Straightforward, hard-to-answer-questions about the Bible/Christianity

Hi Stile I agree entirely with what you say, which I think supports the point that Hyroglyphx made that the Christian argument becomes circular and meaningless.Because who is God to say that we are at fault?In any case the reality is this. God is not saying anything. Some people are saying that God is perfect and that humans are not perfect and God is therefore angry with us. Those people also claim that God is perfect and made man in his image. So did God make man perfect (like him) or not? And if he didn't, then he could only have done so deliberately. If he didn't do so deliberately, he ain't perfect. Unless you see making certain mistakes as a sign of being perfect (like "having fun" as you mention), in which case who's to say humans aren't perfect in their imperfection?!?Whichever way you look at it, the whole thing is total nonsense.

Yes, I agree with the basic premise of Hyro's point as well. At fault for what? Granted if God is the supreme creator, and if all this is according to some plan of his, and if there is some sort of "good" thing behind this unknown plan, and if there is some sort of way we're supposed to understand what to do without knowing the plan or the "good", or God at all... then God may very well have a point in saying that we are "at fault." For something.But, well... obviously, that's a lot of if's. And really big if's. Like, totally out there kind of big if's. An active 3 year old's imagination has nothing on those sorts of if's. Yes, certainly agreed.
Sad, really, that so much fear and anger and bloodshed comes as a result of nonsense. But, well, such things are born of nonsense, regardless of the "form" or "type" of that nonsense. Even without all this God stuff, I'm sure some other nonsense would fill the gap and the world wouldn't be all that different from what it is now.So, how do we fight nonsense? - On a global scale?Obviously through understanding, education and a will for "what's right."
But, as big as all those above "if's" are, this is equally as big of a "easy to say, hard to do" kind of thing.So, what do we do?I haven't worked out any feasible ideas yet, advice is welcomed in earnest. I basically just post here, it makes me feel better Doing our best to try our best, I suppose

Not if you think that perfection isn't a subjective concept. You might as well say --- "Well, if God doesn't exist, then I don't have to explain or defend his actions". But you think that God does exist and is perfect; and it is your own beliefs for which you are required to provide apologetics, not a carefully selected mixture of your own opinions and those of atheists.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Education is the key. The one thing most religions (certainly the ones that cause the most trouble) rely on is stifling knowledge. Who can say what is ultimately the best way, but the more options we have, the better.But I guess we're wandering off topic. Care to start a new one?

Hi, Granny. Most of us (Mormons) are in agreement that merely asking somebody if they want to hear the gospel doesn't constitute a "chance." If that were the case, we could just sit on a street corner, and claim that everybody who noticed us sitting there had the chance to stop and talk to us, and that their damnation is thus their fault.----- Did you notice the part where people on Earth had to get baptized for people who died? How is that going to happen if there's nobody here to do the baptisms?

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Taz. ...? Okay...?And, my question was, "Why is that?"

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

I don't quite get where you're coming from here. How could it not? The example raised was of those who never had a chance to encounter Christianity or Mormonism. Now perhaps just asking, or a casual chat might not count, but giving someone detailed information about your faith, explaining it to them as fully as you can and still having them reject it? That sounds like a good example of someone being handed an opportunity to make an informed rejection of God. Clearly it places them in a different category to someone who never encountered Christians. I don't see what is to be gained in creating such situations, especially since I hear that the average Mormon missionary manages about three or four converts during his stint (obviously you did better ). I'm guessing that many more people end up in the position I've outlined. It all just seems a bit of a waste if they're going to be given the chance to convert in the afterlife anyway. Okay, that's not an unreasonable point, but it surely doesn't require the kind of enthusiastic proselytising that Mormons practise.Mutate and Survive

No, that's just piggicide.

C. S. Lewis would disagree. Have you read The Great Divorce?

Hi slevesque - hope things are well ..I have a 2 part question if you have time to run it by the board ...For the vast majority of His ministry, hardly anyone even knew Joshua was the Anointed One; yet, we are told that Joshua indeed preached 'The Gospel'.According to the church testaments, no one knew that Joshua - as the Anointed One or otherwise, was going to die; much less¹ did any one of his admirers have a clue, before He surrendered his body to Yehosef bar Kayafa and the Roman militia that escorted him, that he was to be venemously murdered ...

quote:

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Luke 24:20

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.. and how our chief priests and rulers handed him over to be condemned to death, and crucified him.

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21 ~ But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Yisrael. Not only this, but it is now the third day since these things happened.

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John 20:9

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(For they did not yet understand the scripture that Joshua must rise from the dead.)

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* What Gospel did Joshua consistently share with those around him, if it did not include anything about His death?

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* For what reasons did that original Gospel of Joshua's become shelved and rarely, if ever, discussed or promoted? Or to rephrase the second portion of the question, considering the doctrine of atonement in its current state didn't exist until the 11th century: In what ways is the modern gospel² - designed by Levitical Catholics, Evangelicals & Mormons, superior to Joshua's original testament?In the name of brother Joshua the Anointed One, peace be with you.One Love ¹ - The ninth verse in the booklet attributed to John is a parenthetical note by the author. As a matter of fact, the author does not, at any point, explicitly mention exactly what original testament scripture is being invoked and neither does uncle Paul in his pharisaical discourse of 1 Cor 15:4. While some purport to see the resurrection of the Anointed One in Isaiah 53:10-12 and Psalms 16:10, it is admittedly in general terms, if at all.

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Again, biblical scholars assume and suppose, because of the mention of 'the third day', that specific references may or may not have been understood in Jonah 1:17 and/or Hoshea 6:2; yet beyond examples such as these, I am often told "it's not possible to be more specific".

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² - According to the theologian Augustine and the theologians of the church in later centuries who considered him 'the father of Christian theology', Joshua was murdered to be an atonement sacrifice to pay for the sins of humanity, following the doctrines laid out in books like Leviticus in the ToRaH, commonly referred to as the Law of Moses. Every sectarian branch of Levitical 'Catholicism' (protestant, mormon, etc.) then become Augustine's child, who are paternal Levites in nature. By partaking of this sacrifice, one is supposed to be ritually 'washed in the blood of the lamb' and then 'imputed' the 'perfection of Christ'. The price was 'fully paid' by 'completely and perfectly' fulfilling this 'law of Moses' and then suffering the punishment for wrongdoers, thus satisfying the demands of distributive justice. I think that's pretty close ...

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Now, as an avid admirer of the ToRaH, the Prophets and the Psalms, this then becomes an extremely peculiar notion. Within Yirmiyahu's booklet it is stated that the Father did not tell those people to bring sacrifices and offerings when they came out of Egypt, but that rather these sacrificing and blood atonement laws were forged by the Levite priests of the Yirusalem temple. In the booklet of Acts, the Apostle Stephen is pictured testifying to a similiar notion before Paul and a few others ruthlessly murder him.

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This evolved doctrine of Joshua as a Levite animal sacrifice did not orginate with the prophets of Yisrael or with the gospels, but rather with theologians of the church, like Augustine. This doctrine is not mentioned in the gospels. However, there is at least one tradition that all four synoptic texts we presently possess agree upon and that is ....

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Joshua the Anointed One was murdered by way of crucifixion to preserve a system of religious dogmatism. ( Matisyahu 26:4, Mark 14:1, Luke 13:31-32, John 11:48/49/50/53 )

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Dear friend,
    Accept confidence. Be an inspiration. Care about others. Dare 2 b different. Envision our dreams. Find out how to love. Grant wishes. Hope hard. Invite possibility. Judge little. Keep promises. Laugh a lot. Make friends. Never give up. Open your mind. Plant miracle seeds. Question everything. Run as fast as you can just to see what it feels like. Stay true. Try your best - especially when considering to take advice and speak your mind. Understand empathy. Volunteer. Win gracefully (when you win). X marks the spot. You'll get there - Zero in on what's important and keep those things close to your heart ...

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Mercy Trumps Judgement,
Love Weary

*Looks up in wikipedia*{lie}Yes, I have.{/lie}Well, his allegories aren't in line with any known church belief. Whatever... Edited by Taz, : No reason given.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

See, here's where it really helps to be able to read Greek. As I remember from the two years I studied it in college, Greek is exceptionally rich in prepositions, so the subtleties and shades of meaning Greek is capable of expressing when describing the relationships between things can't really be expressed well or at least succinctly in English. This phrase "baptized for the dead" is a beautiful case in point. What's this connector "for" mean? For the sake of? In place of? It's also possible that this sentence is a scribal insert, not something Paul actually wrote at all.Being a religion of the book, Christianity can get awfully hung up on the written word, and sometimes significant doctrine hinges on someone's reading of a single sentence. My favorite example is the whole concept of the "age of accountability," which still ties in with my questioning the fairness of the whole Hell concept.Now, if we go by the rules, if everyone is inherently sinful due to Adam's transgression, then that means that everyone is worthy of Hell from the moment they're born whether they've had a chance to hear the Gospel or not. No one wants to think that their little baby who died at two months old is going to burn. (Come to think of it, if you believe that life begins at conception, then all miscarriages are certainly going to Hell - no chance to baptize a fetus, after all. Sheesh.) But if you don't accept infant baptism, as most Christians didn't in the early days and many still don't, then this might seem just a trifle unfair. But God's a good guy, remember, so there's got to be a loophole. So they went back to a single verse (2 Samuel 12:23) where King David is talking about his own infant son who had just died: Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me. Many Christians have taken just that one verse as justification for believing that all babies and small children are issued their own Get Out of Hell Free cards at birth, not having actually had the chance to do anything bad themselves, and then at some point reach an "age of accountability" after which they're considered responsible for their own actions and have to turn the card back in until they do that salvation dance for themselves.Man, do you have to do a lot of theological gymnastics to get the Bible to say what you want it to.Anyway, this whole baptism after death thing seems like yet another way of looking for a loophole in an evil, unjust game. This verse from 1 Corinthians is a pretty fuzzy thing upon which to build not only a doctrine, but an entire industry. After all, isn't one of the driving forces behind the vast genealogic record gathering that the Mormons have done that they want to get names for as many people as they can to baptize after death?So I'm asking Buz or anyone else with some solid study of scripture in the orignal languages to try to make this particular verse more understandable.

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I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John Lydon

From the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on Hell:

I don't support human slavery. I report that it was sanctioned in the OT, nor did Jesus or the apostles condemn it, nor did they express support for it. It was a part of all human cultures on the planet at one time or other. That doesn't mean that I support it. I don't know where you got that notion, Anglagard. God is not the Biblical god Jehovah's proper name. It's a generic word like the word man. These are descriptive words of what an entity is. Jehovah is a god. (aka)Buzsaw is a man. Get it?As well, the Greek word for god, theos is not capitalized, nor is the word Lord/kurios/master or the term, holy spirit. None of these words are proper names which should be capitalized. The translators chose to take it upon themselves to capitalize the names figuring it showed respect. I do capitalize Holy Spirit and God sometimes, depending on how I use them, though I don't think it matters a lot. I'm generally of the opinion that the translators should translate exactly as the manuscript states rather than taking it upon themselves to change what has been inpired by God. (I caped here more or less so not to offend some who don't understand this as I often do) If I said "the god, Jehovah," I do not cap "god."

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

When you ask this, do you mean that being perfect Adam should not have had the ability/or desire to sin? Well, did Adam have the same kind of perfection as God? The God of the Bible is perfect in a completely different sense than Adam was before he sinned. God is perfect in that He cannot sin. God is perfect in that He is omniscient (just to name a few perfections/attributes of His). The Bible implies Adam was created a perfect man yet he sinned. What do you infer? That Adam's "perfectness" cannot be compared to God's "perfectness". In other words, Adam while being a perfect human i.e created in God's image and never having sinned before, still had the choice to sin; freewill to make a choice. In that sense yes, Adam was IMperfect if you define "perfectness" as God's own perfectness. (which in that case even Mother Teresa is IMperfect) No man can ever be perfect like God even when he is created in God's image. God is in a completely different league all by Himself! That's why the Bible says "There is no one like Him" 1 Samuel 2:2
"There is no one holy like the LORD; there is no one besides you..."
The point of the verse is that there is no one else in the category of God, the God of the Bible is the only God! Makes no sense to compare Adam's perfection to God's. Now, when you think of it this way, yes (humanly) perfect Adam was enticed by the devil's words (through eve's report of course), carried away by his desire to be something God forbade him to be, and willfully made a wrong choice disobey God and obey God's enemy. Did Adam know that "the serpent" was God's enemy? I don't know. The Bible doesn't tell us. Could Adam have known? Sure, Adam could have inferred that the serpent was God's enemy by his words. Who else but an enemy would ask Adam to do exactly the opposite of what God asked him to do? God gave Adam the ability to reason and think. And I personally believe that both Adam and his wife understood who Satan was before they bit into that apple.