chaosrage

Right, you have no words because you can't discuss anything intelligently. Thanks for proving my point!

Oh, you guys gave me a bunch of posts to respond to on my birthday. You shouldn't have!

Jesus, you're dumb. I didn't ask you if he would. I asked you what would you do if he did. And would you worship God if he didn't bribe you with heaven? Yeah, I'm not arguing this. I'm arguing that it's not a fact that he's good. It's just a feeling that you have. The only difference between us is that instead of thinking for yourself, you blindly accept it because he said he was good. Because you decided he would be your authority. I feel that he's bad. Could I be wrong? Well, no because if he existed and he told me he was right and everyone in the world agreed that he was right, I would say that you're all wrong. We either both have authority to say that God is bad or good, or neither one of us have that authority. You keep dancing around this point because you can't stand to look at it. If I can't judge him to be bad, then you can't judge him to be good. We can't tell if he's good, we can't tell if he's telling the truth, we can't even tell if he exists because that would be a judgement and our definitions are distorted. Without making judgements, we wouldn't be able to arrive at ANY conclusion, and we'd have to remain completely neutral about everything concerning God. Why is it you haven't done so? I've never seen you dicuss anything intelligently yet. If you did it with anyone, I would be impressed.

I'm pretty sure their faith isn't dead. They know that God's there. James said that faith was dead without good works.

A lot of times the NASB takes the translation that makes the religion look the best, not paying any attention to what the Hebrews who wrote it and read it believed. Example: Using the expanse meaning for raquiya instead of firmament. Hebrews didn't think God was talking about an expanse, they thought the sky was solid. Ratsach as murder. Fruit depart from her as prematurely. Translating Ra as calamity instead of evil. Etc.. As for a lot of scholars thinking it's the most literal, you said the same thing about most scholars believing in the authorship of Luke. Then I gave you a bunch of quotes from scholars saying just the opposite. I'm not going to look for quotes or argue about it anymore than that because this is really off topic. No, IDRM has, I've never seen you hold your own in any debate to be honest. You basically go into every religion thread and say "blah blah, you're wrong, and this is true because I believe it's true.", while sidestepping over the hard questions. For instance, you say we can't judge God because our standards are distorted. But then you turn around and judge God to be good and judge him to be truthful. You have no authority to do this, you even admitted it. By your own logic, you can't judge him as good or truthful because we can't judge God. Respond to this. To an extent, I've been holding my own in an argument in this thread about the existence of invisible magic mud men. Does that mean it has an authoritative base? So you speak with authority because you think what you're saying is true. Well I think there isn't a God so now I must have the authority to tell you there isn't. Yes, I know you believe the created doesn't have the authority to tell the creator how things are. I don't agree, and I think that makes you a brainwashed zombie. It's akin to standing around and watching your father kill hundreds of people and doing nothing to stop him because he's your father and must know what's right. As for bullying, you two are the ones giving me threats of hell. I just find it comical you think that would do anything but push people further away from your religion. That wasn't the question I wanted answered for one thing, and you didn't answer this one either. I believe the question was IF Satan did offer you a better deal, if you found out through personal experience that he did offer a better deal, would you switch sides? Answer the question.

False. You apply a human distortion of love to God. It doesn't work that way. God defines love for us to understand. We don't define love and use that to try and understand God. Hey, this isn't authoritative, right? If you get to be authoritative, then I get to be it too. False. We do define love and if you say otherwise, then you're just a robot believing anyone tells you. What you're saying is that we can't judge God because our standards are half-assed and distorted. If that's true, then you can't call him good or bad. You don't know if he's lying or telling the truth. You have no opinion at all about him. This is like the 10th time I've explained this to you this year. Jeffrey Dahmer's sense of Justice is a part of His sense of love, as it should be. And lucky for all of us, Dahmer's sense of Love tends to govern His sense of justice. He didn't really want to murder and eat people but he had to out of his sense of love. It's justice at the same time because they deserved to be eaten for being so tasty. The two are undeniably bonded and this is the way it should be. If not, there would be no discipline. There would be no right or wrong. Makes as much sense. We aren't. Our ancestors sinned. Well sort of. Turns out they were innocent and couldn't tell good from evil. Do innocent people deserve complete death, spirtual and physical? Guess they might if you're too scared of what might happen to you after you die to think anything else. Of course. How would you like it if a bunch of assholes came up to you and told that you deserve death for being a christian and rebelling against atheism? Again we have God sacrificing himself in order to save us from.. HIMSELF, because he loves us. Can you please stop saying this shit? Of all the things in this thread, this is the most embarassing to read because I know you honestly believe it and it's the most insulting because you expect us to be dumb enough to believe it too. Your loving God tortures newborns to punish their parents, killed off the entire world with a flood, tested Abraham's faith by seeing if he was willing to murder his son, killed the firstborn of all the Egyptians, created earthquakes and diseases, and ordered the slaughter of infants and animals. That makes me wonder what the word love means to you. Question. (that I know you won't answer) If God didn't bribe you with the promise of eternal life, would you still worship him and call him love? If Satan offered you a better deal, would you switch sides and call him love instead?

And you don't word things as authoritative? The NASB for one.

I remember, but you also said we blindly believe evolution after that. The theory of evolution and the theory of abiogenesis are totally different theories. What do you have against abiogenesis anyway? The only way an earthquake isn't bad or good is if things just happened. But if a God was in charge, then the world was made a certain way to have earthquakes. That's bad. And that's the difference. He brutally kills people on purpose, which is cruel. That's an inescapable fact. To some people, cruelty might not be evil though. It's hardly an act of love however. It's an act of supreme indifference to us at best. Evolution is cold and brutal and definitely not a loving act. Any being who would create it on purpose is really a sadistic fuck. Yet by definition, God couldn't be. So again, it's a contradiction, like saying you have a squared triangle. If it was square, it wouldn't be a triangle. A square triangle can't exist. Neither can the Christian God. You didn't answer the question though. WHAT makes you think he's good? How do you know he's not insane or just plain lying? He could just be a demon trying to trick you into joining him. (And if you can't judge him for yourself, how would you know he wasn't?) You might just be walking right into his trap. Since we don't know, it's just as likely that the definition of God is evil. If I told you that a serial killer who killed 200 people was good, and told you that you can't say he isn't good because by definition GOOD IS WHAT HE IS, would you just take my word for it and call him a good person? Or would you think I was a lunatic? Well it's not negated by it because it just isn't true. Simple logic. If action "A" is evil then if being #1 performs that action he is evil. So why, when being #2 performs action "A' he isn't evil? If action "A" is evil then any being who performs it is evil. Let's say A is killing infants to punish their parents. That doesn't mean some crazy person won't think A is good. What it does mean is if you consider A to be good, it has to be good for everyone to do A. You really think nothing could be considered right or wrong without a God? What the hell? But no one deserves to suffer for an eternity. Why do think everyone would deserve to suffer? Because Adam and Eve ate an apple? Nah, rejection has nothing to do with disbelief. If he showed up one day, I would choose to either accept or reject him regardless of what I believed before that. In fact, the only way you could accept or reject him is if you believed in him. The point is he ISN'T offering me a chance. He's only offering people that believe in him a chance. And I wouldn't be emotionally capable of believing it even if I wanted to. You want me to believe in something, then you have to make sense and you have to have evidence that it's true. What about donating money to charity is pain and suffering? If I were a hippie, I'd say all death and torture is bad. I would say no one should be tortured at all even if thousands of people could be saved. But I don't say that. No, it's predicated on the idea that evil exists. Is it a good to create evil, evil people, evil things, Satan, etc..? If it was, evil would have to be good. Instead of needless, I'd say pointless. And it's been my stance all along. You're mixing up cruel and evil. I already explained what's pointless about hell. So no need to do it again. Already answered this too. No crime could fit that harsh of a punishment. It's not that people are inherently good. It's that there's no way anyone could do something bad enough to deserve an eternity of suffering. This is all pretty irrelevant because hell isn't sentenced to killers or terrible criminals, but to honest people and murderers alike just for making the best decision they can make using the limited intelligence and knowledge that God gave them. That's not justice by any definition of the word. Nobody does deserve it, but if people did, it would still be wrong because of who gets sent there. That's not a contradiction, just two separate arguments. I'm saying it's not true, but even if it was true, it wouldn't matter. Hitler was a Catholic, he grew up as an altar boy, and said he was killing Jews in the name of God. I can give you 10 pages of quotes showing you that he was a Catholic. That doesn't matter either though. Hitler was only an example. If he was a catholic, he would go to heaven, while the jews went to hell and you would have to be okay with it. That's the important part. While we're at it, if Hitler gave the Jews a choice to renounce their faith and become nazis, would you call them 15 year olds for evaluating that choice? What makes what Hitler did different from what God does? There's no difference between the two, except that Hitler only condemned people to their death because of their beliefs, while God condemns people to eternal suffering for their beliefs. That makes God about a million times worse. And I didn't address what you said because it was all based on an invalid point. That we deserve hell and need to have someone killed for us in the first place. I can't bend my mind enough to assume that's true because I know it isn't true. That's like saying "Pretend Hitler spared a million Jews and only killed 5 million instead of 6. Now assume that they all deserved to be killed. That makes him loving for sparing some, doesn't it?" Saying that no one deserves to go to hell isn't the same thing as everyone deserves to go to heaven. I've said a bunch of times that he could create an Earth-like for people who didn't believe in him or don't want to be with him. We're proof that he can do it. I don't believe in him and as far as I know, I'm not in hell right now. Besides that, we know he can do it because he's omnipotent. You were going good until you got to the part about "if it were true". Do you hate Santa because if it were true, you would need to be good or you wouldn't get any presents? Of course not because you don't think it is true, so who cares. I don't hate it because of that. I hate it because it tries to get you to be a christian out of threats of torture instead of God being such a good and wonderful thing that if you believe you'll get to be with him and be happy forever. It speaks volumes about what christians themselves believe. A christian should look at that verse you quoted and think I don't want any fucking thing to do with that prick. But their own fear of what he'll do to them keeps them from doing it. That's just sad. Let's take the Santa analogy and change it around a little bit. We won't say he'll reward kids for being good and punish them for being bad because if God did that, well... it would at least make some kind of sense. So let's say he molests little children. If you don't leave milk and cookies out for Santa, he'll molest you. I leave milk and cookies out for Santa, and you should too. Since Santa shows his love by not molesting me, I worship him. If he molests you, it's your own fault for not giving him any cookies. You can't say that he's wrong for doing it. It's justice. You had the chance to give him milk and cookies and be saved but you didn't. Now you deserve what you get. THIS IS WHAT YOU SOUND LIKE TO ME! Yes, I know. It's really the only thing that makes sense if you think about it, heh.

Prove it. And can you receive the holy spirit without a belief a God? Every translation that I looked at. You can compare about 20 translations at blueletterbible, crosswalk, etc.. and they all have 'and' and none have 'even'. Even the crappy liberal translations that Spiderpoet likes has it as 'and'. Babies are born sinners because of Adam and Eve. So they have to be baptised. If they aren't, and they die, then they go to the lake of fire. Right, but so is yours. Not very strong evidence that the baby went to heaven when we can't even be sure if David was sad or not. If you say so. It sounded like they didn't even have time to give the baby a name. That can't compare. Exactly, you made it sound like when people who don't believe in God die, they get judged by deeds so babies might go to heaven. But really everyone gets judged by their belief and their deeds if you believe one set of verses or just their belief if you believe the other sets of verses. If you weren't saying that, what were you saying? *Tries to hold back on that last sentence* The devils have dead faith. Are they in heaven? Nope. If faith is dead, how can you expect to be saved with it? Still a contradiction. Paul says to be justified, you just need belief. And James says you need works along with belief. They were adults, but just like infants they didn't know right from wrong. They were innocent and God didn't really give a shit, did he? He judged them. God judged the entire world as wicked, which is why he killed them in the flood. If he would have judged everyone except for infants and animals, he would've let them live. He didn't though. Whether or not they went to hell, who knows. But it's BS to say that God won't judge infants or animals. So hell might not exist at all now? In the OT, no one talked about eternal torment, but in the NT, Jesus did. What can I say? This is why Jews don't believe in hell. The flames might be figurative but the part about eternal torment can't be. If the flames are figurative, they would be figurative for the eternal torment. Maybe God just didn't feel talking about hell in the OT. Maybe you should be Jewish instead of a Christian. I just said outloud that there is a hell and God didn't correct me either! What's up with that? But killing is the same as judging. He judged that every living thing in Amalek needed to be smited because "he remembers what it did to Israel". And listen to what you're saying. Jonah wanted him to kill them all, not condemn them. And God didn't want to do it. But then he changed his mind a century later. There's no indication that he won't condemn them. Historical fiction is still fiction. Gone with the Wind is just as true as Lord of the Rings. They're both made up stories. One is just based on real events and the other isn't. The fact that the Civil War was real isn't any more evidence for GWTW being true than finding hobbits would be evidence that LOTR was true. Speaking of, Yahoo! News - Remains of New Species of Hobbit-Sized Human Found Yep, I told you that you wouldn't like it. But if you don't agree with it, you have to accept that the story of King Arthur and the Illad are just as likely to be true and just as reliable as real history. If you read a book about the civil war and you have no idea who wrote it, but it has dragons and zombies in it, you can bet that it probably is not true. I never said God can't exist because the bible isn't true. I said there's no evidence of God and the bible isn't it. Just because dragons are in a civil war story doesn't mean there's evidence of dragons. Understand?

(passes out)

It does work that way. The reason why is because there's no evidence that he did. I thought we went over that. I can't make a case against him doing it because there isn't anything to make a case against. If you think he did, then build your case. How does the text point itself to Luke as the author? It's anonymous. Holy shit, SP is the school counselor from south park. I asked you a question and you gave two paragraphs that didn't have anything to do with the question. The question bothered you a little bit. It's okay, you can admit it. Jesus will still love you. Don't try to pretend like you didn't answer because you think it's pointless arguing with me when just a couple posts ago you were looking for a way to jump in on the stupid light debate. Figures that you'd pick the most pointless thing to want to argue about. Just because most people believe something does not make it the truth. That said, can you give me evidence that it's the accepted standing? Not among fundies but real scholars?

If someone gets destroyed someone in a fight, it doesn't mean they're erased from existence. They're just really messed up. If he can't coexist with sin, then how is he able to coexist with us right now? We're in his presence, aren't we? God could give us a second chance. Or he could make that ice cream world I was talking about with a little bit of his presence so we don't wail and gnash our teeth in the afterlife. We only eat ice cream a lot. It might not be flames but it's not a good place to go. Alright, we both agree on that. The flame part isn't really important if we accept that it's eternal torment. How hard would it have been for the rich man to get in heaven and gain understanding and realize what he did was wrong and feel sorry for what he did because it was wrong? And to try get the message across to his brethren that it's wrong because poor people suffer? Or have him in a place away from God, not a horrible place of flames just a place away from God, who he can't see because God disapproves of the life he lived. There's lots of ways he could've got the message across better without being nice for fear of torture. Belief in God is just one sin. There's lots of other sins I could do if I believed in God. So no, I don't think I'd be a robot anymore than I'm a robot for you typing that post and proving to me that you exist. It would be a choice and a threat. Just like it is now. Guess what? I'm warning you right now that aliens are coming kill you. Evidence? HA, that would make it a threat, not a choice. Run outside and hide. He should understand because he created us and built us to not be perfect. If he doesn't understand, that's fine. What's not fine is if he doesn't give us a second chance even if we say we're sorry and promise not to sin anymore.

They're both assumptions to make, but one is a bigger assumption than the other. If someone tells you that someone is very sick, you'll probably assume that they're suffering. You probably won't assume that they're in a coma. It would be if I had put them there knowing they would starve. Yeah, I wouldn't do that, but if all I had to do was snap my fingers and make food fall from the sky I'd do it. Sin is to blame for us not doing anything, but God is to blame as well for not doing anything. And sin isn't to blame for diseases. Who's responsible for that? God, and no one else. He was in the old days. But nevermind. We aren't getting the problem fixed, and they aren't getting fed. If God cared about them, he would come up with a new plan that works or feed them like he did the hebrews. A parent wouldn't say "Hmm.. I think I'll let my kids starve because I don't want them to think they have to depend on me for everything." But what if those babies don't die and instead they grow up suffering their whole lives and believe in a different God or no God? Then they go to hell to spend their eternity suffering. God: "Well.. sucks to be them."

At best that's micro-evolution. Not the huge advances in species change that Darwin theorized about. At the end of the day, it's still a dog. It hasn't grown a fifth leg or gained some new physical ability that other dogs didn't have before. Someone name the passage. Chances are the entire discussion is retarded. This is sad. You do realize that macro and micro-evolution are the same process, simply taking different amounts of time, right?

Okay, so I didn't, but it's there for you if you want to see it. Ever did those bacteria experiments in biology class? If you did, you proved evolution. And evolution has to work for the flood to work. Fossils show that creatures tens of thousands of years age were pretty much the same as they are now though. Sure, just like you decide that God is good and he exists on your whim. What makes you think he is good? Because he said he was good? That's not enough. You have to judge him by his actions, the things he did, the things he commanded, the world he created (not that the world is bad, but nature itself is cruel. Someone would have to be cruel to create a world on purpose where creatures have to kill and eat each other to stay alive.), and the severe punishments he gives you for rejecting him. Because no crime could ever fit that harsh of a punishment. Especially if you didn't even DO anything, you just had a THOUGHT that God didn't like. Fine, you don't think David's baby was tortured. But you know he was killed to punish David and you know that God has killed and commanded infants to be killed and you know he advocated killing people who didn't believe in him. If you think God is good, you have to think these things are good and it's good for us to go around killing infants to punish their parents. After all they go to heaven maybe, so it doesn't matter. If you don't agree, then God can't be good, and by definition he would be a contradiction, so it would be impossible for him to exist. I've learned that those things are wrong in my 20 or whatever years, and you have too. Even if you say you didn't, you're only letting God's opinion override your sense of right and wrong. No, I don't think that would be a very nice thing to do to my kids. I got it from the sappy idea of God from the NT where Jesus calls God love. Making billions of people suffer for an eternity isn't love. Just like hot isn't cold. Wet isn't dry. strong isn't weak, etc.. If not believing is the same as rejecting, how do you explain that if God proved came down from heaven, I would still reject him? Well. I can't absolutely say for sure that I would, maybe I'd be too scared to reject him. But if I did accept him, it would only be out of fear of torture, not because I loved him. It's a gift but only given to people who do something for him in return. Under our definition for cruel and our own court system, it would still be cruel. He has the authority to decide if he deserves it, just like I do. I'm not going to say he's wrong just because I'm the one torturing him. The difference is I'm not perfect or omnipotent. If I could save those 1000s of people without torturing him, I would. Why wouldn't God? Because he's cruel. It sounded like you were saying if we had the authority to say that rejecting God doesn't deserve punishment, it would be up for us to decide the punishment. In that case we couldn't say whether or not anything's wrong unless we're the ones doing whatever it was we thought was wrong. Is community service pain and suffering? If it is, it isn't very much. Can you say the same about hell? No, you can't. Does God have the power to stop it? Yep, he does. That's the reality. God is cruel. If on the other hand he has to do it because it's in his nature to send people to hell, then it's just in God's nature to be cruel. Not much difference. To think that he does exist, you basically have to twist your mind around to think that good is evil. Otherwise he wouldn't have created it or allow it to exist, and there wouldn't be an evil place called hell for evil people that God made knowing they would be evil. Unless it's good to have evil. And it can't be. That makes no sense. Alright, I'll assume it's true. God needed to sacifice himself and had no choice but to pay for our sins with a sacrifice. Wait, my brain just exploded. Ok, let me try again. God had to do this. I would wonder why he just did it for people who believed in him and not everyone. It's good that he did it for some people, but that wouldn't make my atheist sons and daughters being tormented in hell, or the jews Hitler gassed going to hell while Hitler goes to heaven any better. This is why I hate Christianity. Yeah, and "God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie" - 2 Th:11-12 God is a liar, the bible even says it, why believe anything he says?

If they already received the holy spirit, why did he need to baptize him? Peter said they received the holy spirit, therefore nothing should keep them from being baptised with water. Then he baptised them. I don't see how that is an example of salvation without baptism. If 'and' is used in an exegetic sense, why does every single translation translate it as 'and' instead of 'even'? Also, do you believe in original sin? 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." He doesn't stop grieving when he dies. He wasn't fasting to grieve, he was fasting to try to get God to show mercy. But he didn't show mercy, and the baby died, so he stopped. Personally, I think the "I'll go see him but he won't return to me" line is one of the saddest in the bible. If he did stop grieving, it can be explained by Absolom being a grown man and the baby just being a newborn baby. When a baby dies it's sad but it can't really compare to losing a son that you've known for 20 or 30 years. Not the damned, the dead. Everyone is judged by their deeds along with their beliefs. James 2:19,20 "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? James 2:24, "You see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only." That's contradicted by all the verses that say just belief is good enough, but the one thing they all seem to agree on is that belief is required. Hey, you wanted some contradictions, right? Clear these up for me O vain man. From where do you get that they're talking about infants with the blood of innocents? Anyway, God judged infants before, for example the Flood where he killed them all. Weren't Adam and Eve considered innocent? He had a real big problem with judging them. Hell's only in the NT. God either didn't talk about it or Jesus decided to invent it. So Job wouldn't have known about hell. All the 120,000 people are infants? Perhaps they're just 120,000 stupid people. What makes you think he's talking about children? If he's talking about children, why wouldn't he say it? Like I said, God obliterated animals in the flood. He comanded Saul to smite Amalek and slay "infants and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass" and then he punished him for not slaying all the animals. There's historical veracity on that piece of paper I wrote on, so now my penis is 4000 miles long and Elisha is pregnant with my kid. Awesome! Oh wait, that doesn't make it any more true and what I said is still on the same level as hobbits, just like God.

Is God a robot? It's not working backwards. If he knows before you do something, then your choice is dependent on his knowledge, not the other way around. You could ask him "What am I going to eat for breakfast tomorrow?" and he would be able to tell you. If he is able to tell you, then you couldn't choose to do differently, or else his knowledge would be wrong. If, instead, the knowledge is dependent on the choice, then he wouldn't be able to tell you what you'll eat because you haven't decided on it. How can it be known what you will do if you haven't made up your free will yet? Yes, but it's all we have to work with. If we assume that things exist beyond what is tangible than we have to assume everything is true and it'd be impossible to say anything is wrong. We could all be the dream of a 3 year old kangaroo. But there's no justification for it outside of human imagination. So it shouldn't even be put into the mix for consideration. We can't really debate something that we don't know anything about. But the reason it wouldn't be possible is because I wouldn't be physically capable of controlling my emotions and making myself do it. If omnipotence was just being able to do whatever it is in your nature to do, then technically I would be omnipotent. Omnipotence means the power to do everything. Ok, I appreciate that you're still thinking about it. If his power is just limited to doing things that can be done, then you really can't say he has unlimited power, can you? Things are concepts, concrete, abstract, real and unreal. The word "thing" just separates one from another. I agree with you. Omnipotence is a self contradictory idea and it can't exist. They didn't have atheism, but they didn't believe in the God of the bible and he proved himself to them. That overthrew their belief system and their natural line of thought. Did they become robots? Of course they didn't. Evolution doesn't explain the nonexistance of God anyway, just that some things in the bible are wrong. Unless evolution proves God wrong, we would just try to explain how the Adam and Eve story fits with evolution, like christians do now. We'd say that the story wasn't meant to be taken literally, or that Adam and Eve were two little amebas and God just didn't want to confuse the Hebrews, or that the people screwed up his message, or he invented fossils to test people's faith. By that logic, it's okay for us to do whatever we want to our kids, including rape, torture, and kill them because we created them. So in heaven, we'll understand that our atheist kids deserve to be tortured eternally for their beliefs. Sounds like a cool place. What's a billion years to God? I know you could come up with a reason, but your bullshit reasons are just as good as my bullshit reasons. We don't have any way of knowing whose bullshit is right, so the odds that you're a disappointment to God and you're going to hell are just as good as my odds. He might actually want atheists because he wants humanity to learn reason and compassion and use them to decide to reject him. Considering all the visciousness in the bible, if he does exist, I think that's the only reasonable explanation. That is a good idea. But perhaps if some of the people that didn't believe had proof that he existed, they would really want to be with him. Here's a better idea. A omnipotent loving God who was really concerned about choice should make heaven and hell both equally wonderful paradises, the only difference his presence. (And he's omnipotent so he would be able to do it.) Then, and only then, could he know that his followers really want to be with him and not just because he threatened them. The filament is a part of the lightbulb so there's nothing wrong with saying the lightbulb produces light. The moon isn't a light. It just reflects light. I can't see how you could call it a source of light because it's not where you really get the light from. Because you said everyone understood omniscience except me. Heh, I'd love to see a professor ask him to give the correct answers or let him retake the test after he gave that kind of response. A heaven that's "considered by Hebrews as solid and supporting 'waters' above" according to the Hebrew Lexicon. The bible even says there's waters above it. For the expanse meaning, it has "Flat as base" and "support" right next to it. I don't know what the hell that means but it doesn't sound like it's referring to a sky. Or they thought it just didn't need to be explained because it was a given. Everyone believed those things. Or they didn't know for sure, so they decided not to talk about it. Well without mud people, we wouldn't have mud or people. Then where would be today? It's not just the inability to prove the bible wrong. It's a common thread through most of your arguments that if you can't prove something wrong, it's an equally valid viewpoint. But obviously that isn't true. I have no problem saying that little mud people in the Earth don't exist. I'm sure you don't either. But I also have no problem saying a global flood didn't happen, the world is billions of years old, and the population of Earth didn't start with Adam and Eve. It's possible that I'm wrong and mud people do exist. It's possible that God did use miracles to make the flood, but since it doesn't say he did, it's much more likely that the writers just didn't think about these things and made up a story. Here's why the gospels aren't trustable. Back in that time, Jesus wasn't the only savior God in town. There were dozens and they all had religious writings about them all over the area. If you accept the gospels as evidence for Jesus, you'd have to accept that all of those other savior Gods existed, and somehow I doubt that's enough for you to believe that they all went around doing miracles, dying for your sins, and rising from the dead. Not only that, but Jesus is nearly identical to Mithra. Mithra was born of a virgin. He was followed by twelve companions. His disciples and he shared a last supper. He was a great teacher and savior who spoke of salvation throught the father. He was sacrificed to save mankind and rose from the grave after three days and ascended into heaven. Wow, that all sounds kind of familiar. Centuries before Jesus came along. Can you give me a logical reason of why to believe in Mithra over Jesus? No one knows who wrote any of the gospels and nobody can trace any back to the time of Jesus. The earliest copy of a part of any gospel that we can trace is somewhere around 150 AD. The consensus (look at Wikipedia) is that the earliest gospel was written about 40 years after Jesus's death. Just for an example, Luke mentions Bernice at the end of Acts, without explaining who she was. He expected people to know her. Bernice didn't become famous until 69AD. Have you ever played the game of telephone when you were little? Can you imagine what a 40 year game of telephone would be like? They contradict each other hundreds of times. For instance, Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Luke 23:46 And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost. John 19:30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. Which was it? Who's telling the truth here? Same for the old testament. How did Saul die? He killed himself by falling on a sword. (1 Samuel 31:4) The Amalekite killed him, at Saul's request. (2 Samuel 1:7-10) The Philistines killed him. (2 Samuel 21:12) God killed him. (1 Ch 10:14) If it was history, instead of fantasy, this couldn't happen. You're not going to like this one but the fact that it has miracles and people turning into zombies is enough, by itself to dismiss it as a myth. This is what historians usually use as a dividing line between history and fantasy. Nobody knows if there really was a King Arthur, but magicians and dragons are enough to cast doubt on the whole story. See, even if it could be proved without a doubt that King Arthur really existed, the story would STILL be considered fantasy and Guinevere, Sir Lancelot, and Merlin still wouldn't be seen as real. Or an even better example, Hercules. All the Romans and Greeks believed he was real. His words are quoted. There's accounts of what he did. Josephus talks about Hercules. Tacitus talks about Hercules. Plato talks about Hercules. The list goes on and on. We FOUND Troy because we knew the location from the Illiad. The Greeks taught Hercules along with the entire Illiad and Odyssey in schools. How can we just throw it away as fantasy when their historians thought it really happened? Yet, Josephus was still a historian, and if a historian did record Jesus down around his time, that would be some kind of evidence, evidence can be good or bad. The thing is... the first record we have of Josephus mentioning Jesus was from the third century when he was quoted by Eusebius, a bishop who ADMITTED it was good to tell lies to further christianity. As Brian pointed out, Josephus was not a christian, so he also wouldn't have called Jesus "The christ" Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar existed, but the bible says that Belshazzar is Nebuchadnezzar's son. According to Babylonian records, that's not true. Plus he wasn't even a king. Nabudonius was actually the last king. Just another example of the bible, even though it can verify some things, not being reliable as history. The Medo-Persian take over didn't happen. The Medes were defeated by Cyrus years before he took over Babylon. Darius the Mede wasn't a real person. However Darius the Persian became king after Cyrus. Cyrus was the one that conquered Babylon, not a mede. Daniel was a little confused. Those aren't main characters anyway. Jesus, the disciples, Abraham, Moses, Noah, those are main characters. There's no evidence of any of them. What evidence is there of Babylonian captivity and exile? If I'm wrong and some major events can be verified, it'd still just be in the same way that the civil war can be verified in Gone with the Wind. Does that mean there was a Scarlet, a Rhett, etc.? Does that make Gone with the Wind history instead of fantasy? No Egyptian records of a Moses, the plagues and killing of every first born, the drowning of their army, of an exodus. Those are huge events. Why wouldn't they write about them? As for Tacitus, Okay, I don't read hebrew, but what do you think of this? http://www.aiias.edu/ict/vol_26A/26Acc_433-442.pdf "c. To further substantiate the absence of gaps in the genealogies of Genesis 5:11, the Hebrew grammatical form of the verb "begat" (yalad in the Hifil) used throughout this chapter is the special causative form that always elsewhere in the OT refers to actual direct physical offspring, i.e. biological father-son relationship (Gen 6:10; Judg 11:1; 1Chro 8:9; 14:3; 2Chro 11:21; 24:3). This is in contrast to the use of yalad in the simple Qal in many of the other biblical genealogies in which cases it can refer to other than direct physical fathering of immediately succeeding offspring." We have things from Indians that go back 30,000 years, cave paintings and such. Except you know whoever wrote Joshua really believed the sun actually moved and it stood still for a day. Just like you know the writers of Job thought that the Earth was flat because that's what they all thought. And if the sun really did in fact stop for a whole day, don't you think it would've been recorded in every single culture at the time? That's all true, I'm supposed to be a catholic, even when I was little the Mary thing didn't make much sense. But the bible describes Jesus as omnipotent and you seem to think there are things he can't do. Hey, maybe you're not believing in the Jesus of the bible. Every christian I meet has different beliefs, and they can't all be right. Maybe no one really is a christian. Wouldn't that be a shock? The things he punishes them for are so silly. He'll have someone killed because they're picking up sticks on the Sabbith, he'll turn Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for glancing back at a burning city, he'll kill 50,000 for looking at the ark, but going around killing thousands of innocent people, no punishment. Does God have to command Joshua to utterly destroy everything that breathed because it's a conquest? That's why it's different. He didn't just command him to kill soldiers in a war. He comanded him to murder everybody. Is murder good or bad? Maybe God wants to make it more of a challenge for you by making you look harder for the right religion. So perhaps the one that makes the least sense and is the least known is the one with the true God. You grew up hating it but nonetheless, you grew up believing it. Yeah, I don't doubt that you studied all the major religions and you looked at them unbiased, but I think it's still slightly more believable to you than the rest because it had an influence on you. The single best indicator of someone's religion is what religion the people he grew up around was. That means religion is indoctrination, not knowledge. Again, maybe the true test from God is to break the cultural indoctrination barrier and find the religion that looks like it's the biggest pile of shit. Then he would know that the ones who end up with him REALLY want to be with him. Pretend you're Indiana Jones looking for the Holy Grail. You don't want to just stop on biggest and prettiest looking cup. You want to pick the one that's the most ordinary, nothing special about it, nothing stands out. Better include those unknown tribal religions in your search.

True, does destruction necessarily mean there's nothing left though? Something has to be left because the book says it's an eternal torment. And you believe it's an eternal torment. The bible says God's power is without limits and he has sway over all things. All, so that includes himself. Not that it really matters, it's still his leaving that causes it. Even if we could choose to believe him or not (we can't) and even if not believing was the same thing as rejecting him (it isn't), no one would get tormented if he didn't put us away from him. Is he forced to put us away from him for not believing? Well we know that can't be right because if it was, the second we stopped believing, we would have to get sent to hell and there's nothing God could do about it. But I don't believe and I guess you would say he hasn't put me away from him yet. So he doesn't have to do it. He just wants to. Whether it's hell, gehenna, or Hades, it's a place of torment as illustrated by the parable. It can't be biblically a place where everyone goes good or bad unless the good and the bad are both "tormented in flame". The rich man couldn't have went to the same place as Lazarus, there's a gulf between them, a gulf that couldn't be crossed. It wouldn't make any sense if he did. And just wondering, where does it say in the bible that hell is by definition without the presence of God? The point is that Lazarus wished he hadn't been greedy not because it was wrong but because he's being tormented in fire. If the torment doesn't exist, then there's no point to it. It's not like he learned some kind of lesson, he was just scared for his rich buddies being tortured forever. That's all. They knew but they were wrong. Who knows more about the afterlife? The Jews or Jesus? How's about making him stop smoking the cigarette? Or I could show him the flames outside the bubble. If I'm mean enough to think that the choice of smoking the cigarette is more important than forcing him to feel pain, then I could make him burn himself to show him I mean business. What does God do? He throws him in the flames, refuses to let him back in even if he promises not to smoke, and laughs.

That's not how it works. You're the one stating something so you have to back it up. It's impossible to show you any evidence detracting from the authorship of Luke because there's no evidence for the authorship of Luke. If you think a historian named Luke wrote Luke, please show me the evidence of this. Why? Because I wanted to know what you thought. If it hurts you that much to think about it that you have to give me a couple of enraged paragraphs instead of a simple straight answer, then don't worry about it. Sure, I believe you.

Well it says he was very sick. If you're very sick, you usually suffer. It doesn't say anything about a coma. Anyway, if any baby has ever had a disease and suffered because of it, then God tortures infants. Who else could be to blame? If any child has ever been born in a starving country and God let them starve and doesn't rain manna down to feed them, then he tortures children.

FFX-2 and about to start Disgaea

Why am I not surprised that SP thinks he knows who wrote Luke? SP answer the question in my last post.

I told you a bunch of times he doesn't torture infants. You can't just pretend he does because it helps your argument. This is how you continually violate your own admonitions. Some people are revolted and scared that we would eat an animal. That doesn't make it so. No time to respond to everything, but I had to get this. David's son. You were the one that brought it up. He doesn't die instantly. He's basically lying around suffering for 7 days before he dies because of God. I've never seen a christian able to defend it. Maybe you or SP can. Now that we know God does torture infants, respond to that part up above again. How can an infant deserve torture? And why would you want to worship someone who would torture one?

I saw two different kinds of dogs cross breeding. There is no hell. Yep, even if they were kids, that's no excuse. And that's not ignorant of anything except maybe the evilness of God. God can't be evil, you say? Right, that's why as I've shown countless times, he can't exist. You didn't answer the question. I wouldn't be able to torture someone for eternity. How is it possible that I'm nicer and more forgiving than God? Let me help you out. The answer is real simple. It's not possible. He doesn't exist. Then.... I don't have anything to worry about. I won't reject it if it's offered to me, no one would. Of course I still won't believe, but only a complete idiot would think not believing is the same as rejecting something. Problem with that is God isn't offering it to anyone who would take it, he's ONLY offering it to people who believe in him. A TRUE gift would mean everyone is saved, no purchase necessary. We do and here's an example. An infant cannot act in a way which would be deserving of torture. The idea itself that it could be is cruel. The thought that someone would worship something that thinks it could be deserving is seriously revolting and scary at the same time. A judge that sentences someone to torture is a cruel judge. I have that authority and so do you. That's like saying you can't say that a murder is wrong because you're not the murderer. No, that would be knowing what words mean. In some cases, torture may be a good thing, such as if you're torturing someone to get information that you know for a fact he has and it could save thousands of lives. Is it still cruel? Of course it is. I never said it wasn't. However, unlike God, they're not doing it solely for the purpose of pain and suffering. Torture for no purpose at all, such as a hell where a person can't ever escape or learn anything from it, just torture for torture's sake, can only be the act of a cruel monster. Let's look at the facts. Fact: God sentences people to hell for the crime of using their own logic and reason that HE gave them to not believe in him while people like Hitler go to heaven. Fact: God had the power to create any reality he wanted and chose to create one where creatures suffer and he doesn't do anything to fix it or to stop it. Fact: He knows from the beginning of time which people won't believe in him, which people are destined for eternal torment, and he creates them anyway. The facts clearly show that God is cruel. If you come up with anything other than that, you're bending the facts to fit your opinion of what you want him to be.

It's a slow process, it lasts for eternity. That would only be the case if he wanted to be. And what's the difference between that and the condition of absence from God being suffering in fire? Does that make it any better? No. It's still eternal torment and God is responsible for it. The rich man in hell looked and saw Lazarus and Abraham in heaven, with an uncrossable gulf between them. There's no indication that Lazarus is in hell. If he would be in hell, the parable makes even less sense. Why would the greedy rich man care about doing right if nothing will happen to him? He's greedy. Why would he give a shit if it's too late? He prays to Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brethren, not to tell them to do right because time will run out, but to tell them to do right lest they come to the "place of torment". The parable is pointless if men who are rich and greedy don't get sent to a place of torment. Except, he is doing something, he's leaving them alone. If your one year old says that he hates you and hopes you die, are you not doing anything wrong to him by throwing him outside and letting him starve?