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Respecting Christians

So God creates a bunch of beings that have the potential to fail so he can punish them for failing.

Why?
 
arthwollipot said:
This is indeed a contradiction, and I'd love to see what cj has to say about it.
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The limitations of the Bible are limitations of language. It's for Christians to either choose to treat the Bible as being a perfect expression of God's word, without fault and complete - or to recognise, along with mainstream Christianity for two thousand years, that there's a necessary imperfection even in the fact of being written words, and that texts need to be interpreted in this light - that treating a moral guide as if it were a physics/history textbook is a gross misuse.

I can well see that even viewed in this light, many atheists will find fault with the Bible, with Christianity and with religious belief as a whole. However, it seems that this is not enough - a subgroup of atheists continue to regard the bible as inerrant. I suspect that it is based on their path to atheism. Back when Joe Soap the atheist was a Christian, he was repeatedly told that the Bible was the basis of Christianity, that it was perfect and accurate in every detail. When he came to see that this was false, he rejected Christianity and became a happy atheist. However, if he accepted that the Bible wasn't inerrant, then the very basis for his lack of faith would be overthrown. Joe should relax, and accept that there's a wide range of Christian belief for him to reject. He can discard the whole thing.

As for the Bible being the sole basis for Christianity - imagine a Gentleman's club, that's existed for 200 years. They have an imposing headquarters, membership lists, all sorts of traditions and rules - and then a non-member pokes his head in the door and shouts that the whole thing is based on the 1954 rulebook, and without that, the club couldn't even exist.
 
Why would God give us his message through a medium with limitations?

Why doesn't God just snap his fingers and make a clear, concise list of rules in modern language just appear in everyone's hands, with footnotes and references and a 1-800 number to call if you have questions?

Why the smoke and mirrors? Why the "Jeez people I told the illiterate Goat Herders 2000 years ago what I wanted isn't that enough?" act?

God is all powerful. You shouldn't have to be giving him excuses as to why the things he doing doesn't make sense.
 
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If god gave you free will then why would he punish you for exercising it?
 
AvalonXQ said:
God issued commands that men could not perfectly follow. Read Hebrews 7 and thereabouts. The writer explains both the problem and the solution.
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Why would god do that?

The first rule of command is 'never issue and order that you know won't be followed'.

(I see I was ninjaed several times:) )
 
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Tricky said:
"Programmed obedience" is not really obedience, though, is it? It's programming. A program can't decide to disobey its code.
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Even so, isn't what Avalon is described "programmed disobedience"?

We are talking about a set of rules that _cannot_ all be obeyed. Where is the free will in that?
 
Tricky said:
"Programmed obedience" is not really obedience, though, is it? It's programming. A program can't decide to disobey its code.
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Semantics.

If A receives an instruction and responds by doing what the instruction says, we can reasonably call that "A obeyed the instruction".

However, there is a meaningful difference if A was programmed to obey, or chose to obey.
 
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I should add, that respect is a two way street, and it funny how much the people of a loving god aren't loving when they find out you don't buy into him.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
Paulhoff said:
I should add, that respect is a two way street, and it funny how much the people of a loving god aren't loving when they find out you don't buy into him.

Paul

:) :) :)
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There's a loving god in the bible? All I ever found was a psychopathic one. Did I have a bible with a few pages stuck together?
 
dafydd said:
There's a loving god in the bible? All I ever found was a psychopathic one. Did I have a bible with a few pages stuck together?
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I'm not reasonable for what they love to read into that black book. :D


Paul


:) :) :)
 
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