Ignorance and the Bible

[Cypress]

I wish you could be honest in this debate. I have actually lauded much of Christ's teachings on this forum. And you know it. So stop misrepresenting (lying) about my position. Just stop it. It is beneath you.

You know damn well what I'm talking about.

I don't read everything you write.
What did Jesus teach that was codified into US Law?

And Jesus does because it said so in the Bible. Yes we know you are a believer.

"The Bible" didn't exist until almost 400 years after Jesus.
What you have in the first century are multiple independent accounts about the life and death of Jesus written by different people who knew the eyewitnesses.

You're back to believing the New Testament accounts are just in total fabricated fictions? Not even even the great atheist scholar Bart Ehrman believes that.

Many people have died for fictional beliefs. I'm surprised you don't know this. Look at Jonestown in 1978.

Jonestown was largely a mass murder. Not a mass martyrdom. The followers of Jim Jones were mentally unstable people.

I don't think one can read Romans or Acts and conclude Paul and Luke were insane.

The apostles were witnesses and martyrs for Jesus. They were willing to endure stonings, beatings, shipwrecks, pirates, prison, execution for what they saw and believed.

That's not proof, but collectively the witness testimony, the martyrdom, the revelation of nature and conscience are a logical train of inferences that reasonably make Christian faith rational for the thinking person.

You are free to discount that or not believe it.
What you can't do is point at two billion Christians and say they are all barely sentient irrational fools.

It's possible that life, the universe, and everything is just a fluke chance resulting from inanimate physical processes.

But I don't think your case for that faith system is as strong as you assume.

 

[Ross Dolan]

If you didn't have the Holy Spirit, you never were a Christian

You do not get to decide that, Margot. You think you do...just as you think you have a personal relatioinship with the Holy Spirit.

Maybe you are correct. Maybe you are not. No way I can know. NO WAY YOU CAN KNOW EITHER. You may be deluding yourself.

, you were on the outside looking in reading the hand book!

If you need to think that I was kidding myself...fine. I may have been.

But perhaps you are the one kidding one's self.

I may be the only person here giving you the possibility of being correct. (Perhaps one other.)

So...

Christianity is a personal relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit!

That is your opinion...but you may be absolutely incorrect about that.

Your opinion about that may be hogwash.

No church,no book,no denomination needed,that all just confused you. Religious Babelitis

You are building that which you suppose prevents any understanding of the truth. The TRUTH is that neither I nor you nor anyone else here KNOWS FOR CERTAIN the true REALITY of existence...in particular, whether a god exists.

You are blindly guessing a god exists...and you are blindly guessing the god has traits and grievances that make it a petty god. And you put forth those blind guesses as though you are doing more than just blindly guessing.

You show contempt for the opinions of others. Just as your opinions MAY be correct...their opinions MAY be correct. The atheists among us; the Catholics; the Protestants; the Jews; the Islamic; the Hindu; the Confusion; the whatever MAY BE CORRECT or closer to the truth than others.

Why do you suppose this god of yours favored the Jews over all others?

Why do you suppose this Holy Spirit favors you over all others?

What do you mean by "saved?"

 

[gmark77]

What did Jesus teach that was codified into US Law?

I honestly thought I explained this to you. But I also understand it doesn't comport with your strawman version of me so you just ignored it.

You're back to believing the New Testament accounts are just in total fabricated fictions? Not even even the great atheist scholar Bart Ehrman believes that.

So why don't you come out and just confess you're a Christian? Why dodge and weave with this whole made up "agnosticism" stuff?

Jonestown was largely a mass murder.

No, mostly suicide. Some murder. But by all means rewrite history. It wouldn't be the first time for you.

Not a mass martyrdom. The followers of Jim Jones were mentally unstable people.

Special pleading. Again.

I don't think one can read Romans or Acts and conclude Paul and Luke were insane.

A Christian who loves CS Lewis. How original.

 

[gmark77]

Okay...another laugh.

Most cowards

LOL. Just so you can save yourself some typing I don't tend to be "activated" by someone calling me a "coward". Especially someone who does something every single day and then turns around and mocks others for doing the exact same thing.

So hopefully you see how funny you come across.

 

[Ross Dolan]

LOL. Just so you can save yourself some typing I don't tend to be "activated" by someone calling me a "coward". Especially someone who does something every single day and then turns around and mocks others for doing the exact same thing.

Good...I am so glad you are not going to be "activated" by something like being called a coward. Obviously I mean an intellectual coward.

Perhaps you enjoy being an intellectual coward...perhaps you are just not equipped for an intellectual discussion.

All still up for grabs.

So hopefully you see how funny you come across.

I also am happy that you are having fun discussing these things with me.

I am also.

Continue to enjoy...I certainly will.

 

[Ross Dolan]

Good...I am so glad you are not going to be "activated" by something like being called a coward. Obviously I mean an intellectual coward.

Perhaps you enjoy being an intellectual coward...perhaps you are just not equipped for an intellectual discussion.

All still up for grabs.


I also am happy that you are having fun discussing these things with me.

I am also.

Continue to enjoy...I certainly will.

Great. We are still both enjoying the exchanges.

 

[Guno צְבִי]

Jews just see that Christians are going to say or do whatever they're going to say or do in order to rationalize their belief that JC was the Messiah as promised in the Hebrew Bible. They point to all kinds of "miracles" as proof that JC was the son of God.

Two basic problems right there:

1. Judaism prohibits belief in miracles as evidence of the proof of the existence of G-d.
2. Judaism says that Moshiach will be a human being born the normal way that all human beings are born. not a demigod or divine being

Judaism, which is solely responsible for the criteria of and defined the characteristics of the Messiah; JC fulfilled NOT EVEN ONE of the requirements for being Moshiach a.k.a. the Messiah as promised in the Bible.

If one bends the translation, order, and omissions from the Hebrew Bible - which is what all of the different sects of Christianity have done in order to create their Old Testament to suit their purposes in a subsequent anthology of writings known as the New Testament, and call it "prophecy, and proof", so be it for the Christians.

 

[gmark77]

Great. We are still both enjoying the exchanges.

Definitely use your left hand. It’ll feel like a stranger.

 

[Ross Dolan]

Definitely use your left hand. It’ll feel like a stranger.

No it won't!

 

[Cypress]

I honestly thought I explained this to you. But I also understand it doesn't comport with your strawman version of me so you just ignored it.

Okay, so you can't tell me which of Jesus' teachings were codified as US law

So why don't you come out and just confess you're a Christian? Why dodge and weave with this whole made up "agnosticism" stuff?

Being agnostic to me means being open to the possibility of either atheism or religion.

I've already tried atheism, and found I don't have enough faith to believe in it, but I also have not been convinced of the soundness of Christian doctrine yet.

At a minimum, church people are more fun than atheists, so I like to occasionally go to feast days and periodically mingle with people at fellowship or service.
Statistics prove atheists are overwhelmingly white, male, young, and Euro-American. I don't find that kind of monochromatic gender and race exclusivity appealing

No, mostly suicide. Some murder. But by all means rewrite history. It wouldn't be the first time for you.

‘It wasn’t suicide … they were murdered’: inside the Jonestown cult massacre​

‘It wasn’t suicide … they were murdered’: inside the Jonestown cult massacre

A shocking new Hulu docuseries, Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown, returns to 1978 and the tragedy that killed over 900 people on a controlling leader’s orders

www.theguardian.com

Forced suicide and mass murder are not examples of righteous martyrdom.

 

[gmark77]

Okay, so you can't tell me which of Jesus' teachings were codified as US law

Being agnostic to me means being open to the possibility of either atheism or religion.

I've already tried atheism, and found I don't have enough faith to believe in it, but I also have not been convinced of the soundness of Christian doctrine yet.

At a minimum, church people are more fun than atheists, so I like to occasionally go to feast days and periodically mingle with people at fellowship or service.
Statistics prove atheists are overwhelmingly white, male, young, and Euro-American. I don't find that kind of monochromatic gender and race exclusivity appealing

‘It wasn’t suicide … they were murdered’: inside the Jonestown cult massacre​

‘It wasn’t suicide … they were murdered’: inside the Jonestown cult massacre

A shocking new Hulu docuseries, Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown, returns to 1978 and the tragedy that killed over 900 people on a controlling leader’s orders

www.theguardian.com

Forced suicide and mass murder are not examples of righteous martyrdom.

Quick make up some justification for the folks who died by their own choice in Waco

 

[Into the Night]

AI Overview
"Militant atheist" refers to a person or group that actively advocates for atheism, often by opposing religion and promoting secularism through social and political action, rather than simply lacking belief in God.

Key Characteristics:

Active Opposition to Religion:
Militant atheism goes beyond simply not believing in God to actively promoting secularism and challenging religious doctrines and institutions.

Belief in Harmful Nature of Religion:
The philosophy often posits that religion is not only false or nonsensical but also inherently harmful.

Use of Social and Political Action:
Proponents of this approach believe in taking direct measures to reduce or eradicate religious influence in society.

Historically, the League of Militant Atheists was a Soviet organization that promoted anti-religious campaigns.
In modern usage, the term can be controversial, with some humanists and atheists arguing it's a deliberate attempt to associate atheism with conflict or violence

All Scientists Should Be Militant Atheists​

By Lawrence M. Krauss

All Scientists Should Be Militant Atheists

Scientists are often reluctant to disagree with religious ideas. The Kim Davis controversy shows why they shouldn’t be.

www.newyorker.com

The Church of No God is a religion. It is not atheism. There is no such thing as a 'militant atheist'.

 

[Into the Night]

Hmmm.

How active does one have to be to be militant? What are “direct measures”?

What is wrong with challenging church doctrines and institutions? Pure logic and knowledge of historical facts tells us that the Trinity is a bogus and invented concept. We know that the Mormon’s Book of Abraham is equally flawed.

Having another schizophrenic episode. You are not more than one person, Dumber.

Attempted proof by circular. Circular argument fallacies.
The Church of No God is a religion. It is not atheism.

 

[Into the Night]

Quick make up some justification for the folks who died by their own choice in Waco

They didn't die by their own choice.

 

[Into the Night]

No, it isn’t. The Trinity holds that they are 3 distinct entities. 3 distinct persons, if you will. Nothing about a spirit guidance of the three. It’s basically polytheism cloaked in gibberish.

Nope. No gibberish. The Bible is actually quite clear on the subject.

Jesus never claimed he was God,

Yes he did.

nor did his followers believe him to be when he was alive.

Yes they dd.

Only when he died, and messiahs aren’t supposed to do so, did the idea float that he was exalted to the right hand of God. Not the Trinity yet, however. That came much later. Always to fix a theological problem.

The role was set before he was born into this world, Dumber.

There’s nothing in nature that reveals a deity.

There certainly is. There is plenty of natural evidence of God.

The Earth itself. All the plants, animals, and people upon it. The annual seasons, and how benign they really are.

 

[Into the Night]

I studied a lot of theology in college. No one, even critics, asserted such a thing.

Then you are an obvious liar. You never studied theology.

 

[Into the Night]

I knew all this stuff when I was in Sunday School. You really are not very educated.

If you 'knew this stuff', why do you deny 'this stuff', Hugo????

 

[Into the Night]

Now you're choosing to be agnostic about the origin of everything?

What 'origin of everything'???

It's only important what you think, research physicists aren't posting on this thread.

So?

The universe had a beginning. It's not infinitely old, according to the BGV theorem.

Then you enter a paradox. If the Universe has a beginning, what caused that beginning? Nothing can exist outside of the Universe.

As an atheist, you only believe in matter and energy, and that all causes have an inanimate material cause.

Atheism makes no such claim.

Therefore your belief system necessarily is that the universe popped into existence by inanimate chance.

That's a religion. It is not atheism.

Resorting to insults when my responses have been measured?

Random phrase ignored.

"Because we're human beings!" is not an explanation for how inanimate electrons and quarks cause reason, conscience, abstract thought. It's circular reasoning. You haven't explained anything physically or chemically.

He's not trying to.

 

[Into the Night]

I've always read that the Trinity is not three separate entities, but manifestations of a single divine substance.

You didn't read it in the Bible.

It's always seemed analogous to Hinduism which has a pantheon of different deities, but they are all just manifestations of the single universal spirit, Brahman.

Christianity is not Hindi, BSer. Try to stay on topic.

 

[Into the Night]

I don't read everything you write.
What did Jesus teach that was codified into US Law?

Laws against murder. Laws against theft. Laws against false witness. Laws against violence and tyranny.

"The Bible" didn't exist until almost 400 years after Jesus.

It existed BEFORE Jesus and has been added to AFTER Jesus.

What you have in the first century are multiple independent accounts about the life and death of Jesus written by different people who knew the eyewitnesses.

They WERE eyewittnesses, BSer.

You're back to believing the New Testament accounts are just in total fabricated fictions? Not even even the great atheist scholar Bart Ehrman believes that.

Bart Ehrman is not an atheist.

Jonestown was largely a mass murder. Not a mass martyrdom. The followers of Jim Jones were mentally unstable people.

Irrelevance fallacy.

I don't think one can read Romans or Acts and conclude Paul and Luke were insane.

Irrerlevance fallacy.

The apostles were witnesses and martyrs for Jesus. They were willing to endure stonings, beatings, shipwrecks, pirates, prison, execution for what they saw and believed.

That's not proof, but collectively the witness testimony, the martyrdom, the revelation of nature and conscience are a logical train of inferences that reasonably make Christian faith rational for the thinking person.

You are free to discount that or not believe it.
What you can't do is point at two billion Christians and say they are all barely sentient irrational fools.

It's possible that life, the universe, and everything is just a fluke chance resulting from inanimate physical processes.

You seem to be posting random phrases. Douglass Adams is not God.

But I don't think your case for that faith system is as strong as you assume.

Argument of the Stone fallacy. An argument of faith is as strong as any other.