Most personally convincing reasons you don't believe.

[Athene]

[Drich]

Funny that you mention that.. One of my business has me own a independent car dealership. (We do sell used cars but most of what we sell are new.)
That said sincerity is the quality i believe you think is thinning. I can assure you that I believe and stake my own eternal existence on what I have shared. I'm all in here penny and pound.

No, I mean you literally sound like a used car salesman.

....I have made no bones about my lack of understanding and education. That however makes no difference in my usefulness to God. Before I came here I spent 5 years debating and studying under men like you have describes and over time I found that they (like you) rely on a 'traditional understanding, and their educations in that tradition to validate what they believe. To them, and to you I ask, if your prize of knowledge is based on tradition, then what separates you from the Pharisees and Sadducee that Christ had such contempt for??

This is quite the leap you're making here.  I don't know much about Pharisees and Sadduccees and Jesus attitude toward them, but I doubt it was based on a contempt for people who practice good scholarship.

Actually to see What Jesus thought of the religious leaders is to just turn to mat 23 There is a whole chapter dedicated to Jesus point out what He thought of the religious leadership, and it wasn't good.

And this contempt was in part based on what the Leadership would indeed identify as 'Good scholarship' as they were just following the traditional teachings and methods of those who came before, while adding what they saw as a logical extensions to the law.

 Re: where did Nod come from, etc.?  Again, you're asking that it all make sense and is consistent.  These are ancient myths you're dealing with Drich. A lot of times they just didn't make sense (not speaking of the bible in particular, but myth in general). Your problem is you require it all to make sense and be consistent. And it leads you to postulates such as your monkey man which really have no foundation in the bible other than in your overly literal and poorly informed exegesis.

They are only considered 'myths' because they do not make sense or they contradict what is known/believed. But, here's the thing jorgie, By doing nothing more than reading Genesis 1 and 2 and dropping the traditional nonsense I have reconciled the creation account found in Genesis 1&2 with the narrative the world has adopted, AND it also allows us to answer the paradoxical questions that arise with in the traditional reading of this passage, without having to add anything to or take anything away from what is written.

And again it is my "poorly informed exegesis" that makes me a candidate for God's wisdom to be poured in the Exegesis as I do freely admit that I approach the bible with a child's understanding. Yet can pull from it an explanation neither you nor any of the 'well informed exegetical contemporaries' who have tried to discard what I've been shown here can address, without attacking me rather than dismantle the content.

[Drich]

And that's what it is all about right? To be happy? Truly genuinely Happy.

No, not necessarily. Happiness is a transient emotion...incapable of being maintained.

Are you willing to accept the possibility that the truth (whatever that may be) may not align to your succored preconceived notion of it?

Then Joy.. Replace the word Happy with Joy. Truly sustainable life long joyfulness.

[Drich]

I thought that was the whole point of calvinism, "god hates the rest of yiz, but he loves me and my homies. No matter how depraved we get (and we go pretty low) we gets to heaven, no matter how good yiz are ye gets hell."

Calvinism, yes.

I would say not really, as far as own my take use to go, though. As a theist, I spent most of my churchgoing years attending Pentecostal services, but I was always left with the impression that atonement was likely limited to some degree from my own personal study/interpretation. I'd always believed that one could reject the call to salvation, though. And lose it, as well.

None of it makes any sense to me these days, anyhow; I can't make heads or tails of it anymore.

That is where I differ from calvinism as well in that one can indeed reject the call to salvation.

That said i do not believe we can loose our salvation. However I do not believe we are 'saved' at the moment we typically think. Saved as outlined in scripture always points to a comming event. "you will be saved.." ect.  I believe salvation comes at the verdict of your judgement. Once you are saved (from judgement onward) you can never loose your salvation.

[quip]

No, not necessarily. Happiness is a transient emotion...incapable of being maintained.

Are you willing to accept the possibility that the truth (whatever that may be) may not align to your succored preconceived notion of it?

Then Joy.. Replace the word Happy with Joy. 

What's the practical difference?

[Drich]

Then Joy.. Replace the word Happy with Joy. 

What's the practical difference?

As you pointed out and I responded.

Happiness is transient, While Joy is not. Joy is not self generated or dependant on circumstance. Joy is a perpetual sense of happiness despite circumstance.

[quip]

What's the practical difference?

As you pointed out and I responded.

Happiness is transient, While Joy is not. Joy is not self generated or dependant on circumstance. Joy is a perpetual sense of happiness despite circumstance.

Same package, different wrapping.

[Drich]

As you pointed out and I responded.

Happiness is transient, While Joy is not. Joy is not self generated or dependant on circumstance. Joy is a perpetual sense of happiness despite circumstance.

Same package, different wrapping.

Same type of experience, different source.

It's the difference between a battery powered device and a solar powered one.

[quip]

Same package, different wrapping.

Same type of experience, different source.

It's the difference between a battery powered device and a solar powered one.

All emotional states are dependent upon circumstance. 

One can't have perpetual joy without necessary, interceding sorrow...sorrow is what gives joy its flavor, they're both necessarily integrative and transient.

[Athene]