Nighthawk

GreatWhiteNopey just got dissed so bad he should bend over to the front and touch his toes.

Do you become horrified watching Roadrunner cartoons?

I have no idea. But I imagine that any positive mention of rap is way above average on white dork wrestling boards where half the people are from canada and the other half watch buffy.

Are you sure? Chuckie presents things as fact that are absolute bullshit all the time. I wouldn't believe until I saw a picture, just like I didn't believe in that fish that swims up your dick.

By the way, I intentionally waited until it was no longer relevant to say that.

You made me, daddy.

Because all Christians should be baptized. I never indicated otherwise, I just said it doesn't save you. Receiving the Holy Spirit is salvation. It's like saying "They have been saved, so what should stop them from demonstrating their salvation publically with baptism?" Nobody receives the holy spirit until they are saved. For one, I highly doubt you're familiar with every translation. That's not a big deal, but your use of "every single" compels me to point it out. There are very, very many. For one, most translators are not working from a doctrinal standpoint, they're working from a literary standpoint. And in this verse, the most intuitive (but not the only, as my explanation is just as viable, if slightly less likely) translation seems to be as commonly rendered. We must use the rest of the scripture to determine with certainty it's meaning. Also, lots of people do believe in a baptismal regeneration, leaving them happy with the translation. Explain what you mean by original sin. I've seen it used different ways. Which part? Belief being required or God not needing to sacrifice himself? John 3:18 "He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already" Mark 16:16 "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." Matt. 19:26, "But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God, all things are possible." They're both true in one sense and not true in another. I don't remember what I was specifically refering to anymore. Hm, that sounds like a personal interpretation to me. Never known anyone with a dead baby, eh? That's good. But this is one of the least true things you've said. They're judged differently. All the dead aren't condemned to Hell, you know. Actually they are, the different is that the penalty was paid for them by Jesus. Faith without works being dead has nothing to do with salvation or justification. Even if it's dead faith, it's still faith. As works are the natural result of faith, faith is outwardly manifested by works, but is independent of them. As for James 2:24, John Calvin said: "It appears certain that [James] is speaking of the manifestation, not of the imputation of righteousness, as if he had said, Those who are justified by faith prove their justification by obedience and good works, not by a bare and imaginary semblance of faith. In one word, he is not discussing the mode of justification, but requiring that the justification of all believers shall be operative. And as Paul contends that men are justified without the aid of works, so James will not allow any to be regarded as Justified who are destitute of good works. . . . Let them twist the words of James as they may, they will never extract out of them more than two propositions: That an empty phantom of faith does not justify, and that the believer, not contented with such an imagination, manifests his justification by good works." Keep in mind the audience of the epistle, and of Paul's epistles where a grace only salvation is most prominantly presented. They are addressing different opposition here. It's not some wild speculation, I just wanted to save you the trouble of reading the book of Jeremiah, but feel free to anyway, it's a fascinating book, probably my second favorite in the old testament. Killing infants is not the same as judging them, as it says in the Bible "It is appointed to a man once to die and after this the judgement." So you see that they are independent of each other. A declaration of innocence, as we see here, is not a refusal to judge, but a judgement itself, and in this case the infants are already dead. You can't bring Adam and Eve into a discussion about infants, as they were adults, and the very exception that prove the rule under discussion. Hell either exists or it doesn't. If it doesn't, this conversation is unnecesary, and if it does, it doesn't matter whether it was mentioned or not, as it certainly wasn't invented between the old and new testaments. However, the fact that it isn't in the old testament does raise an interesting point, one that has a lot of bearing on my somewhat unusual interpretation of Hell, and of the idea that Jesus used Gehenna figuratively. It is difficult to try to use direct quotes from anyone other than God to support doctrine, and as this is just one example of many, I don't feel the need to belabor it. God didn't correct him, in any case. Stupid people are included as well, which is probably why he didn't say children. I didn't bring it up because I'm trying to keep the conversation lean, but retards fall under the infant salvation dynamic as well. Correct, but as I said, killing is not the same as judging. He did end up destroying Nineveh in the end anyway, in one of the most striking prophecies in the Bible. But animals don't go to Hell, for one (they don't go to heaven either, so I'm not going to make that jump), but the fact is that Nineveh was a city of sin, and God wanted them to repent. Jonah would rather he just kill them all, but God brings up the undeserving, as a seperate class from the sinful and worthy of judgement. It doesn't mean he will never kill them, but it does indicate that he won't condemn them. You're ducking the point which was that you said there was "asolutely no evidence" for the Bible which is blatantly false. I think you don't fully understand what you want. You tried to present the Bible as historical fiction, now you're back to fantasy. In your Gone With the Wind example, is there any reason to believe those things couldn't have happened, other than what we know about the book and it's writing? No. There are reasons to believe hobbits don't exist. Your reasoning as to verification of the Bible as untrue was that it contains things of a miraculous nature, which are by nature unprovable, as if they were provable, they would be natural and cease to be miraculous. So God appears in a book of fantasy, making him false, and it is confirmed as false by it's containment of things which are not possible, not natural, are in fact, supernatural. So your stance is that the Bible isn't true because God can't exist, and God can't exist because the Bible isn't true. Something's wrong with this picture.

You guys are dumbasses. There's more rap fans here than the average place of comparable nature. 2Pac is cool, but I think he's hurt by being forever associated with Biggie Smalls, cause Biggie is a lot better than him. Me Against the World is an excellent album, and though I wouldn't call it the best hip hop album ever, it's one of the best gangsta rap albums ever, hovering around the same level as Doggystyle, with The Chronic and Ready to Die being a little better in my opinion. Changes is actually my favorite 2Pac song. I like the sampling, among other things.

My god that sucks so bad. Just thought I'd let you know.

Hm... better than Incandenza. Probably.

The thread won't die... but neither would Jesus. There's your flaw. If the knowledge is dependent on the choice, it can't be known, except that God is outside time. His knowledge, dependent on choice, is not dependent on when the choice is made. Eh, maybe. I was refering more to choice not existing outside the physical and mental action of choosing. If choice doesn't exist outside the choice, then free will doesn't exist. There was a decent essay on that subject a few pages back, inserting God into the equation becomes somewhat of a moot point. But we both know you physically could do it. You could have a seizure, or hallucinate or something. It's in your power, yet outside your power. The difference between your omnipotence and God's is that yours is defined by the relatively short list of things you can do, God's by the relatively short list of things he can not. Sure, you can. The issue of what God will do and what he won't is more important as relates to us than the limit or lack thereof of his power. Whatever limits on his power there are, we know that losing control of our salvation is not one of them, and that's the significance. Saying he's omnipotent is just something you say cause he's God. If it's technically true, or practically true, or whatever, it's praise. Correct, the only way omnipotence can exist is if it's limited. The limits can even be self imposed, as it says that Jesus voluntarily gave up some of his power while on Earth. This flushes well enough with the partial omnipotence theory. He didn't really prove himself to them. There were some instances where he proved himself better than their gods, but that doesn't mean they must throw down their gods and worship him. They did, a lot of the time, but that was the way people lived. Lots of gods, some people worshipped weaker gods, some people worshipped stronger gods. Israel's God was pretty good, but they still lost battles. In hindsight we can understand this better than they could at the time. If you belief that there is no God, you cannot rationally accept this belief without evolution. This is how it explains the nonexistance of God. It doesn't prove it, but you can't believe it without it. We didn't create them ex nihilo. Our kids are, strictly speaking, equal in value and status to us, unlike God. Also, it's not such a stretch as many people did and do believe that. They overestimate their importance. If you really did understand that, that would be some trick, so yes, quite the cool place to be able to pull that off. You work under the assumption that the Bible exists in a vacuum, which it doesn't. It doesn't just blanketly state claims with no support. Really, you don't come to a belief in God through analysis and study. The spiritual aspect is the significant. You'll gain more faith that God exists from the book of Proverbs than Genesis. Once there, you can look at what else it says from that vantage point. Is the Depeche Mode God in line with what we understand of the relational God? Not at all. The historical God is an extension of the relational God. You're not working from nothing. But there's no reason to think that, and although you may say there's no reason to believe the Biblical view, as I've stated above, there is. Telling God to make a paradise without him because he's omnipotent, by the way, is akin to telling him to make 2 + 2 5. Now don't start that again. Heat is not a part of the lightbulb, it's an element unto itself. Light can be an element unto itself, as such. And I'll be honest with you, I just don't care anymore. Because you said everyone understood omniscience except me. I meant everyone in the world, not everyone in the thread. Supporting something doesn't make it solid, you know. Water supports a boat, water's not solid. The waters being above it was something else, that's how it was supposed to have been at the time. An expanse (air) supporting an atmospheric layer of water. It fell during the flood. Them believing it means nothing. Whether they wrote it down in the Bible is important, and they didn't. If it was important to God, he'd have had them write the truth. He didn't because it doesn't matter. No, just the Bible. It's not the same as mud people, or anything else for that matter. It is unto itself. Of course there were others. Jesus mentioned them. There are still savior gods today. Walk down the street (well, if you live in a big city) and you'll see ten of them. None of them died for your sins. For one, nobody thought that was what the Messiah would do. The very fact that those other Messiahs are nobodies and Jesus is still around today means something. Nobody cares about Mithra anymore. There's your reason. I can give you three reasons why that doesn't make any difference, one practical, one logical, and one functional. One, remember that book, The Wreck of the Titan (actually I think that was a retitle)? Does that book proove that the Titanic didn't sink, and everyone who says it did is making it up? Two, something which is true is unnaffected by predication. Three, it's probably a lie anyway. Support Mithra. You can't at all. If you tell me to support Jesus, I can give you 17 pages. Of course they wouldn't be from the time of Jesus... he dies in them. I don't even have to point out that the concensus of the writing of the gospel was 40 years after Jesus' death, you've done it for me. This is amazingly supportive of the historical accuracy of the gospels. 40 years is nothing in this field. For this to be a game of telephone, the message would have to be written down, and at each link the person would stand up and ask the originator if he still had it right before passing it on. You know what saying something about the year 1964 is today? A 40 year game of telephone. Acts isn't a gospel, by the way. All of them. He did all three things, and each writer recorded one. This is exactly why we have four gospels. You and I could stand next to each other on the street corner and witness a car crash. When the police took our statements, we could have completely different observations, both of them true. He fell on his sword because he had been defeated by the Philistines, which God allowed to happen. The Amalekite lied to gain favor. Not too difficult. It makes it more accurate. We could have had just one of these statements and it be true, this allows a fuller understanding. And people do quite regularly. It's primary function is not a history book, though there are elements of that. All of history is full of lies, in a way. Martin Luther King was a whoremongering plagiarist, yet history records him as a great American. Was he not a great American? No, he was a great American and a whoremongering plagiarist. But that's not how the books make him look. But wait, I wouldn't know that unless at least some of the books did. And this was only a few years ago. So if all history is a lie, what can be believed? Only something inspired. It's spiritual truths are self sufficient, and you can take the history on top of that. One validates the other. I don't know, how? I never stated that you must believe something because a lot of people did. It is evidence, and there is evidence that Hercules was a real person (and he probably was, in one form or another). Evidence does not prove, it supports. I don't think he did. I don't think that warrants throwing out the entire passage, but if you must, it wasn't the only mention of Jesus in his writings. Even if Josephus didn't mention Jesus, it wouldn't mean much, as you said, he was just one of many saviors who messed with the wrong Jews and got himself crucified. Nothing to write home about. Christians were much more important, and increasingly so, and I know you won't try to deny early records of Christians. Don't play games with the word either, because we're talking about Jesus Christ. Their existance in itself supports Christ. Not anything about him, or what he said, but that he existed. Remember what I said about how father can mean grandfather or ancestor? Yeah. Also, Belshazzar was a monarch, somewhat of a sitting king as Nabonidas was a traveller and was, at the time, residing away from Babylon. This is even indicated in Daniel by Belshazzar offering the third place in the kingdom. Why not the second? Because he was the second. This is just muddled records, if anything, the same as when everyone knew Belshazzar wasn't real. Well, Nebuchadnezzar really was. He's one of the most important characters in the Bible, actually. There certainly is evidence of Jesus. I mean seriously, out of all the claims made against Christianity, this is just silly. Jesus never existed? What purpose would making him up serve? How could they convert people to a religion based on a person they supposedly knew, famously taught and performed miracles before crowds of thousands, and was crucified on Passover in Jerusalem (when every Jew travelled to Jerusalem) and nobody had ever seen or heard of him? Come on. And now the disciples weren't real? Who made him up then? What evidence would you expect of Abraham, a desert dwelling nomad of importance to nobody except his descendants? Who would write about him save said descendants, which they certainly did, both Jew and Arab. You know, if Moses didn't exist, then the Israelites weren't slaves. If they were slaves, who freed them? If they weren't, who did the Egyptians keep as slaves? And Noah... honestly man. What corroborating record do you want of a man who lived on the Earth by himself. So the Bible is historical fiction, now? This is just turning surreal. I dunno, they were ashamed? Duh. There actually is a little indication of those things, in a backhanded way. As far as that thing about Tacitus... did you really read all that? Once again, big deal. Jesus wasn't that important. His followers weren't at first either but became so more and more. Also, the archaeopterix was not a transitional fossil. It's not such a big deal, but the very examples they use to support the claim can't be said to definitely refer to direct physical offspring. Well, those aren't really "records" now are they? Again, it doesn't matter what they believed. I could tell you a lot of other things they believed that were wrong. You can't make these general statements because there are indications of accurate science as vague and undogmatic as these. Well, I bet a lot of things were written by those cultures that we don't have anymore. Writings get old and fall apart if somebody doesn't make a conscious effort to preserve them. By this logic, remember, you support the flood. It does say he laid aside some of his power. There are a few beliefs you can't deviate from, and many you can. The catholics break the important ones. There's no way it was 50000 people, by the way, there weren't even 50000 people in that town. That's a translation error, and a real easy one to make. They weren't innocent, either. Well, it is very clear why God said to kill everybody and everything, but it's a somewhat complicated issue and perhaps I'll discuss it later. It gives it's reasons though, it's not a mystery. Ok, if I lived in Atlanta until I was 15 and then moved to St. Louis for 5 years, I don't say I grew up in St. Louis. I never hated Christianity, per se, it was the church, and even then it wasn't really "hate" it was just a fun game to play. Of course religion is indoctrination, but I disagree with most christians (ie catholics), which is the indoctrination and the prettiest cup combined. Real christianity is a very small and unknown phenomenon. Notice I said real and not true, an important distinction. I'd have absolutely no problem denyng the existance of God and saying we came from nothing and evolved to the state we see before if that made sense, but it just doesn't. God is a given. Regardless of what word you use, abiogensis proves a god at some point in time. Which God? I still study it all the time. It's fascinating. God as my witness, I will respond to the rest of this. Eventually.

That was before Chaplin's Great Dictator, by the way. My favorite short was Uncivil Warriors (you can probably guess which one that was by the title), and my favorite scene was everything from when Larry impersonates Moe's father until the end of that one. They were hitting on all cylinders all the way through. Larry is my favorite stooge, by the way, but I'm probably the only one you'll meet in your life. I like Shemp and Curly equally.

You know, if everybody turns on Eminem, you know who he needs to turn to to get his back? ICP. Seriously. Think about it.

No, never have. Sounds like a rip off of Reefer Madness, though.

"Guts" suffers from the same problem that plagued the Marquis. He was trying way too hard.

Killer Klowns is in no way obscure.

Excellent points, although I have one minor quibble, in Biblical times (with increasing regularity reaching a high point during the time of Jesus) there was rampant divorce. People were misusing a verse in Dueteronomy to say that God allowed them to get a divorce for any reason whenever they wanted. There was a lot of this in the New Testament Jews. They were extremely religious people, but no less sinful than anyone else. They would take the Old Testament and twist it around to allow them to do things which God had forbid, but they wanted to do. They had a rationalization for everything. Much of what Jesus said and did was countering this course of action. All he said about how it matters where your heart is was in response to this, about how it matters less what God says and more what he means. Not that it's difficult to know what God means, it's about you twisting a perfectly understandable decree of God around to fit your preference. And people today are doing the very same thing with Jesus' rebukes as the Jews were doing to warrant his rebuke in the first place. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Mine was. One good trend deserves another.

By the way, rappers did make up the word thur, it's how they talk in Missouri. Fools.

Now I know how Incandenza feels.

Perhaps there is, on a subconscious level. I mean, if somebody's just completely clueless and awkward at sex, it's not like it's particularly difficult to learn or improve. By the way, I can't think of anyone offhand who has regretted abstinance, but I can think of several people who regretted doing it. But you're right, what's done is done, it's not going to kill you (probably).

I was trying to agree with you. Stunning wit. The point was that we might as well throw the dictionary definition out the window because it means something totally different than what everyone thinks it does. The internet dictionary defines cult as "A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader" by the way.

Maybe not, but if you had waited until you were 29, you wouldn't look back and regret not doing it either. Eh, I consider that copatability thing pretty much bullshit, kind of a crutch for people who feel guilty about having sex. Sex is sex, it's not like blood types.

Well, I can't just go handing out my brilliant insight like tupenny rice... but very well. Cult is a very misunderstood idea in this culture. It is, in truth, only a word which can be applied to many things. We have cult movies and tv shows, cult books and cult bands. It involves a relatively small and relatively devoted following. Using cult as a way to talk down about a religion brings it's own set of problems, because by definition every religion is a cult. So what does this make cult? Meaningless. How can we distinguish cult, the true definitionk, from cult, the popular definition? Well, it's like this: the popular definition of cult involves relgious devotion to or based on a (wo)man. If most of your rites and doctrines are all the work of one man, you are a cult. So here, Mormans qualify, as they are based on the teachings of Brigham Young. JW's do as well, as they can be traced to Charles Russell, although this is less flagrant than in the case of Mormonism. Catholics? Eh. They have a supreme overlord, but their genesis and doctrine is not rooted in his teaching, it's rooted in the Bible. Which makes them Christians in the popular sense of the word, if not the spiritual. Christian= not cult. But wait, some semi Christian organizations are cult. The Worldwide Church of God for example (at least they used to be, they've actually cleaned up their act), basically Christianity but all run through the sift of Herbert W. Armstrong. That's the difference. So, there you go. By true definition, most everything is a cult, and the word loses all meaning. By popular definition, I say we say it's rooted in one (hu)man, and by this Catholics are excluded. It may interest you to know that Pentacostals are a cult by this definition as well.

You'll probably rethink some things after you've been in love. I wouldn't agree with marriage at an early age either, but the answer is just don't have sex. It's not that hard. Christianity never claimed sex was evil, after all, God invented it. That's a false image, although it is perverted in the sense that perversion is what deviates from what is normal or intended, and as God intended sex to be restricted to marriage, to not do so is a perversion. It's no "worse" than any other sin though. Sin is sin, in the eyes of God. It being enjoyable isn't the standard, as I'm sure we could all name enjoyable things which are not good for us. Once you start having more sex, and start dealing with the consequences of sex, you'll see that there really was something to what God said afterall. Trust me on this one.