Importance of Original Sin

In a sense, you are trying to push your non-belief onto me. I don't reach conclusions the same way that you did. As I have said before, you will stand at the altar forever if necessary waiting for evidence.You can say that my methodology is flawed, but you would have to indict virtually all believers worldwide with the same accusation. Many of us believe that we have subjective proof enough to convince us....it may not reach the standard of evidence that you personally would demand...but you have no problem being a secular humanist anyway and hoping that people will come together as one without religion or need of a savior. I am not as optimistic nor would I be happy in such a communal state of global living.Without promises of a better life, what good does it do for everyone to simply share diminishing resources? I'm more for competition when the pickings get that slim.

I'm just pointing out how your belief makes no sense. Fine. But you're throwing out the evidence that you do have. You claim to believe in Jesus but you throw out everything He taught. You mock the Bible as a dusty old book even though it's the only reason you have to believe that Jesus ever existed.

As I have told you over and over and over and over..the Bible is not the only reason nor the only source. God inspired the book before the book was even written. God existed before we did. And who said I threw out that He taught? You take the message and run with it only to support your crony socialists and yourself optimistically making a new and better future...whereas I see that as something not to follow.

It really is though. You did. You've spent much of this thread arguing against what Jesus said. Nonsense. As I've told you over and over and over and over, Jesus just happened to get it right. If He was wrong, I'd say so. Either way, I'm not going to stand by and watch you and Faith pervert the Bible for your own ends.And I don't have any "crony socialists".

So in other words, you already had a message of your own which the character in the book just happened to conform to...right?

We all do. The apostle Paul even said so. Whether it's from nature or nurture, we all have those "social instincts" that put survival of the species ahead of individual selfish interests - unless we're sociopaths or psychopaths or we've had the goodness trained out of us by Pharisees or other Fundamentalists.Edited by ringo, : Spellinge.

OK, I think I get this argument.Premise: All characters in ALL books are described by human authors. Some may argue that authors are describing a character in their own mind or soul whom they believe exists apart from their imagination, but this cannot be proven one way or another...thus all we have are characters written about by humans.The "God character" who commanded the slaughter of innocents and who declared that He would have mercy on whom He would have mercy was written by fundamentalist or pharisaical authors...whereas the Jesus who Matthew 25 immortalizes was written about by more rationally minded authors.Conclusion: In the final analysis, even if God exists apart from our individual or collective imagination, our description of (and behavior because of Him) is all that we have to write or talk about. Thus your premise that the message supersedes the messenger would still presuppose that we ourselves are the messenger living out the message. Does that sound plausible? Actually, I've been arguing against you....not Jesus. What message I get from Jesus is an individual decision.Where I might get in trouble is if all along you were the messenger sent divinely whom I ignored. I just argue with you because I don't like the idea that my money doesn't belong to me. Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

It's an objective message - it's agreed on by most humans and it works; it makes life better. The "premise" that the message supersedes the messenger is bloody obvious. And you know it's true. You don't throw away your bills and keep the envellope. So why do you even bring it up? No, you're arguing against the closest thing we have to objective evidence of what Jesus taught.

my belief is not in the book nor its message...as if it were a static thing set in time. My belief is a belief in a living presence...an interactive super conscience that communes with my own. Given free will, I do have the human ability to wriggle out of truths that I find uncomfortable...or to obey them and live them. My point is that I don't believe that the message is confined to a book written in times past.

One that you made up in your head, one that has little relationship to reality or to the character in the book - even though you have borrowed the name from the character in the book. That's what I've always said. We all have the message. We don't need a made-up character to bring us a message that we already have.

Im not convinced that God is *made up* nor do I see how it would be possible to tell one way or another.I believe based on a number of subjective experiences that confirmed rather than challenged my faith. Lately I have become aware of ohers who have suffered and would have reasons to question a God Who allows suffering, so I can see that argument.Reality makes me have to accept that God is not a God of favor nor entitlement, though I believe that there is an overall purpose to all of this.And I disagree with Faiths approach where she has decided to take a stand on what she believes and ignore any and all evidence that is presented against her arguments. It is not a good teachable moment strategy. On the other hand, I too take a stand regarding my belief and find it disingenuous when opponents simply start their argument with a negative truth claim such as that God does not exist.My belief in God is a belief that His presence is real(though subjectively since I cannot prove objectivity)... And yet you say that the messenger is unimportant and that I too should (and do) see and grasp this "obvious" truth! Ther are millions of respectable Christians who have respectable lives and who reach out in their communities and embrace the message that they have chosen to internalize.You claim that overall, there is no evidence that these believers have any sort of better message than do atheists who help their communities...and for that, I won't argue.But I will say that you and I have different messages. And yet in some ways, they could be the same message. I'm just emphasizing a relationship with the Creator. You are emphasizing a "relationship" with that stinky homeless guy that tries to survive in this world. Your basic argument is Matthew 25, where you show how the message emphasizes that if I relate to (and help feed and clothe) a homeless guy I am having a relationship with the Creator.And I cant really argue with your logic. I just wonder why you see Jesus as simply a character, an envelope, and a presence limited to a book from the past.When is the last time a homeless guy ever blessed you with any favor?And that's the flaw in my belief. I expect blessing and I expect the favor.

Well yes, confirmation bias tends to confirm your biases, not challenge them. As you said yourself, there's no reason to think otherwise. Why is blessing me with favours important?

One of the main reasons I began to question the bible.
There are a few things that I don't understand and don't sit well with me.As far as I understood it the reason we get baptized is to clense us from the original sin... I get thatJesus was sent by God to suffer a bloody death in order to save humanity from its sins. Thats generally how it goes and what I struggled to acceptWhy did God make Jesus go through such an terrible death?
How exactly does that save us from sin?
Why do we then still have to confess or even lead a moral life if Jesus saved us already? Or why lead a moral life is a simple confession absolves my sins?
What of all the people that died before Jesus? Or the people born in other cultures?
Did they just automatically go to hell?That's one of the reasons why, even though I was raised a catholic, don't take the bible literally anymore. So many things in it just don't make sense

Join the club! If I recall, you went through a phase of cognitive dissonance where you had already switched your opinion on religion and yet felt guilty because you disrespected your family for so doing. Perhaps the questions to ask yourself are whether a relationship is more important than personal honesty and integrity with others---family especially.None of us know how the real story actually goes---and won't know until we die. Perhaps our proper approach is to believe and do something that will give us a personal sense of integrity and inner peace now while we are alive. And as ringo has pointed out, one does not need to be religious in order to be good to others...he would suggest in fact that the non-religious are often better at this than are the believers.Faith would argue that the book only makes sense once you believe and ths *know* that everything in and about the book must be true.I believe that the book is metaphorical in many ways, though I do believe that Jesus is alive and real...I just cant prove it to anyone. Percy would say that evidence means everything and that we dont have any evidence...thus no real reason to accept it all.In the end, you need to make up your own mind about what you do and do not believe. I would still suggest trying to be a most excellent person and give more than you expect. This is hard for me to do, for I expect a lot of favor from God and not a large sense of duty.Thus I am not a good role model in this regard.Anyway, nice to hear from you now and then. Hope that your studies are going well and that you are relatively content and at peace with college.

That's close but the main thing about baptism is that it officially includes believers in the Body of Christ. In a sense it is an outward representation of the "baptism in the Holy Spirit" which Christ gives us. It is crucial to understand this. Jesus died IN OUR PLACE, as the sacrificial lamb to pay for OUR SINS. WE deserve that death plus an eternity of suffering but He took it all on Himself so that we don't have to suffer it. The terrible death shows how terrible our sins are that He paid for in our place. It saves us from sin because He paid it all for us. It's clear your context is Roman Catholic from the mention of confession but of course Protestants also must confess our sins, only not to a priest, but to God Himself and to each other where appropriate. The reason for continually being cleansed from our sins by repentance and obedience to God's moral law is that this is what we are saved FOR. The whole story is that the human race became sinners and enemies of God when Adam and Eve disobeyed His command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was the Fall at which our spiritual capacity for communication with God was lost. But from that point on God promised that He would send us a Savior from our fallen condition, the Messiah or Anointed One, who finally came, and that is Jesus Christ. His death pays for our sins, removes the curse of the Fall, reinstates our spiritual capacity and even more than that unites us to Himself through the indwelling Holy Spirit. And inaugurates a brand new Creation in which we will eventually be "Sons of God" and without any more tendency to sin. The entire human race is destined for Hell by nature because of our fallen condition. Some who nevertheless obey God's Law intuitively are probably saved but all we know for sure is that those who believe in the sacrifice of Christ to pay for our sins are saved, and that includes millions of people from all cultures because of missionaries who have taken the gospel to them. Old Testament Jews were saved, however, by believing what light they had through God's revelation in their time. There are some things in it that will probably never make sense to any of us until Jesus returns, but that's the reason for living by faith.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.