JUST OPEN YOUR HEART, DAMMIT!

[T.J.]

Christians are in more denial about magic being in their book than GRRM is in his.

Just get to the White Walkers, and stop trying to be a historical text because you're not!

Not historical. Is that what atheist Bart Ehrman, professor at UNC - Chapel Hill has said?

"Serious historians of the early Christian movement—all of them—have spent many years preparing to be experts in their field. Just to read the ancient sources requires expertise in a range of ancient languages: Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and often Aramaic, Syriac, and Coptic, not to mention the modern languages of scholarship (for example, German and French). And that is just for starters. Expertise requires years of patiently examining ancient texts and a thorough grounding in the history and culture of Greek and Roman antiquity, the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world, both pagan and Jewish, knowledge of the history of the Christian church and the development of its social life and theology, and, well, lots of other things. It is striking that virtually everyone who has spent all the years needed to attain these qualifications is convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure." (Ehrman, Bart, Did Jesus Exist?, 5-6.)

He also wrote:

“It is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution. We know some of these believers by name; one of them, the apostle Paul, claims quite plainly to have seen Jesus alive after his death. Thus, for the historian, Christianity begins after the death of Jesus, not with the resurrection itself, but with the belief in the resurrection” (Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Third Edition. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, 276).

Jesus being real doesn't automatically mean that all of it was real, or even that he was the Son of God. Just like Vlad Dracula being real doesn't mean he was really a vampire.

All the second paragraph proves is that they believed it. Not that it was. I can also make a claim that I saw someone reported to be dead alive as well. People do it with Elvis all the time.

[ignoramus]

THEOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS
"A Brilliant Book of Immense Practical Usefulness"

Wow! SMACK IS GOBBED!

[Godscreated]

God doesn't do magic, just because you and I can't understand how He does it doesn't mean something else did, with God we have a absolute beginning. Why are you avoiding my question about the Holy Spirit, it's a simple thing I ask, it only requires a yes or no.

GC

Relax, Sparky...take it easy, before you burst a vessel. I don't get your Holy Spirit fetish, or what it is that you seem to need for me to say......what's my line here?

You as a Christian, are in fact promoting Biblical magic. Christians, hypocritically refuse to call it magic, but face it GC...that's exactly what it is. The Bible clearly says that your god spoke the world into existence....no mistaking it. That is a spell. A magic spell. Without a tremendous belief in magic, it is impossible to be true believer. All that you seem to be pushing is magic beliefs. You shouldn't get bent out of shape because people can't accept that
magic is real. Come on, GC. Be reasonable.

You good and well know what I'm asking about the Holy Spirit, you are afraid to answer, for what reason I have no idea but the only conclusion I can come to is you're afraid to answer a simple question that a ten year old would have no trouble answering. Have you ever seen or have proof of anyone doing this magic you speak of, seems to me you're taking things from a child's fairy tale books. Read William Paley's book Natural Theology: or Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearance of Nature. By the way I'm not the one getting excited here, you're tactic is to divert from what I have patiently been asking.

GC

[Homeless Nutter]

THEOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS
"A Brilliant Book of Immense Practical Usefulness"
[...]

Must be printed on toilet paper...

[Godscreated]

The big bang can't explain how the material came into existence. God said He created it, that would be, commanded it into existence. Through the word of God we have an explanation. Through man we have nothing.

GC

God is a superficial answer that cannot be proven as a real answer.  God is merely an answer to fill in the gaps of knowledge for idiots who are uncomfortable with the I don't know reality.  Truth is not something that can be brought out simply to fill in the gaps of knowledge, which is the entire foundation of religion, but rather truth is something that must have a basis of evidence to support it that does not rely upon faith.

You dismiss God by faith, you have no evidence to use to dismiss Him, faith is seemingly important to your life.

GC

[robvalue]

Theology for beginners! Oh yeah, I read that one. It's quite short.

Step 1: Make up whatever shit you want. You can copy other people's shit and change it a bit, or make up a whole new load of shit. IMPORTANT! Make sure that none of it can be proven wrong. Avoid anything that coincides with reality in any way.

Step 2: Say that it's your sincerely held religious belief and that you have the right to practice it, even if it involves mutilating passers by.

Step 3: Announce that everyone must live by your rules, and anyone that doesn't is oppressing you.

Congratulations! You are now an entry level theologist. Please continue onto Theology for the Smug Intermediate.

[Longhorn]

I'm a theologian. Watch

God is cheese. Cheese is eternal. The moon is cheese. The moon is god. That explains tides. Allah is a moon god. Praise Allah.

You can call me Mo

[Godscreated]

The following question would then be, how? God spoke it into existence, great. That still doesn't explain it.... where did the stuff come from? What energies are involved? What is the process? Is there any residual energies left over? Etc, etc...
If you don't feel you need to answer these question about creation, then no one needs to answer those questions about the big bang.

I'm comfortable saying I do not know, it's secular science that feels like it has to spout things to deny what man had accepted for thousands of years, even to the point of making up invisible things that have never been seen in nature nor the laboratory and then they will holler that Christians use an invisible being.

GC

[Redbeard The Pink]

[Randy Carson]