My Beliefs- GDR

Uh huh, well God INSPIRED those error-prone men, and there really aren't all that many inconsistencies anyway. Most of them are easily enough resolved with a little good will, good faith etc. Um, far from "no trace," there are plenty of His words in the Bible, Tangle, quite enough to help anyone get his message who isn't determined not to get it. Since the entire Bible is said to have been inspired by God in that sense every last word of it is "his own that would actually help people get his message" if they weren't so busy trying strenuously to prove it isn't his word.You're just proving that you don't honestly want to know what God has to say. He's said it and you reject it but you prefer to blame that on God when it's you making the decisions. You don't HAVE to believe those ridiculous dates, which were all made up just to cast doubt on the Bible, you COULD believe the earlier dates given by true believers down the centuries instead. The fact is that all the reports were written within a few decades of the events they describe, and they ARE reports, not "stories."As for unknown people, God expressly CHOSE to work with unknown people, chose people the world doesn't naturally admire, scripture says so. It's not what worldly people would expect of course, because God likes to work against what worldly people expect. The "politicians" were the leaders of the many churches, not politicians at all but pastors and bishops and so on. And there was not just one council that established the canon of scripture but many councils compiled lists of what they regarded as the authentic inspired writings, and these were chosen largely because of their usage in the various churches, so it's not correct to say they were the choice of only a few people.The ones discarded are clearly in contradiction with the inspired ones,. The inspired ones warn against the gnostics for instance and the discarded ones are mostly gnostic writings by men who didn't much like the truths about God and Jesus. They also have the flavor of fiction compared to the true ones, to a discerning person anyway. But those who prefer the fakes and gnostic writings may have them, they just can't have the true writings at the same time because they are contradictory.

Some god you have there. He cannot even get a story straight. That sure is some awesome divine inspiration. In other words it is all on faith. The lack of evidence is a clear sign of evidence?Wow.

Thank you for the nature of this post. I know this is a debate forum but I really appreciate the conversational tone of your questions. That is largely true but with a couple of caveats. It isn’t that I see other religions as being false religions but I do see Christianity as giving us the clearest picture of God that we have and yes I see the resurrection as being the confirmation of that picture of God as we see in the man Jesus Christ.I’m not sure what you mean by truth about the world but I would like to comment on what I believe we can learn from the NT about the afterlife.Actually, much of what Jesus said that people assume is about the afterlife was actually a political polemic that spoke against the revolutionaries. There is actually much more in Paul’s epistles about the afterlife than there is in the Gospels. His message which is consistent with the OT message, )particularly in the last couple of chapters of Isaiah), is that at the end of time there will be a resurrection for all of creation, the renewal of all things with the coming together of our earthly dimension and God’s heavenly dimension.It is actually pretty vague about what happens between now and then, although there is certainly the indication that His followers, (which means much more than acknowledging Him as part of the Trinity), are in some way pre-judged ahead of the end of time. However, although His message was in many ways eschatological it wasn’t the main thrust of what He was concerned with. His message wasn’t concerned as much with personal salvation, but much more with salvation of the whole planet. IMHO personal salvation is a by-product of being a follower of Jesus but if it is taken as the focus of it you have missed the whole point of what Jesus had to say. Partly. The term born again is a term that I think is badly misused. The details are personal but I do know that some time after I accepted Christianity I realized that I had a different view of things. I related differently to others and also found that things which had seemed normal to me didn’t any more. I was different to what I had been. The point of mentioning that is I do believe that in ways that aren’t, at least generally speaking, directly perceptible to us, God through His Spirit does increase our inclination to love unselfishly, which is not to say that it makes me less selfish than the atheist next door. I’d say that is true as far as it goes but I believe it is much more than that. In the first place the message that we get from the Bible is that what we do matters. The world as we perceive it will at some point end, but that it will be renewed and that somehow the good that we have done plays into that.The quote that I use as my signature I believe represents accurately what God wants of us and that it is also a foreshadowing of the world that will be when all is renewed. Your question though only addresses the justice and kindness part. The point of walking humbly with God is also an important element. I think that when we are kind and just it is easy to have a high opinion of ourselves, particularly when others tell us how wonderful we are. As I have said numerous times, and it is certainly scriptural, is that it is all about the heart. It is important to realize that we are only able to be kind and just because it is God in us and not something in which we are to take can take pride. We love because God first loved us.We are a people in exile. We are currently living in a world that aside from suffering caused by natural disasters is full of suffering caused by the selfishness of people. We are exiled from the world that God would have us living in, (we are told to ask in prayer for God’s Kingdom to come on Earth as in Heaven), which is a world where the unselfishness of Christ is the norm. I realize that in so many cases, myself as an example, you would never know it but the followers of Jesus are called to be people who infect the world with God’s love, forgiveness, mercy, peace and justice. The idea is that Christians are saved for a purpose not simply for their own eternal benefit. Actually the post count is way to high because believe it or not I do have a life apart from EvC and I’d like to get back to it. I just think it is rude to not answer posts that are addressed to me and that in the majority of cases they deserve a response. This response will probably get Faith riled up but the prophesies in the OT were essentially a metaphorical understanding of resurrection referring to the Jews reclaiming control of the Promised Land. The usual means by which they would get God to make this happen would be to religiously follow the laws, and to be on the safe side they made up a bunch more. Jesus redefined what it all meant and went to the cross as a tremendous act of faith which was vindicated by God through the resurrection.I frankly am in agreement with people like John Polkinhorne who believes that God relates to us in time and has no better idea what I’ll have for lunch next Tuesday than I do.In my view all life is miraculous but sometimes God does things that we don’t expect. I view our Earthly dimension and God’s heavenly dimension as being interlocked in ways that are imperceptible to us. I’m not sure that when God brings the two together in such a way that we are able to perceive it, that it is nearly as big a miracle as it seems to us. The Biblical message, particularly as we see in Paul, is that the resurrected Jesus is the first example of what will happen to us at the end of time as we know it. He did in Jesus He in advance what is in store for all creation eventually.I don’t think I’ve answered your questions particularly well, partly because they are such big questions. Thanks again for asking them.

Have you even read my posts? I have always said that it is men with their personal and cultural biases that have written what is now in the Bible. Sure they were inspired by God but people are inspired to do things all the time with things like acts of selfless courage, selfless charity or even creating works of art. None of them do it perfectly. In the first place it wasn’t God that had Jesus killed it was people. God resurrected Him.We don’t actually know whether or not Jesus actually wrote anything out or not. All we know is that people from about 50 to 70n or so years later compiled what was written, in addition to what came through the oral tradition, into the Gospels that we have today. We do have the Epistles from an earlier date.In general God has chosen, to work through the hearts minds and imaginations of humans and as a result things don’t work out perfectly. That is just comes from having free will.

I agree that is a reasonable argument to make. I find it interesting to consider when the Gospels were compiled, but it doesn't affect my understanding of them, nor their validity one way or the other.I used this site for dates and it is a good source fro early Christian documents. Early Christian Documents

Yes, hence my reply to it. Correct. They make things up, embellish and exaggerate to make their point. They also lie and many of those that do actually come to believe their lies once they've said them enough. My point is that this is all HUMAN. It's no evidence at all of anything to do with a God; it's exactly the opposite. [And yet it's rolled out as evidence that it's true.]Sophistry. If you put a baby in a shark tank, what kills it, the shark or you? God knew what would happen and it was part of the plan. (I feel like I'm talking about the tooth fairy as though it exists.) And again, that's my point. You're God, you send your son to earth to save them but you don't leave ANY record - nothing - that would help people when he's gone. That's just dumb and unfair. It means that only those that actually witnesses it have any reason to believe it. It makes no sense at all. 2000 years later there's no reason at all to believe that anything special happened.That is not how a God would work if He wanted to change hearts and minds after he's gone.

Let's be clear, all I said the Bible was evidence of was that a collection of people wrote some stories. I agree it's evidence but only of that and that alone.When you say "The Bible is evidence you can accept or reject" you're not telling me what it's evidence for. Do you see that?You can say "The Bible is a book that has stories about god that you can either accept or reject" - Ok, I can understand that. But not the way you're saying it. Sure it is simple. As a whole it's obviously complex, but when you break down the cell you can see it's made up of a combination of smaller bits of chemical reactions.When you look at a massive Sun burning fuel it is a complex machine generating an insane amount of energy, creating heavier elements and when it explodes (if it explodes) the energy that produces creates every other heavier element in the universe, that then go on to create solar systems and planets, that hold the building blocks to life. That is the process of a Sun. Complex as a whole. But, what it actually starts off as is hydrogen. A single, simple element.When you see a cell, what you're actually looking at is simple elements and a combination of various chemical reactions, that, in combination create a cell. But, what it actually starts off as is basic elements. Unicorns aren't a religion, so the word atheistic doesn't make sense. You simply don't start with the premise that unicorns exist because...? Care to answer that? What I'm saying is you can't present the Bible as a confirmation of the stories in the Bible. Surely that bit of logic doesn't escape you? Yes, and your answer is basically an argument from incredulity - a logical falacy. You can't imagine it happening naturally so therefore it couldn't have happened.You've just lost the argument. Do you think saying that differently makes it less improbable?However improbable you feel the chemistry that fomred life is, it is way more improbable that an intelligent agency has always existed created by nothing and needing no explanation as to it's origin. Yes, we do disagree. But lets note that my position is based on chemistry and natural selection, for which there is a ton of evidnce. Your position remains the stuff of mythology. Starting off with the belief in a god before any such god has been proven to exist is NOT a rational point of view. It is the whole point of our discussion.But now I see that your argument is basically an argument from incredulity, therefore it isn't rational or logical. Again, this is an argument from incredulity. I mean for fuck sake now your saying that single celled organisms have the knowledge to evolve into sentient beings. More and more having debates here it just makes me realize how little science most of you actually understand. Just because they changed it from a plant to a human doesn't make it unique. It just means someone took an old story and changed it to make it their own. Like I said when I first posted in this thread, it's plagiarism. It's the very definition of it.- OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

That site is clearly not a conservative Christian site, it includes all kinds of writings that have nothing to do with the Bible but presents them as if they did, and its dates are the usual late dates preferred by revisionists and Bible debunkers. Most of the NT CANNOT have been written after 70 AD because of the destruction of Jerusalem, which figures in the gospels only as prophecy and is otherwise unmentioned in other books as well. By conservative dating methods all the NT was written before the end of the first century, and the majority of it before 70 AD. John's writings are the latest, dated around 95 AD when he was on Patmos.The later the dating the more excuse is given to Bible debunkers to claim it is merely myth and all that. That's the motive for the dating, it's all subjective and speculative so they can get away with it with most people. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It could very well have been written after the fall of Jerusalem to make it seem like a prophecy. Especially considering that for all intent and purposes the authors wanted to make Jesus look like a prophet. It could also have a lot to do with the guy coming back from the dead, like in mythology.- Oni

These Jewish guys had no MOTIVE to make it "look like a prophecy" -- what, they just made up Jesus' words after the fact? That's ridiculous. And they CERTAINLY had no desire to ape mythology, which as good Jews they despised. You'll believe the most nonsensical things in your zeal to debunk Christianity.But YES, the dating is made later because of that belief that it must be myth, isn't that the same thing I said already? Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No motive? The motive is to make Jesus look like a prophet. To do that it makes sense that they would write about an event that already happened. Yeah. I mean, Jesus didn't actually write anything himself. Is it? Really? People making up stories sounds ridiculous to you? I'm sorry, do you know these people personally or something? Oh please. You believe a guy came back from the dead. Talk about believing in the most nonsensical things.- Oni

Right, no motive to make Jesus look like a prophet. You think these blue collar Jewish guys were going to try to face down the Pharisees with a lie they made up themselves? About a Messiah that didn't even fit the Messiah who was going to defeat Rome that everybody was expecting? And besides, this would be a particularly useless lie, a prophecy that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed -- you think they could have made up that whole thing about how Jesus is now the cornerstone of the temple and the physical temple was going to be destroyed to prove that? And get the world to believe it? A bunch of fishermen?I don't need to know those people to know that a bunch of Jewish guys raised in the Jewish religion had NO motive whatsoever to create anything that sounded like a pagan myth. They had enough trouble believing the truth about Jesus as it was, believing in the resurrection and so on. They were afraid of the Jewish leaders, hiding out after the crucifixion. You should at least try to make your theory fit the facts just a teensy bit.

They had all the motive to do so since they believed he was the son of god.- Oni

When He died on the cross their faith was shaken, where were they going to get the motivation to make Him out to be the Son of God when they weren't sure of anything any more? But if you're talking about after the resurrection, even then they were hiding out from the Pharisees and not going out and preaching their gospel. Even believing Jesus was the Son of God wasn't enough to motivate them to do that much. You just aren't taking the actual situation into account in your zeal to prove they were all liars.

Ever hear of Rastafarianism?