Are we prisoners of sin

This has absolutely nothing at all to do with the comment I was responding to: You asserted that God alone has the authority to set up standards of right and wrong. This has nothing to do with the ability to "evict tenants," and everything to do with the actual topic of this thread: sin.Why, Peg, does God and God alone have the authority to set standards of good and evil, as you have asserted?

As Revelation 4:11 says 'You are worthy to receive the honor and glory and power because you created all things and because of your will they existed and were created'if a father does not have the right to set the rules and standards for his children, then something is not right.

You're trying to answer in a single sentence, as if the answer is self-evident. If it was self-evident, I wouldn't be asking the question.Why does God and God alone have the authority to set standards of right and wrong? Why are humans not able to make that determination?Your quote from Revelation is irrelevant - I don't care what the Bible says, I want to hear your explanation of why this entity you call God is the only being with the authority to set down standards of right and wrong.

because he is all powerfulbecause he created all thingsbecause his standards workbecause he is incorruptible and unlike humans, never misuses his powerbecause he has a perfect sense of justice and imparts that justice to all without prejudicebecause all that he does, he does out of love and goodness with the best intentionsbecause our very lives are dependent on him

Power is a valid backing for moral authority?Are you certain?That line of reasoning means that anyone who is more pwoerful than you is able to dictate morality to you.Or does God get a special exception because he's really powerful? That would be special pleading.In any case, I thought humanity had moved beyond simple might-makes-right ethics.Silly me. They do? What is the intended goal of his standards? It seems to me that resetting all of creation via a giant Flood followed by human sacrifice to atone for what a long-dead pair of individuals did doesn't qualify as "working."It also seems to me that setting unattainable standards (like restricting even thoughts of sexual immorality) does not "work" unless your intended goal is to induce guilt and shame and severe psychoses surrounding sex. I dunno. The whole "hardening Pharaoh's heart" thing, the plagues, the Flood, Isaac's near-sacrifice, and sending people to eternal suffering sure seem like abuses of power to me. ...riiiight. See above. So, to paraphrase the late an great George Carlin, there's an invisible man in the sky watching everythign you do, who has a special list of things you can never do, and if you do one of them even once he has a special place to send you that's filled with smoke and fire and burning and pain and torture and fear and screaming forever and ever...but he loves you.Right. In what way? When I stopped believing in God, I didn't die. I don't see any medical evidence that suggests there is a magical deity keeping our lungs breathing and our hearts beating. In fact, I rather think you're full of shit.

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it has everything to do with the tree because the tree was a physical representation of Gods authority. It was the writing on the wall.

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There's that inconsistency of yours again. You said the tree of knowledge was a representation of Good and Evil. Make up your mind.

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That is what the serpent told her and she believed it. But it gave her no wisdom, it did not bring her closer to God, it alienated her from God, gave her a bad conscience and saw her expelled from her Garden home. That cannot be considered wisdom, surely.

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Sure it did, it gave her the same knowledge of good and evil that God has and you have been told this several times in this thread and the scripture quoted to you. So it has been shown to you how the story reveals that they became like God. They became like God because they now knew good and evil.If as you say now the tree represents God's authority, then God was abusing his power. Putting a bowl of candy on the floor and then telling a young child they are not allowed to touch it under threat of punishment is really bad parenting.If God wanted them to overcome their selfish survival instincts he shouldn't have programmed them that way. Pretty bad when the programmer punishes when the program works.He only had two people to deal with. It would have been much easier to just start over then, but then if we look at Jewish mythology, this was his second shot at making the woman anyway.IOW, you're over analyzing the story.Don't forget to address Message 255. Something I hadn't connected before. Paul took his gospel to the Gentiles, but apparently forgot that they weren't under Mosaic law anyway. So the idea that Jesus died to save Gentiles from the penalties of God's law, which is considered to be the Mosaic law, really didn't apply to the Gentiles anyway.

God has all power on earth, in hell and in heaven, he is all powerful to be sure and you had better not cross him.

Rev 19:6 Then I heard what seemed to be a large crowd that sounded like a roaring flood and loud thunder all mixed together. They were saying, "Praise the Lord! Our Lord God All-Powerful now rules as king. 2Co 6:18 and be your Father. You will be my sons and my daughters, as surely as I am God, the All-Powerful." Rev 1:8 The Lord God says, "I am Alpha and Omega, the one who is and was and is coming. I am God All-Powerful!" Rev 11:17 They said, "Lord God All-Powerful, you are and you were, and we thank you. You used your great power and started ruling. Gen 17:1 Abram was ninety-nine years old when the LORD appeared to him again and said, "I am God All-Powerful. If you obey me and always do right,

Predictably many people will find such an idea as scary that an individual could single-handedly wield such enormous unlimited power; however is this fear justified? I would safely say no, for the reason that the bible, God’s own word, describes him (God) as a good and loving God. But even better it also describes him as constant steady personality that will never change with time as do humans.

Num 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie, Neither the son of man, that he should repent: Hath he said, and will he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and will he not make it good? Heb 1:12 And as a mantle shalt thou roll them up, As a garment, and they shall be changed: But thou art the same, And thy years shall not fail. Heb 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.

Now we have to bear in mind that the bible is God’s word, and in it God is said to be an honest unchanging personality, therefore when the bible describes God as a good God, a loving God, it is telling the truth since the bible is the word of God, and God cannot lie. So it is totally logical and warranted to rather assign the right to rule to God than anyone else, since God is the most powerful and yet at the same time the most trustworthy rigid (unchanging) individual out there. In plain English, rulership is made for God and God for rulership.Just as a caption I would like to comment on the idea that God possesses unlimited power. This is true but not totally true, because God’s own personality keeps a tight rein on what he can and can’t do, the bible declares that God is love, and the bible also defines what love is here:

(1Co 13:4) Love is kind and patient, never jealous, boastful, proud, or

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(1Co 13:5) rude. Love isn't selfish or quick tempered. It doesn't keep a record of wrongs that others do.

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(1Co 13:6) Love rejoices in the truth, but not in evil.

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(1Co 13:7) Love is always supportive, loyal, hopeful, and trusting.

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(1Co 13:8) Love never fails! Everyone who prophesies will stop, and unknown languages will no longer be spoken. All that we know will be forgotten.

So God’s own love will never allow him to go on a rampage with his power. And thus Christians are confident in the Fact that God will always remain a moral and good God, and therefore we can also agree that all his past present and future actions issue(d) from somewhere in his love and not from an evil place. Therefore we can declare that whatever God does is moral and good. Why doesn’t it qualify? I think to make a claim like this one you must first understand God’s mind and why he pursues certain actions and not others? What do you think for example would have been the case if God had not acted out in this way, if God had left humanity in that depraved state it was in in Noah’s time can you imagine what the world would be like today if God hadn't caused the flood? God is all-knowing, but we aren’t and as such we cannot always see the bigger picture, just like a child who frowns internally at his parent for receiving a spanking we may also be frowning at God because we have missed the bigger picture. In fact if we understood all of God’s actions and plans then he wouldn’t be so incomprehensible would he. However the bible says in (Job 37:5)

God thundereth marvellously with his voice; Great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend.

And this is true we cannot comprehend all of God’s actions that’s why we are questioning them even now. God is just way up there way beyond us and not surprisingly some of the things he does will baffle us even seem crazy and bizarre to us, but this is the quality of being incomprehensible you will be misunderstood. God did not deliberately set unattainable standards for man; take into account that man did use to have power over these standards before the fall, and these are the standards that God expects his entire creation to live by (current heavenly beings do), he created us with these standards we lost them along the way and now we are to repossess them. We can do this by accepting the free gift of salvation that Christ offers first of all, and then Christ with his divine power once we have accepted him into our hearts will give us the strength and the ability to start adhering to these perfect standards of God once more, but we will only entirely be perfect when we get to heaven.And you are right the Ten Commandments were aimed at making us realize that we are sinners, but before a person can do something about his sin he has to feel guilty about them first, it is by feeling guilty for the most part that we even make an effort to say we’re sorry and to be willing to change afterward. So I don’t see what is so wrong with wanting to make somebody feel guilty about a wrong thing he/she has done. If someone wrongs you you would like that person to feel guilty enough to apologize to you right? This is the same function of the Ten Commandments, to expose our sin first of all but secondly to also make us feel guilty that we may be willing to change as a result.Concerning the rest of your post I will simply give you the following verse

Psa 147:5 Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite.

God’s understanding is infinite ours isn’t, God’s foresight is endless our isn't, therefore as I have provided earlier in this post, we may not always understand God’s actions, but we do understand a fraction of his character revealing that he is a good God and thus we can rest assured that whatever God does, he does because he loves us and not because his out to get us.

I am amazed at the speciousness of this style of thinking. It seems that, if you can rummage around in your old book and find bits and pieces of text that support your ideas, you think that validates those ideas. You also seem to think that these quilted constructs are preferable to simple clear thinking.I have encountered just this style of thinking among muslims. They too seemed incapable of thinking for themselves and could only rummage around in their old book.These so-called holy texts seem to me to be a great danger for humanity.

Explain these dangers as it relates to the clear unadulterated message in the Christian bible, namely love your enemies as you love yourself. Tell me how can this virtuous and pure teaching ever end up in a bloodbath. I urge you to take the following definition of love into consideration as you go about answering my question:

(1Co 13:4) Love is kind and patient, never jealous, boastful, proud, or

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(1Co 13:5) rude. Love isn't selfish or quick tempered. It doesn't keep a record of wrongs that others do.

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(1Co 13:6) Love rejoices in the truth, but not in evil.

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(1Co 13:7) Love is always supportive, loyal, hopeful, and trusting.

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(1Co 13:8) Love never fails! Everyone who prophesies will stop, and unknown languages will no longer be spoken. All that we know will be forgotten.

Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.

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Explain these dangers as it relates to the clear unadulterated message in the Christian bible

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The Bible is far from clear or unadulterated.

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Tell me how can this virtuous and pure teaching ever end up in a bloodbath.

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Have you even read the damn Bible? It contains quite a few bloodbaths, most at the behest of your "loving" god. Go and re-read the OT, because you seem to have missed a few bits. Whilst you're at it, you might like to pick up a history book or two.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

The chief peril is that using old books gives people a false sense of certainty and an appalling arrogance. They are empowered to justify any bigotry at all, provided they can find some musty bit of text to support it.If you don't think text-based religion leads to bloodbaths, you must not be following the news these days.I am not impressed by your your bits of text about love. One can easily find vile bits of text in the same book.

So by your reasoning God deserves to define morality not only because he has a whole lot of power and we should be afraid he might assault us, but also because he is inherently good and loving. We supposedly know this because he told us so, and we can trust him because he also said he is good, so we can conclude that anything he does is good.This particular logical fallacy is called begging the question, where you assume the conclusion as one of the premises. The conclusion is that everything God does is moral; you cannot conclude that God would not do anything immoral because he is inherently good, and use that as evidence that God is inherently good.

Supply the proof for you claim. God carrying out justice upon sinful nations may seem like a bloodbath to you and unjust, but it really isn’t. Remember as loving as God is he is also a just judge, sometimes when outsiders even certain Christians look at God they expect a Omni-benevolent God who turns a blind eye to sin, don’t make the mistake of elevating one attribute of God above another, for as much as God is a God of love, he is also a God of justice. He may be slow to anger, but he does get angry and does punish. Now it is not for us to say that these ancient nations that tasted the tip of God’s double-edged sword didn’t receive warning after warning from him, before they finally incurred his wrath. Neither can we know the level of sin these various nations had achieved. To incur God’s direct chastisement they must have been awfully sinful.Now God is angered by sin, and eventually he will put a stop to it, all of it in due time. But also know that the wage of sin is death. This is a law, no one escapes it. And that is exactly what these sinful nations had secured for themselves by their sinning. Whether in hell someday or through direct punishment from God on earth all sinners will pay for their sins ultimately. The bible is clear on this; it declares that our own sinning destroys us, and that sin will lead us to death, so when we see destruction upon nations as a result of their sinning, like the ancient cities, this is not something that they didn’t deserve all along. Now about the bloody history of Christianity which really is a molehill compared to the atrocities that people committed under such banners as social Darwinism, Nazism etc and the world wars. Regarding this bloody history of Christianity, we cannot really hold the bible or Christ accountable for what these Christian renegades committed in the name of Christianity, because their acts are in direct opposition to the clear message of loving your enemies taught by the bible. Early Christianity unlike Islam had spread through non-violence means, and this shows that in essence Christianity is a peace religion.Surely if I killed millions of Americans in the name of evolution did I prove that evolution is wicked or at least encourages wicked behavior, of course you would say no, what about if I killed in your name Granny Magda shall the state then hold you responsible for my actions when you have not encouraged or instructed me to kill. This is the same thing with Christianity. It is not right to blame Christianity for some of the actions committed by its followers because it doesn’t teach or instruct or even encourage these actions .

I'm afraid Phage0070 you are the one who is begging the question. Not only have you misread what I have written but you have come to a completely different conclusion than I have. My question is how did you do it? Yes God deserves to define morality, and what's wrong with that, somebody will have to define morality by the end of the day, you say society gets to define what is moral, so what's wrong if God who is all-knowing and is defined as being love itself and is also just defines morality, he knows better much much better than any society on earth. And I am not saying that because he has a whole lot of power he should get to define morality but because he is a just and fair God, the bible says God is not a respecter of man meaning he doesn’t favor one man at the expense of another, so I think he has every right to define what is moral, and what’s more seeing that he created us, and if he wants to define morality who can stand in his way.But the truth is God can never define morality he never did, his nature defines morality and his nature is good and is marked by love, so it would be impossible for God to for example endorse senseless murdering or lying or any other thing that seems morally curios because it would go against God’s very nature. So therefore I repeat Christians can rest assured that God will never turn into a tyrannical power freak who will reign with an iron fist. Why not. If I say that the color pink will never become the color red because it is inherently pink, may I not use this as evidence that the color pink is inherently pink. God is like this pink color he can never become evil, because he was good from the beginning and he can never change. what of this is so hard to grasp. If something can never change then it will forever exist in its original state.

In case you haven't figured out yet I'm not vouching for just any text-based religion, since the opening of this thread I have been arguing primarily for Christianity, not Islam or any other text-based religion that might exist out there. I'm a Christian and I don't believe in the authenticity of other religions, frankly I believe their teachings are either plainly man's ideas or man's ideas mingled with satanic ideas, this is what I believe.But since you've accused me of not watching my news I ask you to update me on anything recent that has been committed by Christians in the name of Christ. Update me Woodsy.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.