A discussion around family table.

[Scented Nectar]

Xtians tend to overvalue the platitudes that come from their 'god', S/N.

It's a failing of all religions in truth, but since we mainly get xtians here of one stripe or another its easy to forget.

True, and at least the ones here are changing it to be better than the stuff that's actually written. On the Coughlan616 youtube channel today (that's not a typo, it's his alternate channel), is a new one that gets into cherry picking and why it's a good thing. I'm too lazy to go get the link though and paste it in, and I just kind of summed up that part of the video anyways, but it reminded me a bit of the tons of reinterpretations over here.

[fr0d0]

The magnitude of willful ignorance here is astounding. Talk about argue black is white.

[Ace Otana]

The magnitude of willful ignorance here is astounding. Talk about argue black is white.

Couldn't resist.

[Godscreated]

God is not forcing me to love Him it's my choice it's what I want to do.

So, you don't do it because you are expected to? You love/idolize him to such an extent that you capitalize pronouns referring to him. What's with that silly stuff? The bible constantly orders you to love him, sometimes using different words like worship, praise, into yer heart, or whatever. One of your sacred commandments is an order to not love other gods because your god wants it all to himself, even admits he's jealous. If you don't love god, you're a sinner in his eyes. I mean what the fuck? The whole bible is one big love/obey god-fest.

Answer to the underlined Respect. Worship and praise are forms of respect and are not a requirement it's what true believers want to do. Yes, you are right He does say He is a jealous God. He is not jealous of other gods because there are none, He is jealous for us, He knows people will make up other gods (false idols,money,careers,other people and on and on it goes) and He knows the harm that will bring into ones life His jealousy is for our well being. You need to see the Bible for its true purpose and that will stay beyond you until you decide to seek the truth it holds.

And how do you 'choose' to love? You either feel the emotion love, or you don't. If you have chosen to feel it, and then intentionally try and feel it resulting in kind of feeling it, then you have just done the faith version of love. Way to taint what should be a nice and true emotion for yourself. Rather than really feel and enjoy it and find it awesome for just being what it is, it's a taste of god's goodness tossed as a crumb to unworthy you, who couldn't possibly feel such a thing without his mercy and magnificence. Do I have that right? Is it something like that?

Answer to the underlined NO, your understanding of love is limited to the English definition of love. The Greeks have many words for love which helps to show the real power of love. Gods love for us and our love for Him in the Greek is agape. In the Greek there are words for love of a friend, for family, for your mate in marriage, for places and things and ect. Please understand I'm not saying you do not know what real love is I'm saying that there are many different kinds of love and the love God has for you is beyond your understanding because you have rejected His love by rejecting Him. I don't know if you are married or not but I can tell you from experience that after 30 years of marriage that feel good love you mentioned doesn't feel the same it grows much deeper and becomes a love of partnership, sacrifice, devotion, need, comfort, understanding, trust, desire, helping, giving, taking and ect. this is a love built in relationship. The love of God is like this it's built in a personal relationship and you have no hope of understanding this love until you enter a true relationship with Him.

Godschild Wrote:

I do go out living life in and with love and I try to live a good moral life and not because I'm commanded to I do this I do this to show others what God has done in and for my life.

That's sad. Your motivation for being good is to thank god and tout the worship and obeying his commands. Being good for the sake of being good is much more authentic and purely motivated by goodness and true morality. The goodness inspired by religions however, are motivated by the believers being convinced that god wants them to do this or that, and that goodness means whatever god says it means. For a believer, the warm and fuzzy feeling from being good is probably the nice being-approved-of feeling, where god loves you for being so obedient.

What is sad about being thankful for Gods goodness to me. My love and respect for God is my motivation.
I know what He can do for others if they will only allow Him to work in their lives. IMO what is really sad is those who do not experience Gods love because they reject Him. You mentioned being good for the sake of being good that it's authentic and motivated by goodness and morality. I've never seen that, one would have to be omniscient a perfect being and that leaves the human race out so what you described could only be accomplished by God. God loves everyone regardless of their obedience to Him and what's so wrong about feeling good when you do something good for others.

Godschild Wrote:

I try to do the things I should in thanks to God for redeeming this unworthy person.

Why are you assuming you are starting from some default 'unworthy' position? That's pretty fucking pathetic. They have convinced you that any bad feelings you have inside you, can be cured with god/belief/love rather than actually looking into what has really caused you to feel bad. You can walk with that crutch all your life, or you can fix your leg and not need it after that.

Compared to the righteous God that's everyones default position. There's nothing pathetic about understanding who you are in relation to God an omniscient,omnipotent and omnipresent being. Who are they and who says I feel bad, I did not compare myself to you or any one else just God and when I saw who and what He is then I knew my unworthiness. You have no need for crutches when you are walking with God.

Godschild wrote: There's no way I can deny Gods love for me because His love cost Him a very high price.

Really? What high price? Do you mean when god pretended to be a human and died in a way that was less painful than many humans have experienced when injured or dying? Didn't your god already know what pain was, since he invented pain and dying? Seriously, what high price do you think your god had to pay?

God did not invent or create pain. Pain is a result of sin as is death and that is the price my God had to pay. He suffered a horrible death of pain but the greatest pain He suffered was the burden of sin He had to bear that was not His. My sin, your sin, everyones sin became as His sin, the perfect unblimished God who created all things good and perfect. Look at it this way what if you were imprisoned for a crime that someone else committed, suffering for someones sin, being punished for someones misdeed. Tell me would you not feel the pain of injustice would you not be paying a high price.

Godschild wrote: I know you do not understand this because you have chosen to disbelieve, that is a privilege God has given us, but your disbelief can not and will not change the fact that God is real.

Belief is not a choice, except when one convinces oneself to believe before evidence (and even after no evidence appears), and believing in that way is called faith. Faith is not true belief, it is an induced state of convincing oneself, self delusion to the point where one actually does kind of believe it. They must then battle 'doubts' whenever their mind naturally, and healthily, questions anything regarding it. True belief/disbelief just simply happens. If your god were real, and made himself known to me, I wouldn't have the choice about believing. I simply would believe, since he would be shown as real and not just in my mind. The choice would then be whether to try and follow his hideous laws. If your god were real, and if it mattered to him that I believe he existed, he would show that he existed in a way that can't be denied. Unless he is stupid or sadistic, that is. Is your god too stupid to be able to prove to everyone he's even there? Is he so mean that he would set up a difficult to believe situation that guarantees some to fail, for which he then tortures the failees?

Answer to the underlined: nice to see you understand freewill. No choice just a puppet is that appealing to you because that's the way it would be if God revealed Himself to us as you would have Him do. Personally I like having a choice, I found it to be hard, until I came to know Him and understand what He sacrificed for me. You know what, my belief in Him releases me from being a puppet. God did not setup a situation for failure, He's given us a choice to live with Him or without Him. Sin brings the punishment not God I do not understand why people have such a hard time with this truth.

Godschild wrote:Why is it you believe God would be forcing one to believe in Him, just because He gives us choices does not constitute force.

When the so called 'choice' is to believe or be punished, it is not really a choice, is it? He's not just warning you and saving you, you know. He's the one who decided you should be tortured forever. He's driving the truck he's telling you to step out of the way from. He's lighting the fucking match and locking you in the building and then telling you under what conditions he'll let you out. At least acknowledge that you are being coerced bigtime. Oh yeah, you can't think about that or you'll be punished. Never mind, I don't want to get you in trouble.

Your wrong God does not torture. Your choice determines your eternal life, you choose to repent "Heaven," you choose to live a life in sin "Hell". It's up to you, your decision not Gods. I see no coercion I've made my decision to follow Christ.

[tackattack]

@Min- They weren't platitudes identified by Christians. In case you missed the point, there are reasonable atheists who try an unbiased approach to the study of theism. They wrote the skeptics annotated guide to the bible from whence I had quoted.

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Ace it's not about whether we've personally failed at this or not or about the reward or punishment, it's about whether they're good or bad rules to follow.

That's not what your book says

And particularly about ScentedNectars obstinant refusal that the Bible has any good in it.

Because she has actually READ the bloody thing??

Thanks for your input though and I don't think that you're going to hell because you broke the rules.

Hel is a nice little place in Norway ....well probably nice at this time of year anyway. And you don't need to do much except pay the fare.

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1-The "it's" in "it's not about..." was in regards to the convrsation not the content of the book, hence the " it's about whether they're good or bad rules to follow."
2-To her own admision she has not entirely read the Bible


And on that note I think I'll have to fully agree with Fr0d0 and assume no progress can be made in this thread, hijack away.

[Scented Nectar]

And particularly about ScentedNectars obstinant refusal that the Bible has any good in it.

Because she has actually READ the bloody thing??

To her own admision she has not entirely read the Bible

While I won't torture myself by reading all the 'begats', I have read a fair bit of the thing. I still see nothing in it of worth. The few good concepts have been long replaced with much better and fairer laws in modern secular societies. The rest of the bible is very UNworthy, and in fact deserving of a lot of scorn.

I'm still waiting for a christian to show me even one bible-command good enough to cancel out the shitty ones. I'm also still waiting to be shown where one part of the bible changes the context of another part to the point where it really means the opposite of what it says.

And Tack, don't be so upset that I got tired about the list of 'good' stuff you gave me. In another thread you seem to think I shouldn't have given up on the list like that. Well, yes I should have. None of the ones I checked out had anything close to what you presented them as. I even went to the bother of demonstrating a few to you. Of course I stopped at that point. Should I have kept going through all of them hoping there might be a needle in the haystack somewhere? It's you who is claiming that needle is there, so please point it out. I'm not going to go searching and searching forever.

Godspuppy, er I mean, Godschild, I don't have it in me today to address the zillion delusions you seem to embrace. It would take pages and pages as well, even with hide tags. It would maybe mean I'd be writing a book, and that was never one of my life's plans. What can I say?

[tackattack]

The tired point I was reffering to was your dismissal of point 1,2,and 3 and by default I have to assume you're jus being selective in your feedback and rude or that you assent.

[Scented Nectar]

The tired point I was reffering to was your dismissal of point 1,2,and 3 and by default I have to assume you're jus being selective in your feedback and rude or that you assent.

The post I was responding to when I said fuck this etc, has numbered points 2, 3 and 4. Which post number are you referring to? Usually, the reasons I skip over points are not for rudeness (I prefer using words for that!), but because I had nothing much to say about it, or at worst, I just couldn't be bothered to type out my thoughts on it. Sometimes the reason I have nothing to say is because I agree with the point, but not always.

[tackattack]

1 was from post 113 and 2 and 3 were indeed from 115, the one you reffered to, where you only responded to 4.

[Scented Nectar]

I don't have much to say about those. They are your opinion. I disagree with some things, but it's all stuff I've said my bit on. What can I say?