A discussion around family table.

[tackattack]

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You choose not to take context into account, yet are complaining that you don't understand.

There's no context being presented to me, so how can I understand something if it's not there? The missing element is any example at all of where I have taken a horrible bible thing out of context. An example meaning that you show how the other bible parts cancel it out. I am willing to take context into account, but I don't think you can present anything other than your emotions about what a good god must have meant. Speaks well of you, so don't get me wrong here, you seem to be choosing the more moral paths in life despite your evil god's commands.

You can define faith any way you like, you seem to accept only the interpretations of words that coincide with your biases.

That's unfair. The normal dictionary definitions must be assumed by me, since you never used a disclaimer saying 'when I use the word faith here, I really mean such&such which is similar in thisorthat but different in as far as whatzit goes'. Note that I used nonsense words as fillers since I still don't know what your personal definition of the word is compared to which parts of the normal definitions.

You and the writer above claim how can you believe in something you can't interact with. We're saying you can't know if something exists unless you've interacted with it. If you feel every theist is a delusional, irrational unicorn believer than fine by me. If you want to believe the holy spirit is just an emotional state, fine by me. I really wish you wouldn't speak to things you have no context or belief in though.

I've fully interacted. Just like the guy in the video (Dusty Smith, has lots of great videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/CultOfDusty by the way), I am very willing to interact with any gods that want to communicate with me. I've done my part. I'm here, if ever any god wishes to chat. They don't even have to phone ahead. Same goes for other deities too though, and flower fairies, and thetans, and ghosts, and santa clauses, and really any other supernatural entities. It's usually nice to meet new people, especially unusual interesting ones, as I imagine these beings would be.

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1- Even the skeptics Annotated Bible(SAB) has a list of good things in the Bible. You're not even attempting to comment on them. I fully admitted to teh horrors in teh Bible and I don't think you're being intellectually honest. Context is not taking 1 liners from the parts you disagree with, by differnt authors, without thought for the pages up to and after the sentence for a perspective and trying to get me to cancel them out with oneliners from the other side. It's not a weight and balance scale, there's duality in the men who wrote it therefore it's in teh book by them as well. For instance: the OT references to homosexuality (not the word use the context from the Koine Greek) These translations generally interpret the Greek words "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai" as referring to homosexuals. Effiminate or soft would be the former and catamite would be the latter.We can be fairly certain that this is not the meaning that Paul wanted to convey. If he had, he would have used the Greek word "paiderasste." That was the standard term at the time for males who had sex with males. That coupled with the fact it's in a long list of things the pagan converts (with old pagan rituals) are doing wrong within the church.That's context, language changes and expands and meanings change over time. If I said you were nice it'd be a compliment, however originally from the greek it was meant to be an ignorant person.


2- As far as definine faith, I agree with Arcanus' explination of faith. What I'm trying to explain to you is not the definition of the words that is an issue. I can throw 20 random words at you and we can agree on their definition. But them in a sentence and we might disagree as to the meaning of it, due to context. It's about factoring in the subject, the author, the time, the society it was all written in. It's about how verbal stories were written as moralistic poems and narratives rich in imagery lacking in reality.

3-Good I'm glad you're open to the experience, it doesn't come across in your words to this point, but I'll accept that you are at face value.