Questions for Jesus-Freak

[Beleth]

So do I, and you are irrationally bending mercy into meaning injustice.

Not at all. Rather, you are slavishly regurgitating a nonsense concept because one of your teachers drilled it into your head.

Uh no, it is mercy because God does not make them pay for their own crimes. He maintains His justice, however, with his own blood.

Uh, no. That's simply not what mercy means.

Have fun with Gears of War. I see no reason to continue this conversation.

 

[RationalReverend]

RationalReverend, I feel I may be getting repetitive on the religion boards, but what do you make of Matthew 1:2-16 v. Luke 3:23-38. Please note that these are not passages which can concievably be put forth as poetic, unless the almighty is a truely crappy poet, and that these passages contradict each other directly in revealing the lineage of Jesus. One of the few things these passages agree on is the patrimony of Jesus being worldly.

This is not poetic license.
This is not a case of the lineages being confused by the Greek tradition of male lines v. the Jewish tradition of female lines. If that was all it was, the ancestors of Jesus often interbred.
This is a direct argument, stated twice, concerning the fulfillment of specific necessities of messiah-hood.

whose confused? One line is through his mother, and one line is through the male side. Both parents were Jewish so I can't really fathom why having some common ancestors is a point of negation.

 

[RationalReverend]

Ah, right, okay.

I'm answering these questions from a Christian perspective. That is what we believe.

Haven't ever heard of Ehrman, nor have I ever heard what he had to say. Your claim is not based on anything but a presumption (prejudice, I guess?)

My claim is based on the fact that Textual Criticism produces results, and we can reconstruct a very good rendering of the original text based on the greek manuscripts we have, not to mention the multitudes of translations we have in a myriad of languages. I will admit I assumed this was about to go into the copies of copies of copies argument and responded that way. I apologize for my rudeness.

Ah well, it was a mistake to try to start up a debate with a theologian.

Debates have rules and moderators, this is a discussion, and I'm sorry I have made you feel as if you cannot dialog with me.

 

[Lonewulf]

I'm answering these questions from a Christian perspective. That is what we believe.

That's cool.

My claim is based on the fact that Textual Criticism produces results, and we can reconstruct a very good rendering of the original text based on the greek manuscripts we have, not to mention the multitudes of translations we have in a myriad of languages. I will admit I assumed this was about to go into the copies of copies of copies argument and responded that way. I apologize for my rudeness.

Your apology is accepted, although that was what I was thinking about.

What about the claim that many of the passages in the bible (ignoring the Apostles and probably much of the New Testament) were voted on by a council, putting in what mainly appealed to the people at the time period?

Debates have rules and moderators, this is a discussion, and I'm sorry I have made you feel as if you cannot dialog with me.

What I said was in frustration.

 

[RationalReverend]

Not at all. Rather, you are slavishly regurgitating a nonsense concept because one of your teachers drilled it into your head.

Hardly, I've never had an apologetics class, it is just painfully obvious stuff. If you cannot understand the concept as I am relating then I am deficient in speech, and if this be the case I am sorry, or you are unable to understand, willfully or unwillfully.

Uh, no. That's simply not what mercy means.

From the American Heritage Dictionary:
mer·cy (mûr'sē)
n. pl. mer·cies

1. Compassionate treatment, especially of those under one's power; clemency.
2. A disposition to be kind and forgiving: a heart full of mercy.
3. Something for which to be thankful; a blessing: It was a mercy that no one was hurt.
4. Alleviation of distress; relief: Taking in the refugees was an act of mercy.

By this definition what I am saying falls perfectly in line with the definition of mercy. God's law dictates punishment, and if he chooses not to punish the one guilty in the eyes of the law, then that is mercy. The fact that he pays the satisfaction of his own law does not negate his mercy, it magnifies it.

Have fun with Gears of War. I see no reason to continue this conversation.

I did have fun thanks, and whether you continue or not is your prerogative.

 

[jesus_freak]

Incidentally, AnswersInGenesis are a pathetically inept crowd of bunglers masquerading as scientists. The vast majority of them (and there are pitiful few as it is) have no qualifications to speak of, on any subject they propound on. Those few that do are either deluded soft-heads, or they are actually "real" scientists in their day-jobs weekdays, and cynically evangelistic (and money-grubbing) creationists only on Sundays.

Ahhh...they don't follow your thoughts and beleifs so you just slap them with a label of "not real scientists" You know calling people names because the don't agree with you is pretty sweet. I get the feeling from your post that you think of your self as the smartest one on this board and you are doing us all a favor by throwing in you two cents worth...Well I'm not impressed or intimidated. You claim that your time is worth so much...so much that you can not even take a $50 challenge for a 5 minute phone call? But yet you have plenty of time to hang out on a message board(for free I presume). For the most part this thread has been kept pretty civil and I actually thought we were having some good discussions. I will not let you or a few others on here ruin the good thing that the rest of us got going.

 

[RationalReverend]

What about the claim that many of the passages in the bible (ignoring the Apostles and probably much of the New Testament) were voted on by a council, putting in what mainly appealed to the people at the time period?

Well, passages of texts were never discussed as in regard to Canon, but rather texts as a whole. Back when The DaVinci Code came out, there were all sorts of Grandiose claims that the Council of Nicea (325) among others were in fact the ones who decided what was in the Bible. The truth is by that time the Canon was pretty much set. It is true that councils have affirmed the Canon and its exclusivity, but never did anyone sit down and say this one that one this one and then we poof had a canon. Also, the reception of books in the Canon is not universally the same. The Gospels for example were unanimously accepted very early on, as were the Pauline Epistles a little later. We have evidence though in the Patristics that the works in our current canon were viewed as authoritative very early on. Justin Martyr for example (c.150) quotes many NT works in the same way as he does OT works. There are earlier examples, but you get the idea. Short and Sweet: these works were copied and kept and held as sacred from the beginning, but the process of collecting them in a single volume took time. Mainly, it just wasn't done in those days. In fact, Christians pretty much are the reason the codex or book form is used today rather than scrolls. Christians were the first to do it widespread. So, until that practice developed people would naturally just have kept the letters and copied the letters individually. (sorry that was so longwinded)

What I said was in frustration.

No worries mate, we all get frustrated and sometimes are rude, even us Christians.

 

[Zep]

Ahhh...they don't follow your thoughts and beleifs so you just slap them with a label of "not real scientists" You know calling people names because the don't agree with you is pretty sweet. I get the feeling from your post that you think of your self as the smartest one on this board and you are doing us all a favor by throwing in you two cents worth...Well I'm not impressed or intimidated. You claim that your time is worth so much...so much that you can not even take a $50 challenge for a 5 minute phone call? But yet you have plenty of time to hang out on a message board(for free I presume). For the most part this thread has been kept pretty civil and I actually thought we were having some good discussions. I will not let you or a few others on here ruin the good thing that the rest of us got going.

I'll make it clear for you point by point:

0) I understand the AnswersInGenesis crowd extremely well. There is nothing they have produced that has ever stumped me. But that's hardly a cause for me to crow - most average intelligence people can do the same with ease (if they put their prejudices to one side first). Honestly, JF, the stuff AiG produce is barely up to children's comic-book standard - in fact, they are aiming it precisely at the uneducated, naive and uninformed! They are not trying to win Nobel prizes, they are trying to propagandise to the most easily influenced people (who are the most likely to pay up for this rubbish).

1) With only a pitiful few exceptions, AiG are NOT real scientists by ANYONE'S standards. Really. They make stuff up like crazy, including their qualifications, and have done so for decades. It's been documented fully. Isn't there some biblical warning about giving false witness? Perhaps these guys should read that and think about it a bit...

2) I don't care if you are unimpressed or unintimidated by me. That's hardly my point. The evidence is abundant that the AiG people are either wilfully ignorant or cynically conniving, whether either of us likes it or not. So, for your own benefit, I would suggest not espousing them as good role models for your cause.

3) I fully admit I am NOT the most intelligent guy on this forum by a long chalk. But then, how would you know who is and who is not? You seem to have trouble enough as it is realising that AiG is cerebrally bankrupt. Can I suggest some honest and dilligent research on your part will serve you well?

4) My time IS worth that much. A phone call from here to the USA will cost me more than $50 for the amount of time required to be on air with your self-inflated radio jocks.

5) No, it's not free for me to "hang out" here. But I get far better value for a lot longer, for far less than $50.

Please understand that I am not trying to be rude to you, and wish you to stay and talk more, as you are well-mannered and coherent, and certainly welcome to do so. But there are some very unpleasant facts about the people you have proposed as your models, i.e. AiG, that they will never tell you, their erstwhile followers.

Make research your tools, evidence your treasure, knowledge your goal!

 

[El Greco]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47975
Some people also say that Christ never lived.Give it time and people will say that 9/11 never happened.

Exactly like people who say that evolution didn't happen and isn't happening.

 

[Ossai]

jesus_freak

The church I agree can be wrong, but the Bible never is. When science said the earth was flat, the Bible said it was round, well before science knew of bacteria, or germs, the Bible was stating to wash your hands after touching a dead body. These are just a few examples.

Actually, it’s the bible that declared the earth flat. Quotes from The Flat Earth Bible
• I Chronicles 16:30: "He has fixed the earth firm, immovable."
• Psalm 93:1: "Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm..."
• Psalm 96:10: "He has fixed the earth firm, immovable..."
• Psalm 104:5: "Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken."
• Isaiah 45:18: "...who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast..."
• Job 9:8, “...who by himself spread out the heavens [shamayim]...”
• Psalm 19:1, “The heavens [shamayim] tell out the glory of God, the vault of heaven [raqiya] reveals his handiwork.”
• Psalm 102:25, “...the heavens [shamayim] were thy handiwork.”
• Isaiah 45:12, “I, with my own hands, stretched out the heavens [shamayim] and caused all their host to shine...”
• Isaiah 48:13, “...with my right hand I formed the expanse of the sky [shamayim]...”

Not sure what your next point is but yes I disagree. I beleive that every word in the Bible was inspired by God and he used the "authors" of the Bible the same way that we would use a pen.

Then how do you justify the numerous contradictions?


RationalReverend

The Bible is truth because it is Revelation, it is the communication of God to men.

And this is based on what? The absurdities contained in the bible, YHWH must be a real joker.

The satisfaction of their guilt was already paid by Christ, so their is nothing for the wronged to seek. The debt of the sinner to the wronged has been paid in God's blood. When God's mercy mitigates his justice and he makes anew a sinner, then the satisfaction of his Justice was met by his own blood.

Then why bother repenting? As long as you’re Christian you can do anything and you get a free pass to heaven.

To satisfy your argumentation, everyone in the world would have to speak the same language or God would need to make some magic bibles! Neither requirement is fair. God spoke clearly, if people cannot hear, then that does not call into question God's ability to speak. You are slavishly attempting to turn the faults of our race into the faults of God.

Sorry, still god’s fault. God designed people in such a manner that they could not understand. Design flaw.

Again for your claims to be satisfied God would have to forcibly take hold of anyone who read the Bible and feed them the meaning of every text, and your demand is ridiculous and unreasonable.

No it’s not. God, being omnipotent could easily do so with no cost to himself. It’s sadistic that he doesn’t make the meaning clear.

Uh no, it is mercy because God does not make them pay for their own crimes. He maintains His justice, however, with his own blood.

whose confused? One line is through his mother, and one line is through the male side. Both parents were Jewish so I can't really fathom why having some common ancestors is a point of negation.

You are directly contradicting the bible. Both Matthew 1:2-16 v. Luke 3:23-38 specifically (in translation and the original text) proclaim that the line is through Joseph.

If either lineage (they’re both different) reported in the bible for Jesus is correct then God directly excluded Jesus from the Davidic lineage. Which in and of itself negates Jesus as the messiah.

Ossai

 

[SimonD]

God spoke through the prophets to the people in a specific time and a specific context. They understood just fine. If God speaks in a language I do not know, if I want to know what he said, I learn the language. To satisfy your argumentation, everyone in the world would have to speak the same language or God would need to make some magic bibles! Neither requirement is fair. God spoke clearly, if people cannot hear, then that does not call into question God's ability to speak. You are slavishly attempting to turn the faults of our race into the faults of God.

4) God spoke clearly and was understood in the time that he spoke. Our job as Christians is to examine the text in light of that context and thereby understand God.

Again for your claims to be satisfied God would have to forcibly take hold of anyone who read the Bible and feed them the meaning of every text, and your demand is ridiculous and unreasonable.

If God spoke so clearly, then how comes the Bible contradicts itself?

 

[ChristineR]

Ahhh...they don't follow your thoughts and beleifs so you just slap them with a label of "not real scientists" You know calling people names because the don't agree with you is pretty sweet. I get the feeling from your post that you think of your self as the smartest one on this board and you are doing us all a favor by throwing in you two cents worth...Well I'm not impressed or intimidated. You claim that your time is worth so much...so much that you can not even take a $50 challenge for a 5 minute phone call? But yet you have plenty of time to hang out on a message board(for free I presume). For the most part this thread has been kept pretty civil and I actually thought we were having some good discussions. I will not let you or a few others on here ruin the good thing that the rest of us got going.

I don't see how you can say this. Honestly, and I'm pretty sympathetic to fundamentalist Christians, having been one myself. Try this. Read through AnswersInGenesis, all of it if you can. Then read through Talk Origins' 29 Evidences for Macro Evolution. Answers in Genesis is just a bunch of outrageous speculation, oddities deliberately misinterpreted and taken out of context, and a history of the funnier mistakes and hoaxes that briefly fooled some legitimate scientists. It's high points are complex statistical analyses of data that have no meaning.

There is no comparison. If you were just to come forward and say "It's a mystery and although I have theories, I don't understand why all the evidence is wrong but my belief in Bible literalism is so strong and so fundamental to my being that I cannot accept it" I would wonder about your mental health, but at least I'd respect you and your opinions.

 

[bruto]

So god spoke clearly to the prophets back then, and all was fine, but now it's not clear? If we're to believe the bible, Adam and Eve, Abraham and the lot did not need the kind of anti-rational faith that is called for now. They met God and bargained with him in ways that (if it were true) would require no leap of faith at all, any more than I would need faith to believe that my neighbor across the street exists.

Aren't we supposed to be talking about God almighty here? What kind of deity would be so inefficient, inconsistent and sloppy? A true and viable God of the sort the bible describes could manifest himself unambiguously to everyone he wants. The usual copout that God wants faith, and faith doesn't work if there is certainty, fails in this case, because it's clear from the biblical text that God did not require that level of faith once upon a time. If the bible is true, he manifested himself clearly enough to erase all doubt.

So what prevents the almighty and all benevolent and all wise god from fixing the problem now? Why did he want understanding to be clear then, but now makes a puzzle of it? Is he on sabbatical? Lost his voice? Dead? Or is old Jehovah just the mean-spirited tinpot desert demiurge that a bunch of stone age nomads imagined because they could not think of anything better?

 

[jesus_freak]

Actually, it’s the bible that declared the earth flat. Quotes from The Flat Earth Bible
• I Chronicles 16:30: "He has fixed the earth firm, immovable."
• Psalm 93:1: "Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm..."
• Psalm 96:10: "He has fixed the earth firm, immovable..."
• Psalm 104:5: "Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken."
• Isaiah 45:18: "...who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast..."
• Job 9:8, “...who by himself spread out the heavens [shamayim]...”
• Psalm 19:1, “The heavens [shamayim] tell out the glory of God, the vault of heaven [raqiya] reveals his handiwork.”
• Psalm 102:25, “...the heavens [shamayim] were thy handiwork.”
• Isaiah 45:12, “I, with my own hands, stretched out the heavens [shamayim] and caused all their host to shine...”
• Isaiah 48:13, “...with my right hand I formed the expanse of the sky [shamayim]...”

Don't see anywhere that it says the earth is flat...but I can understand this one pretty clearly...
"He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth..." (Isaiah 40:22,NIV).

 

[jesus_freak]

Here are some other verses that were way ahead of science.

"He spreads out the northern [skies] over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing" (Job 26:7, NIV).

"He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight" (Job 26:8, NIV).

"He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams; the clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind" (Job 36:27-28, NIV).

"The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again" (Ecclesiastes 1:6-7, NIV).

 

[jesus_freak]

"The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth laid bare at the rebuke of the Lord. . . " (2 Samuel 22:16, NIV).

"Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." (Proverbs 16:24, NIV).

"The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor." (1 Corinthians 15:41).

lev.17:11 describes the value of blood, "for the life of the flesh is in the blood..."

I could go on and on but even non beleivers have to be pretty amazed by some of these.

 

[edge]

Explain mules.

Mules cannot make new mules they are sterile.
End of the line.
There's a verse for that.

 

[edge]

So god spoke clearly to the prophets back then, and all was fine, but now it's not clear? If we're to believe the bible, Adam and Eve, Abraham and the lot did not need the kind of anti-rational faith that is called for now. They met God and bargained with him in ways that (if it were true) would require no leap of faith at all, any more than I would need faith to believe that my neighbor across the street exists.

Aren't we supposed to be talking about God almighty here? What kind of deity would be so inefficient, inconsistent and sloppy? A true and viable God of the sort the bible describes could manifest himself unambiguously to everyone he wants. The usual copout that God wants faith, and faith doesn't work if there is certainty, fails in this case, because it's clear from the biblical text that God did not require that level of faith once upon a time. If the bible is true, he manifested himself clearly enough to erase all doubt.

So what prevents the almighty and all benevolent and all wise god from fixing the problem now? Why did he want understanding to be clear then, but now makes a puzzle of it? Is he on sabbatical? Lost his voice? Dead? Or is old Jehovah just the mean-spirited tinpot desert demiurge that a bunch of stone age nomads imagined because they could not think of anything better?

If he gave us a perfect prophesy then things would be predestined, so we cannot know of the things to come exact hours, dates.
Only Jesus is able to look into the future clearly.
That would cancel out freewill also.
There are signs to read from them, “prophesies” as warnings.

He wants us to have faith, blind faith, which is different from the scales on your eyes.
When we remove the scales on our eyes we have faith and see even more clearly although you may call us blind it means the opposite has occurred.

 

[edge]

If the bible is true, he manifested himself clearly enough to erase all doubt.

That time is coming soon.

Pay attention.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2374529#post2374529
The great lie.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1877033#post1877033
The beast.
Thanks for this slingblade.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Islam is a Christian based heresy. There is a lot of evidence that Mo was exposed to Christianity and Gnosticism, the three biggest being his employment as a trader, the stories in the hadith that say so, and the passages in the Quran that are perverted versions of stories in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Gnostic works. It is painfully obvious that he borrowed his stories, and the errors in them prove them less than genuine. If you want to make an argument about what is revelation the Quran is the last place you want to look. Especially since it contains such golden nuggets of awesome as telling his followers to test what he said by the Bible. He failed the test.

As the Jews see it, Christianity is a Jewish based heresy. There is plenty of evidence that Paul and the other early Christian writers were exposed to numerous pagan beliefs common to the period in which they wrote. It is painfully obvious to historians that they borrowed their stories as well.