
Explain the evidence you drew upon to translate this into "I and the Father are in a special organization called God" as opposed to some type of poetic symbolism.

I've done this already. I shown and you have confirmed the seperate nature of God, and verse 30 shows that the Father and the Son are one. That "one" refers to God. Even if you can not or will not comperhend the meaning of this passage, the Jews Christ was speaking to did understand Him to say that He was God, as the Father is God. Read verse 31, 32, and 33. Christ unmistakable refers to Himself as God. And the Jews wanted to stone Him for saying it because they only understood God being a single person to that point. So again if The Son is God, as the Father is God, but both have been shown to be seperate, and yet they are one as God, then God is not a persons name, but state or title.

We also know this to be true because of the words used in the greek to communicate "God" is theos:
2) the Godhead, trinity

a) God the Father, the first person in the trinity

b) Christ, the second person of the trinity

c) Holy Spirit, the third person in the trinity

The Doctrine of the Godhead is what i have broken down and explained here. In that God is a title and not a name. (It's nothing new, just an new way at looking at things)

And what I have explained here is that at no point is God as an organization ever stated or even implied. This is something you've gathered from odds and ends that you've put your own meaning behind. There is nothing substantial behind your theory no matter how much you try to claim there is. Your theory is just one of many that has scant to back it up. Stop acting like you've proven it, you haven't even proven the concept of God exists let alone your personal theory for the state in which you think God exists

(June 5, 2012 at 10:27 am)Drich Wrote: I've done this already. I shown and you have confirmed the seperate nature of God,....

I think the term 'person' causes much confusion. It comes from 'persona', meaning mask, and describes God's three means of presentation.

The best way to understand the Trinity is as a compromise in committee.

Early Christians were wrestling with Christology. What was Jesus and his role in salvation? Was he man or a god or the God or an angel or...?

The problem was complicated by the need to reconcile Jesus with strict OT monotheism. The god YHWH was a jealous and deeply insecure god who couldn't bear any distractions from his adoration by mortal worshipers. His first commandment was "thou shalt have no gods before me" and his rant in Isaiah 43:10-12 made it clear that he delegates his role as judge to no one.

So how should Christianity reconcile this OT god with the god who fades into a mysterious backdrop while Jesus takes center stage? Jesus' very claim in John 14:6 that he is the intercessor to Yahweh and the only path to salvation.

In sum:
OT: "You are forbidden to have an intercessor" (Is 43:10-12)
NT: "You are required to have an intercessor" (John 14:6)

This is quite a dilemma to reconcile. A more clear contradiction on the important matter of salvation would be hard to imagine.

Solution: Jesus is the same god of the OT and so he is his own intercessor ...to himself ...because no one comes to him except through him.

OK, we're already on pretty shaky ground here with tautologies like that but it gets worse when you consider how the Synoptic Gospels (Matt, Mark and Luke) depict Jesus as clearly separate from and subordinate to his father (sorry Dirch, but there's no "equality" here between the parts).

Jesus and Yahweh speak to each other in 2nd person and of each other in 3rd person:

Quote:Mark 15:34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Jesus doesn't know all that Yahweh knows:

Quote:Matt 24:36 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, neither the Son but my Father only.

Jesus has a separate will which is subordinate to his father's will:

Quote:Luke 22:42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

These are just a few examples how how the Synoptics depict a Jesus clearly separate from and subordinate to his father, Yahweh. Were the Gospel of John lost to us, were we to rely on the Synoptics, we'd have the idea that Jesus is some sort of demigod. How can such verses be squared with the idea of Jesus as Yahweh or even as part of some equal triumvirate corporation of deities that you propose Dirch?

The solution is to babble about how Jesus is God and not God, wholly human and wholly divine, three separate persons in one divine being. When this proves unsatisfying, rely on metaphors like water or invent ad hoc explanations based on nothing but imagination like the one you've come up with Dirch.

This is how to understand the Trinity. It is, as one Christian on this forum once blundered into admitting, a way to have your cake and eat it too. It's a clumsy tool to ram together pagan ideas of an intercessor deity to save us from a pagan inspired Hell (which the ancient Hebrews did NOT believe in, based on the OT) with the strict monotheism of Judaism.

And your idea of a corporation of deities IS polytheism, no matter how you quibble about as you try to redefine the term "deity".

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(June 5, 2012 at 10:48 am)ChadWooters Wrote: I think the term 'person' causes much confusion. It comes from 'persona', meaning mask, and describes God's three means of presentation.

Which utterly fails to explain the Synoptic Gospel verses like the ones I quoted above.

Ah, DP, you kick ass.

I think I've found God:



Slippery son-of-a-bitch, ain't he? Also father- and holy-ghost-of-.