Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

If you have so many great theologians on your side it shouldn’t be hard for you to find a decent answer to this rather obvious problem.Unless there isn’t one.

No I don't, I've said all I have to say on it.

Your lack of confidence in your great theologians is noted.I guess we leave it there then, without even an attempt at a rational response from you.

Is that how I come across? I will fall back on the position that God is somewhat more complex than what we humans can understand, but I would imagine that He wants to commune with us and interact at some level---I am not a Deist. We are a forum of discussion and understanding. I may have gone off a bit harshly on Faith, but hers is not the only voice of reason and truth contained here and I responded publically to her pubic tirade.Let me clarify my belief for you (and for myself! )God could be said to be responsible for all that happens in that He is the Creator. And yet can we humans indict Him? Are we not free moral agents capable of saying and doing what we choose? And even if we could indict Him, how on earth (or in heaven) would we sentence Him? All that we can be responsible or sovereign over are our own choices and decisions. If something good happens, we can choose to credit God or fate and chance, though I believe that there really is no such thing---it too being a belief.And the same goes for if something bad happens. Blaming God may make humans feel less responsible, but we do have a degree of responsibility in every daily decision within our control...such as global warming, for example. Granted we may have a minuscule percentage of responsibility, but blaming God is similar to blaming reality....it goes nowhere.

You already "really went off on me."But I wanted to answer this one statement. What I think has nothing to do with experiences, personal beliefs, being "in touch with God" and so on. I think you are extremely deficient in DOCTRINE, as if you just don't know much. GDR has studied a great deal and come to conclusions that are not orthodox or traditional etc., and possibly not even truly Christian. I know this because I HAVE studied a fair amount of doctrine. If this is "getting out of line" in your opinion, that's sad.

I just get tired of this whole "Faith against the world" thing. If I got a bit personal, it was only because your rant irritated me for some reason. Without you here, we would still have our personal rants against each other...its just that sometimes you get carried away. Nobody here hates you though...that I'm aware. You actually generate much of our forum response. I get mad when you make the claim that you and you alone understand Gods interaction with the planet. Some of the stuff you believe you refuse to give evidence for...apart from claiming that God does not make mistakes. How can anyone hope to understand Christian belief with that sort of all or nothing attitude? I know the beliefs...I just question them and am unafraid to do so.Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

Well, Phat, I think it's the best I can do and I'm sorry if it just seems like a bunch of meaningless rants and isn't explaining anything.

I'm not accusing you personally of evil acts. I didnt say you personally were killing babies in God's name. I'm pointing out that defining an act, no matter how atrocious, as 'good and 'just on the basis of being God's will is a dangerous, delusional path to evil.You talk about people flying planes into buildings. They had exactly that mindset. They believed their actions justified as God's will. They believed their murderous acts to be 'Good' and 'just' on the same basis that you proclaim murderous acts in the bible to be good and just.

No Faith, no one wants to shoot you. We want you to live a long and healthy life, despite how vigorously we may disagree on issues. Remember that it is you, not us, arguing that it is sometimes good to kill children over their parents' religion, not us. YOU are the one defending the killing, not us. You would rather be dead than have to listen to us whine about how we shouldn't ever kill children? Our strong opinions that we should keep our children safe, and protect them against those who wish them harm, is in your opinion "puny, and fallen" thoughts?

This is actually true. You will never convince us that it was a good thing for Israel to kill Canaanite babies and kids. Killing children over religion and politics is evil. Every single time, it is only evil. You aren't changing our minds on this point; it is futile to try. But the ugly bit...I'm confused. Are you saying it is ugly for us to defend protecting children, or is it ugly for you to justify killing them? Then stop trying to defend religious genocide! Edited by Aussie, : grammar...

Hotmail is blocking emails from EvC. I'm investigating.

Thank you! They aren't even going to junk mail. I know I rarely post, but the EvC emails are great reminders. I thought perhaps I had changed a setting somewhere that I couldn't find, and would be an easy fix. Edited by Aussie, : additional info.

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Well, Phat, I think it's the best I can do and I'm sorry if it just seems like a bunch of meaningless rants and isn't explaining anything.

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Given the complete absence of anything which could be considered an attempt at explanation your posts certainly aren’t explaining anything. And I don’t see how you could think it possible that they might.If you can’t do better - and honestly admitting that you don’t have a rational answer would be a LOT better - then You really ought to admit that the criticisms that come your way do have a basis in fact.

It strikes me that Calvanism may be the correct interpretation of the bible in that it admits to its major contradictions and paradoxes. But it's conclusions from this analysis are wrong.Because it starts from a position of belief, it says that an evil that god does is not an evil and that god controling everything and knowing all outcomes in advance does not affect our free will.All it offers as an explanation for these contradictions is that we can't know the mind of god.Whereas if you start from a neutral position, your conclusion must be that there's something inherrantly wrong here and the most likely thing is that the contradictions and paradoxes are as a result of the document listing them - the bible - being in error. And everything we know about how the bible was constructed and by whom shouts that this is the case.If you have an unreliable narrator (the bible), an unreliable interpretor (a believer) and an unreliable media (politicised priesthoods), the likelyhood of a correct conclusion appoaches zero.

Figured it out. An evcforum.net email account was compromised and used to send spam, which I've now fixed. Hotmail.com/Outlook.com email uses a scoring system to blacklist domains, and right now the score is too low to apply for reinstatement. Hopefully the score will recover quickly, then I'll apply.