The God That Paul Marketed Over Time.

Nonsense. Evidence may or may not be conclusive. If it isn't conclusive the any conclusion you might draw is a belief.

Here is the wiki definition of scientific evidence.

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Scientific evidence is evidence which serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis. Such evidence is expected to be empirical evidence and interpretation in accordance with scientific method.

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The evidence supported or counters a theory but it doesn't make the conclusion certain. Obviously as well people can look at the same evidence and come to different conclusions which might well be based on their existing beliefs.

Yes but that does not change the fact that there was evidence that wasn't conclusive. The individual bias that factored into the conclusion doesn't change the fact that there was evidence to be considered.

Stile said this earlier:[quote]My understanding is that "data" may or may not be conclusive.
But "evidence" is always conclusive based on it's very definition:[/qs]My point is that evidence, even in the field of science is not always, (or I'd even argue usually), conclusive. That is evidence and people often used that evidence to conclude that the Earth was the centre of the universe and everything revolved around the Earth. The evidence wasn't conclusive, but it was still evidence. In this case it turns out that the conclusion they came to, based on the evidence, was wrong.

I think Phat that we have to be careful of how we understand John 1. John was a literate first century Jew and would be intimately aware of Genesis 1. Genesis 1 has Yahweh speaking the world into existence, and that it was this "speaking" things into existence, (which isn’t saying that he couldn't have spoken things into existence through an evolutionary process), John called God's wisdom and creative action God's "Word", and using personal pronouns such as He to refer to the Word.
Here is how John, (or whoever the author is), starts his gospel.

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1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.

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It is ambiguous if we try to understand the same way we would read a newspaper. How can the Word be God and at the same time be with Him. I suggest that what John’s first century Jewish audience would hear is that God was there at the beginning of time, and that God is responsible for our existence. He then separates out God as a being from His wisdom which he, again, calls the Word’ of God. He then later says that the Word became flesh. He is saying that Jesus perfectly embodied this Word or wisdom of God. He is then saying, that if we want to understand the true nature of God we are to look at the one who perfectly embodied this His nature.
John is saying that it is God and His Word that existed at the beginning. We know Jesus had a day on which He was born. I think that a lot of people believe that Jesus remembers a time of walking with the angels in heaven but frankly that just doesn’t fit with the Gospels. This isn’t to deny Christ’s deity. Think of what Jesus was saying when He referred to Himself as the Son of Man. This is an obvious reference to the book of Daniel and particularly to Daniel 7 where one like a Son of Man’ is presented to the Ancient of Days. Here is the quote:

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13 In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

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It is Yahweh, the "Ancient of Days" who enthroned Jesus, made Him Lord and gave Him dominion over His eternal kingdom. This is how we can understand Jesus as being both God and man.It seems the Christians are so focused and seeing Jesus as God that they forget that He was also a man. Remember; wholly God and wholly Man. Jesus would have had intimate knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures. As we can see in the Gospels He was also a man who prayed. It becomes clear through this that He believed as matter of faith, that He was God’s anointed one, the Messiah and that in addition, He was somehow embodying Yahweh’s return to His people. It was this resolute faith that carried Him into Jerusalem knowing what the result would be of what He was doing.The problem as I see it is that we our stuck with our 21st century mindset when we read the Bible. We have to read it in the way it was intended, and it was intended primarily for people of the first century and written by first century Jews.

Hi Faith. Happy 2017. I cheered your post because it takes guts to post something that personal on this forum. Your experiences may or may not have been of God, or the Holy Spirit if you like, but let us assume that they were.Just because God has touched your heart and mind, doesn't confirm in any way your understanding of how the Bible itself is to be understood. You didn't claim that in this post, but you have inferred it other times. There are many of us with different beliefs about Biblical interpretation who have also have felt that God had touched and influenced their lives. You might also look at New Cat's Eye's thread who as a Catholic, a faith that you so strongly criticize, to see that he also experienced God in his life.I only post this to suggest that you might be a little less critical of the beliefs of others, and consider that just maybe it is our response to the influences that we receive from God ,as opposed to our doctrinal beliefs, that is important to God.Edited by GDR, : incomplete sentence

That is the whole thing in a nut shell Faith. You say there is no other authority than the Bible. What about Jesus? As it says in the gospel of John;’ the Word became flesh, it doesn’t say that the Word became a book. You choose the Bible over Jesus and make an idol of the Bible. Jesus corrects the OT in several places and also personifies a very different nature of God than what we see often, but not even always, in the OT. You cannot have it both ways.You cannot rationalize God’s nature as being able to ask His chosen people to engage in genocide and public stoning, with His Word, that is incarnate in Jesus, where His followers are told to love their enemy, turn the other cheek etc. You can’t even rationalize it with much of the OT such as the verse from Micah that is my signature. I agree that Jesus speaks to us through the Bible, through other people, through the Holy Spirit speaking to our hearts and, even as Paul says by seeing God in what He has created. However, once again; how about judging sources by the message of Jesus and the law of love. The point was not, implied or otherwise, that CS’ experience validated RC doctrine or any doctrine at all. My point was that you can’t make claim to the validity of your doctrine because of your experience of God, and the same holds true for me. Many, if not all, people are touched by God one way or another, whether they recognize it as such or not. God’s love for the world is omnipresent. Doctrine and theology are a separate issues.This thread is about the idea of Paul’s marketing of the faith. I disagree with the premise. Paul is simply a theologian who is building a coherent theology based on his understanding of Jewish scriptures as revised by the life, death and particularly the resurrection of Jesus. Yes, he was an evangelist telling the world about what God was doing through the Jews and specifically through the Jewish Messiah. A couple of things here. Firstly it is your focus on intellectual ascent to Jesus as Saviour, and as you have said elsewhere, Jesus as your personal saviour. I’m on board with the idea of Jesus as saviour but the point about salvation, is that one is saved for a purpose. We are saved so that we can serve God and His creation by reflecting His love into it. It is not about the specic doctrine that we espouse. This can be true for people of any belief.The point about believing is not about our doctrinal views but about what we believe in our hearts. Are we about self love or the sacrificial love that we have for others. We can see this love of God personified in the life and death ofJesus, and confirmed by the Father having resurrected Him.

Let's narrow it down to that statement as you emphasized it. In the OT they claim that God said that they were to slaughter their enemies. Jesus said, "love your enemies". In the OT they claim that God said that you are to stone to death people for various offences such as adulterers, whereas Jesus said when it came to the adulteress woman that the one without sin should cast the first stone saving her life.Let's just look at the issue of genocide first. You call it God's justice. They were called to slaughter infants and you call that justice. They were to slaughter every living thing and you call that justice. Why then didn’t Jesus not call on the Israelites to slaughter the Romans. He was highly critical of the revolutionaries, telling them that if they kept it up Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed as it was in 70AD. He said that they were to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile etc. Paul tells us in Ephesians that we should;

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13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

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Jesus was clear that evil is defeated with love not the sword.How about justice for the Israelites? In how many cases in the last century have we seen people coming back from war, where they fought consenting adults and have been completely traumatized to the point where they take their own lives. We know what war does to its combatants. You think it is just fine for God as you understand Him to order His chosen people, the ones that He loves, to slaughter women and infants. What kind of justice is that for the Israelites? By your understanding of the OT God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah all on His own. If it was necessary then why wouldn’t He just do that rather than putting His people, the people He loves, through that ordeal.You state that God’s justice was being done when He supposedly ordered that some poor smuck was to be stoned to death for picking up firewood on the Sabbath. Jesus, as I said before repudiated that with the woman caught in adultery. Once again, what does that do to someone required to go out with the rest of the community and throw rocks at your neighbour until he’s dead. If it really was necessary, why wouldn't God do it Himself or at least come up with a more humane way of doing it?If you really believe that God ordered that done, then I really have to ask the question of why you would want to worship a deity like that. Is it just because He’s God and therefore you’ll worship Him no matter how nasty he is. Isn’t that what the pagans do? Isn’t that what the members of ISIS do?It is Christianity and you are a Christian. So why sacrifice the teaching of Jesus in favour of an inerrant Bible? You are making a false idol out of the Bible

It isn't about the name, it is about the true nature of God, and of course what that should mean to us as individuals or as a species.In the case of Islam they revere the Koran and discern Allah's nature from that. Within the Koran Allah is depicted as a deity desiring peace and love. However it also depicts the deity as one who is violent and war like.In the case of Christianity we revere the Bible and discern God's nature from that. Within the Bible God is depicted as a deity desiring peace and love. However it also depicts the deity as one who is violent and war like.In either faith we can understand our deity as one who desires us to build peaceful bonds with our neighbours, and even our enemies, or, that we should slaughter them. Both positions can be held by understanding the holy books as being inerrant.In actuality, in all faiths it so often becomes about trying to control God to further our own purposes whether it is to get a new car, destroy enemies, give us power or to allow us to live forever in comfort. It isn't a great analogy but we really should be asking not what God can do for us but what we can do to serve God.Interestingly, and maybe tellingly enough the Koran starts off with a more peaceable deity and it seems as Mohammed gains political influence and power, he becomes increasingly more war like. In the Bible it generally starts with a more war like deity and climaxes in a deity that is peace loving, as we see His nature being perfectly embodied in Jesus.In the case of Christianity we have to discern the message that God wants to convey when we read the BIble. In your case you understand that it is to be read exactly as written so that when Yahweh demands genocide or public stonings you take that as being fact, and justify it by saying that it is God's perfect justice that goes beyond human understanding. (I find that odd. If we our made in God's image then justice is something that we should have a reasonable grasp of.)I however understand God as saying to us that genocide and public stoning is evil, and that those who either prophesied these actions or carried them out were wrong in doing so. In order to make the point we have Jesus. To understand what is of God in the Bible I use the lens of the incarnate Word of God, which is Jesus. As I said earlier, God's Word or Wisdom was embodied in a man, not in a book, or a collection of writings to be more exact.The point is though that when you read some parts of the OT, you can find a theology that supports essentially the same theology followed by ISIS. Enemies are to be slaughtered and apostates put to death cruelly. It is government by fear as opposed to the Christ centred model of government by love.I know that your experiences lead you to understand that God is a God of love, but your theology actually contradicts your beliefs.

C'mon Faith. That sounds like everybody is crazy except me. Maybe that should tell you something.Talk about not looking at things in context.Firstly Jesus was not under a government as we are governed. He was governed by foreign powers and a puppet government that was upheld by the foreign government. It is not comparable to our situation.Secondly, what they did have was special interest groups with their individual political views which is as close as what we can get to our form of government. Jesus was critical of the Pharisees for their legalism. (IMHO fundamentalists are the modern day equivalent of the Pharisees.) He was critical of the revolutionists saying things like those who live by the sword die by the sword. Jesus was actually very political.

What evidence would that be?

That's still just your assertion. Where is the evidence and statistics you talk about?How about looking at the statistics of how much foreign aid or local charity is done by Christians compared to any other demographic.For example in your country.

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Once again, the biggest givers are found to be concentrated in Bible Belt states in the South or where Mormons make up a large portion of the population.
On the other hand, scant-giving households are heavily concentrated in relatively wealthy and secular New England.

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This effect holds up not only across states but also in major cities. For instance, denizens of Salt Lake City, Birmingham, Memphis, Nashville, and Atlanta donate from 4 to 6 percent of their discretionary income to charity, while counterparts in Boston, Hartford, and Providence average just 2 percent. Silicon Valley is legendary for its wealth, yet lags badly in charitythe Chronicle data show San Jose and San Francisco falling near the bottom among our 50 biggest cities, giving away just 2.2 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively, of their income.

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Here is the site those quotes are from.
Who Gives Most to Charity

I have provided statistical data from a non-Christian source and you call them "unsupported assertions".Here is what you have posted. You claim all the evidence supports what you say.You then said: Note you said "every" available statistic.I asked for you to show us the evidence in the first post and the statistics in the second and all you do is make further assertions, and accuse me of an unsupported assertion after I actually provided a non-biased source which you simply debunk because it doesn't agree with your assertion.

double postEdited by GDR, : No reason given.

Maybe, but this was also part of that same study.

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Finer-grain numbers from the PSID show that the faithful don’t just give to religious causes; they are also much more likely to give to secular causes than the non-religious. Among Americans who report that they never attend religious services, just less than half give any money at all to secular causes. People who attend services 27-52 times per year, though, give money to secular charities in two thirds of all cases. (See page 1138.)

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My main point however was not to even say that jar was wrong, but simply that he makes assertions, saying that his point is backed up by all statistics as well as the evidence without providing either and we should just automatically agree with him. Even after I pointed it out he did exactly the same thing in his subsequent post. He is constantly criticizing other posters for less than that.