Pauline Letters to the church.

[Drich]

show me the scripture in which you speak and let's put in into it's proper context.

2 Thessalonians 2:11:

And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

The context is that people who don't love the truth will be further deceived by God in order that they shall never, EVER be saved: no redemption, no chance to make atonement for sins committed - God deludes them specifically to prevent any chance of salvation. This strikes me as pretty odd behavior for a God who wants ALL people to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4, in case you were wondering).

But I digress. Given the above, how can you determine if your religious beliefs are what God actually wants you to believe, or if God is making you believe a lie for the express purpose of damning you?

Boru

ah, no. Verse 11 is tied to the time frame established in verse 1. Verse one is speaking of the last days of the apoclapse. Which means in the last days (once the events of the end of the world have been triggered) those who wanted nothing to do God before the end times, will not accept the signs of the end times because of this great deception that has been sent.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?sea...rsion=NKJV

I gave an example of what this deception might look like here: http://atheistforums.org/thread-11941.html

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If the case is such that Satan can deceive people into think he is god, then how can we know that the god of the bible isn't the evil one and Satan the true god?

In Christianity God and satan are not equals. Satan is a reluctant servant of God. He only does what He is allowed to do (see the book of Job.) If Satan is the almighty, then he is getting his teeth kicked in by his nemsis. Which makes him less than 'almighty.' which means he can not be God.

Maybe the whole bible was written by authors that thought they were in touch with god but actually talking to Satan in order to complete the deception.

Kinda like the koran and the book of Moromon? So ask yourself what seperated the bible for the book of mormon? Answer? Prophesy. Satan's books are filled with flat out wrong and unanswered prophesy. Satan is not Onmipotent therefore does not know what is comming.

Then it would follow that drich's method would be incorporated into the text and people would be taught to disregard anything that disagreed with those teachings in the bible because it's a deception trying to protect itself from the truth.

Then what standard would one use as the word of God?

Hence the bible calls for death of and/or detachment from nonbelievers, where as if it was true it would encourage dissent and challenges it too in order to prove its truth.

Where does it call for this?

However what we see in reality and the bible is very different, Paul teaches to distance yourself from non believers, moses teaches to murder them and burn their towns down, Jesus says they will burn in hell, and john backs him up in revelations.

again where?