Importance of Original Sin

You asked me if I was offended. As I'm an atheist, I'm hardly likely to offended by you claiming to be saved. I'll admit to getting a little irritated by the door knockers claiming similar things and thinking that they need to impress on me the need to be saved too, but offended? No, normally just amused, as now. This is a recurring and interesting trait you have, I've not seen it since I left the playground; does it normally work for you? It's kind of reverse tu quoque with integrated straw man.Oh well. I have never said or inferred that you think that JC is not the final judge - as, of course, you know. What I have said, at least twice now, is that you can not claim to be saved because you are not the judge on that issue.So, to be clear, as you are not the judge of your own righteousness, you can not and should not go around claiming to be. To do so is lacking in humility as well as being plumb wrong in your case.I have heard it said by Christians that arrogance is a sin and humility a virtue - which is something a good atheist can nod agreement with. Perhaps you should practice what you preach.

Nice hyperbole. No, the lies of religious charlatans or unethical marketing ploys is not okay. Lying to save someone's life from a crazy person: probably okay. Pretty sad that this needs to be explained to you. Every heard of A.I.?And nice try at a dodge, but the analogy is quite sound. The point attempting to be conveyed is the relationship between the designer and that which is being designed. The designer controls ALL aspects of how things in the end product will behave. And that includes the 'free will' mechanism. Which, by your own statements, is actually an illusion. God gave man free will and then told man how to behave. Not exactly effective.If I write an A.I. that is designed to freely define its own taste in music, I cannot then state to this program that it can function autonomously but it MUST only choose the music I like. I have just undermined the function of my own program. Get the picture now? How about I do this: why did god let satan (manifesting as a serpent) into the garden of eden in the first place? I thought satan was banished to hell? What exactly was he doing there and how did he get in? You god is pretty lousy at security. Sounds like Stockholm Syndrome to me. Kudos to you. Too bad all those Muslims, Hindus, Taoists, Buddhists and us poor, mis-guided atheists will just burn in hell for all eternity, right?

CARM is pretty much a joke and another great example of perverting the message of Christ.You also need to stop creating strawmen and misrepresenting what I say.I never suggested kicking John out of any canon, particularly out of the Western Protestant Canon.What I suggest is to start being honest about what is actually written.Of course neither Luke or Paul actually had any experience or knowledge of Jesus life if they even actually wrote anything.But Original Sin is still utter nonsense and Jesus as blood sacrifice still just makes GOD look like a evil fool and an idiot.

In his responce to you jaywill said the following:

quote:

---

If the final judge says "Whoever believes in Him [the Son of God] shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

​

Why then can I not take the "final judge's" word to the bank ?
Why can I not take Him who has the final word, AT His word ?

---

If you are at least old enough to have taken basic English grammar you would know that is not a quote from Jesus or even an allegation that is something Jesus ever said but an editorial comment, a belief of the author or editor of John's Gospel and a great example of deliberate quote mining to pervert the content of the Bible.Let's look at what follows. As you can see, when someone looks at John3:16 in context it returns to doing, NOT belief. The test of belief is not acclamation but action.Edited by jar, : how did a 0 get in there?

Instead of using the rest of the New Testament to twist the passage in question, let's go with what the passage in question says.Jesus is talking to the sheep and the goats. There is nobody else present but the angels. Angels are messengers, servants, not brothers. (Note the distinction made between brothers and servants in the parable of the prodigal son.) The only ones present who can be His brothers are the sheep and the goats. There is no voodoo "household of faith" mentioned, just everybody.

False.The goats:

quote:

---

Matthew 25:44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?"

---

They thought they were ministering unto Him. They were Christians.

By quoting me and leaving out the question mark on the end, you, I could say, are being disgustingly dishonest. You misquote my question as if I am making a statement that religious charlatans are okay.I can say that was a nice bit of lying on your part. You didn't have the integrity to even follow your selected quotation with " ... ". You don't have any moral high ground as a sly misrepresenter of what others have written. Artificial Intelligence. ARTIFICIAL .... intelligence. That is not the REAL thing.And man designs "not the real thing" when it comes to "a living soul". No dodge. I meet you head on.
ARTIFICAL ... Intelligence cannot be used to be an equal comparison with ACTUAL human intelligence.Nice try at a totally equal comparison. The designer, as a human, may be real.
The matter that you are trying to compare with an actual human being is ... ARTIFICIAL.It is not life.
I don't believe as Stephen Hawking claimed that a computer virus is a man made life form. Maybe you do.But the will of a human being and the heuristics of a computer program in A.I. are still light years apart. I told you before that the deep philosophical dispute about free will verses foreknowledge or predestination has been argued by much more adept minds than either yours or mine - for many centuries.This to me is like arguing on the deck of the Titanic exactly WHO was at fault, ad infinitum.Was the disaster the fault of the ship designers?
Was it the fault of the captain?
Was it the fault of the people designing the travel route?
Was it the fault of the crew members?
Was it the fault of the marketing agency hype writers?So your blaming God the Creator ultimately for the first fall of man is a bit of philosophical dispute you can contemplate forever if you like.Some really smart debaters could also have gone down drowning while arguing about whose fault the sea disaster REALLY was.We're on the Titanic and there is a saving truth for me to take. I take it.
Go ahead and meet God with your argument that its His fault about everything that happened.I can see both a creature created with a free will AND an eternal God who foresees everything from a transcendent standpoint.I have personal experience with this. That is the mystery of my freedom of choice and God's foreknowledge of what I was going to do. I still cannot figure out how He did it. I don't see any contradiction. And I don't think you can say a programmer designed software with free will. At best it is "artificial". I don't think you can give an example actually equal to the making of man by God. Especially, God making man in His own image, and all that entails.It is interesting though that the first thing out of Adam's mouth when he made his choice was to deflect the responsibility off to someone ELSE. And Eve did likewise.Notice that the serpent did not do so.
The serpent was the Slanderer and the Adversary.He was there to slander God to man, as he continues to do.
He is also good at slandering man to God, as we see in an older book - Job.No Diomedes, I see Adam's freedom of will to choose despite your playing God at your PC to write "Artificial Intelligence." Now why the serpent was in the garden in the first place is probably the one of the first questions a Bible reader has. This was suppose to be paradise. So what on earth is a lying, adversarial, God slandering tempter doing there?In this short post I will not say much about that, though I find it a legitimate question. At this time I will only say the following.In Genesis 1:31 I read -

quote:

---

"And God saw everything that He had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day."

---

So one might ask "If there was Satan the Devil there in God's creation how can God pronounce everything as very good?"But as I understand this what was very good included that Man was given "dominion" as well as image to be a deputy authority over all of God's creation including any creeping things, lying things, sneaky things.

quote:

---

"And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them have dominion OVER ... the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing which creeps upon the earth." (Gen. 1:26)

---

Adam and Eve were created to have DOMINION OVER any other creature in that world. They were not to gain DOMINION OVER Adam and Eve.That man was committed with dominion was "very good". It is not that the serpent was very good. When Adam relinquished through disobedience his God ordained dominion and came under the lying control of Satan - that was his fall. That was also his loss of his deputy authority.Man was created to express God and to deal with God's enemies by having dominion OVER any other creature in his creation. He ceded that mandate when in disobedience he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.That was Adam's wrong choice. And that is all I will write on that in this post. I have more to write on it latter. Sounds like a relationship with the God the ultimate reality and ground of all being as my heavenly Father.Now a question for you.You're an Atheist. So I assume you mean that man is the measure of all things.Which man then ?
You seem upset about unethical behavior. But whose the judge as to ultimately what is good ? Where is your ultimate decider? Which man defines for you what is good and what is evil?Who will bring evil doers to an ultimate accountability ?
Won't all the charlatans in your atheist world simply melt into the dust of the earth in eternal oblivion ?So in your world with no God, who will bring Elmer Gantry before the ultimate bar of good and evil to be judged ?So though you may upset with bad behavior, I see your being upset as just your personal preference. I like chocolate icecream to vanilla. Its just a taste thing. You like good behavior as opposed to bad. So, why is that not just your personal matter of taste ?Like most atheists you have to borrow a Christian world-view in order to be up and arms about evil doing. This is like the little child who has to sit on its parent's lap in order to reach the parent to slap the face.You're borrowing my Theistic world view of an Ultimate Governor because you have none of your own. And you are trying to use that view to criticize God.In your godless world, what is really wrong with deceptive charlatans and liars ? You just don't LIKE it ?I just don't LIKE nuts in my ice cream either. Just personal preference.
I don't think you have any objective ground to pronounce a universal moral judgment that is anything much else but your preference about your likes.Stalin liked what he did.
Pol Pot liked what he did.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Not just dishonest, but disgustingly dishonest? Well, ouch.And for the record, I was not implying that you agreed with that notion, I was pointing out the absurdity of the analogy. Please try to read more carefully. Double ouch. How do you KNOW that? What evidence do you have that 'souls' exist and what evidence do you have that they cannot manifest in something other than humans? You are reading your scripture and working backwards, pigeon holing things as needed. Once again, the analogy goes totally over your head.The concept I am conveying is the relationship between the designer and that which is being designed. It doesn't matter if that which is being designed is an A.I., a bridge, an iPhone, or a Tickle Me Elmo. The ultimate point is the designer is ultimately responsible for their design. PERIOD. End of story. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. And those disputes still exist. But no, this is not like arguing on the deck of the Titanic who is at fault. This discussion is akin to performing an analysis of the disaster after it has occurred, similar to what the NTSB does. Last time I checked, nobody absolved the humans and blamed the boat for what happened. Are you certain? And your need to label things as 'artificial' is predicated on your need to place humans on a pedestal, as dictated in the bible where they have dominion over all other creatures and have souls. You are begging the question. No need. I contemplated it when I was about fourteen and came to the conclusion I have now. If there were 'lying things' and 'sneaky things' in the garden of eden, than it was NOT paradise. But even if one can consider a snake 'sneaky', the point is not even that it was a snake, it was actually Satan. Sorry, but allowing that to happen would be like inviting John Wayne Gacy to your kid's birthday party. Once again, you are looking at the literal aspects of the analogy without understanding the crux of the analogy: the relationship between the designer and that which is designed. And you make that assumption based on......? I would hope most people are upset by unethical behavior.With regards to who the judge is, we all are. We have a compendium of laws that were compiled by men as part of our broader social order. Good and evil are actually anachronistic concepts and are often relative. Which is why dealing with them in absolutes is not possible and requires us to weigh factors when we draw our conclusions. Are these conclusions perfect? Of course not, because humans are not perfect. So evil only exists in Christian world views? Muslims have no concept of evil? Buddhists? We are all 'borrowing' from you? Geez dude, how condescending and narcissistic is that notion? And here you are outed again, as in your dialog with Tangle. Ultimately, your need for cosmic justice is dictating your religious view.As an atheist, yes, I believe that if a charlatan or 'evil doer' is not brought to justice in this world, they melt (decay) into the dust. Nothing happens beyond that. Assuming otherwise is just trying to satisfy your need that bad people eventually get what is coming to them.By the way, if a charlatan or 'evil doer' repents on their death bed and is saved, do they go to heaven? And if so, where is the justice in that regard? Ah, the old invocation of other 'atheists' as a means to draw a conclusion that they are all evil. Well, at least you had the wherewithal to not mention Hitler. Afterall, he was Roman Catholic. And once again, you are outed. Eventually revolving back to the Original Sin ploy. Triple ouch. I do love BBQ though. Do they have combo rib and chicken BBQ platters in hell? And now we have come full circle. Didn't we already answer the 'eternal purpose' of god in a previous post? Remember?
"Go to that big building you worthless, disgusting, original sin carrying human and beg for forgiveness for something that allegedly happened umpteen years ago. Oh, and don't forget to put some money in the collection plate...."

We've been around this before. Why do you think I would change my view ?The passage is not in the vacuum you wish to make for it. It comes at the end of a long section following chapter 24 all concerning the things and events of Christ's second coming.And it is confirming of other prophecies in the Old Testament. I gave those references. Don't expect me to now say they are not relevant.The judgment that comes upon the Gentiles who follow the antichrist is described also in Joel 3:12, Micah 4:11-13; Zephaniah 3:8; Zechariah 12:3; and Revelation 16:14 and 19:21. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Whoa, that's rich coming from you.For example, Message 552Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

I don't expect you to change your view. I expect people who read this thread to look at the Bible for themselves and see that your view is nonsensical. I have mentioned Matthew 24. In it Jesus spoke of false prophets who would talk about His "second coming"; He told us not to believe them.He also said:

quote:

---

Matthew 24:34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

---

If it was a prophecy, it was a failed prophecy (unless you stretch "this generation" out to millennia like you stretch "the same day" in Genesis out to centuries). A more sensible interpretation is that Jesus was not talking about some specific event but about the general principles by which we will be judged.In any case, the time frame is irrelevant because Christians are clearly among those who are judged.

To the advantage of those taking a negative position against my posts, I have too many ideas to respond to.So for the rest of this day, probably, I will pick what I think are the more substantive comments. Those with a constructive tone will get a better chance, if there are any.Above here you speak of man "begging" for forgiveness. When I talk with people with concepts like this, I really thank God that I read the Bible carefully for myself.God is not interested in me begging or groveling around on the floor pleading for forgiveness of my sins.He IS interested in my BELIEVING in Jesus Christ.Ie. No, God is not interested in your pleading and begging for forgiveness.
Now you MAY shed some tears when the realization of what you have been dawns upon your God enlightened conscience. That may happen to someone.He just calls for you to believe in the Gospel message and receive Christ.
Even your tears have to be washed in the blood of Jesus.And that is all the response to your last post I feel to make right now. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

You're jumping around from complaint to complaint too much. All the old standard objections you're grasping at.That the goats of the nations are disciples of Jesus is not at all a good interpretation.That is not to say there are not naughty or immature or even bad acting disciples of Christ. Other passages could I use to underscore that matter.The better interpretation, I think, is that after the rapture of His disciples who are watching and waiting, as we saw in chapter 24, the dispensation of God's way is changed.The Christians and elect Jews are is brothers left on the earth during the time of the great tribulation. Horrible persecution from the world will emerge against them led by the Antichrist.This is happening, I feel, in its infant stages right now under our noses, in Europe and to an extent in the US also. The basic hostility to drive the Judeo / Christian world view people out of the public square. Someday it will be out of the Antichrist led society in general - not able to buy or sell anything.In the last of days how the human conscience reacts to this governmental mandate of persecution will be a factor of Christ's judgement upon the Gentiles -I don't believe that the passage is about how the sheep treated each other or the goats. I do not believe that passage is about how the goats treated each other or the sheep.It is about how the sheep people and the goat people treated the brothers of Christ down to the least of them. Emphatically, His relationship with His people is HIMSELF. And those of that final stage in history will learn that.What you (this final generation of Gentiles) did or not do to His saved ones was what you did or did not do to HIMSELF.He dispensed Himself INTO man. He was one with some people. He was theirs and they were His in a more profound way than just them being created. They were virtually Him on the earth.You want to have a different interpretation? Go ahead.
This is how I interpret and will continue to teach it.If you find it inspires you to want to see all people as Christ's brothers so as to be charitable to all people, I have no problem with that. I regard that as an acceptable APPLICATION rather than good INTERPRETATION of the passageEdited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Ah, yes... the message of Jesus Christ:"Do good things to some of the people." You should be ashamed of yourself. Read the parable of The Good Samaritan:

quote:

---

5 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

​

26 What is written in the Law? he replied. How do you read it?

​

27 He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d]

​

28 You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this and you will live.

​

29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, And who is my neighbor?

​

30 In reply Jesus said: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii[e] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

​

36 Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?

​

37 The expert in the law replied, The one who had mercy on him.

​

Jesus told him, Go and do likewise.

---

Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

That I regard as a twisting of the purpose of the prophetic teaching.I have a tag team of four skeptics now arguing with me.
I'm limited in time. I can't respond to all these arguing posts.Praise the Lord for that !!
Go for it guys ! LOL!"There's safety in numbers." LOL.