Do you believe that 2007 will have the second coming of Jesus Christ?
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  Do you believe that 2007 will have the second coming of Jesus Christ?
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Author Topic: Do you believe that 2007 will have the second coming of Jesus Christ?  (Read 22532 times)
Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #200 on: January 15, 2008, 03:19:41 PM »

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I know; what I got across from your post is that you believe Mohammed is given some reputation as 'untouchable' by western writers due to a supposed Islamic Sympathy? Or perhaps that was my imagination.

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True; but the expansion of Christanity was not a military event unlike Islam. Europe did not turn Christian under a force of arms; unlike say, Iran. In the Koran Mohammed leads conquests which almost certainly did occur; plotting the historical movements of troops on the globe is much easier to decipher than the early history of what was, an underground and much persecuted sect.

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I don't think my worldview is particularly commendable. All I report is how I perceive it (or at least I try to), bring other factors into it without skepticism just leads to worst kinds of absolutism. How can we judge one person's opinion on a nebelous human concept - 'religion', 'ethics', 'morality', etc - over another if both people are use external and unprovable forces such as god as justification.
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #201 on: January 15, 2008, 03:23:15 PM »

True; but the expansion of Christanity was not a military event unlike Islam. Europe did not turn Christian under a force of arms; unlike say, Iran.
Most of Europe did, actually.
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #202 on: January 15, 2008, 03:25:52 PM »

True; but the expansion of Christanity was not a military event unlike Islam. Europe did not turn Christian under a force of arms; unlike say, Iran.
Most of Europe did, actually.

Yeah, 300+ years after Christ's death. Not quite the same thing. Though I admit I probably should shut up now - my late-Roman Empire knowledge isn't great.
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #203 on: January 15, 2008, 03:30:34 PM »

True; but the expansion of Christanity was not a military event unlike Islam. Europe did not turn Christian under a force of arms; unlike say, Iran.
Most of Europe did, actually.

Yeah, 300+ years after Christ's death. Not quite the same thing. Though I admit I probably should shut up now - my late-Roman Empire knowledge isn't great.
300 to 1300 years after Jesus' death, to be precise. Smiley
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Bono
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« Reply #204 on: January 15, 2008, 03:38:10 PM »

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I know; what I got across from your post is that you believe Mohammed is given some reputation as 'untouchable' by western writers due to a supposed Islamic Sympathy? Or perhaps that was my imagination.
Yes, it was. I didn't have any of that in mind; the same is true of plenty other antiquity figures. It's Jesus who is given a special status, but not a privileged one, on the contrary, because atheist writers will go to any lenghts to try to show He didn't exist.
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True; but the expansion of Christanity was not a military event unlike Islam. Europe did not turn Christian under a force of arms; unlike say, Iran. In the Koran Mohammed leads conquests which almost certainly did occur; plotting the historical movements of troops on the globe is much easier to decipher than the early history of what was, an underground and much persecuted sect.
And yet we have much more documents dealing with early Christianity...
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I don't think my worldview is particularly commendable. All I report is how I perceive it (or at least I try to), bring other factors into it without skepticism just leads to worst kinds of absolutism. How can we judge one person's opinion on a nebelous human concept - 'religion', 'ethics', 'morality', etc - over another if both people are use external and unprovable forces such as god as justification.
That's not the kind of skepticism I was referring to. I was pointing out that if in your view you cannot know anything you don't experience directly, then you fall into a general septicism, not just a skepticism about religion--this is patently obvious if according to your view one cannot know Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo.
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #205 on: January 15, 2008, 03:47:00 PM »

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Oooopsss... (actually my imagination here perhaps proves my later point.. interesting. Wink )

Anyway as I have already said I do believe that Jesus was a real person; even though as an agnostic I believe that most of his life stories as set in the gospels are fabricated (even ignoring the 'godly' stuff: How likely is it that Pilate would have met with Jesus before his execution? All that attention on a minor prophet - do you know how many of those there were in Judea at the time?)

Though I believe that the fabrication took place well before the gospels were written.

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Probably Culture. Though I'm just speculating here tbh. I admit when I say "I just don't know".

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Perhaps 'know' is too clunky a word. I have received knowledge that Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo and that knowledge is known to reliable and true as written in both primary and secondary sources. But I don't 'know' that in the same way, I know what I ate this morning. Damn English language.
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Gabu
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« Reply #206 on: January 15, 2008, 05:18:45 PM »

What is so amazing is not that God doesn't save everyone, but that He saves anyone at all.

Yeah, it's sure amazing that God would create something and then not subject it to eternal pain and suffering.  Similarly, I think it's so amazing and commendable when a mother has a baby and then doesn't torture her baby shortly thereafter, since we would obviously expect such a thing to occur and consider it right and just.  Such commendable love and affection.
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Bono
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« Reply #207 on: January 15, 2008, 05:30:06 PM »

What is so amazing is not that God doesn't save everyone, but that He saves anyone at all.

Yeah, it's sure amazing that God would create something and then not subject it to eternal pain and suffering.  Similarly, I think it's so amazing and commendable when a mother has a baby and then doesn't torture her baby shortly thereafter, since we would obviously expect such a thing to occur and consider it right and just.  Such commendable love and affection.

God's perfect justice necessitates punishment, Gabu.
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Gabu
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« Reply #208 on: January 15, 2008, 06:12:57 PM »

What is so amazing is not that God doesn't save everyone, but that He saves anyone at all.

Yeah, it's sure amazing that God would create something and then not subject it to eternal pain and suffering.  Similarly, I think it's so amazing and commendable when a mother has a baby and then doesn't torture her baby shortly thereafter, since we would obviously expect such a thing to occur and consider it right and just.  Such commendable love and affection.

God's perfect justice necessitates punishment, Gabu.

Okay, here's how things go in my view.

There are generally three things asserted of God:

1. God is all-knowing.
2. God is all-loving.
3. God is all-powerful.

Christianity (among other religions) then asserts a few other things:

4. God created humans and defined their characteristics.
5. Humans who fail to satisfy a set of salvation requirements in life go to hell when they die where they are subjected to eternal suffering and torment.

Assuming that only one religion can be the correct religion, and given that for any given religion, the majority of humans do not follow it, we can conclude the following:

6. The vast majority of humans in existence will go to hell when they die. (from #5)

Now, a few deductions can be made:

7. When God created humans, he knew that the vast majority of humans would go to hell when they die. (from #1, #4, and #6)
8. It is fully within God's power to prevent humans from going to hell when they die. (from #3)

Thus, we can make the following conclusion:

9. God created humans with the full knowledge that they would go to hell when they died and did absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening. (from #7 and #8)

By any reasonable definition of the word "loving", one can say that an entity who created a living organism with the full knowledge that it would be destined to inevitably receive eternal suffering and torment is certainly not "loving", so we can finally conclude the following:

10. God is not all-loving. (from #9)

This is a direct contradiction with #2, so one of our assumptions must be wrong.  This means that one of the following must be true:

1. God does not know whether or not a human will go to hell upon dying (God is not all-knowing).
2. God does not care that he created something only to have it inevitably go to hell upon dying (God is not all-loving).
3. God cannot prevent humans from going to hell upon dying (God is not all-powerful).
4. God did not create humans or did not define their characteristics.
5. Humans who fail to satisfy a set of salvation requirements in life do not go to hell when they die.

If there's a problem in here, I'd certainly like to have it pointed out.
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Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck
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« Reply #209 on: January 15, 2008, 06:17:55 PM »

No......just....no
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John Dibble
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« Reply #210 on: January 15, 2008, 08:24:35 PM »

actually, unless you live in a dry county, I don't see how the religion of Christians is affecting you at all.  The last time I was affected by someone else's religion was when the Mormons knocked on my door.

You lack imagination, try putting yourself into other people's shoes. You're a Christian, one of the clear majority in this country, so obviously other religions don't affect you as much as it would if you held another set of religious beliefs. Here's just a few examples of how people holding different religious beliefs can affect me:

1. Christians often try to affect the school system. While this might not affect me directly anymore given I am done with school, it could affect any children I might have in the future. There are many who push for creationism and intelligent design, non-science and pseudo-science respectively, to be put on equal footing with the science of evolution in the classroom. Others wish to teach those and ban the teaching of evolution outright. (mind you I don't have any notion against the ideas being discussed, but to put them on equal footing with legitimate science is not acceptable) Also, such people are often inclined to ban books in school libraries that any future children of mine might want to read. Basically, they want to push their beliefs onto the students.

When people want to do this, clearly it's going to have an affect on those who disagree - at the very least the opposition must rally to prevent it from occurring, and at worst it occurs and the opposition has to deal with the consequences.

2. If I wanted to run for elected office, do you think I could be open and honest about my religious beliefs and still stand a chance of winning? Nope. Wouldn't matter much to too many people in this country if they agreed with me on the issues or not, they wouldn't accept someone without faith, and probably their faith in particular. In fact a good deal of Christians aren't very friendly or tolerant towards non-believers in general. The religion issue can break up friendships, prevent relationships that might otherwise be great (in my experience many Christian women won't go out with a non-believer, which limits my pool of possible mates), and some people will get outright violent about it.

3. Many people I care about are gay. Friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances. Frankly, I see no logical reason why they shouldn't be allowed to marry, adopt, and everything else that straight couples do. However, there's this certain group of people who work constantly to prevent that because they view these people as "sinful" and they must "protect the sanctity of marriage". Take a guess who those people are? Does this affect me directly? Sure. If someone you cared about was suffering an injustice wouldn't it affect you?

Need I go on? Religion is such a big part of our world that it would be illogical to ignore it as if it didn't affect me.

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It might not change Muslim terrorists, but that doesn't make it worthless to discuss. Discussion allows us to gain and spread knowledge. If discussing Islam gives people a greater understanding of the world around them and of those who wish to kill them, what does it matter if the terrorists themselves won't change?
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Bono
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« Reply #211 on: January 16, 2008, 05:06:55 AM »

What is so amazing is not that God doesn't save everyone, but that He saves anyone at all.

Yeah, it's sure amazing that God would create something and then not subject it to eternal pain and suffering.  Similarly, I think it's so amazing and commendable when a mother has a baby and then doesn't torture her baby shortly thereafter, since we would obviously expect such a thing to occur and consider it right and just.  Such commendable love and affection.

God's perfect justice necessitates punishment, Gabu.

Okay, here's how things go in my view.

There are generally three things asserted of God:

1. God is all-knowing.
2. God is all-loving.
3. God is all-powerful.

Christianity (among other religions) then asserts a few other things:

4. God created humans and defined their characteristics.
5. Humans who fail to satisfy a set of salvation requirements in life go to hell when they die where they are subjected to eternal suffering and torment.

Assuming that only one religion can be the correct religion, and given that for any given religion, the majority of humans do not follow it, we can conclude the following:

6. The vast majority of humans in existence will go to hell when they die. (from #5)

Now, a few deductions can be made:

7. When God created humans, he knew that the vast majority of humans would go to hell when they die. (from #1, #4, and #6)
8. It is fully within God's power to prevent humans from going to hell when they die. (from #3)

Thus, we can make the following conclusion:

9. God created humans with the full knowledge that they would go to hell when they died and did absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening. (from #7 and #8)

By any reasonable definition of the word "loving", one can say that an entity who created a living organism with the full knowledge that it would be destined to inevitably receive eternal suffering and torment is certainly not "loving", so we can finally conclude the following:

10. God is not all-loving. (from #9)

This is a direct contradiction with #2, so one of our assumptions must be wrong.  This means that one of the following must be true:

1. God does not know whether or not a human will go to hell upon dying (God is not all-knowing).
2. God does not care that he created something only to have it inevitably go to hell upon dying (God is not all-loving).
3. God cannot prevent humans from going to hell upon dying (God is not all-powerful).
4. God did not create humans or did not define their characteristics.
5. Humans who fail to satisfy a set of salvation requirements in life do not go to hell when they die.

If there's a problem in here, I'd certainly like to have it pointed out.

Gabu, all these 'all-' prefixes have been lately creeping their way into descriptions of God. While they belong to a few attributes, using them indiscriminately is just poisoning the well. Obviously God does not love all people in the same manner, because all people are not the same. If all people were the same, then diversity, what would be considered a greater order good, would be sacrificed. Now, in respect to the reason why these people go to hell, the Bible is very clear:

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A few quotes to illustrate this point:

“The fact that from the race of man—and of them equal fallen and involved in guilt and depravity—God of his good pleasure had predestinated some men to everlasting life, and passed by the rest and left them to perish in their sins…supplies, in the purpose to save some men with an everlasting salvation, a new and most impressive manifestation of the divine character and moral government, which could not, so far as we can see, have been furnished in any other way,” W. Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation (Banner of Truth 1967), 577-73.

“How could it be permissible to create these moral beings and put them in this probationary economy, with the knowledge, not that they might possibly fall, but that they certainly would fall? The only tenable ground here is the Calvinistic ground that such action on God’s part involves the divine intention, in this sense, of the fall—that is, its predestination. And the only conceivable direction in which to look for a theodicy is in that of an end great and glorious enough to justify the incidental evil arising from this course,” B. Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings (P&R 1980), 2:112.

“It is not within the power of omnipotence, for example, to secure a manifestation of the divine justice and grace without objects of such kind that upon them justice and grace may be secured. These things do not belong in the sphere of ‘power.’ The reason why God is supposed not to attain that better thing which is attained by the presence of sin in the universe, without sin, is not, then, because he is supposed to lack in power, but because the attainment of this end in itself requires sin as its condition…[So] it does not follow that the very idea of a theodicy derived from the use of sin as a means to a glorious end otherwise obtainable is inconsistent with the conception of an omnipotent God,” B. Warfield, Works (Baker 2003),10:153.

“Not only is mankind subject to logic, God is as well. As it is impossible for a person to be forgiven who has not committed a fault, it is impossible for God to forgive, to show mercy, in a universe in which there is no fault. If one supposes that it is a good thing for God to display his mercy and grace, and that both the universe and its creator benefit if God manifests his forgiveness and grace, then this also provides a reason for permitting evil. That is, any Christian theodicy must not only have a manward emphasis but also, and perhaps predominantly, a God-ward aspect as well. In the permission of moral evil lies the prospect of God’s own character being revealed in ways which, but for the evil, it could not be,” P. Helm, The Providence of God (IVP 1994), 215.

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Gabu
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« Reply #212 on: January 18, 2008, 03:00:14 AM »
« Edited: January 18, 2008, 03:13:15 AM by Gabu »

Can we get that in plain English?  The quoted bits sound rather strange, but I'd rather be completely clear on what they're saying before commenting.  Specifically, Warfield and Helm's statements seem to be saying that it's necessary for God to send people to eternal suffering and torment in hell so that we can see his mercy and grace.  Personally, I don't see where the mercy and grace would be shown from such a thing; that sounds like blatant sadism and favoritism to me, certainly things that no one would expect from a god that is claimed to be perfect and infinitely just.  From temporary pain, the absence of it can be enjoyed, but eternal pain seems to serve no purpose whatsoever other than to cause the person to suffer forever.  And people who go to heaven certainly couldn't appreciate what they have due to God damning others to hell, as they would never have to experience for one moment what others are going through in hell.

Suppose a mother has two children.  She leaves bleach out by one of them and keeps the other away from it.  The infant by the bleach predictably drinks it and dies, while the other lives.  Is it an act of mercy and grace that she did not also subject the other to the same fate?  I think anyone would agree that that was a terrible act of negligence at best and deliberate infanticide at worst.  Yet then they turn around and lavish nothing but the highest praise and adoration on this God of theirs who supposedly does something extremely similar, with seemingly no reason for this massive discrepancy other than "he's God and by definition everything he does is right".  Well, sure, you can say, "Assume God is perfect and that he can do no wrong.  Then assume God does X, Y, and Z.  Therefore, X, Y, and Z are right."  This is logically sound, but utterly irrelevant when applied to reality unless the assumptions are actually true - a thought which no one seems willing to entertain for a moment except to say "well, they obviously are".

Sorry, but all those quotations sound like an extremely strained attempt to justify an apparently blatant contradiction by saying "well he's God so everything he does is right" without ever even bothering to question whether or not the Bible is, in fact, 100% the true word of God (or even bothering to question whether or not their interpretation of it is correct).  It all seems very intellectually lazy and seems to commit the terribly heinous logical crime of starting with a conclusion (that the Bible is true and that they've interpreted it correctly) and then looking for a logical justification.
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Aizen
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« Reply #213 on: January 20, 2008, 09:25:37 PM »

Hey guys, let's all read a passage from the Bible together!


http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%203:16
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