God says “Love me or die”

[Violet]

We're just now begining to map where certain thoughts come from in the brain, much less what they are.

Although it should be noted that what, when, and where are separate "parts" of existence.

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The nicene creed
the Bible
subjective personal experience
rational and logical observance
intuition
faith
practical application

not necessarily in that order

I'll believe every one of those except the strikeout. While you may think that there are rational/logical observations that can be made... you should note that "God" being able to create something from nothing defies logic, and observations is to suggest that "God" can be scientifically tested. But I can understand how the rest is what you base your christianity on (fr0d0 probably does as well, as probably does a lot of Christians). But not one of them I know has the strikeout as a part of their basis except as a mistake, or a lack of thought regarding the matter.

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It's just more examples of Biblical contradictions...more evidence that the Bible shouldn't (or to be more accurate...can't) be taken literally. Also more evidence it wasn't written by a God...though maybe he was incompetent?

That assumes that writing the bible as he did (full of contradictions) was not a part of his plan when writing it. Perhaps our understanding of his motive in writing the bible is mistaken?

Just one more interpretation... this one to defend a "perfect God" against the attacks of logicians. As we have no way of knowing what a "perfect God" would be... it seems presumptuous of us to use the bible at all in regards to the being's perfection.

While it is demonstrably true that the thing created is "imperfect", this is to be considered by a subjective viewpoint and interpretation of what perfect is. If the being that created the "imperfect" thing is "perfect", it could be very well that the thing it created was too perfect... just not in our opinion. And perhaps a perfect being would create imperfect things... indeed, perhaps the "imperfection" was the intent of the "perfect" being.

We have no ground to make any opinion in the matter of that which cannot be known at our current level of existence... while a thing may not apply here... that is a far cry from suggesting that it would not apply elsewhere.