The Truth of Christianity vs. All Other Belief Systems

[Lanzy]

God provides the evidence and it is called faith. God has another gift, that even if you do not accept the first one, He has provided an easy way out, through His Son having taken your punishment on himself, to be able to go into oblivion painlessly.[/QUOTE]

What punishment? How does this scapegoating work exactly?

"He died for your sins"; seems completely meaningless.

 

[Ethnikos]

So a more valid analogy would be a parent telling his little kid that if he doesn't clean his room, he'll be disowned and sent to an orphanage, as a warning to his siblings.
Of course, a far more valid analogy would be a dictator sending dissidents to prison camps or having them shot. Sophie Scholl could've lived a quiet life and become a successful student, but no, she chose to be beheaded by disobeying Hitler's NSDAP.

I was listening to Dr. Katherine Albrecht on her radio show, yesterday, reading some of the writings from The White Rose. They could see where things were heading in Germany and spoke out against it, to their own personal consequences. It would be a good thing for everyone to read those because they apply today.
Your warning to siblings analogy is good because we have siblings we have not met who know what is happening on this planet and will benefit from our example. Too bad for all of us, that we have to be the ones born here. God will pay us back with interest for what we have been through, in the next life.

 

[Foster Zygote]

God will pay us back with interest for what we have been through, in the next life.

Again, if God plans to make everything right, eventually, then why didn't he just make everything right the first time out?

 

[Tricky]

Again, if God plans to make everything right, eventually, then why didn't he just make everything right the first time out?

He doesn't have enough power to fix things for everybody, so the corporal world is how he screens out recipients down to just a relative few, so that he won't go metaphysically bankrupt.

 

[Ethnikos]

No faith is faith.
evidence is evidence.

Faith is belief in the absence of evidence.
Redefining one to mean the other is at best intellectual masturbation and at worst deceitful semantic nonsense.

Martin Luther says about faith:
Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.

That's one way of looking at it and he was talking about faith in the context of works, as in salvation. Faith creates works.
It is a little difficult to find a good definition for faith. Here is another argument:
The Greek word behind "faith" in the NT is pistis. As a noun, pistis is a word that was used as a technical rhetorical term for forensic proof. Examples of this usage are found in the NT in Acts 17:31 because he has set a day on which he is going to judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom he designated, having provided proof to everyone by raising him from the dead.

You would need proof of the proof, probably. God gives you the proof spiritually. The spirit is not something out of yourself, that you manufacture. It comes from out of yourself and works in you. The evidence is something you can discern on a normal thinking level because you know yourself how you are different.

 

[yy2bggggs]

You would need proof of the proof, probably. God gives you the proof spiritually.

Begs the question.

The spirit is not something out of yourself, that you manufacture. It comes from out of yourself and works in you. The evidence is something you can discern on a normal thinking level because you know yourself how you are different.

That's not how evidence works. That's how rationalization works--you have your conclusion, and you're ratcheting your observations to it.

Evidence goes the other way--you take your observations, and you try to figure out what to conclude based on them. The fact that we are different doesn't suggest that there's an infinitely big invisible one of us.

 

[Ethnikos]

What punishment? How does this scapegoating work exactly?
"He died for your sins"; seems completely meaningless.

Justice demands a penalty for wrong doing. Jesus took the penalty upon himself in a way that only a person who is also god could do. The point I was making is that Jesus died for the sins of the world, not just some of them. Even if you do not believe it, you benefit from it anyway. First, you were born because the world was not destroyed earlier. You are not punished in some sort of karma fest, in this life. When you reject Jesus, and die, eventually, you can do so without any further punishment.

 

[Elizabeth I]

Do you have a Bible? And if so have you ever read it??

You're a slow learner, aren't you? How many times do you have to be told that many non-believers on this forum have read the Bible repeatedly? Probably more than you have.

 

[Ethnikos]

Again, if God plans to make everything right, eventually, then why didn't he just make everything right the first time out?

At least we can know He loves us. He did not make a universe and just abandon us when we messed up.
I was told by my pastor in private conversation that God created the universe after Lucifer had already made the transition to Satan. He thinks that the world was doomed from the get-go. That seems like a horrible thought to me. As if we are mere pawns in a dispute between God and Satan, over who is more just. If God killed Satan outright, it would have seemed rather arbitrary, so God allows Satan to play his part and run things the way he wants. After everyone blows up the world with nukes, or whatever, God comes in and cleans up the mess, having his proof that Satan was not really looking out for our best interests. Nice story but I find it rather disturbing. I like to think that there was a chance that Adam and Eve could have resisted the Devil and Satan would have been relegated to being able to run his mouth.
No matter what version of the world you want to believe, we are stuck in it for now and we have to realize that siding with the One who can bring you back to life is the way to go. Sitting around and complaining gets you nowhere.

 

[Foster Zygote]

He doesn't have enough power to fix things for everybody, so the corporal world is how he screens out recipients down to just a relative few, so that he won't go metaphysically bankrupt.

I'd still take said god's promises with a grain of salt.

"Doh! I mean... It's all your fault! Just muddle through for a while and I'll be back to make it right after I go make some calculations."

 

[Foster Zygote]

Martin Luther says about faith:
Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.

Faith only proves that people have beliefs, not that those beliefs are true. The Maya used to conduct ceremonies based on their faith that the setting sun became a jaguar that battled the forces of evil in the underworld to return as the sun in the east the following day. They were so sure of their ideas regarding the order and function of the universe that they sacrificed human lives with faith that this would help maintain it.

That's one way of looking at it and he was talking about faith in the context of works, as in salvation. Faith creates works.

It certainly does. Sometimes it inspires people to feed and clothe the poor. Sometimes it inspires people to slaughter women, children and infants in the name of their god. Again, the presence of faith does not verify the object of faith.

It is a little difficult to find a good definition for faith. Here is another argument:
The Greek word behind "faith" in the NT is pistis. As a noun, pistis is a word that was used as a technical rhetorical term for forensic proof. Examples of this usage are found in the NT in Acts 17:31 because he has set a day on which he is going to judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom he designated, having provided proof to everyone by raising him from the dead.

But the rising sun in the east proved to the Maya that Ah Xoc Kin had traveled through the underworld the night before.

Playing semantic games with the word "faith" does not magically turn "belief without evidence" into "belief with evidence".

You would need proof of the proof, probably. God gives you the proof spiritually. The spirit is not something out of yourself, that you manufacture. It comes from out of yourself and works in you. The evidence is something you can discern on a normal thinking level because you know yourself how you are different.

Actually, the spirit would seem to be something within yourself that you manufacture.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Justice demands a penalty for wrong doing.

Unless you're God.

 

[Foster Zygote]

At least we can know He loves us.

If I loved my little son the way your God is said to love his creation, no doubt he'd have been crushed under a speeding car or abducted by some monster by now. Or, more likely, he'd have been taken into the custody of a state that seems far more responsible for helpless children that your callous god.

No matter what version of the world you want to believe, we are stuck in it for now and we have to realize that siding with the One who can bring you back to life is the way to go. Sitting around and complaining gets you nowhere.

Waiting for a magical being to save us gets us nowhere either. Better to realize that the universe is full of natural dangers that can hurt or destroy us no matter what we do or believe. Floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, droughts, comets and asteroids, solar storms, gamma ray bursts... all natural events that have been occurring since before there was even life on the Earth. When these things hurt humans it is nothing personal. It is not punishment for our actions. It is nature.

Better to realize that the good and bad that humans do comes from within us. We are responsible for our actions and it is up to us to make the world a better place.

Better to realize that we are just as vulnerable to extinction as the vast majority of species that have ever existed. If we destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons there will be no benevolent deity to step in and save us, or some of us. If we cause our own extinction then the universe will go on without us for countless billions of years with but a few quiet testimonies to our existence in the form of a handful of space probes and an expanding shell of faint radio signals as a whisper of our existence into the noise of the vast universal sea.

 

[joobz]

Martin Luther says about faith:
Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.

I dont see evidence in that anywhere... interesting...

That's one way of looking at it and he was talking about faith in the context of works, as in salvation. Faith creates works.

Again, I don't see any evidene here. you a talking arround the subject.

It is a little difficult to find a good definition for faith. Here is another argument:
The Greek word behind "faith" in the NT is pistis. As a noun, pistis is a word that was used as a technical rhetorical term for forensic proof. Examples of this usage are found in the NT in Acts 17:31 because he has set a day on which he is going to judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom he designated, having provided proof to everyone by raising him from the dead.

So now you are simply throwing up definitions to see which one sticks?
That behavior is evidence of you dishonestly stating faith=evidence.


this is blatant equivocation. words can and have multiple meanings. Faith as in "faith in god" is not evidence for god regardless of how much semantic game playing you do.

You would need proof of the proof, probably. God gives you the proof spiritually. The spirit is not something out of yourself, that you manufacture. It comes from out of yourself and works in you. The evidence is something you can discern on a normal thinking level because you know yourself how you are different.

Wow that's a lot of nonsense.

Evidence is observable data which support a supposition or hypothesis. There are many provable evidences for god:
1.) God Showing himself/herself
2.) Demonstrate that prayer to him/her has results better than statisical chance
3.) Bring someone back from the dead.
4.) Evidence for ANY biblical miracle...


these are but a few. Strange how lacking the evidence is.

 

[Moochie]

I already changed my mind.

What you believe is foolishness. If you stay here long enough, perhaps your eyes may be opened, your mind may be changed.

One can only hope.

I read this poster's posts and I see a very immature intellect at work. I don't think that it's possible to establish any meaningful dialogue with this person, although, as you say, one can only hope.

I think it's sad.


M.

 

[tsig]

God provides the evidence and it is called faith. God has another gift, that even if you do not accept the first one, He has provided an easy way out, through His Son having taken your punishment on himself, to be able to go into oblivion painlessly.[/QUOTE]

What punishment? How does this scapegoating work exactly?

"He died for your sins"; seems completely meaningless.

He died for them you burn for them.

 

[Ethnikos]

I dont see evidence in that anywhere... interesting...
Again, I don't see any evidene here. you a talking arround the subject.
So now you are simply throwing up definitions to see which one sticks?
That behavior is evidence of you dishonestly stating faith=evidence.
this is blatant equivocation. words can and have multiple meanings. Faith as in "faith in god" is not evidence for god regardless of how much semantic game playing you do.
3.) Bring someone back from the dead.

God brought me back from the dead and I did not know why, when it happened. (Just in case anyone is wondering this is another story and not one from the uselessness of prayer thread. I said a long time ago that I was only starting on my miracle stories. I got stopped after the first three) Anyway, so here I am alive and I am a witness to the fact of God raising the dead. Does that help any? Jesus in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus has Abraham telling the rich man if anyone came back to warn them, it would do no good. Despite that I am here as a witness against you. My resurrection will not save you but it will condemn you. I am testifying that God has the power to do what he wants and if he chooses he can have anyone he wants come back to life and accuse you of your faithlessness.
I tell people that I do not have much faith because I have plenty of evidence in my own life that God is real. There are people who have faith and have never had anything unusual happen to them that would make them believe. I have been stuck with another responsibility, one that goes beyond only believing. (That would be something of a luxury to me) I have to actually do something. My doing something does not save me. I am as human as anyone and God could raise me up for a purpose and I could still fall and die just like anyone. It does not matter at this point and is not something for me to worry about. People who are busy worrying about themselves are useless to God.
What does Jesus say? The harvest is ready and few are the reapers. Maybe God could not spare one. So my life is but for one purpose. Faith is not in myself and is void in that respect. Faith for me is the grabbing onto the promise, for example; Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies.

 

[joobz]

He died for them you burn for them.

John 3:16.5

"For God so loved the world, that he had his son-self give up a weekend, so that whosoever doesn't believe this rediculous story will forever be tortured and I'm guilt free ."

 

[Sun Countess]

God has another gift, that even if you do not accept the first one, He has provided an easy way out, through His Son having taken your punishment on himself, to be able to go into oblivion painlessly.

What exactly am I being punished for? Why was I (or any of mankind) not consulted before this transaction occurred? If it were up to me, and there really were an afterlife, the decent people would go someplace nice, and the really evil people of the world would have to do some hard labor and work their way back to living a nice afterlife.

There's no need for Jesus to die for decent people who DO NOT deserve punishment. The ones who deserve punishment should receive it.

That is honestly the suckiest deal God has ever brokered and I don't know if anyone can convince me otherwise. It does seem to make sense to people who believe they're evil sinners by virtue of their very existence. Newsflash: They're not.

 

[Paulhoff]

God brought me back from the dead and I did not know why, when it happened.

Here is a clue..................... it didn't

Paul