Re: Here's a religious question...

John Carson

grape8 wrote: The real issue here is the Holiness of God. His Holiness demands sinless perfection and absolute justice. Let's see if I have got this right. There are a whole lot of sinful people --- millions of them. So the way to deal with this in order to satisfy the requirements of "absolute justice" was to take someone completely innocent and kill him. Yeah. Sounds fair. John Carson

J Dunlap

Joe Woodbury wrote: We also have writing even older from Egypt. A few years ago, the oldest known writing was discovered in Pakistan which dates to about 3200 BC. OK, but that's beside the point. The point we were disputing is that the prophecies about Jesus in the Bible couldn't have been placed their later by Jesus's followers. If we have copies of the prophets' writings that date from before Jesus was born, then they couldn't have been manipulated to fit the viewpoints of Jesus's followers.

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grape8

You're right. It's not fair at all -- but it's not about fairness, it's about justice. You've actually realize the central theme of the gospel or "Good News" of Jesus Christ... that He died a death He didn't deserve -- on my behalf! This issue is exactly why the Bible states that Jesus is an "offense to the natural mind". It's not a rational proposition; at least from our vantage point. But it pleased God; and He's the One we should be worried about. But that's not the end of it -- you see, this whole thing was God's idea. He unilaterally decided both to redeem sinful man and the mechanics of how it would work. (After all, being God certainly gives Him the perogative to do so.) Actually, the truly amazing thing here is that He decided to redeem us at all... He decided that all who would come to Him must believe what He says is true. We call that faith. And God has very clearly said that without faith you cannot please Him. So God has set the whole thing up -- He sent His only son, Jesus, to pay a debit He did not owe... on our behalf, so that if we would believe, by faith, that Jesus' death, burial and resurrection was an acceptable payment of justice to God on our behalf that God would then credit the righteousness of Jesus to us. And that's the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus -- God did all the work and He's willing to give us credit; if we'll only believe. Rick Davis

John Carson

You apparently consider that this sophistry is intellectually credible. I don't. Leaving aside the bizarre distinction you draw between justice and fairness, you were earlier arguing that God had to do things a certain way because of the demands of justice, holiness etc. At the same time, you say that God can waive the rules by imposing a death that was not deserved. What it all comes down to is that you have no coherent explanation for what God does or doesn't do. You simply attempt to rationalise his alleged actions after the fact. Now it is probably possible to have an intellectually coherent position which simply involves deferring to whatever God is alleged to have done. What is neither coherent nor honest is to pretend to be able to explain God's actions and the constraints under which he operates when all the while you are really just deferring to what you believe God has done. John Carson

grape8

Paul, you'll be pleased to know that my wife is right there with you on the "white Jesus" painting! :-D It's one of her most common complaints whenever we see a movie or picture of Him. We've got a "picture of Jesus" in our home and I think the guy in it looks a lot like Chuck Norris! I don't know why we can't paint Him as the Middle Eastern Jew He was. You're in a very difficult situation -- things happened to you as a child that never ever should have happened... and for that I'm truly sorry. Even though I've not walked where you've walked I'd like to share a couple of thoughts with you that hopefully will help... (I'm not trying to preach -- sorry if it comes across as such) 1) We get our initial identity of who God is from our fathers. Whenever our fathers fail us we naturally associate that to God. After all, our fathers are supposed to be the representatives of God in the family -- and you only have to read the papers and watch the news to see how poorly we've done. 2) Why didn't God make them stop? I don't know. Were they wrong? Absolutely. Jesus himself said that anyone who harms a child would have been better off not being born. I interpret that on two levels: One; they must be beyond miserable with themselves to do such a thing (I can't imaging living with the shame and guilt of doing so.) Two; we forget how bad hell is. It's not just a hot place for a while. Rather it's everlasting pain, suffering and torment without time off for good behavior or a chance for parole. So in the end they get it and get it bad. 3) You're faced with issues of unforgiveness -- towards God and towards the perpetrator(s). I don't say that lightly. And I'm sure it's the last thing you want to hear or consider. But you have to know this: all of our sins are as heanous to God as the ones that have been committed against you. And yet God has chosen to forgive us of our sins through faith in Jesus Christ, His Son and Messiah. As a Christian, I'm charged with forgiving others just as Christ forgave me. It's a tall order. Actually, it's impossible without the Holy Spirit. Forgiveness is a divine choice. It's not saying; "It's okay. It doesn't matter." It's saying; "I choose to release you from all the anger, hate, etc. that I have against you because of what you've done to me." It's to our benefit to forgive! By releasing others from there sins against us we free ourselves to get on with our lives and please God in the process. I've never found this to be an easy thing to do because I feel much more justif

Tim Craig

Yeah, here's the rules. You better swallow them whole or ELSE. Be careful, if you don't believe, there's hellfire eternal waiting on you. So what bumpkin isn't going to buy into it? I bypassed the bumpkin stage. :laugh: At any given instant there are considerably more assholes than mouths in the universe.

Tim Craig

What difference does it make what a writings survive from a few fanatical dolts? It just doesn't matter. The babbling of superstitious idiots is still babbling. You might as well go way back and interpret some of the Egyptian hierglypics or Babalyonian texts and conclude that since they're much older than Jewish texts that they must be correct. AGE is not the governing issue here. AGE does NOT make them correct. At any given instant there are considerably more assholes than mouths in the universe.

grape8

Well there's a lot more to it than I've laid out -- I was just trying to keep it short and sweet and hit the highlights. As for the distinction between justice and fairness -- fairness has a connotation of justice to it for us. But in reality fairness is nothing more than two equal sides in a disagreement coming to a mutually agreed upon settlement that seems right to both parties. If find that the following are generally misunderstood: - The "Godness" of God. When we say "God" we're generally thinking about a barely superhuman being who seems more impotent than omniopotent. - The greatness of the offense of sin to God. We think "it's just a little white lie. God won't mind." Having said that, God has a disagreement with us: our sin. He being God and us not being so endowed removes the issue of fairness from the picture since we're in no position to bargan with Him. God has stipulated from the beinging that the penalty for sin is death (primarily spirutal death -- which is much worse than physical death since it's eternal and filled with suffering). God's goodness, holiness, and uprightness will not all Him to to back on His word -- to do so (were He capable) would bring and end to His God-hood. So God has a "problem". He's incredibly offened with us because of our sin but at the same time has chosen (that's a very important word here ) to love us. However, His holiness and righteousness will not allow Him to gloss over our sins. So He decides to do something about it -- He decides to accept a sacrifice offered on behalf of sinnful people. First via the "sacrifical system" outlined in the Old Testament but ultimately through Jesus -- the final sacrifice. Now I'm not going to pretend to understand why God chose to do it this way because I haven't a clue. I don't even know why He chose to love us or sacrifice His Son for us -- I wouldn't. All I do know is that God has provided a way to restore our broken fellowship with Him due to our sin and it doesn't violate His holiness and it's not fair (because we're not an equal party with Him)... but it is just and He seems pretty pleased with it. So He's happy... I'm tickled. Rick Davis

grape8

Hmm, I didn't think bumpkins could design highly scalable, distributed systems and write multi-threaded applications? Maybe I'm missing something here... or perhaps you are? :sigh: Rick Davis

Tim Craig

Hmmm. Maybe you're missing the argument. What does the fact that "religious bumpkins" and writing code have to do with anything? So you can write code and you're religious, that makes your brand of religion correct? I think we have some Muslim, Hindu, and whatever codewriters here that blow that arguement out of the water. Not to mention humble athiests like me. At any given instant there are considerably more assholes than mouths in the universe.

Joe Woodbury

jdunlap wrote: The point we were disputing is that the prophecies about Jesus in the Bible couldn't have been placed their later by Jesus's followers. No, I was disputing your statement that "many of the original manuscripts of the prophets have been proven to be authentic by carbon dating, the script/dialect being used at the time they were written, and even the type of clay that they were written on." I said nothing of Old Testament prophecies concerning a messiah. No one disputes many such prophecies exist, only their application to a man Christians claim to be Jesus (or even any Messiah.) Followers of messiahs and/or prophets will pick and choose prophecies from scripture and interpret them to in ways to buttress their claims of divinity, often ex post facto. In fact, many who claim to be messiahs and/or prophets often manipulate events in their own lives to "fulfill" prophecies. (Politicians are known to "put words" in the mouths of dead statesmen and heroes to add credibility to their claims. And this is just to get elected, not save souls.) From the first century BCE to the second war of the Jews there were dozens of men claiming to be the messiah spoken of in scripture. Even in American history, I can think of a few well known claimants. Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke

Terry ONolley

yawn. Face it - God is a megalomaniacal freak who felt no sense of worth without building an army of meat puppets to kiss his ass.

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