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Author | Topic: The Marketing Of Christianity | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
My point of course is that Jesus prayed. You seem to minimize the importance of prayer. Some believe that prayer gets more done in certain situations than can be done through lifting that barge and toting that bale.
Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
jar writes: The text clearly says that Stephen was a man filled with the Holy Spirit.
Stephen was appointed by the Twelve as a Deacon and his job duties were to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, comfort the sorrowful. His was a mission of doing. He too was a Jew and saw the Jesus movement as completely Jewish, not a new religion but rather a Reformation. In fact his defense at his trial (recounted in Acts 7) was that Jesus and his movement was not to destroy Judaism or create a new and separate religion but rather Reformation. And it was that message, "The problem is YOU not Jesus or the Mexicans or the Muslims or the liberals but YOU. " and it was that message that got him stoned. It's not healthy to tell the voters that they are the problem.jar,referring to Saul/Paul writes: You seem to dismiss this whole idea that a person can and does undergo a dramatic transformation. I have seen personal evidence to the contrary.
But there was NOT much of a dramatic transformation.As you have been shown, the story of Paul's experience did undergo dramatic transformation as it got revised and retold, but the only real change was one of allegiance; Paul switched sides. jar writes: So I am assuming that you believe much the same about any claim that dramatic transformations happen...even today. By dramatic transformations I am talking of being Born Again. You claim that it is a marketing tool and not an actual fact. Am I correct? I don't think anyone doubts that Paul experienced something dramatic, but that is not evidence that anything really happened, only that Paul believed something happened.Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
jar writes: I would argue that it is not just a matter of starting to do things----anybody can be a do-gooder. The argument that I am making is that there is a transformation in ones life before they really want to do things. Unless they are a liberal humanitarian, of course...in which case they are taking up a cause rather than being transformed. If Christianity marketed Jesus' sacrifice as his life instead of his death then things look more reasonable. GOD performs miracles through Jesus just as GOD performed miracles through others in other stories. Jesus is then a lesson on what humans could be, what humans should do, what humans may face. Jesus message then changes emphasis from a way to get outtahellfree towards a way to live, changes the focus from after death to during life, from "what's in it for me" towards "what am I supposed to do". I believe that one of the big issues facing Christianity is that it seems to be choosing the easy marketing path instead of the harder marketing path which has resulted in so many folk seeing Christianity and Jesus message as totally irrelevant and just a waste of time and effort; as "it just doesn't make any sense". And I think their assessment is correct. Christianity as marketed today really doesn't make any sense and really is irrelevant. One last point to bring dogma back into focus; this marketing plan says nothing about the state of Jesus before being born or after his ascension. Oh and one more thing. You say that GOD performs miracles through Jesus just as GOD performed miracles through others in other stories. Jesus is then a lesson on what humans could be, what humans should do, what humans may face. I would agree that GOD performs miracles through people as they do for others...my only caveat being that God uses transformed vessels rather than just eager humanitarians. Edited by Phat, : added pointChance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
jar writes: No one knows in the critical thinking and reality-based logic of daily life since there is no evidence and one would be right to always question what they perceive. But if you were to take an informal poll, most would say that one just knows. The fact that you never knew or claimed to know is telling. Why are you different from the other believers? Are you too busy questioning your beliefs to ever accept any tentative answers? Are you saying--as you always have--that no one can ever know such things? I think its because you have never thought it possible to have any sort of relationship with GOD. You have always been too busy simply doing for others to give any thought or concern whether you were communing with GOD. Maybe you have always believed that YOU were responsible and that GOD being there communing with you was too silly a thought. Comments? How does someone know they have a relationship of any kind or duration or interval with God?Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Not everything can be proven through evidence but this does not make it fantasy.
Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Can you tell me how you can know you are communing with God and not a bad burrito? What are the tests? Mere Christianity writes: Granted, Lewis does not say that this is found only within Christians.
We all know what itfeels like to be prompted by instinct-by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires-one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides whichshould be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys. Mere Christianity writes: Lewis never mentions burritos, though if one only felt this way after eating one could be a test of sorts, I suppose. Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the "right" notes and the "wrong" ones. mEvery single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or any set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Lewis seems to think we break the rule all the time.
Mere Christianity writes: These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that humanbeings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. That law certainly does not mean "what human beings, in fact, do"; for as I Thus Lewis supports the idea that we often(if not always) fail to do what we should do.said before, many of them do not obey this law at all, and none of them obey it completely. The law of gravity tells you what stones do if you drop them; but the Law of Human Nature tells you what human beings ought to do and do not. In other words, when you are dealing with humans, something else comes in above and beyond the actual facts. You have the facts (how men do behave) and you also have something else (how they ought to behave). In the rest of the universe there need not be anything but the facts. Lewis then supports my quote about chance being a myth.
Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there. And, very roughly, two views have been held. First, there is what is called the materialist view. People who take that view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a thousand something hit our sun and made it produce the planets; and by another thousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on this earth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the living creatures developed into things like us. The other view is the religious view. (*) According to it, what is behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know. Regarding the law of right and wrong...even though we usually disobey it is there any chance that we won't? Does chance even enter into it??Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
ringo the contrarian writes: He "supports" it with nothing but ignorance and incredulity. If you would rather believe in chance over certainty, I might have to pray for you more often! Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Lewis was not an ignorant man and he explained the plausibility of Christianity much better than chance explains why we are the way we are.
Mere Christianity writes: So whats so incredulous about that? Oneof the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe-a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin. The difference is that Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong. Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
aside from scoring points in this argument, what do you really think of CS Lewis? What about Simon Greenleaf?
Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Phat writes:
What about Simon Greenleaf?Ringo writes: Who's he? jar writes:
I've never heard that version.
Simon Greenleaf is a great example of "Biblical Christian Freedom from Truth" as he is often mentioned in the fantasy where as an atheist he is challenged by a student to actually look at the evidence and does and gets "Born Again" as a Christian.jar writes: Yes. His most famous book was The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by The Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice Well the facts as usual are slightly different. He was born into a Christian Family and was raised as a Christian. He was a Christian Apologist and as a lawyer used legal processes as a basis for a book he wrote.jar writes: I never read where he founded the school either. All that I have read was that he was well educated in law. He did not found Harvard Law school as claimed by many current Christian liars but did help it expand.Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
And you do understand that legal standing is entirely different than scientific standing? Of course. Legal standing does not require physical evidence if adequate eyewitness testimony is found. What else do you want us to know?Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
jar writes: Yes. There has been some controversy over Greenleafs conclusions.
And he was using the legal tests as they would have been applied at the time. You do understand that? Wiki writes: Howard Richard Packham is a retired foreign language instructor and former part-time estate planning attorney who holds to an atheist worldview. He has written an internet article criticising the technical arguments set forth by Greenleaf and others. This critique is found here. Critique of John Warwick Montgomery's Arguments for the Legal Evidence for Christianity Packham essentially concludes that the Gospels were made up.Packham writes: Of course nearly all modern Christian apologists will deny this to be their conclusion, but if we assume that the stories really were just stories told round a campfire, does this impact our belief in any way? You may argue that the tales still have value...but I would insist that Jesus be who the Nicene Creed says He is and not some made up character like Long John Silver. Is it any surprise that four imaginative and faithful writers would be able to come up with an impressive life story? Except that their details contradict each other, which shows that the gospels are fictionalized legends, and not based on personal knowledge. Of course, if your conclusion that all humans are alike and none are chosen or special is true, perhaps we better go with your conclusions in your belief statement. I'll say one thing, though. The view that you defend (and which ringo largely agrees with) is not found anywhere else that I have found. People whom I have met are either believers ascribing largely to Pauls marketing and an inerrant Bible or they are atheists like Tangle who refuse to entertain anything unproven by evidence. If anything, these conclusions strengthen my faith that God will help me to be stronger rather than weaken it.Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Me writes:
I'll say one thing, though. The view that you defend (and which ringo largely agrees with) is not found anywhere else that I have found. People whom I have met are either believers ascribing largely to Pauls marketing and an inerrant Bible or they are atheists like Tangle who refuse to entertain anything unproven by evidence.jar writes: Nothing. I am just saying that in the course of my limited exposure I have never seen anyone else that believes quite like you do. But what does that have to do with anything more than you having a limited exposure? I expect people like Tangle to deny that God (or even Jesus) ever existed. What I'm not used to is a person such as yourself who agrees with the evidence that atheists use in critical thought and evidence and yet still believe. Are there any notable people that you can think of that believe that Christianity is about what one does and that everyone on the planet is free from damnation without need of a belief in a messiah?Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
There you go preaching chance again!
quote:If that quote attributed to Buddha is correct, Christianity is in fact based on what we do. Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
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