Poll for Christians: Are the End Times imminent?

[Godlesspanther]

The rapture, is in my mind, one of the most damaging, destructive, abusive, and all-around fucked-up beliefs that a group of people has ever been subjected to.

Look at the Rapture Ready forums (participants often make FSTDT)and you can see how the belief system has damaged its adherents' ability to think properly.

The rapture will never happen. That is not an opinion, that is a fact.

[xpastor]

Your funny, you know nothing about scriptures, no wonder you're an xpastor I bet your church tossed you. I haven't the time to answer these absurd statements at this time I will after Christmas if I remember, time for God and family.

And you are ungrammatical.

If I know nothing about scriptures, then neither does Bart D. Ehrman, B.A. (Wheaton), M. Div. and Ph.D. (Princeton Theological Seminary), Professor of New Testament Studies, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, formerly President of the Society of Biblical Literature and book review editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature, and author of about a dozen well-known books in the field, including Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, on which I relied heavily for the argument above. Apologies for not citing it the first time. I had meant to do so because I'm certainly not claiming originality for this theory, but I wrote my summary over a period of a few days and left out a few things I meant to mention.

I don't doubt that you and your fellow fundamentalist bozos will wave your hands and say you've disproved it all. However, when you read the bible as an ordinary book without presuming that it can't possibly have a mistake, that is exactly what comes out on this subject.

If you are ashamed of me and of my teaching in this godless and wicked day, then the Son of Man will be ashamed of you when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. And he went on to say, “I tell you, there are some here who will not die until they have seen the Kingdom of God come with power.” (Mark 8:38 - 9:1)

Go ahead. Twist your brain into a pretzel trying to show how this is anything but a prophecy of the Last Judgment within the lives of those standing there.

[Esquilax]

Xpastor, you're being incredibly charitable in responding to GC at all: I myself wouldn't have found the intellectual content present in his standard "you're dumb and don't understand bibles!" response to be worth the time it would take you to type.

GC: flat assertions may be all you have, but your unfounded opinions aren't binding on the rest of us.

[xpastor]

Xpastor, you're being incredibly charitable in responding to GC at all: I myself wouldn't have found the intellectual content present in his standard "you're dumb and don't understand bibles!" response to be worth the time it would take you to type.

GC: flat assertions may be all you have, but your unfounded opinions aren't binding on the rest of us.

I really felt badly about failing to credit Ehrman for so much of the content, although before receiving GC's idiotic comment, I would not have stated Ehrman's qualifications in such exhaustive detail

[Minimalist]

Your funny, you know nothing about scriptures,

Says the asshole who believes in talking snakes and world-covering floods.
You are an amazing source of amusement, G-C. A stellar example of allowing your brain to atrophy.

[xpastor]

Your funny, you know nothing about scriptures,

Says the asshole who believes in talking snakes and world-covering floods.
You are an amazing source of amusement, G-C. A stellar example of allowing your brain to atrophy.

Since you mention that smooth-talking serpent, it reminds me I have a half-formed theory that some of the OT writers were much more sophisticated than their present day fundie fans.

Specifically, I doubt that the authors of Job and Jonah thought the truth value of their fables was as historical fact, not anymore than Aesop did. The stories are so well-formed that they give the impression of a professional story teller rather than someone trying to recite a bit of tribal history handed down through the ages.

The snippet about the talking donkey and the appearance of the talking snake are too brief to judge, but they could also be intentional fables.

However, I don't see anyway of saving the fantasies about the sun standing still in the sky or iron axe heads floating in water. They're unbelievable on any level.

[Mystical]

Since you mention that smooth-talking serpent, it reminds me I have a half-formed theory …

that some of the OT writers were much more sophisticated than their present day fundie fans.

Your half formed theory reminds me of my half formed theory: that the writers were all professional wine tasters.

The snippet about the talking donkey and the appearance of the talking snake ...

However, I don't see anyway of saving the fantasies about the sun standing still in the sky or iron axe heads floating in water...

Case in point

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Oh and big holiday bunny hugs, Expastorman

I'm just sappy, don't mind me ..

[xpastor]

Oh and big holiday bunny hugs, Expastorman

I'm just sappy, don't mind me ..

Hey, I'm always gald to exchange holiday hugs. Back at you.

[orangebox21]

What is your standard for morality and why should a person follow your standard?

Reason, compassion, empathy and evidence. People should follow that standard because it conforms to the real world in which we live, and the people therein; their wellbeing is paramount.

Follow up questions: if you're claiming biblical morality, why don't you obey your god's instructions with regards to, say, slavery? And if you're saying you follow god's morality, were there actual reasons why he chose X things as good, and Y things as bad, that apply to the real world? Or is it all just a grab bag of the guy's opinions? If it's the latter, what use is morality at all? If it's the former, should not those real world reasons become apparent to anyone else as well, if your god is always correct?

Where did you get your reason from? Where did you get your compassion from? Where did you get your empathy from? Where do you get your evidence from? No animal displays these characteristics.

Not everyone agrees to your standards. Why should we accept your standards as truth?

Biblical morality states that: "there is no one rightous no not one." This is the truth of morality. You're not moral, I'm not moral, mother Teresa isn't moral. That has been and always will be the truth. No one can live up to what Biblical morality expects of us because "all of us like sheep have gone astray." We have all broken the law. We have all done wrong. We have all sinned. There have been times that we haven't been reasonable, compassionate, empathetic, and with evidence. So what happens then? What happens to a person who can't even live up to their own standards?

What's ironic is that we, who can't even live up to our own standards, want to hold God to those standards as if we have some kind of moral superiority to Him.

God created everything as good. We rebelled against Him and as a result there is bad. God didn't choose this or that to be good or bad, we make it that way then blame Him for the wrong we have created or ask Him to save us from the consequences (which He has done in the Christ).

I don't recall God telling me to get slaves but rather to be a servant to others.

[xpastor]

Where did you get your reason from? Where did you get your compassion from? Where did you get your empathy from? Where do you get your evidence from? No animal displays these characteristics.

You don't know very much about animals. There are lots of studies by experts demonstrating precisely that many species of animals are capable of empathy, even across species boundaries. Frans de Waal tells of a bonobo which solicitously cared for a bird for several hours after it had knocked itself out.

We get all those qualities from our evolutionary heritage.