Summations Only

I have read most of the Book of Buddha and have gone through the Qu'ran as well as reading books on comparative religions. Certainly all of the things that you mention are going to have an impact on what religion we choose. For that matter someone born in the western world is more likely to choose atheism than someone in other parts of the world.Actually, if you read the Bible carefully it is clear that in the NT it isn't people that get their theology right that are serving God but those who have hearts that love unselfishly. Just read Matthew 25 and the sheep and the goats. The sheep were the ones who fed the hungry, visited the prisoners etc without any idea that they were doing these things for God. They just did them because it was what people with loving hearts do. There was no mention have believing the right doctrine.All of the major world religions have as part of their doctrine some version of the "Golden Rule". God reaches out to all mankind, (even atheists )and all mankind can respond to that still small loving voice of God regardless of theology.However I do believe that in the case of Jesus God did do something unique. I believe that His Word or wisdom was made incarnate in Jesus and that through Him He established a Kingdom of all people tasked with reflecting His love, justice, peace etc into the world. I realize that when you look at the church it doesn't always look that way but on the other hand there is a great deal of good being done by individuals in the church. There is an 85 year old woman from our relatively small church who next week is going to Kampala to work in an AIDS hospital there for a month. As a retired nurse she has been doing this for several years now. Our local surgeon from a different church gives up his practice for a month very year to go to Zambia to volunteer in the hospital there.I think that so often that we are inclined to look at religion as a way to get God on our side so that He will serve our purposes in this life and/or the next, which is what leads to questions such as you just asked. The point should be not be how do we get God to serve our purposes, but how we can serve His purposes. How is it that by reading arguments for against the resurrection and coming to a conclusion is extreme indoctrination. The best debates IMHO on the subject are between NT Wright and Dom Crossan or Marcus Borg. I am assuming that jar would take Crossan's or Borg's position whereas I find Wright's views more compelling. It isn't indoctrination at all. It is simply the very human search for what is truth. We aren't all going to come to the same conclusions as we all on faith establish a worldview. I have concluded that my understanding of Christianity is the best worldview on offer.One other quick question. In an early post where you listed all those questions, you mentioned unfulfilled prophesies of Jesus. Could you give me a Biblical reference for what you were referring to.Cheers

That is your belief. In the time of Jesus Son of God was simply a messianic term and there were varying ideas about the messiah with the predominate one being that he would lead them to military victory against their enemies and make them the dominate power. It was then adapted to be used in opposition to the Romans who used the term for their leaders. Essentially the early Jesus followers were saying that Jesus is King and that Caesar isn't. As the theology developed it came to mean something more in that as Jesus became revered as more than a messiah.Resurrection had various understandings. Most of them were part of Roman or Greek mythology and were stories of their gods. Biblical stories such as Lazarus were about resuscitations not resurrections. Resurrection in the Christian sense is that Jesus died and came out the other side of death but not with the same physicality that He had pre-crucifixion.The concept of miracles have been part of all cultures. So what?Virgin birth. It may be historical or it may be legendary. It isn't essential to Christianity and the fact that it has been part of the stories from other cultures isn't really relevant.Trinity is simply man's attempt to understand the nature of the relationship between God, Jesus and the Spirit. Well it may be dumb to you but it seems brilliant to me. There is no precedence for what God did with Jesus. We have one man who perfectly images the nature or Word of God . The message is so compelling that this man's motley humble crew of followers is able to spread this message to the world after God validates the life and message of that man by resurrecting Him to the new life that is a prototype or foretaste of what is planned for all creation at the end of time.I'd still like to here your answer to the question about failed prophesy I asked in my last post.

Have you never had the sense that you should do something because it was the right thing to do or not to do something because it was the wrong thing to do? Whether or not you rejected that voice isn't the point but it is my contention, that aside from mental issues, that voice exists in all of us including you.Remember it is about the heart and not the doctrine.

...and as been explained to you numerous times you confuse process with cause.

Certainly that is one of the strangest passages in the NT. I see it as Matthew painting a picture of the idea that through the death and resurrection of Jesus death has been defeated in that even though we suffer death of life as we know it, it isn't the end and life continues. I wouldn't take it as literal.There is no doubt that superstition existed then to an even greater extent than it does now. Frankly I don't see that as relevant. Yes the term son of god was part of their vernacular as they applied it to Roman emperors particularly but I went through that in my last post.Josephus was very political for a start and it is absolutely correct that not all first century Jews accepted the resurrection of Jesus. Josephus made every effort to stay on the right side of the powers that be at any given time and to be writing about the resurrection would have put him on the wrong side of either the Romans or the revolutionaries in turn.Again, what you have given would not be a case of an unfulfilled prophesy of Jesus that I have asked you for a couple of times now.

In your earlier post you described what goes on in the brain as the process. You wrote:

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Of course, all of mankind has that. It's an emotion called morality which we can see in action in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain using fRMI. The reason 14-24 year olds are responsible for the vast majority of crime is because the pre-frontal cortex which is responsible for executive functioning - ie self-control - and the limbic system - which is responsible for governing risk taking - are still under-developed. This has been explained to you umpteen times.

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I know you don't believe that the process that you just described had an instant cause. I'm sure you believe that there were other processes that led up what you described in that post. After that of course there was the process that led to that process and so on and so on.Your belief, correct if I'm wrong that if we go back far enough that there is nothing but non-intelligent, non-moral causes that have evolved into what we experience today.That is your belief. It is my belief that there is an intelligent and moral cause that is at the root of the processes that have evolved into what we now experience.In either case it is belief. It isn't knowledge in the scientific sense.I don't think that God intervenes directly in our actions, but I do believe that He does intervene in our thoughts which may or may not result in our actions, and that we exist in such a manner that it isn't obvious to us. We just know that we have a thought or an idea.

Do you read what I wrote? I said that I didn't believe it was to be understood literally. If you insist on a literal translation of these stories then argue with Faith. The point is that Jesus is Lord of all. The rich and powerful as in the 3 wisemen and the working class guys such as the shepherds. This happened years before Josephus was born and likely involved the killing of maybe a dozen or so children. Herod was known for more heinous acts than that. It would be similar to what we see under ISIL today. How do you know? Freedom from anxiety alleviates lots of physical problems. You keep confusing resuscitation with resurrection. Lazarus may have been brought back to life but he died again later. This is very different than what we are told in the Gospels about the resurrection of Jesus. We can believe the miracles or we can dismiss them. If we start off believing in an involved god the miracles are a possibility.

It was you that claimed that Jesus made unfulfilled prophesies and now you are saying that you don't want make a case for them as you have the only method of understanding the Bible that is acceptable, and that you don't want to be bothered with any other understanding.

Now you are talking like Faith. Either the whole Bible is to be read literally or none of it is to be read literally. You would have the equivalent of somebody reading 2000 or more years from now something that was written today that said it was raining cats and dogs and taking it literally. The bible was written in another time in another culture.As far as my signature is concerned I'm not suggesting that I should be strolling along in the park walking humbly with God. As far as loving kindness is concerned it is literal in one sense but it also isn't something that I can't just will myself to do. It again is a heart thing which you are quick to discount, and as far as doing justice goes that is something that is not always clear, so in actuality that statement is probably more metaphorical than literal although it has elements of both in it. You were talking about Josephus and now you segued over to Herod. Can you produce a record of all that Herod did as compiled by this historian? There is metaphor in the Bible, there are legendary accounts in the Bible, there are histories and all with political biases in the Bible, and there are things to be taken literally in the Bible.Once again you want to attack a straw man by insisting that we understand the Bible in the manner that Faith does. I suggest that we are also to use the God given gift of human reasoning. I am applying my reasoning to what I get from the Bible as well as what from what others have written or spoken about the Bible. I didn't gain my understanding a a vacuum.

As I've said before. I take two things on faith. God is good and the NT writers got it correct when they claimed that Jesus had been bodily resurrected.When it comes to the Bible I view it as a collection of books written by fallible men. When I look at the miracles it seems to me that if God can resurrect Jesus then miracles are definitely a possibility but if someone could prove absolutely that Lazarus wasn't brought back to life it wouldn't make any real difference to my faith.My faith is Bible focused it is Jesus focused and I understand the Bible from that perspective. I believe that the Bible is a narrative of the history and stories of God reaching out to humanity as written by fallible human beings with all of their faults and prejudices. However, I also think that the bible is a tool that God uses to continue to reach out to us. That is the lens through which I understand the Bible.You may consider my views as arbitrary and in some cases they are but everyone's take on things that can't be known in the empirical sense can be viewed as arbitrary. None of us come to our understanding of things religious objectively. We all our a product of our genes, culture and familes etc.In my post, Message 1232, in this thread I went through my SUBJECTIVE rationale for my beliefs. I believe it is rational and others like yourself might feel differently. Where Faith and I differ is in our understanding of how the Bible is to be understood. My problem with Faith's understanding is that it negates my first criteria that God is good. By Faith's understanding God is guilty of having some atrocious ideas.

A time out is not quiet the same thing as ordering mass genocide or public stonings for minor offences.According to a literal reading of the scripture God commanded the slaughter of an entire tribe - men, women, children and even live stock. (Sounds a lot like this ISIS group. ) Now let's just say that God really did want these people out of the way, why would he have the people that he loves carry this out. Why not just do it himself?I can't find it but I recall you claiming that some of the modern natural disasters in the world were because of God's unhappiness with what the residents and/or governments were up to. You maintain that God used a world wide flood to cleanse the nations.If God can bring about natural disasters to cleanse the population then why would he not do that, instead of having the people who are called to spread his love to the world out killing men, women and children. We know what war does to the hearts and minds of people. Look what it is doing to the soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. So God is going to subject the people he loves to having to do that.What do you think about having the community go out and publicly stone to death their next door neighbour for picking up firewood on the Sabbath, or having the disobedient children stoned to death, again by the whole community. What does that do to the hearts and minds of the people that God loves?And yet, you try and square this with Jesus, who embodies the Word of God, telling us to love our enemy, forgive endlessly turn the other cheek etc. It's bizarre. First off if all religions don't worship the same god then how many gods are there? We both believe that there is but one god and what varies is our understanding of the nature of God. You and I have a very different view point on the nature of God as your focus is on an inerrant Bible, whereas my focus is on the message as espoused by Jesus. From that POV we worship very different gods, even though we both call it Christianity.Sure there are Christians in virtually all nations and the same thing holds true for other faiths as well. You growing up and living in the US made it far more likely that you would adopt the Christian faith as opposed to Islam or some other faith. If you had been Indian growing up in Delhi then you might be a Christian, but odds are you would be a Hindu. You can deny that being the case for you but statistically that would make you an anomaly.

Fair enough. What I have written before on this forum and what I meant in this case that there are two essentials of Christianity that I take on faith. Yes I believe that God isn't guilty of the atrocious acts that Faith believes he has committed, and I do believe that we gain an understanding of the nature of God and the nature of our purpose in life from the Bible, but those beliefs flow from the two essentials of the faith. If God resurrected Jesus then it confirms Jesus life and message, it confirms the idea that God is good, kind, just etc and repudiates much of what is written in the OT including public stonings, genocide etc.IMHO I believe I have a very consistent way of understanding the Scriptures. As I take on faith the resurrection I see the life and message of Jesus as being affirmed and so that is my starting point in my understanding of the scriptures.As we can see that there are huge inconsistencies between what Jesus taught and what parts of the Bible had God doing we can be sure that the Bible isn't inerrant. If the Bible isn't inerrant, and if what is written doesn't involve morality such as the suggestion that God created the world in 6 days then, (although from a Christian POV it is inconsequential), we can only form conclusions on our own reasoning and information that we can gain from other sources.My point is that I do have a consistent method of understanding the Bible that isn't arbitrary. Faith on the other hand on the other hand is inconsistent about how she explains away the many inconsistencies between the various books in the Bible in trying to consistently show that the Bible is consistent as it has to be if it is inerrant. To recap, there are two essentials that I take on Faith. God is good and God resurrected Jesus. All else that I believe flows from the faith that those two essentials are accurate. It means, for a start, that Jesus accurately portrayed the nature of God, that God is involved and is not a deistic god, and that He has a purpose for our lives and for all of creation.

As Reagan would say, there you go again. The Bible is 66 books and not one. Different authors in a very different time. Actually there are good reasons to accept the resurrection as being historical but there is also an argument against it as well. I went through one philosophical rationale earlier. I also have yet to find a version of the explanation for the rise of the early church that IMHO is reasonable, whereas an historical resurrection easily explains it.I can find all sorts of reasonable reasons not to believe the legend of Noah as written about in the book of Genesis.

Absolutely. It is a belief. If it was knowledge we would all agree.

Yes it is belief. It isn't knowledge. I base my world view on it just as you have a world view based on something you believe. We can argue, as Percy did in a recent post, that not all beliefs have equal validity but once again that is based upon our beliefs.Certainly things that have been learned since the so-called enlightenment have affected my thinking in many areas, but the early Christians believed as I do that God is good and that Jesus was resurrected. Just read Paul's epistles. They are all based on that belief.Yes I accept things like evolution, modern science etc but that has nothing to do with my Christian faith.