What is "FAITH"

[Bad Writer]

Let's say I give a homeless man a ten-dollar bill. I attribute my good deed to my own desire to make the world a better place, and especially to brighten this man's day a bit. Now, because I made the conscious decision to do this, all of my own accord, should that be attributed to God, because it's good?

*Homeless Man stares at the ten-dollar bill while BadWriterSparty walks away*

Ten bucks! I can get 3 bottles of Mad Dog with this!

That deserved some Kudos.

[Consilius]

The good in the world is executed by our own conscious decisions. The opportunity or the availability of us to do these things is much 'by chance' or beyond forces we can't usually control. How did you come across that ONE homeless person at the time of day he was out when there are a number of them in the city who beg at different times in different places?

I happened upon him by random chance, as you suggested. I think that's believable in and of itself, and it doesn't need to be qualified by saying "God made it so", which would kind of take away free will, another staple of Christian teachings. You're not saying that though, so I'm not really sure where your point is leading to.

The slaughters of the Old Testament were mostly acts of war, which were frequent between tribes at the time. So if a nation attacks a band of slaves in the middle of the desert, you can expect that they plan to wipe them out. The Israelites instead returned the favor, as law around the world in the OT dictated. The Amelekites would have expected it from any people that they had attempted to exterminate. Notice how Israel, when, as a nation with a population much harder to exterminate to their enemies, only went to war with the soldiers, because Israelite opponents had only the intention of political conquest and not racial genocide.

In my world, this is called cherry picking. You take one aspect of the story, call it good, and you...eh...kinda sorta leave the rest of the ickyness to the side of it all. I know the Bible isn't perfect, and neither were God's people in it, but the fact remains that god told them to initiate those genocides and mass murders, wiping out the previous inhabitants from those lands, and even taking the women unto themselves as they saw fit (and it was also commanded that they do so.) This wasn't just any prophet telling them to do it either. We're talking about Moses and his successors.

The problem I have with this is not the validity of the stories themselves. Rather, the big issue is that the religions out there are not owning up to the fact that maybe Moses wasn't a very good guy. The Catholic Church has gone and has spoken openly about its indiscretions in the past, as well as the Mormon Church, whose members confessed to the Mountains Meadow Massacre that happened during its early days. These were people supposedly acting in the name of God. Trying to sugar-coat the acts of Moses and his people is like saying Hitler had a point to his proceedings.

This law was the imperfect or incomplete law that existed on earth because of Adam's sin. When the time was right, Christ instituted God's law of mercy in fulness through the ultimate example of himself. We live by this law today, which is why there were Chrisitan martyrs. Also, even if we DID live under OT law, Christians are so many that any attack on us would most likely not be intended to kill all of us, and the retaliation prescreibed in the OT would come short of international genocide.

Wait...! Hold on a second. You believe that? But your book preaches something else...let's see...

Matthew 5:18 - For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Dude! Jesus SAID that! You cannot unwrite the law that was written in the OT. The only thing Jesus supposedly fulfilled in the Christian worldview was that no one needed blood sacrifice again because of his death on the cross. All other laws remained! I mean...are you going to throw out the Ten Commandments just because there's a New Testament now? Please...why even keep the OT on hand if you aren't going to abide by it?

All sarcasm aside now...ahem. How does Jesus' death make it so there are Christian martyrs? If Jesus had lived, but people died in his name, there still would have been martyrs...so...I guess I don't get your point.

And as for that last point. Yes. You are right. It's also a very scary thought. I think you have a little disclaimer to that somewhere...here...oh yes, here it is, just below what you wrote.

Let me also say that God's law is fully consistent with the Bible. What we should and should not do are not conditional until told otherwise. There have been plenty of so-called 'prophets', and they have little influence on the Christian community as a whole. We do not work under God's direct commands, but follow the morals of what is compiled in the Bible to do what we think is right and continue doing it that way.

Oh, so it's wolves in sheep's clothing sort of thing.

Yeah...um...dude...my example didn't include that. I said something along the lines of if there were a prophet of god among men today. This means that this particular prophet definitely speaks for god, and everything he says in god's name is righteous in god's eyes. But that was just an example because we both know that a man speaking for a god is silly...right? Right?

Okay, I got silly again. I'm guessing you don't subscribe to the notion that God speaks to men today, but that he did in times past, which is why we have the Bible. So my new question to you is: why? Why can't he speak through men now, if that was his preferred method of informing the masses back then? (Chances are your answer might be completely opinion based, so arguing with you on it won't be very effective...I just want to know what you think.)

The 'chance' part I believe is orchestrated by God, but, no matter what happens, the decision to give money to the homeless man remains yours. It could be that God led the right person to the right person at the right time and in the right place.

I can't make a defense of Moses being a bad person because, as far as the Bible is concerned, God directly told him to command the slaughter of Israelite enemies. Pope Urban II is not believed to have recieved any such command as the Crusades. However, Moses had his flaws and made a mistake that kept him from being allowed to enter Canaan (Deuteronomy 34:4).

The OT law was not eliminated, it was completed or perfected.
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill."
The RCC even has the Ten Commandments listed out and interpreted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
By the martyrs thing I mean that because of Jesus' teaching, persecuted Christians no longer fought their enemies in wars, but died in the name of their cause, as Jesus had.

Any supposed 'prophet' is judged by his words and actions. Even if God does not speak to him, he at least acts like a prophet if what he says is consistent with the Bible. The instant that he deviates from Christian teaching in the Bible is when we can clearly tell that he is not a prophet, or stopped being one.

That last question is you asking why there are no miracles today. My opinion is that if the Judeo-Christian religion had been the 'true' religion, it would need to be well-kept. In the OT, God starts officially with Abraham. We have one man in the entire world with the 'true' worship. Peer pressure alone is discouraging enough, not to mention that he was expected to travel under the direction of a voice we heard. Miracles fill up that gap of motivation.
Then we have the Israelites in the middle of the desert. The law they had was peculiar to them and directly handed down by God, as the Bible claims. This message would have to go unaltered in letter and in practice by their descendants for 2000 years. So you can expect much was expected of them. "With great power comes great responsibility" and Jesus said, "To whom much is given, much is expected" (Luke 12:48). So these people got miracles every other day. That is also why punishments were so harsh, like Sabbath stonings, earthquakes, and capital punishments.
These things become less harsh as Israel becomes a nation in Canaan and miracles become less grand and less common. However, this is still a single country in the world that practices the 'true' worship. That explains God having serious issues with the polytheistic "heathens" who try to bring pagan worship into Israel.
Miracles become less and less grand as the nation of Israel grows in size. The return from the Israelite exile can be seen as a miracle, or was it simply a product of chance? You see, the line between 'miracle' and 'coincidence' fades as Israel grows in population and events become easier for us to analyze historically.
Christ comes along and also performs his own miracles. They would be easier to check out for ourselves but it is harder to see if they happened, because many of them were so small and left little trace of their occurrence. Christ also taught against looking for miracles: Matthew 12:38-42
"38 Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.

39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas (Jonah):

40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (the Resurrection).

41 The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

42 The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.
(It is talking about people who had less proof of God's law getting angry because they believed on the account of people, while the Pharisees had God in their midst and still wouldn't believe him.)

Doesn't it strike you that many of these OT people still refused God on account of all the cool miracles they had? There were very strong forces of peer pressure and societal instability that encouraged them to do so.
The reason we don't get to see if the miracles like those in Exodus are true or not is because there are people around the world who understand the same message God preached through Christ, which is one of love and forgiveness. We all have a general idea of Christ's teachings and we follow them. Mission accomplished. We know a good way to live and a bad way.
OT miracles are incompatible with today because they no longer would serve the purpose they were intended to serve. If they were obvious and verifiable, there would be no room for faith, which God establishes in much ore subtle ways on account of the good morals already preached by society as a whole. We would serve God out of fear and not love.

Imagine we got a reincarnation of Moses. If he had only been seen by one community then disappeared, everyone, even most Christians, would dismiss it as a hoax. Science has a thing for either dismissing contradictory evidence or saying that "we don't have the science yet". That is perfectly OK, and an indispensable part of scientific pursuit, which is why miracles do not have the same effect on modern societies as they did ancient ones.
Say our Moses went all over England with his staff, talking about God. He would be summoned by the scientific community and have a tub of water placed in front of him in a test room. There would be chemical analyses of his staff and X-rays of his hand. After which, the scientific community might publish that God is real. The world would become a theocracy of fearful Christians and non-Christians alike, and the newfound political power of religious authorities would be used for selfish purposes.
No one can be sure God is real, which is why religion is based on faith and subtle subjective evidence.

[Bad Writer]

I wasn't asking about miracles. You're right though. If Jesus came down today and walked on water, I still wouldn't believe he's the incarnation of Yahweh.

I see that you're basing a lot of this on your own feelings, and as such (and as I suspected) there's not really much to debate on that.

The only thing I'll still nitpick with you and other Christians about is that Jesus never said he would change the law (as I put forth earlier) and you didn't disprove that when you told me that he fulfilled the law. There's no need for argument (not at this point anyway, I think), for we're reading and understanding the same things. The only thing different is interpretation, and that's a whole other topic.

Disclaimer:
Please don't take my "interpretation" as meaning that I believe in the Bible, for I only use the Bible when pointing things out to those who read or believe in it.

I think I'm done with this one, so I'll give you the closing thoughts to our little back and forth.

[Consilius]

Well, if I am going debate biblical events and biblical teachings, I should put some biblical information forth, just to close:
Paul's Letter to the Galatians 3:16-19
16 The promises (of salvation) were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,”[i] meaning one person, who is Christ. 17 What I mean is this: The law, (Jewish law) introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant (the one between God and Abraham) previously established by God and thus do away with the promise (of salvation). 18 For if the inheritance (God's favor) depends on the law (Jewish law), then it no longer depends on the promise (of salvation); but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise (of salvation).

19 Why, then, was the law (Jewish law) given at all? It was added because of transgressions (Adam's sin) until the Seed (Christ) to whom the promise (of salvation) referred had come. The law (Jewish law) was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator (Christ).

[Faith No More]

Gladly.
An example would be cases of 'luck'.
The luck we percieve we have from our opportunities gives the human being a sense of purpose.
When good things happen, we trust that the same benevolent being that brought these good events can do so in adverse times as well. That's what trust is.
An example of 'luck' would be the degree of opportunity that someone is born into.

Your example of the logic that is rooted in your faith seems to be missing some things like coherency, valid premises, and that all important element, logic.

[Consilius]

Ooh, a new argument!
God is good i.e. the embodiment of all good in the universe.
Psalm 107:1—"Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever."
Good is invisible, unchanging, omnipotent and omnipresent, as is God.
Good cannot exist outside God, because God exists in everything.
Therefore, God is good.

[Faith No More]

[Esquilax]

Ooh, a new argument!
God is good i.e. the embodiment of all good in the universe.
Psalm 107:1—"Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever."
Good is invisible, unchanging, omnipotent and omnipresent, as is God.
Good cannot exist outside God, because God exists in everything.
Therefore, God is good.

Book of Ryan, 1:1- "The bible is the claim, it is not evidence for the claim; using the bible to justify a belief about god is circular reasoning."

[Consilius]

Of course the Bible isn't evidence. I just didn't want anyone thinking I was making an independent claim.
It still remains that God is invisible, immutable, omnipotent and ubiquitous goodness.
Christians worship this potent force of good because this good 'reveals' itself to not only them, but to everybody.
This good is called upon in times when it appears it is not there.

[The Grand Nudger]

Gladly.
An example would be cases of 'luck'.
The luck we percieve we have from our opportunities gives the human being a sense of purpose.
When good things happen, we trust that the same benevolent being that brought these good events can do so in adverse times as well. That's what trust is.
An example of 'luck' would be the degree of opportunity that someone is born into.

b-mine.

That's faith rooted in faith.