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On October 17 2013 05:19 Hryul wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 04:31 blubbdavid wrote:On October 17 2013 04:21 Hryul wrote:
Edit: corumjhaelen, it's useful because otherwise hells of arbitrariness and subjectivity and post-modernism break lose. Nah. Just consider black swans, and even worse, Black Swans. The burden of proof can be life threatening and is not a principle one should live by (if it is a principle). So you are saying that we can't predict the future and that there will be unforeseen events that shake the very foundation of today's knowledge? what an insight sherlock. Ofc there might be electrons with a mass other than 0.5 MeV but until we actually discover them I know no reasonable way to include this into my knowledge other than: might be, might not be. Or in other words: Yes, there is a difference between logical/mathematical proof and proof by physicists (tm).
Yes. As there is difference between proof by physicists and all else (theology, economics, biology etc.). The burden of proof can only reliably applied in physics, but not in the real world.
Or did I have to show you proof in 2007 that there will be financial crisis (subjective Black Swan)? Non-existent till proven true, sadly it's already too late then. That's what I mean with life threatening.
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On October 17 2013 05:38 packrat386 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 05:34 Myrkskog wrote:
What evidence is there that the god you are defending interacts with the physical world today? Not much. I basically only defend some small interaction for the purposes of prayer. In order to talk to god he must somehow affect your consciousness, unless we want to believe that the conscious brain is immaterial. I want to stress that my conception of god is very different from IronMan
Prayer is powerful. When you pray "in the Spirit," you are spiritually in God's presence talking to him, though physically speaking it doesn't seem or feel like it. It's not a matter of God turning on a switch in our brain to get us to pray, or even to prompt us to. We pray because we know God is sovereign and he wants us to spend time with him, and we seek his guidance. The very fact that we even GO to Christ in prayer is evidence that he lives inside us. We Christians (at least I try to) generally use the 'ACTS' acronym:
A - Adoration (praising God for who he is)
C - Confession (confessing that you've sinned in God's eyes and ask for forgiveness)
T - Thanksgiving (Thanking God for all he's done)
S - Supplication (Giving requests to God)
It is true that we ask God for ridiculous things, like possessions, a job promotion, or that we ask certain things to go in our favor. That is also why the Holy Spirit prays for us, because he knows what we actually need. Our selfishness, intentions and secret motives are very plain in God's eyes when we pray. An example, and we all struggle with it sometimes, is asking God for forgiveness for a particular sin you've committed, and then once you're done praying you go and do it. This is the wrong way to ask for forgiveness.
When we pray we have to pray with God's will in mind, that's why we say "Your will be done, not mine." Even Jesus said this in the garden before his arrest. He begged his Father to release him from the torture he would endure, but ended his prayer with "Your will be done, not mine." We need to pray for things that matter in God's eyes, like asking for wisdom and guidance to rebuilding a marriage, discernment when attending a new church, words of encouragement to lift up a friend, and so forth. Most of all, when we pray, we need to believe who God is and that in Christ, all things are possible.
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Dude, I disagree with you on many things. Telling me about how you concieve of prayer is not helpful or necessary.
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On October 17 2013 05:44 packrat386 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 05:41 Myrkskog wrote:
What evidence is there that the god you are defending can affect a person's consciousness? arguably testimony. People have said that they have an interaction with god when they pray, and it is very difficult to show otherwise.
So have you had an experience with god through prayer?
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On October 17 2013 05:56 Myrkskog wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 05:44 packrat386 wrote:On October 17 2013 05:41 Myrkskog wrote:
What evidence is there that the god you are defending can affect a person's consciousness? arguably testimony. People have said that they have an interaction with god when they pray, and it is very difficult to show otherwise. So have you had an experience with god through prayer?
No, but I might believe some people do.
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On October 17 2013 05:46 blubbdavid wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 05:19 Hryul wrote:On October 17 2013 04:31 blubbdavid wrote:On October 17 2013 04:21 Hryul wrote:
Edit: corumjhaelen, it's useful because otherwise hells of arbitrariness and subjectivity and post-modernism break lose. Nah. Just consider black swans, and even worse, Black Swans. The burden of proof can be life threatening and is not a principle one should live by (if it is a principle). So you are saying that we can't predict the future and that there will be unforeseen events that shake the very foundation of today's knowledge? what an insight sherlock. Ofc there might be electrons with a mass other than 0.5 MeV but until we actually discover them I know no reasonable way to include this into my knowledge other than: might be, might not be. Or in other words: Yes, there is a difference between logical/mathematical proof and proof by physicists (tm). Yes. As there is difference between proof by physicists and all else (theology, economics, biology etc.). The burden of proof can only reliably applied in physics, but not in the real world. Or did I have to show you proof in 2007 that there will be financial crisis (subjective Black Swan)? Non-existent till proven true, sadly it's already too late then. That's what I mean with life threatening.
If it pleases you I can change "burden of proof" to "reasonable evidence" to account for the complexity of the world. It doesn't change the core that you shouldn't go around with "X because X" or "X because I said so".
I can't react to a financial crisis that isn't there. I can just sharpen my tools to detect signs earlier.
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On October 17 2013 05:44 packrat386 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 05:41 Myrkskog wrote:
What evidence is there that the god you are defending can affect a person's consciousness? arguably testimony. People have said that they have an interaction with god when they pray, and it is very difficult to show otherwise.
What you need to understand is that God gave us all we need in the Bible. Prophecies, how to live life, how to be saved, and how to trust Jesus for what's yet to come, and many more things. When people today say they had a vision or prophecy of a future event, I actually feel slightly uneasy about it because why do we need another vision of revelation when we have all we need to know already written down? I'm not judging them or anything of course. The core message in many visions and "afterlife" testimonies are all in line with who God is and what the Bible says, but it is still something that should be taken cautiously and with careful discernment, which I choose not to go in depth more.
It is difficult to fully explain your spiritual experiences since they are personal. John, the author of several books in the Bible including Revelation, can't even describe in human words what he was really seeing in his vision of the end times. He used a lot of metaphors to describe it, and that the holiness of God was so surreal and unimaginable that he "fell as though dead at his feet." I can recall perhaps two times in my life where I distinctly heard the voice of God, and for some reason I just knew it inside my heart that it was him. It wasn't audible, but somehow I just knew it, and I listened to it.
There are a vast number of visions, dreams, and moments where God can talk to someone (and still can today), which goes to explain that there is something, or someone bigger out there that is communicating with us. However God wants to talk to you (through a friend, elder, study, Bible, nature, prayer, circumstance, etc) is his choice alone, and it's sufficient for you. When I say sufficient, I mean it's something that works for you: it's noticeable, it meets you where you're at spiritually, and it produces some sort of change to increase your faith in God.
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On October 17 2013 05:57 packrat386 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 05:56 Myrkskog wrote:On October 17 2013 05:44 packrat386 wrote:On October 17 2013 05:41 Myrkskog wrote:
What evidence is there that the god you are defending can affect a person's consciousness? arguably testimony. People have said that they have an interaction with god when they pray, and it is very difficult to show otherwise. So have you had an experience with god through prayer? No, but I might believe some people do.
I might believe that they had some experience also. But there is no justification for either of us to accept that the reason for this experience is god.
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Everyone has the capacity to do good works in life because we were made in his image; to reflect him.
God's image? Or Christ's? Because, strictly speaking, Christ wasn't a human being when human beings first came into existence. But yes, we are "in God's image" in some sense, although the meaning of that is pretty vague. I take it to mean that, unlike other creatures, human beings are capable of relationships with God (and with other people) in a deep way.
The question though is why do you do what you do? What's the driving force/motivation that inclines you to do good things in life? For the believer, we do good things because of what Christ did for us.
You're mixing up two things, here. There's motivation for a moral action on the one hand, and then there's the ontological grounding of a moral system, on the other. While the example given by Christ is definitely a motivating factor for me when I'm making ethical decisions (though I should note that Christ is by no means the only person who inspires me, morally speaking) it has nothing to do with the real reason I do good things, which is because I think they are good things based on logical argument.
We love him because he first loved us. Good works alone will not merit a ticket to heaven or his favor (he has no favorites).
I don't think you need a ticket to get to heaven.
That's why we humbly accept Jesus as Lord, his gift of forgiveness and eternal life, and trust in his claims and promises. God saves -- we cannot save ourselves, so we must trust God and that he is who he says he is. That is how helpless we really are.
This is nonsense. If human beings are this worthless, you might want to ask why God should bother creating them to begin with. It's not so much that all of what you say is false, but that you mean it so literally. Yes, God "saves," but that doesn't mean human beings are fundamentally disgusting creatures that aren't worth saving. God doesn't love us out of pity, or something; he loves us because, among other things, humanity is valuable and fundamentally good.
You're right, the Christian walk is about having a personal relationship with God - after you are saved. When you are saved, he gives you the faith to believe in him and trust in him.
I think there's a hell of a lot more to being a Christian than this.
You can't please God without faith, which comes from not only hearing but believing the Word of God.
I'm not sure what this even means. Are we reading God's mind, now? Do you seriously think that an entity that literally knows everything and whose mind is so far beyond anything we can comprehend would behave as if it had the moral compass of a jealous eleven year-old? While I'm aware that loving God is one of Christ's two commandments, nobody ever seems to mention the second one, without which the first one doesn't even make sense: love your neighbour as yourself. Evidently that pleases God, whether or not you're thinking about Jesus when you do it or whether you're an atheist. Good things are of God, necessarily. The claim that without faith everything becomes essentially meaningless/worthless to God is stupid, and only exists out of a desire to exclude otherwise good people from your club.
Alongside that, he gives you the Holy Spirit who counsels you as life goes on and sanctifies you throughout your lifetime to become more and more Christ-like. The Holy Spirit enables you to understand Scripture and spiritual truths, and helps you see and think the way that God does (not completely, but enough to understand what he wants for you).
This is conjecture. The Holy Spirit isn't some magical force that imparts years of scripture study to you within a second. Besides, if your hypothesis were actually true, then either pretty much everyone is lying about their exegeses, or the Holy Spirit is doing an awful job at helping people understand things.
Ok, I have a question for you. Why did Jesus die? How do we receive forgiveness?
Jesus died because dying was a necessary consequence of his perfect fidelity to God. Without his life, Jesus' death would have been absolutely and totally meaningless. The point of Jesus, to my mind, was bringing God into the world in a real, tangible, personal manner. He showed what humanity is capable of, and evidently that had a great effect on a lot of people. That Jesus died was really just part of the job description, in a sense. At no point does Jesus try to get himself killed for the sake of some petty ritual, but merely says that it's going to happen (well, those are the words the Gospel authors put in his mouth, anyway, and those particular phrases are less-than-perfectly-reliable compared to others, historically speaking) and continues preaching the kingdom of God.
Jesus died for no other reason than that certain people wanted him to die, and that those certain people succeeded in, more or less, convicting him in an unjust manner. Jesus, really, could have survived if he recanted, but that he chose not to is significant not because of death and blood, or whatever, but because the totality of his life was in fidelity to God. He didn't slip up and neglect what he was trying to do, not even in the face of death.
How do we receive forgiveness? Well, from what? From sin? Which sins? I'm of the mind that morality is fundamentally a rational enterprise (because every other definition is basically really abusive) so I think that we obtain forgiveness from a particular wrongdoing by realizing that it's wrong in an authentic manner. Why should someone be begrudged forgiveness if they understand their error? This is, ultimately, why I reject that having Christ in your heart (and, more annoyingly, on your lips) explicitly is a prerequisite for salvation. It would make God, the supposed source of goodness/justice/love, guilty of condemning to eternal punishment people who, for the most part, didn't even do anything especially bad. If someone doesn't believe in Christ, it's not because they're douchebags, or sinners; it's because they really don't feel that such a belief is justified. How can you fault them for that, really? How could God fault them for that?
It's not like there's a limited amount of space in heaven, or something ("God wills all to be saved," remember). See, the fundamental problem I have with this kind of thing is that, well, it doesn't make any sense. God sentences you to hell because you didn't believe that Christ was God, or that God existed, or whatever? Since when were beliefs a choice? We do the best we can with the evidence presented to us. A God with the mindset above would be the worst kind of egotist. Given that God is supposed to be loving, you'd expect that he's at least more loving than the average human being, and I'm pretty sure we wouldn't sentence anyone in the universe to infinite punishment for finite crimes (setting aside the fact that punishment for crimes is utterly useless in this sense, because it's not like it's going to reform anyone; it's just God being a prick, for no real reason).
Seriously, you really have to think about this one. Who the fuck cares if you honestly didn't believe in God? Obviously you thought you had some pretty good reasons. Why wouldn't God just explain where you went wrong, give you a pat on the back, and then go back to being your friend? Better yet, why would he deliberately not do this in favour of throwing you into hell? Because of some twisted conception of justice that divine command theorists endlessly philosophize about?
I mean, if you really think that imperfection (which is really what sin is) in the human condition is worthy of eternal suffering, I'm not sure what to tell you. It's not like God would be doing you some selfless, massive favour by not sentencing you to this, because there's no reason to sentence you to it to start with! So you sinned! Okay, that's bad! Here's why it's bad! Okay! Problem solved!
Basically it comes down to the fact that if God really decides the fate of human beings for all eternity on the basis of whether they believed in him while they were on earth, then he's kinda like that kid in your first grade class who wouldn't let you come to his birthday party because of something you did six months ago. Basically, a child. If what you say is literally true, then not only is God unspeakably evil, as there is no crime which merits infinite torture and if you dispute this you're just wrong, but he's also kinda an idiot.
I think that Jesus would have existed even if human beings couldn't sin at all, simply because he loved us and wanted to encounter us. This notion that he was substituting himself as punishment (or ransom, or whatever) for our sins makes no sense whatsoever and totally undercuts the notion that God actually loves humanity in a way that actually has anything to do with what the word "love" means.
What you need to understand is that God gave us all we need in the Bible. Prophecies, how to live life, how to be saved, and how to trust Jesus for what's yet to come, and many more things. When people today say they had a vision or prophecy of a future event, I actually feel slightly uneasy about it because why do we need another vision of revelation when we have all we need to know already written down?
I'm pretty sure the Bible does not constitute the sum-total of human knowledge necessary for effective living, and it has never claimed to do so. The Bible is about humanity's relationship with God. It's not about science. It's not about prophecy (prophets in the pre-Christian sense were not people who predicted the future in an oracular way; they were more about speaking for God in the context of the present conditions) or fortune-telling. The book of Revelation (which was probably not written by the same guy as the Gospel, and was definitely not written by an apostle) is a giant allegory. John wasn't necessarily literally seeing what he describes in such explicit detail, because most of it would make no sense if you thought about it in such a case, but was trying to communicate, in my estimation, a spiritual feeling. I don't think the end-times even exist, and if they do, certainly not in the way described in Revelation, given that, again, it would be very twisted and unreal.
I mean, while scripture is divinely inspired (I believe so, anyway) that doesn't mean that it's literally God speaking through an author as if by mind control. The people writing the New Testament didn't actually expect their writings to be used for thousands of years worldwide. They didn't even think about that stuff. They didn't even think about other Gospels! They wrote for the people in their immediate community (which is obvious from the content of the Gospels) and assumed that their community would use their Gospel, because why would it need another one? It wasn't until centuries later that people started talking about four Gospels (and don't even get me started on John, which is a totally different beast).
It always amazes me to realize that Paul didn't set out to write his letters as universal declarations about Christianity (which wasn't even really a thing back then, but just a brand of radical Judaism) but really just wrote them to specific churches scattered around. He was arguing against other theologians, and evidently a lot of people sided with Paul (even Peter, for instance, was against Paul on circumcision). But he was a human being and a theologian. Paul was not a deity, and his theology is a product of the first century AD. It cannot be lifted straight into the 21st century because Paul believed things about reality/God that are almost certainly false (for instance, his interpretation of Sara/Hagar as literally allegorical has no basis in OT scholarship) but which are nonetheless still meaningful in some sense.
His moral proscriptions about homosexuality and women being subservient, and all that, are actually just not true in the context of the modern world.
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On October 17 2013 06:47 Shiori wrote:
His moral proscriptions about homosexuality and women being subservient, and all that, are actually just not true in the context of the modern world.
It has always been strange to me that many Christians have convinced themselves that, on one hand, the scripture is the word of God and it's somewhat timeless, except the parts that are not convenient anymore. It appears that in your mind, God's morals are derived from ours in some ways.
So God doesn't dislike homosexuals as suggested by the Bible because he keeps up with the morals of progressive occidentals? Ain't that sweet. You speak of the context of the modern world as if we had somehow eradicated proscriptions about homosexuality and women being subservient, when not only it's not even remotely the case, why in fuck's name would God happen to become a bit more "progressive" all of a sudden?
It seems to me like God doesn't make this decision, you see - the Church, or should I say, some PARTS of the Church have changed the rules of their game. Your God is a modular God, with interchangeable bits and pieces. It can be customized to fit anybody, and then it justifies YOUR opinion when YOU say that God happens to think like you do. Although you, Shiori, may not use that card, others certainly do.
Someone should make a "make your God" website where you can find out which church you should go to based on what opinions you want to justify with your religion. 10 questions questionnaire asking you which people you hate and who you want to fuck and what you think of pastors who fuck and all that. After you're done answering the questionnaire, it'll give you a selection of churches. Strangely most questions will be about fucking and which holes you can fuck and whatnot because they seem to be big distinctive factors...
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On October 17 2013 05:57 packrat386 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 05:56 Myrkskog wrote:On October 17 2013 05:44 packrat386 wrote:On October 17 2013 05:41 Myrkskog wrote:
What evidence is there that the god you are defending can affect a person's consciousness? arguably testimony. People have said that they have an interaction with god when they pray, and it is very difficult to show otherwise. So have you had an experience with god through prayer? No, but I might believe some people do.
the sujet-supposer-savoir 
hell, I'VE had an experience with god through prayer. that doesn't tell you much about theology, though
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On October 17 2013 06:02 IronManSC wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 05:44 packrat386 wrote:On October 17 2013 05:41 Myrkskog wrote:
What evidence is there that the god you are defending can affect a person's consciousness? arguably testimony. People have said that they have an interaction with god when they pray, and it is very difficult to show otherwise. What you need to understand is that God gave us all we need in the Bible. Prophecies, how to live life, how to be saved, and how to trust Jesus for what's yet to come, and many more things. When people today say they had a vision or prophecy of a future event, I actually feel slightly uneasy about it because why do we need another vision of revelation when we have all we need to know already written down? I'm not judging them or anything of course. The core message in many visions and "afterlife" testimonies are all in line with who God is and what the Bible says, but it is still something that should be taken cautiously and with careful discernment, which I choose not to go in depth more. It is difficult to fully explain your spiritual experiences since they are personal. John, the author of several books in the Bible including Revelation, can't even describe in human words what he was really seeing in his vision of the end times. He used a lot of metaphors to describe it, and that the holiness of God was so surreal and unimaginable that he "fell as though dead at his feet." I can recall perhaps two times in my life where I distinctly heard the voice of God, and for some reason I just knew it inside my heart that it was him. It wasn't audible, but somehow I just knew it, and I listened to it. There are a vast number of visions, dreams, and moments where God can talk to someone (and still can today), which goes to explain that there is something, or someone bigger out there that is communicating with us. However God wants to talk to you (through a friend, elder, study, Bible, nature, prayer, circumstance, etc) is his choice alone, and it's sufficient for you. When I say sufficient, I mean it's something that works for you: it's noticeable, it meets you where you're at spiritually, and it produces some sort of change to increase your faith in God.
You know it's a different John, right IronMan?
You never came back to the thread you started. It's languishing in purgatory right now.
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On October 17 2013 09:00 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 06:47 Shiori wrote:
His moral proscriptions about homosexuality and women being subservient, and all that, are actually just not true in the context of the modern world. It has always been strange to me that many Christians have convinced themselves that, on one hand, the scripture is the word of God and it's somewhat timeless, except the parts that are not convenient anymore. It appears that in your mind, God's morals are derived from ours in some ways.
All divinely inspired means is that the fullness of the means to salvation are present in the Bible. At least, that's the way I look at it.
So God doesn't dislike homosexuals as suggested by the Bible because he keeps up with the morals of progressive occidentals? Ain't that sweet. You speak of the context of the modern world as if we had somehow eradicated proscriptions about homosexuality and women being subservient, when not only it's not even remotely the case, why in fuck's name would God happen to become a bit more "progressive" all of a sudden?
God didn't change. We did. More than anything, the Bible is a history of the Israelites' relationship to God. It changes and evolves as they do, as one would expect, much like a child's understanding of their parents evolves (infants, for example, may believe their parents are omnipotent).
It seems to me like God doesn't make this decision, you see - the Church, or should I say, some PARTS of the Church have changed the rules of their game. Your God is a modular God, with interchangeable bits and pieces. It can be customized to fit anybody, and then it justifies YOUR opinion when YOU say that God happens to think like you do. Although you, Shiori, may not use that card, others certainly do.
I agree; some people do this, and it's annoying. But it's worth noting that most of the stuff in the Bible that people find objectionable in light modern morality (the big, common examples like homosexuality, subservience of women, etc.) are actually really not important lines or passages even in the context of the work itself. Seriously, Jesus doesn't even touch any of these things. You really hit the nail on the head when you said that it's people who are the problem. I'd even argue that people are the problem in this regard; see, Scripture, taken in a measured, constructivist sense, really doesn't say much at all about homosexuality. It doesn't say much at all about women being bad people, either. But people in history have taken these like collective 5 lines amid thousands and trumpeted them at the top of their lungs, so that others come away with the impression that, say, homosexuality being immoral (or whatever) is actually fundamental to Scripture, when it never has been. It's not revisionism or modular anything, in that context. The stuff about homosexuality in the NT is a tangent which has little to do with the actual thesis of the writing. The bit about women is a paradoxical metaphor (given that the next sentence is husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church; that is, with utter servitude. So if both people are serving each other...yeah). Not that I'm saying Paul wasn't a chauvinist. He obviously was. But chauvinism is not central in Scripture.
Someone should make a "make your God" website where you can find out which church you should go to based on what opinions you want to justify with your religion. 10 questions questionnaire asking you which people you hate and who you want to fuck and what you think of pastors who fuck and all that. After you're done answering the questionnaire, it'll give you a selection of churches. Strangely most questions will be about fucking and which holes you can fuck and whatnot because they seem to be big distinctive factors...
The way I look at it is that God doesn't hate anyone, so if you're asking that question, you've already fucked up. If only more Christians though that way, I guess.
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On October 17 2013 09:47 Shiori wrote:
God didn't change. We did.
Why did you say that God's stuff was no longer relevant anymore? Sure, we changed, but weren't you saying that God did too and now he's a little laxer with the gays? x_x
I agree; some people do this, and it's annoying. But it's worth noting that most of the stuff in the Bible that people find objectionable in light modern morality (the big, common examples like homosexuality, subservience of women, etc.) are actually really not important lines or passages even in the context of the work itself. Seriously, Jesus doesn't even touch any of these things. You really hit the nail on the head when you said that it's people who are the problem. I'd even argue that people are the problem in this regard; see, Scripture, taken in a measured, constructivist sense, really doesn't say much at all about homosexuality. It doesn't say much at all about women being bad people, either. But people in history have taken these like collective 5 lines amid thousands and trumpeted them at the top of their lungs, so that others come away with the impression that, say, homosexuality being immoral (or whatever) is actually fundamental to Scripture, when it never has been. It's not revisionism or modular anything, in that context. The stuff about homosexuality in the NT is a tangent which has little to do with the actual thesis of the writing. The bit about women is a paradoxical metaphor (given that the next sentence is husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church; that is, with utter servitude. So if both people are serving each other...yeah). Not that I'm saying Paul wasn't a chauvinist. He obviously was. But chauvinism is not central in Scripture.
You say that those passages are not important but in today's world, they're some of the most consequential because they affect people's lives directly. I'll write more on this at the end of my post.
The way I look at it is that God doesn't hate anyone, so if you're asking that question, you've already fucked up. If only more Christians though that way, I guess.
I don't think I fucked up though, God "says" in the scripture that he doesn't hate anybody, and that he "loves" everybody, but I could say the same thing and it wouldn't necessarily be true. In the Bible, God does many things that aren't very representative (by normal standards) to that of a loving individual. Regardless, I didn't mean that God hates people, but I meant that hateful christians will congregate in hateful christian churches and they will use the scripture to justify their hatred of homosexuals and their views that women are inferior to men.
So to me this brings up another question. If God is perfect and whatnot, why write this shit about slavery, women, "sodomites", in the Bible? Presumably, he knew that it would drag on for centuries and those people would be persecuted by HIS followers for bullshit reasons!!! So how the fuck are those passages not important Shiori? Because you say they aren't?
And you say they aren't because they aren't important to you. This is what I was talking about isn't it, your interpretation of the Bible is completely tinted by your own moral standards - which is great in your case because you appear to be a great person, but it's not a very good way to look for the intended message.
So sure the horrible sexist and homophobic shit wasn't at the center of the scripture... I'm willing to give you that. It's still there. It's still the Bible. So what should we understand? That God was a bit of a dick but didn't make it the core of his biography?
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On October 17 2013 06:02 Myrkskog wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 05:57 packrat386 wrote:On October 17 2013 05:56 Myrkskog wrote:On October 17 2013 05:44 packrat386 wrote:On October 17 2013 05:41 Myrkskog wrote:
What evidence is there that the god you are defending can affect a person's consciousness? arguably testimony. People have said that they have an interaction with god when they pray, and it is very difficult to show otherwise. So have you had an experience with god through prayer? No, but I might believe some people do. I might believe that they had some experience also. But there is no justification for either of us to accept that the reason for this experience is god.
Since there is no evidence otherwise, I can't reject that as an explanation.
Also, IronManSC. Peddle your bullshit elsewhere. I'm not interested in your born again viewpoint and intolerant views.
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If God is perfect and whatnot, why write this shit about slavery, women, "sodomites", in the Bible?
God didn't write the Bible. That's really the gist of my answer. That God "says" things is obviously a literary device (every exegete would agree). God didn't literally pen the words.
People have interpreted God differently throughout history. The Christian is only really committed to the claim that the fullness of the message of salvation is contained in the Bible. It's not a requirement to think that the Biblical authors were infallible or that they somehow didn't exist in the context of their eras. It also strikes me as silly to think (as you appear to) of the Bible as one really big book, when in fact it's dozens of very different ones.
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On October 17 2013 10:16 Shiori wrote:
It also strikes me as silly to think (as you appear to) of the Bible as one really big book, when in fact it's dozens of very different ones.
i think this is really all one need say about the topic, tbh
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On October 17 2013 10:17 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2013 10:16 Shiori wrote:
It also strikes me as silly to think (as you appear to) of the Bible as one really big book, when in fact it's dozens of very different ones. i think this is really all one need say about the topic, tbh
Yeah. I know it's vogue to consider scriptural study some sort of joke-field, but history is history. The authorship and context and content and references in all of these passages is the subject of intense study, from a historical PoV. It annoys me when people tacitly assume anything other than the most literal innerantism is somehow wrong or arbitrary, and that the "real" interpretation is literalism.
EDIT: I don't think (nor have I ever claimed) that the Bible is biography of God, nor that God changed his mind about gay people. You're assuming a premise in here, or something.
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On October 17 2013 10:16 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +If God is perfect and whatnot, why write this shit about slavery, women, "sodomites", in the Bible? God didn't write the Bible. That's really the gist of my answer. That God "says" things is obviously a literary device (every exegete would agree). God didn't literally pen the words. People have interpreted God differently throughout history. The Christian is only really committed to the claim that the fullness of the message of salvation is contained in the Bible. It's not a requirement to think that the Biblical authors were infallible or that they somehow didn't exist in the context of their eras. It also strikes me as silly to think (as you appear to) of the Bible as one really big book, when in fact it's dozens of very different ones.
Well forgive me. The Bible is referred to dogmatically to explain to us how we should behave and what we should think and why God exists (rather than does not). And now when I happen to mention that the Bible, often considered to be the "word of God", you tell me that it's not the word of God. Doesn't that put the whole thing into question?
At this point, I'm just confused. The Bible is a big deal and it's the word of God or at least contains the word of God, except when people point out objectionable content, in which case well, it's all up for debate, which is what allows you to pick and choose the parts you like and discard the ones you don't.
As for the fact that the Bible is a collection of books, I don't see how that's relevant to what I was saying, nor would it be silly for someone to think it's one big book. Before I learned, I assumed it was one big book, because that's what it physically looks like. Unless you're told, it's not immediately noticeable.
EDIT: I don't think (nor have I ever claimed) that the Bible is biography of God, nor that God changed his mind about gay people. You're assuming a premise in here, or something.
I didn't assume anything, I'm still confused about what you meant when you said "His moral proscriptions about homosexuality and women being subservient, and all that, are actually just not true in the context of the modern world."
Are God's words invalidated by our greatness? Why are his moral proscriptions now irrelevant?
Edit: Were you talking about Paul? Perhaps I got confused there because there are passages in the Bible where God himself is credited for some serious heinous shit towards homosexuals.
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On October 17 2013 10:26 Djzapz wrote:
because that's what it physically looks like.
well, no. that's what modern printed editions look like.
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EPT
