The Reasons why "Just Following Jesus" Doesn't work

[Redbeard The Pink]

Before I start talking about what Christianity is and why Christians look like the world. Would you mind explaining what you believed when you practiced Christianity, or what you think your parents believe as Christians?

 

Why, so you can decide whether we're True Scotsman?

Biblically a Christian is someone who accepts the Gospel (that Jesus died for their sins). Having agreed that they sin (wanting life on their own terms, which leads to death and separation from God) and ask for forgiveness. This entire process is done by faith (belief but into action), which leads to their salvation.  Then as a guarantee of their salvation God will give His Spirit. Once this happens a Christian will begin to mature into their new spiritual life. Much like a child matures into adulthood. People don't come out of the womb walking and talking; a Christian doesn't become a mature Christian at the moment they believe. They have to learn to navigate their new life by God's word. Overcoming their past sinful habits by the power of the Holy Spirit. This process varies and has setbacks, but there is a move towards God in love, with devotion, and through obedience. A Christian may look/act like the culture they are from, because that is all they knew before.  Also, one is not simply a Christian because they "say" they are, or were brought up by Christian parents.  There should be some evidence of change, and a desire to change more.  Their life as a Christian isn't a whim or tradition and but a worthwhile sacrifice for something infinitely better.

 

Yeah, that's pretty much the gist of what I believed when I was in your death cult.

Any religion or system of thinking that promotes working your way to God is false (No matter its degree of correct theology). In other words no Jesus +, the book of Galatians covers this topic I am speaking of.  

 

Any religion or system of thinking that promotes God is false. There is no such thing as correct theology, not even in the book of Galatians.

You spoke about not seeing certain elements of the gospels as being cohesive. So I was thought about your objection and God brought to mind the resurrection account, and how many women were at the tomb. It isn't a problem if you allow them to harmonize. In a musical composition parts are written with variation to create depth and richness in the piece. I propose this is what's happening in the Gospels. In the book of Matthew, Mary Magdalene and another Mary (28:1) find the empty tomb. In Mark Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome (16:1) find the tomb. In Luke Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and others (24:10) find the tomb.  Lastly in John Mary Magdalene (20:18) finds the tomb. The writers of the Gospels focus on certain parts of the resurrection account that satisfies their reasoning. If you allow the gospels to harmonize then you see the full account in more detail than any one Gospel gives.  This one may not be what you were thinking of and there are other apparent "contradictions" in the gospels so I am willing to discuss those if you wish.

 

The number of women isn't the only detail that's problematic with that part of the story. Scholars have tried to sit down and build a cohesive narrative that accounts for all the post-resurrection details that the gospels present, and it simply cannot be done. The details of the stories are mutually exclusive, which should tell you all you need to know about the fallibility of the humans who wrote them.

As you said in you previous post there was an type of indentured slavery in Israel, which afforded the poor and indebted a way out of their poverty. Then after 6 years they were set free.  Greco-Roman slavery is the slavery system of the new testament. Up to a 3rd of the people in Rome were like employees, teachers, craftsmen, managers, cooks, government officials and some slaves even owned slaves. Some become slaves to gain Roman citizenship and a social standing. It provided security and stability and many slaves were released by 30 to stand on their own. However this doesn't mean its inclusion in the Bible therefore concludes God's will was for man to own slaves.

Leviticus 25:44-46New International Version (NIV)

44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

Again, you're just objectively wrong about what the Bible says about slavery. The caveats and restrictions only applied to Jewish slaves, and even those were pretty loose. Foreign slaves could be kept for life and were treated strictly as property, not "servants" or anything else, and even Jewish slaves could be beaten, provided you did not knock out their eyes or teeth or kill them (see the previously discussed passage in Numbers).


According to Numbers, Leviticus, and Ephesians (at least), your god is totally cool with slavery. At no point does he speak against it in the Bible even a little bit.

The slavery in America was built on human-trafficking and sub-humanism propaganda. This was done by people, yes even Christians, who were more interested in their own gains than the personhood of the slave.

American slavery (most especially in the South) was expressly based on the law of Moses. Look it up if you don't believe me. Those people were using the Bible to justify and regulate slavery, and the Bible does not make that hard. Furthermore (I realize this is, like, the #1 racist argument about slavery, so I'm loathe to bring it up, but here goes), many slaves were sold to us as war prisoners by tribes who had conquered them, and another great many were born right here in the States. Kidnapping raids were fairly common early in the American Slave Trade, but these excursions proved to be dangerous, so it actually became more common just to buy them from other Africans. The whole "kidnapping" thing you're trying to base this whole argument on has the same problem here that it did with the Jews; all told, "kidnapping" isn't how most American slaves were obtained. Most of them were sold into it or were born into it.

They were abused and misused and the repercussions of that still affects America today. Some people were "Christians" out of tradition and others allowed themselves to be blinded to the reality of this evil.

Funny how a thing like religious beliefs can cause a person to lose sight of what's evil.

Much like in today's society we are blind to abortion and pornography. The slave owners rapped when the wanted, killed when they wanted and become hardened by the cruelty.

Some of them did, sure, but some of them didn't treat their slaves any worse than you'd treat a plow animal (which is still a terrible way to treat a human). Slave owners, contrary to modern popular belief, weren't routinely torturing their slaves or beating them to death; slaves cost money and do work, so most owners couldn't afford to just spend them on a whim. Furthermore, Biblical slave masters could "marry" their slaves without consent and beat them to death as long as it took them more than a day or two to bite it. That's not at all better than what you're describing in the South.

This is not the same type of slavery written about in the New testament when Paul tells a slave to return home and for the master to forgive him. Knowledge of past cultures in the Bible helps us to put into perspective what is actually being said and how that applies to our lives in the 20th Century. There is another type of slavery spoken of in the bible and that is spiritual slavery. When anyone worships anything other than God they become a slave to sin. No matter what kind of outward change they perform they'll never be free. God, through Jesus' sacrifice, buys us out of our slavery to sin and death. God uses the theme of slavery as a picture of our bondage to sin.

The god of morality allowed and regulated an immoral practice just as an object lesson? What a dick.

 

Now the question is are you supporting the degradation of humans? There are men, women, boys, and girls who are sex slaves for the production of pornography and when you support that you support slavery. This industry is destructive to all involved it dehumanizes people making it easier to abuse them. It also robs all involved of their humanity. The only hope is God He and His ability to free slaves from every from of slavery.

 

Do I support human trafficking? No. Do I support sexual slavery of any kind? No. Do I support the sexual exploitation of children for any reason, pornographic or otherwise? No.


Do I support pornography that's made and viewed by consenting adults? Yes, absolutely.

DNA is genetic information and people are trying now to use DNA as a storage system. It is a far more advanced storage system than anything we have created (you can look at this CNN article). Since computer code act similar to DNA if it were to evolve or change randomly it would degrade long before it had a positive mutation. You offered up time as a solution to this problem. The problem is that there isn't enough time to move through all the possible combinations of proteins to create a positive mutation. Here is a debate with Stephen Meyer (my main source) and Charles Marshall. The question is where did all that information come from?

 

And the problem with that, again, is that science not having the answer does not make your god the answer; that's an argument from ignorance. You're basically saying "I don't understand DNA or how it can do what it does, therefore my god must be responsible." It doesn't matter how long that debate went on or what was said, really. The theist is arguing from ignorance, so he loses. To prove that DNA came from his god, he would have to have a way to demonstrate that; he doesn't simply win the argument because the scientist can't answer his question about "where the information came from."

I don't see your "just is" as equivalent to my statement that God is self-existent. He isn't a thing but a being possessing infinite knowledge, immutability, all power and is eternal. He is therefore able to work in every moment and can accomplish what is necessary for the out come that He wants. It is reasonable to believe God created us simply because of the information in the Bible let alone the information found in DNA. Information always traces back to a mind, why would it be different with DNA. When we find information in books or on a disc we don't assume it evolved, but that it was created.

 

If god can "just is," so can other things. If he's the only thing that can "just is," then that's special pleading. We have been over this...so many times...

Finally; human beings are categorized as "Hominids" and the word ape is an English word not a taxonomic category. If you could point me to the fossil information you sighted, because my search was mostly fruitless.

"Ape" is an English word describing a taxonomic branch of tailless, old-world primates whose scientific name is "Hominoidea." "Hominids (aka Great Apes)" are a subset of this category, and we are in that category. We are tailless primates native to Africa. We are literally apes by definition.