...I will not align myself with any sect or cult that proclaims him to be their savior, and the one and only savior. 'Till then, Ill meditate, and connect with everything around me. If I am sent to hell for this, then maybe such a god is not worth bowing to, if he is so immature and heartless. Seeing is believing. Show me, and I will see. My standards may be high, but surely this is a feat that is childsplay to an omnipotent deity, no?
Do you really think an omnipotent deity gives a rats ass about convincing you of its existence? It's your choice what you believe or disbelieve. Personally, I think you're justified not to align yourself with any belief system unless you're convinced its right according to your best judgment based on the evidence available to you, and certainly not because you've been threatened with hell. But I hope you'll do some active fact gathering and analytical thinking, and keep an open mind, along with the meditating and connecting. I doubt that God is going to make a personal visitation so that He can persuade you beyond a reasonable doubt that He's real.
What is stopping God from proving me he is real? Is he not omni-everything? A salesman trying to convince a customer to buy a new car is no small task. Even the best have to fight through a customer's existence. But these are mortal men we are talking about. Not a deity.
A male-to-female transexual was recently interviewed by G-d to be an Angel. G-d asked the transexual about what, if any, pain the person experienced during the operation. The transexual replied, "Well, when they cut my penis off, that really didn't hurt too much. Even when they implanted the breasts in my chest, well, that really didn't hurt too much either...." "Then G-d said you didn't experience any real physical pain at all then?" "No not really" Said the transexual.. "Oh good" Said G-d "Im going to send you to Earth as the seconding coming, so when the idiots nail you to the cross, you won't, feel a thing..
Don't judge Christianity by Christians. And especially not by churches. Anyone who feels as He felt, thinks as He thinks, tries to act as He acts is headed back to the source 'through Him' (as He said) - even if that anyone has not been indoctinated to believe in Him. The words attributed to His speaking (in the four gospels) tell all that's needed. That almost nobody since the first generation has had the faith to accept His truth by actually trying to live it does nothing to falsify it. Church is within self. Peace, charity, mercy, forgiveness are the cornerstones of the way - no matter what your label.
But seriously, you sound like a whiny 'i'm smarter than you!' atheist. If you want to try to discount christianity, at least make a reasonable argument, such as... The God of the old tesament acted suspiciously like a pagan god, in that he chose one nation to be his favorite (why would a real god do that?) killed thousands of babies in Egypt, commanded Jews to attack a city and kill every man, woman, child, and animal, and punished them when they saved things to sacrifice to him. He also allowed the devil to kill Job's (one of god's most faithful followers) entire family, as well as his slaves. (God was cool with slaves back then) just because Satan was talking trash to god. He also flooded the earth... Killing countless more children, oh, and he destroyed Sodom, gamorah, and jericho.. (however niniva got a chance to be redemed.. They must have been Gods second favorite people). God then gave the Jews a list of ten things he really didn't want them to do (he probably should have added pedophilia to the list, judging by how the catholic church operates. But who knows... Maybe he just has it out for kids). One of the rules being that you couldn't work every 7th day, this is representitive of the day god rested, because apparently after 6 days of creating the universe, god was too pooped out to do anything, and needed to rest. When I was in isreal, I was talking to a very religious Jew, and he told me that the holocost was a punishment from god for not returning to the holy land when the Jews had the chance. I tend to think this is how the old testament was written, when bad things happened, they assumed it was god punishing them (or proving a point to Satan) and that's what they wrote down. When good things happened, it was god helping his chosen people win the war (a quality that is exactly the same as that of the Greek and roman gods and goddesses.. It only makes sense that an invisible diety is sitting in the sky controling the fighting people of earth like pawns in chess, sending people to hell while knowing the outcome from the start. (but wait! There was no hell in the old testement! Or at least he just didn't bring it up until about 2000 years ago) When suddenly, god decided to have a baby. The baby was tourchured and killed, but rose again and saved us all from our sins! After that he flew away. (sin: noun, an evil force present in us from birth because a talking snake convinced a woman to eat from a magic tree) and preventing eternal punishment can be accomplished by telepathicly telling this flying Jew that you believe he rose from the dead. We know this must be true because it was put into a cannon about 350 years after these events transpired. That's longer than the united states have been a country! (we're pretty sure we know all the authors, and we think that probably no details were changed. Also, we think that 2 of the importent 4 books were based on 1 of the four, leaving really only 2 original books, but that doesn't really prove anything) by the by, when all he books were shoved into the cannon (in D), Christianity became the state mandated religion, and anyone who didn't believe that Jesus loved them was killed. The crusades and the Spanish interviews came after.. Oddly, god never found any cause to smight any of these people as he did when aninias and saphira fibbed about their tithe, or when old testement charactures used the pull out method. In fact.. We havnt had a good smighting in a few thousand years. Maybe he should bring it back, smight some of those far away brown people that have been causing us so many issues. If he did that, belief in Christianity would skyrocket.. Jesus said that faith can move mountains.. Mabey someone should do that, have a documentery where they shoot mount everest to the moon using only prayer.. Or maybe we could get some of those Baal worshipers to poor water on a sacrifice and then have our god ignite it on national television. That would get some media coverage. (all of the baal worshipers would have to be killed of course..) I could go on... But you get the idea. Now stop making an ass of yourself
The Old Testament is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. The Christ fulfilled the Law and His instructions supercede the previous instruction. He has graduated His brethren to a higher understanding and a higher Law - it was time.
false if you give Jesus more credit than you do buddah, or Muhammad, and believe that he was from god (or was god himself) then your whole system of belief revolves around the accuracy of the old testement. If there was no talking snake, and no magic tree, then Jesus had no reason to die. The whole point of his existence was to set right the problems caused in genesis. If the begining of genesis is true, it seems like the next logical step is that the rest of it is true. Genesis (assuming it's true) shows us how God handles day to day situations (several of which I mentioned) aside from genesis, Jesus refrences many, many parts of the old testement. If he was in fact supernatural, he knew the validity of the passages he quoted, and to quote lies would have defied his nature. (well.. Unless god is in the habit of lying to and tricking us, it seems he may have pulled a prank by planting evidence that contradicts the Bible's young earth. Good one God!) he also said that he came not to change the law, but to fufil it. )fun fact This is the same law that says that we should kill the fags, stone the blasphemers, and chop up people who masterbate.). This suggests that there was nothing wrong with the law, and it was in fact god inspired, not the creation of some devious Jew. This stands, not to mention the fact that Jesus is shown to be the messiah through all those prophesys, without those, the "messiah" aspect doesn't mean nearly as much. Paul tells us the all scripture is god breathed, by scripture, he of course meant "old testement", because the new testement in which his letter was placed wouldn't show up until over 300 years after his death. So, if Paul is to be trusted (I would hope so, he wrote a pretty big part of the new testement). Then everything in the old testement must be true, which would mean that a Christian would believe (it's probably better if I say almost) everything in my previous post. So actualy, without the old testement, the new testement is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant.
Hmm... That's assuming you give the bible more divine credibility than say, the cat in the hat. If the new testement is used as a philosophy refrence, and not as a history textbook, then my above post should be disregarded. Damn... There I go making asumpsions again.
False for you. True for me. Those who are peaceful, charitable, merciful and forgiving need never to have heard of the Old Testament. Or the New for that matter. They exist in the grace of Him, and walk His path - His way.
you seem to have missed this post. because the Bible doesn't teach anything of the sort. We seem to have similar worldviews, but I don't quite understand your view of the bible.
Maybe He's not that into you. God isn't in sales. In this case, the customer isn't always right. Do you use the same approach as a dating strategy in finding significant others? If so, how's that working for you?
An important tradition of Christian theology going back at least to Origen in the 3rd century interprets the Old Testament allegorically/metaphorically, rather than a factual account of what happened. By this view, the Bible communicates moral truths, not historical or scientific ones. From that standpoint your discussion sounds like a grade school book report on the Iliad or the Arthurian legends. I gather you're being sarcastic here. I don't think we're sure we know most of the authors. Actually, that might be a good way of dealing with the mindless Christian fundamentalists who make up the religious right in the United States, because they actually seem to believe all that. But it doesn't solve the basis problem of Christianity--that other religion taught in the leading mainline seminaries that believes in the teachings and example of Jesus. But nobody's gonna do that for you. You have to do it for yourself.
Most of the leading mainline Christian seminaries in the United States today take an historical/metaphorical approach to the Bible, going back to Origen in the third century if not Barnabas even earlier. They don't accept the notion that a literalist Genesis is necessary to explain Jesus' "mission". I became a Christian as a result of a personal religious experience involving Genesis, but I regard talking snakes, six day creations, and magic trees as myths. I view the "atonement" metaphor of Paul the same way. I embrace the example and teachings of Jesus as the principles I've chosen to live my life by. I view the Genesis story as an allegory about the basic human tendency toward attachments. Here are Adam and Eve in Paradise, but what they really think they need is that apple so that they can be like gods. Is there a message here for our time? But I think any effort to view the Bible as inerrant is seriously messed up. You might check out Paul again, because I read him as saying that not only is the Jewish law not applicable to Christians but that it would be wrong for them to try to follow it, because it shows a lack of faith in their redemption by Jesus.
I totaly agree.. It sounds like all the other religions from that time period. (well.. Maybe not all. But the vast majority) The only difference is that today we call those religions "mythology" and it seems that the Hebrew God has caught on. (he even has 2 spinoff religions.. Unfortunently, their adherents don't get along well.) You can decide that the old testement is not to be taken literaly, but at the time of Jesus, the Jews took it all very literaly. So my question to you is, why would God allow EVERYONE (not just the Jews) to believe that he was an angry, vengful, violent racist, when he is actualy a totaly nice guy. I mean, all the prophets talked about him as if he were all those things, are they to be taken metaphoricaly too? Is any of the old testement to be taken literaly, or just the parts that don't mention the god that the Jews followed for thousands of years? true I have tried before... I am usualy told that they don't understand the wisdom of god, it's a different time, and that we just need to have that god knows what he's doing, even when we don't understand it.
That's where the historical part of the historical/metaphorical approach comes in. I regard the Bible as the search of men from a remarkable cultural tradition to find God, rather than God writing history or giving dictation. The original Yahweh was the War God of the Israelites, and it wasn't until later that He mellowed and became the universal god of peace and kindness we know and love today. Sometimes that happens with the aging process. It's possible God entered a rageaholic Twelve Step program at some point, but that part of the Bible may be lost to us. Seriously, I view the Bible the way I view everything else, as a bet on a set of tentative hypotheses to be examined and tested in light of my personal experience, judgment,and the best evidence available to me. At present, I take the middle ground between the minimalist (believe nothing ) and maximalist (believe anything) schools of biblical history/archaeology. Keep trying?
