Respecting Christians

Minarvia said:
That confuses me. This, and likely any other god, is not an entity who is likely to bargain, is he/she? If not, then if you mess with what they demand of a follower, than that follower is royally screwed for all eternity. Or do I have this wrong?
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I can only assume they don't really believe but enjoy playing along with the fantasy.
 
cj.23 said:
I recall Yrreg vaguely, but only as a name. Never met Jabba. Does DOC not sign his? If you think I might be one of these posters, I'm not. I have posted on and off for ages, and my blog is linked at the bottom of my posts, I have never been bothered to conceal my identity, as I don't see the point in trolling or being antagonistic. Darat can probably vouch I am epically tedious, but not a sock puppet.

cj x
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Goodness, no! I do NOT believe you are any of those posters! For one thing, you are far to intelligent, articulate, and polite. Besides that, you use the English language quite well!

Tedious? Maybe! LOL I don't know about that, but don't think there is any chance at all that you are Yrreg or DOC! I don't know Jabba, so I can't say. Signing posts is not uncommon around here, so I don't take that as anything serious. :)
 
tsig said:
God deliberately blinding himself to certain facts shouldn't be a surprise since gods reflect their believers.
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Here is the problem with god blindfolding himself to certain facts.

If i want to never smoke a cigarette in my life, i must know what a cigarette is, so that i can avoid smoking one. This isn't a problem if we are talking about something, but when it comes to simple knowledge...

If my goal was to never have any experience with a cigarette ever, it is impossible. Because to know i don't want to have any experience with a cigarette, i need to have some knowledge of cigarettes ( at the very least what they are.) , which instantly stops me from being able to never have any kind of cigarette experience or knowledge.

So to illustrate using a more divine example.

God doesn't want to know how everything is going to turn out. In order to know what he needs to blindfold himself from... (there is no way for this not to be repetitive.)god needs to know what to blindfold himself from, which means he already knows it.

But then he could just magic that knowledge away, but that leaves him in the awkward position of being right back where he started. Now that he has absolutely no knowledge of what he doesn't want to know about, he doesn't know what he doesn't want to know. Which means that he has no idea if he is seeing it, which means that he needs to find out what it is, which means he knows, and on and on it goes.

It would be like if i could erase my memory of how my remote works, in order to stop watching so much t.v. I'd do it, then see the remote, fiddle a bit, turn the t.v. on , remember that i didn't want to watch so much t.v., erase my knowledge of the remote, fiddle with the remote a bit, turn the t.v. on, etc etc etc.

In short, ham fisted character nerfing in order to make the character more interesting. The bible does this more than supernatural for **** sakes.
 
tsig said:
Another believer that won't say what they actuality believe.
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I spend ages saying exactly what I believe. :) I'm hardly evasive!!? (this is serving the useful purpose of a break from work I should be doing)

cj x
 
cj.23 said:
Yes. Lots of people rise from the dead though. That is not in itself very dramatic, though three days is as far as I know unheard of. Resurrection is more than that, more than resuscitation, miraculous as that seems to me (and praised be modern medicine and paramedics etc!). However the answer to your question is almost certainly yes. I believe Jesus returned from death, rose from the tomb, on the third day. Physically. Really. Not metaphotocally, but as in he was actually there.

So yep.

cj x
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I wasn't aware of this phenomenon, kinda cheapens Jesus s' resurrection if it was commonly happening.

Have you met any dead people?
 
mutile said:
I can only assume they don't really believe but enjoy playing along with the fantasy.
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I currently have a house-guest who does just that. She is incapable of reason and cannot answer the simplest questions regarding her "faith." She really likes the community aspect and wants comfort for her times of trouble and depression, but I don't think for a moment that she genuinely believes her professed faith.

Others, yes, but not this woman. She wears the rose-coloured glasses when things are going well, but when they are not, all of a sudden she has a "crisis of faith" and other things like that. She goes onto this Sim called "Second Life" and meets with other Christians, but eventually they all begin to drift away from solid conversation and start to pair up at bonfires and talk about more...intimate things. I don't think all Christians on that Sim do that, but her group does.

So yeah, I'm sure many just call themselves Christians but really aren't.

I'd rather she be honest with herself. Knowing her as well as I do, it would also likely help her feel better about her pain following her recent divorce and her problems with meeting and keeping a boyfriend, and all the other drama she has going on. I can only help her so much before I just don't know what to say or do to help more than I am. :(
 
dafydd said:
That is my problem with Christianity. The bible, the infallible word of god, is a pick 'n' mix free-for-all. Rather amusing to an atheist like me.
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Here is a guidebook that contains all morality you ever need and was written with the intervention of a being that has absolute knowledge and control over the universe.

So, you know, just ignore all you want, and you only have to follow the bits you like. And really you don't even have to do that, all we care about is that you call yourself a christian, and believe in god. And even if you don't , i'm sure we could find some kind of denomination for you.

It boggles my mind how religious people can do this **** with a straight face.

Imagine if i read instructions on how to put together a stereo, in the same manner folks read the bible...

" Okay, make sure you have 30 feet of speaker wire...**** that, make sure all speakers are in the appropriate places as evidenced in diagram 1A, Nope, make sure stereo is plugged into an outlet, not on your life manual, i'm not paying extra electricity...

What is wrong with this p.o.s. ?"

Unfortunately , analogy wise when christians get to that last part there is nothing that is supposed to happen so they can simply claim success.
 
dafydd said:
Links? Proof? And what does ''metaphotocally'' mean?
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It means I'm typing too fast. Metaphorically. Sorry. :)

People are resuscitated all the time in most hospitals after being dead for a few seconds. Why brain death probably the best way of declaring what dead actually is. Still big medical debate, but yes we resuciatate people. My point was I don't mean that when I say Jesus came back from the dead. If we believe Lazarus was raised from the tomb after three days by Jesus, do we believe his return to the living was the same as that of Jesus? I don't think so. What happens next is different. This would be another thread though, but an interesting one.

cj x
 
sadhatter said:
Here is a guidebook that contains all morality you ever need and was written with the intervention of a being that has absolute knowledge and control over the universe.
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Two questions

1. Is that actually a belief of Christianity re the Bible?

and

2. When were the first Christians around then?

cj x
 
cj.23 said:
It means I'm typing too fast. Metaphorically. Sorry. :)

People are resuscitated all the time in most hospitals after being dead for a few seconds. Why brain death probably the best way of declaring what dead actually is. Still big medical debate, but yes we resuciatate people. My point was I don't mean that when I say Jesus came back from the dead. If we believe Lazarus was raised from the tomb after three days by Jesus, do we believe his return to the living was the same as that of Jesus? I don't think so. What happens next is different. This would be another thread though, but an interesting one.
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A few seconds. Exactly. How many dead people have you met? Ones that were dead for three days and then came back to life.
 
dafydd said:
So you would prefer to discuss semantics. That's understandable.
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Have a look. If you hold a belief in the inerrancy or infallibility of the Bible is essential to Christianity, when did the first Christians exist in your opinion? Genuine question...

cj x
 
Minarvia said:
I'd rather she be honest with herself. Knowing her as well as I do, it would also likely help her feel better about her pain following her recent divorce and her problems with meeting and keeping a boyfriend, and all the other drama she has going on. I can only help her so much before I just don't know what to say or do to help more than I am. :(
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You are doing loads. You have taken her in as a guest, are sympathetic and are listening. You are doing just wonderfully. And hey, maybe she will meet someone in her Sim, but I'm glad you are there for her. We all get fluffy about our beliefs at times, but she is probably pretty mixed up. Seriously respect the kindness you are showing her though. :)

cj x
 
cj.23 said:
Have a look. If you hold a belief in the inerrancy or infallibility of the Bible is essential to Christianity, when did the first Christians exist in your opinion? Genuine question...
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Educate yourself about the history of your religion. I know when they appeared but frankly I don't really care. Genuine answer.
 
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dafydd said:
Where does it say in the bible that part 2 cancels out part 1?
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The claim is that Jesus is God incarnate, so it trumps the earlier scriptures. Mark 3: 1 - 6 is one example, though actually nowhere in the Old Testament does it say it is wrong to heal on the Sabbath as far as I know anyway. Still to a Christian the revelation of God in the flesh trumps the revelation of God in the Scriptures through the prophets, or rather complements it.

cj x
 
cj.23 said:
The claim is that Jesus is God incarnate, so it trumps the earlier scriptures. Mark 3: 1 - 6 is one example, though actually nowhere in the Old Testament does it say it is wrong to heal on the Sabbath as far as I know anyway. Still to a Christian the revelation of God in the flesh trumps the revelation of God in the Scriptures through the prophets, or rather complements it.
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The claim? Who first made this claim? So the answer to my question was nowhere.
 
dafydd said:
Educate yourself about the history of your religion. I know when they appeared but frankly I don't really care. Genuine answer.
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I'm pretty good on history. I recall that we have references to Christians in the first century in pagan sources, but we can effectively say that they split from Judaism at some point in the late 1st century. So let's say 100CE. We are in 2012CE. So we have about 1900 years (well 1912) of Christianity then.

I guess we can date the commonly accepted canon to the 380's, but lets go for Origen of Alexandria in the early 200's as the earliest modern Bible with a New Testament of 27 books. Of course the protestants tend to lose the deuterocananoical books after the 15th century - but anyway, we have at least 100 years of Christianity where there was no Bible. Critically, the earliest Jewish Christians had no New Testament, because it had not been written at that point.

So I guess my point is: the Church predated the Bible, as does Christianity?

cj x
 
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