(November 4, 2012 at 6:08 am)Reasonable_Jeff Wrote: Actually the Bible teaches that man is unable to atone for his sins. Other religions teach that man can atone for his sins, but Christianity says to atone you must keep the law perfectly, love others perfectly and love God perfectly.

No human has been able to do this, so God himself became human, kept the law perfectly and loved God and humans perfectly....then he went to the cross as the sinless sacrifice and on the cross he took the sins of those who would come to faith in him upon his shoulders....the perfect became the most putrid being in the eyes of God and paid in the full the debt of sin for those that would believe in Him.

When believers put their faith in Jesus, God credits them the righteous life of Jesus (and remember there is no longer a penalty for their sins because Christ paid it).

Because I have faith in Jesus it's:
*just as if I never sinned
*just as if I had always obeyed.

Christianity says you can't atone for your sins, that's why you need a Savior....and salvation comes only through Him, the Son of God.

Sounds perfectly in line with what she said. You start off by telling the man that his entire existence is sin and that he is depraved. You simply switched what it means to 'atone' - your idea of atonement means crawling through the mud and worshiping your Jesus.

So for Christians, sin doesn't exist, for them, because they have accepted Christ?

Well I don't believe it exists for anyone so...

(November 4, 2012 at 8:28 am)genkaus Wrote: your idea of atonement means crawling through the mud and worshiping your Jesus.

I'm not sure what you mean by crawling through the mud....but what I'm saying is that you dont' atone....Jesus did.

The life of a Christian is one that is lived out of appreciation for what's already been accomplished for me in Christ.

---

(November 4, 2012 at 8:45 am)DoubtVsFaith Wrote: So for Christians, sin doesn't exist, for them, because they have accepted Christ?

Sin is still a reality, as long as we are in this world....I'm saying that for those who have accepted Christ the penalty for their sins doesn't exist...it was paid for by Christ on the cross.

Okay so for those who accept Christ the penalty of their sins doesn't exist but they can still sin?

(November 1, 2012 at 10:41 pm)Drich Wrote: All I am saying is the creation account is not a scientific account. So to take fundamentaly scientific principle and apply it the creation account in the way you have attempted to do so is a flawed line of reasoning. Primarily because you are not comparing your principle against what the bible actually says. Your comparing your principle against a very specific appologetic. one that is accepted by most, but never the less is still flawed and does not completely or accuratly reflect what is actually written. Fore what is written has many silent or dark spots when compared to the scientific record. Instead of remaining silent the appologetic attemps to 'fill in' and give an answer where one was simply never implied.

Right, it isn't an "account" at all, it's a myth. IOW, irreconcilable with reality. It fails in it's singular purpose as an attempt at origins because it offers no origins to begin with.

Quote:All I have ever done is made you all aware of the silent areas and even atempted to 'plug in' your best 'scientific' theories and have shown (in many cases) that it is possiable for both to have happened to some degree or another.

It is deafeningly silent with regards to reality, rgr. If the best you can offer me is "the creation account isn't a narrative about creation" then you and I have no room for disagreement.

I have absolutely no idea what Jeff is ranting on about.

All it can be summarised up as is "Blah blah, I believe this, blah blah, I believe that, blah".

Actually ALL THEISTIC DEBATES can be summarised as this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmee2mLmj0Y

Undeceived Wrote:Correlation (to an admittedly vague extent) is not causation. Basically, "the formation of stars, galaxies, etc., during the early years of the Universe’s formation, required that variations be present in the earliest distribution of the matter so that the matter ultimately would coalesce into those stars, galaxies, etc. And, as everyone acknowledged, the existence of these variations should have had some effect on the background radiation." (http://www.apologeticspress.org/apconten...article=54 ) There are fluctuations, but we have no evidence the Big Bang caused them. The CMB could have just as easily been the limiting temperature of space heated by starlight, and not an ancient fireball. Also, the theory requires that 90-99% of matter be dark matter in order for the numbers to come out right. There is little observational evidence for dark matter--it is a theory contrived in response to the Big Bang's need. The main evidence is a signal of gamma-rays coming from the middle of our galaxy, which could just as easily come from far-off stars.
More:
http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/bb-top-30.asp

Dark matter is a theory which is still sound.

Quote:Astronomers have deduced the existence of dark matter by observing its gravitational influence on normal matter which consists of stars, gas, and dust.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...093947.htm

Quote:Evidence God created starlight-trails:
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/scient...ars/756519

1) I don't see why you have to conclude "goddidit". Non-sequitur.
2) It seems like their outrageous claims didn't hold any water. This article was written last year and it looks like the scientific community (after the peer reviews they were going to do for the journal publication) didn't find anything to uphold the view that those stars were 20 billion years old.

Quote:But I want to get back to our original topic. You say God would make a perfect world, and he would use a randomized Big Bang to do it. Putting aside the questions why, it seems to me all the evidence posited for the Big Bang thus far could just as easily have been manufactured by God through his infusion of energy into our universe. We should ask ourselves: would creation look any different than what we see? Well, creation would explain all the inconsistencies of the Big Bang linked above. And it might look billions of years old. This is because all rock dating is done to the molten creation of the rock--when it was last lava/magma. So any rock created without this initial stage is going to have whatever amount of Argon/Lead God saw fit to put in. If God had put any different levels of elements in rocks, the earth would not have been immediately habitable. Old-earth scientists date the earth and universe according to how long they think it would have taken to reach the habitable zones we have today.

Why do you assume that different levels in the rocks would therefore mean differing time spans until the earth would be habitable? I don't understand where this assumption is coming from.

Quote:Well, it's logical that God would have done that from the outset. This includes the locations of the planets and stars and outer reaches of the universe. Everything is exactly as we need it, with dangerous imbalances working in union all around. God cannot possibly create a world that looks younger for the sake of non-deception if we make up our own criteria for what is 'old'. Do you see what I mean? To make it ‘look’ younger, He would have to make an inhabitable world.

Still not sure where the habitable/inhabitable assumption is coming from.

Quote:He makes a habitable world, and we immediately conclude it needed billions of years to get there naturally. Well, God is not going to go out of his way to make his supernatural look natural. Should he?

...to make his supernatural world look natural. Hmm, should he do that? I find that's a very profound question. I think the simple answer has to do with what actually happened rather than whether God has this obligation or not. What actually happened is that our world has, by the looks of it, 0% divine influence. I'm not just talking physically, but in general, which includes our daily lives. If this world was actually dripping with divine interaction, our species would have unified under the one true God long ago. But the simple fact is that the Christian god seems apathetic towards our worship, prayers, personal sacrifices, acts of faith and basically anything else that the Bible says God cares about. This behaviour is no different to other mythical figures i.e. they don't respond because they don't exist. So, should God make his supernatural world look natural? Well, I have yet to see this "supernatural" aspect to any of it, so this "created" universe to me is natural, whether there's a god or not.

---

DoubtVsFaith Wrote:You still haven't disproved that Jesus is God incarnate and that God created the universe. What Jesus is saving us from could mean anything if it's all allegory.

Matthew 19:4 Wrote:And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female

Genesis 1:27 Wrote:

---

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

---

Romans 5:12
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned

The fact that Paul, who was in contact with Christ Jesus, tells us that Adam was literal, either shows that Paul was making up stuff (because our assumption here is that Genesis is allegorical) OR that Jesus himself was telling him Adam was literal, which means that Jesus was wrong i.e. he wasn't divine in that case. Then we also get Jesus himself making an implicit reference to creation and how the first humans were Adam & Eve. Given that in this thread we have granted the bulk of the Christian god's claims but modified it to say Genesis is allegorical, I'd say that these couple of things show Jesus wasn't god.

FallentoReason Wrote:I refuse to believe this "mysterious ways" thing. He supposedly left behind his word that tells us about him. It's just a cop out, moving the goal posts and special pleading to explain how he really can still exist.

Quote:Your own incredulity isn't disproof.

Saying "God works in mysterious ways" makes the Christian sound like a Pantheist. The Christian claims to have a relationship with the Almighty Creator of the Cosmos whereas the Pantheist doesn't, but yet the Christian has to shrug and cop out with the "mysterious ways" line. I find that incredibly laughable really. So laughable in fact that the hilarity can be portrayed through memes.





Arguably, both these examples also show he wasn't divine. Why does a divine Jesus not know when his own creation--the fig tree--was out of season? Why does a divine Jesus have to ask himself why he abandoned himself on the cross?

(November 4, 2012 at 10:13 am)DoubtVsFaith Wrote: Okay so for those who accept Christ the penalty of their sins doesn't exist but they can still sin?

Short answer: yes

The only difference in the end (judgment day sort of scene) is those who have placed their faith in Jesus receive mercy instead of justice.

If everyone got justice we'd all go to hell.

1 John 2:1 - My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Then so be it. Why compromise both concepts in an attempt to hold on to a third? Justice is not justice if it is not just. Mercy is not mercy if it is doled out by criteria of cronyism.

(November 5, 2012 at 2:03 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Then so be it. Why compromise both concepts in an attempt to hold on to a third? Justice is not justice if it is not just. Mercy is not mercy if it is doled out by criteria of cronyism.

Are you saying that you'd prefer that God showed no mercy and we all went to hell?