Jesus and his sacrifice is Satan’s test of man’s morality.

I'll quote this but I'll also reply more generally. You are arguing against those like Faith that have long ago given up listening to what Jesus said and did in order to argue for an inerrant Bible.The problem is that this is a tradition that grew out of the reformation and essentially has done away with the worship of the Jesus of the Gospels in order to worship an inerrant Bible.The Gospel of John tells about the Word or Wisdom of God which existed before all things and brought about all things. He goes on to say that this Word or Wisdom became flesh. In other words Jesus perfectly embodied the true nature and will of God. This is quite different than the idea of stating simply that Jesus is God, as obviously it begs the question of just who He was praying to. Praying to oneself doesn't make a lot of sense.You stated that supposedly Jesus knew He wasn't going to die. I suggest that when He went into Jerusalem He did it knowing that He would die because He knew full well what the response of those in power would be with those who did what He was about to do. His message angered every power group in the country. His allies were the the weak and helpless, the prostitutes, the hated tax collectors etc. He prayed that it wouldn't be the Father's will for Him to have to go through with it.However, through prayer and through His understanding of the Hebrew scriptures he believed that this is what He had to do and that somehow God would in the end use this sacrifice for the good of the world. The point is that He went to His death as an act of faith, not with any certainty of His resurrection. Any other belief denies His humanity and belittles the enormity of what He was doing.His divinity comes through His embodiment of the Word of God and by extension the embodiment of the return of Yahweh to His people. It was the resurrection of Jesus by the Father that affirmed and vindicated the life and message of Jesus and it was God the Father, the Ancient if Days that enthroned Jesus.

I know you disagree Faith but the most obvious example is the fact that you can reconcile the belief that Jesus taught that we are to love our enemy, turn the other cheek and that our weapon against evil is love with the idea that Yahweh commanded genocide and public stoning for petty offences such as pick up firewood on the Sabbath. Those positions are irreconcilable.You put your faith in the Bible ahead of your faith in Jesus.

Humans like certainty. I agree that there is no certainty within Christianity or within any other faith. From a Christian perspective it is the view that God wants us to freely choose the very basic message that can be seen in my signature. If there was certainty then we would lose the ability to freely choose by knowing that we will be rewarded for behaving in a certain manner. It is about having hearts that love our neighbour as ourselves and through that choice care for the planet and all life on it.I know this was discussed in another thread recently, but all religion is man made. Religions are theistic attempts to understand the nature of god(s) and what our response to that nature should be. In the majority of cases the response has been to figure out how to get this god to conform to our desires.The message that we see espoused by Jesus is that we are to serve God by serving His creation. This is often not the case in the OT where it was usually about trying to follow a set of laws in order to get Yahweh to be with them in defeating their enemies and putting them in power over other nations.It is my contention that with Faith's views that it is all about getting our belief system in line so that we are rewarded with eternal life with God. It is the carrot on the end of the stick approach with I contend is fundamentally opposite to the message of Jesus again. Fundamentalism is a modern version of the approach taken by the Pharisees of Jesus' day.I understand the Bible to be the "word" of God with Jesus being the "Word" of God. The Bible is a library of books with no doubt hundreds of authors. It is a history of man's understanding of God slowly being refined over the centuries until it comes to a climax in Jesus where we see God's true nature being fully revealed and that is confirmed by God resurrecting Jesus.I believe that God's nature and purposes are revealed in the Bible and that He speaks to our minds and hearts through the written word. It is a tool used by God to change people's hearts.We all have a world view based on somet belief. None of us have certainty that the basis for our world view is accurate. We have people who spend their lives in service to others at their own expense and we have people who spend their lives serving themselves at other expense. If we had certainty that serving others was really about serving ourselves then then it is again all about us. Again, as per my signature, God wants us to humbly love kindness and justice. In the end it is all about the heart.

First off, the very first words I used were that "I know you disagree". Secondly of course I am expressing my opinion just as you express your opinion about what I believe. You just continue to make my point Faith. You are able to reconcile a belief in a deity that would tell the people whose job it is to reflect His love to the world but that they are to go out and slaughter the men, women and children of another community. We can see today the damage being done with PTSD to those who we send out to participate in our various wars. Your god would send out the people he loves to participate in these slaughters and then come home, unmoved by this mass slaughter, and then lead lives of love and kindness to their fellow man.You suggest that God was responsible for the civil war in your country. How about the suffering and death of those who opposed slavery all along. How about the Christian approach taken by Wiberforce in Britain who facilitated the end of slavery there without the slaughter of the US Civil War. Do you really think that God would lead those in Britain to end slavery without bloodshed but would use a particularly brutal civil war that turned brother against brother in the US to end it?As far as judgement is concerned, here is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4. "5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God."Paul understands it to be about the motive's of men's hearts. It isn't for us to judge. Christianity is not about worrying about who is in and who is out. It is about following Jesus and reflecting the love of His and our Father into God's good creation, and God confirmed that by resurrecting Jesus. That's helpful. My opinion may be wrong but that doesn't make it a lie.

Some. like yourself have decided that the Bible is inerrant and have built a religion around that. All religions are man made. As I said, all religions are built on understanding the true nature of a deity and what our response should be. But what does it mean to "worship" Him. Is worship making sure that we get to church on time every Sunday. Sure that's a good thing. But maybe it's more importantly about telling the young woman at the check-out counter that she has a pretty smile, or buying someone who is homeless a meal, or working to integrate a refugee family into the community, and then thanking God that we have been gifted in such a way that these acts of love are possible. Then why don't you follow it. Do you ever shop on Sunday, or is it Saturday? Why don't you recommend the public execution for those who do? Why aren't you advocating that nuclear bombs or some other method of annihilation be used on Islamic nations? It isn't works righteousness. It is about the heart. Psalm 37 tells us that if we delight in the Lord He will give us the desires of our heart. I think that the psalmist got it exactly right. If we truly follow Jesus, (whether we know Him by name or not), our hearts will desire and find joy in the expressions of love that can be expressed in our lives multiple times a day. As Christians we should then always remember that we are only capable of that love because God loved us first and that we are to give thanks for it. Many people have been damaged due to abuse, genealogy or whatever, and find it difficult to understand love but deep down desire it even though their actions don't show it. Again, ultimately it is about the heart, or as Paul says, it is about the motives of our heart. In what we have that Jesus said in the Gospels we can see that He was very Jewish and constantly referred us back to the OT. At the same time in corrected the parts that were wrong. For example:

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38 "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' 39 But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

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If I am picking out the parts that I agree with I guess I'm in good company. If we want to understand Jesus we have to understand Him in His 1st century Jewish context. To understand that context we need the OT. To understand God's nature and His desires for us we need the words of Jesus as a lens to understand what is written in the OT. The epistles then are the first theologians working out just what it was that Jesus taught and to understand what God was doing in resurrecting Him.

First off it is a collection of 66 books with no doubt hundreds of authors involved. I think that there is consistency as it it a history of the Jewish understanding of God that we can see evolve from the tough vengeful god that is often depicted in the early part of the OT to the much more compassionate deity in Isaiah and the other later prophets until we get to the full revelation and embodiment of God's nature in the person of Jesus. Not really. I have no doubt that some of the things I believe are wrong. Yes, I pray but in the end I think that usually our prayers are answered by the heart knowledge that comes from God of what is the right thing that I am to do in my life. I suppose that God does give us understanding but that understanding is also quite obviously going to be impacted by our life experiences.

It's back to the same thing again. Yes, it is ambiguous - we don't have certainty. With people who have actually put thought into it, there isn't likely to be two Christians anywhere that will agree on everything.If we had certainty then we would lose our ability to freely choose free of self interest.It also of course holds true about prayer. It is clear that the nature of God as we see it perfectly embodied in Jesus is far more concerned about our heart for all of His creation than He is about our theology.

God did not have Him murdered. It was people who murdered Him. It was God who resurrected Him.The Christian message is that ultimately there will be a re-creation of all things and that, for lack of a better term, the resurrected Jesus is the prototype of the life in a resurrected world. In Christian parlance Jesus is the new Adam for this re-created world.As a theist it makes sense to me that this isn't all there is and frankly as far as I'm concerned is does all fit. I actually relate to this quote of CS Lewis.

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I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

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Now I know that this doesn't resonate with you but it does for me. There is the belief that a single cell and ultimately sentient moral life evolved without any intelligent or moral input from the endless chance combinations of mindless particles. That is without answering the question of why those particles existed in the first place.Doesn't that smell just a little like it might just be people deluding other people and themselves?

The only point I was making, (which had nothing to do with explaining Christian beliefs), is that atheistic beliefs require far more faith than do Christian beliefs IMHO. See my post #37 in this thread. I have already covered that.

I have no problem believing in evolution. I do have a problem believing in an evolutionary process that is a result of endless mindless processes from mindless particles.What then do atheists believe about abiogenesis or the ultimate basis for the evolutionary process?

Why discuss it then. You have no position to defend and yet you denounce as ridiculous the views of those who have come to a conclusion about the why's of our existence. Actually your view sounds a great deal more agnostic to me than atheistic. Presumably to be an atheistic one has to believe in our existence being the result of purely materialistic origins. Sorry. Post 48 in this thread

Certainly there are natural processes that result in hurricanes or even evolution. The question is the origin of the natural processes. Look at evolution. Here is a process the required incredibly complex cells initially. and that then wound up in a process where life reproduces itself and with the myriad of life forms we see today including creatures with sentience and an understanding of morality.I contend that all of this is far more likely to resulted from a pre-existing intelligence as opposed to the chance combination of mindless particles. That again is without even asking why those particles existed in the first place.

I listened to that and I also own and have read his book "I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution". The only question that i would have with him is on his Biblical view. What does he mean when he calls the Bible inspired by God. I have probably differ with him somewhat on that as yes I believe that God does communicate wisdom to people, but in the case of the Bible, I would agree that God inspired writers to write but which in my view does not mean that they always got it correct.

I fully agree with all of that, but if someone calls them self an atheist then i would have to assume that he/she has given a thought to all this stuff. Again, if they call themselves atheistic then they must have considered it and then gotten on with their lives.

OK so evolution occurs without any intervention. That still does not answer the question of why it exists or whether it is the result of a pre-existing intelligence or not. As you say the answer is up for grabs. As a theist I believe that it was caused by a pre-existing intelligence I and others call God. An agnostic presumably would claim that we can't know so why bother worrying about it and an atheist would presumably say that it is all the result of mindless natural processes.I have been simply attempting to defend my position. The only defence that I have seen from atheists is that is what they believe. We both have looked at the evidence and have come to very different conclusions.