Why God uses faith

As I already said, this logic doesn't fly. If the Quran didn't pretend to respect the Bible's revelation you might have a point.

hey im just following Faith it looks like 10 against 1 here and im amazed how she has been around for so long... man, what would i do for a shell like that ... i say a few prayers for her.. that extra coat of turtle wax

It can't be that hard for her when all she has to say is, "I'm right and you're wrong."(Don't tell her I said so - I'm supposed to be a tough guy - but I'm impressed with her behaviour lately. She used to resort to insults after about three posts. )

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be nice ringo star. ok.. we'd better get back to the topic before we get red tagged by judge judy This message has been edited by veiledvirtue, 03-02-2006 11:04 PM

Edited because this is just dragging the thread off topic. Suffice to say I have it from the highest authority that Faith is 100% wrong.This message has been edited by DrJones*, 03-02-2006 11:36 PM This message has been edited by AdminPD, 03-03-2006 05:16 AM

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If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

Veiledvirtue,While I'm sure Faith appreciates you being her #1 fan, you need to add substance to your posts.The majority of them have just been comments that don't help further the discussion. Since the thread length is limited to 300 posts, it is a shame to squander them.Remember this is a debate thread, not a chat page.Also, please do not go back and delete the content of posts that are deemed off topic or without substance. It's like listening to a conversation with bleeps in it. Visitors won't understand why people answer you the way they do.Please direct any comments concerning this Admin msg to the moderation link listed below.Thank you

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Usually, in a well-conducted debate, speakers are either emotionally uncommitted or can preserve sufficient detachment to maintain a coolly academic approach.-- Encylopedia Brittanica, on debate

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There, of course, is the third and the 4th possiblity.The third possiblity is that , since the New Testament contradicts the Old testament, the Jews are right, and both the Christians and the Mulsims are wrong (for that matter, the samaratians might be right, and anything past the pentaach is wrong).Or everything from genesis to the koran is wrong.

Homer descibes, in poetic form, a series of events that took place during the alleged Trojan war. The context of his story is historically accurate, in that the city of Troy existed, it had been the subject of a big attack and the Greeks also existed as Homer describes them.It's now up to you to choose whether you accept what Homer says as fact or fiction.If you accept what he says as fact, I'd expect you to believe that Athena, Zeus and all the other gods existed and behaved like Homer describes.If you accept what he says as fiction, I'd like to know what standards you applied to his story to consider it fictional and whether you've applied the same standards to the Bible.In other words, why do you choose to place your faith in the gospel authors and not Homer. you only consider Smith a fraud because you've made the decision to place your faith in the Bible and not the Book of Mormon.why don't you try putting your faith in the BoM and then compare it against the Bible ?!You'll come to the conclusion that the Bible is incomplete and corrupted.That's what faith is: a decision to deal with the unknown in a way that we are comfortable with.Just another form of wishful thinking.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the pigeon and some days you'll be the statue."

Stephen RobertsThis message has been edited by subbie, 03-04-2006 11:31 AM

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

I was perfectly comfortable being an atheist, Legend, so you can give up your vulgar psychoanalysis of believers. It's extremely rude to pretend to know another's motivations based only on their philosophy.As I think I said, I have no problem believing in the actions of demon gods. Whether what Homer wrote he wrote from knowledge or from his own imagination I'm simply in no position to judge. Are you? That's what needs to be judged. You can't judge reality on the basis of what COULD have been the case.Sorry, no, I can't prove the historical writings of the Bible are fact. I simply know this. Someday you'll know it too.

There are of course criteria for these things, it is simply difficult to spell them out and I don't care to battle over it after a certain point.When it comes to the BoM it is a gross contradiction of the spirit and teaching of the Bible, of which it claims to be a new revelation. Same with Islam. The illogic of both should prove the case against them if nothing else.

I don't pretend to know your motivation Faith, though I can take an educated guess. I just gave a definition of what faith is, IMHO. In the sentence above, replace 'Homer' with the 'Gospel authors'.I judge both on the same basis. You apply different standards of judging to one than to the other.You unquestionably accept (put your faith in) the one, but cannot make a judgement about the other. These are two contradictory statements. If you can't prove something then you don't 'know' it's true, you simply 'hope' it's true.You call this faith, I call it wishful thinking.Why does a God who purports to love us and want to save us cannot / doesn't want to prove his Word to you or me ? Why is he requiring faith instead ?There's only one answer to this question Faith. I used to 'know' it too. Then reality raised its ugly head.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the pigeon and some days you'll be the statue."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But that's what I'm saying! because you chose to have faith in the Bible, you find the BoM contradictory to it.Had you chosen to put your faith in the BoM, then you would see the Bible as incomplete and corrupted and the BoM would make perfect sense. Same goes for Islam.You just chose to have faith in one and not the other. If the Biblical God exists, he didn't take any measures to show which one is his genuine word. Which, ofcourse, contradicts his very own word, as the Bible claims he loves us and want us to be saved.There is absolutely no reason for an all powerful, all-loving God who created us and allowed us to tell good from evil, to request faith in him.In real life, genuine, honest people show themselves to you and gain your trust. The loving God cannot or doesn't want to do likewise.PS I agree that there are other problems and internal contradictions with the BoM but that's besides the point here. If you had faith in the BoM you would have ignored those problems , as you are now ignoring the problems with Biblical writings.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the pigeon and some days you'll be the statue."

If you define it as giving comfort then you are pretending to know people's motivations. I think we DO know that the Bible writers wrote from what they believed to be factual knowledge and not ever from imagination -- that would have been against their religion, obviously. But I don't know how Homer wrote. Do you? See above. All you do is read the gospels and decide you can't accept that they are fact, that's all. That is not applying knowledge of the state of mind of its writers. You have no such knowledge apart from how they present themselves and they present themselves as writing fact, so you are in the position of contradicting them and implicitly accusing them of either lying or stupidity.Again, I do not know Homer enough to know how he wrote, whether it was OK with him to add imaginative bits into the writing or if he thought what he was writing was fact as the Gospel writers obviously believe of themselves. Do you? I don't KNOW enough about the other. No, I know it is true. I've experienced its truth. I know it is true the way I know grass is green. I can't prove it is green, I merely know it is green. Falsely. I've said a few things about this on this thread. I guess you don't like what I said. Faith honors God, faith honors the trusted one. To believe from raw evidence doesn't produce love of God, more likely indifference, but faith does. Faith is also spiritual, it is of the substance of God, of the Kingdom of God.He HAS proved his Word to me. All you have to do is consider that you might be wrong and He right and be willing to take His word over your own and you might begin to see the proof yourself. Humble yourself to HIS view of things. That's the key. That's exactly what nobody here who disbelieves wants to do. All they do is accuse and argue and find anything they can to find fault with it. The way into the Kingdom is the opposite direction. Lay down your weapons, consider you might be wrong, surrender. The answer is that you refuse to humble yourself under God's hand, Legend, seek His will rather than your own, that's the answer. He isn't found by intellect, He's found by humility, desire, hope. I have to figure you only knew it in the sense of that sort of blind faith you and others always wrongly impute to those of us who continue to know it. I went through that kind of disillusionment as a teenager, from a previous rather shallow blind faith I'd picked up in church as a child. Some atheistic teachers and friends claimed that belief was silly and irrational and that science had proved it all wrong and since I was supposedly a bright person I had to see it their way, and it wasn't hard to give it all up on that basis -- a pang of loss, I do remember that, but I was soon in the brave new world of atheism and stayed there for the next three decades. I gather your belief was a lot deeper than mine, and harder to give up, but still it must have been founded on nothing more solid than mine had been. I don't know what makes the difference exactly, but when I came back to faith it was with a lot more knowledge and a lot of personal experience, and there is just no way I will ever lose it again. I DO "know" all this.

That is NOT what I'm saying. I'm using the BoM against itself, and the Koran against itself. They BOTH claim to be based on the Bible and to honor the Bible but they both blatantly contradict the Bible. This is OBJECTIVE internal proof of their wrongness. It has nothing whatever to do with my faith.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-04-2006 05:12 PM