The Bible is literally true.

[Guest SP-1]

I just kind of have to laugh. There are no words.

[Nighthawk 0]

I'm your huckleberry...

[Nighthawk 0]

 

Prove it.  And can you receive the holy spirit without a belief a God?

 

What you're asking is the equivalent of asking for proof that the Bible contains a man named Jesus. Even the most cursory study will demonstrate it.

And, no you cannot. If you're angling at the infant salvation issue, allow me to make a bold statement. Babies do deserve to go to Hell. I know I'm a sick bastard, but hear me out, I'll reference it again in this reply. I just believe he doesn't send them there out of mercy alone.

 

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'. 

 

Well, for one, and could mean both things... it just doesn't sound that way in English. It's not a wrong translation so much as a confusing one. I have explained why that would be the case, and whatever you regard as liberal translations , the Greek is the Greek. And the Greek word can mean a number of things. We need context to determine which, and context we have. If you don't like the verse in Acts to support salvation without baptism, although I don't know why you wouldn't, I can give you others.

 

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.

 

There's one grain of truth. They're born sinners, a state, by the way, of which Adam and Eve are given too much credit. Baptism is not required for them, as it isn't for anyone else, but especially not for them as it is a rite for those already saved, of which babies are incapable of being. They do not go to the lake of fire, as God saves them through an act of mercy.

If this were not true, I would be saying that we are all born as something of a clean slate, and at some point in time we sin, and are condemned to hell at that point in time. This is not my statement at all. You might be horrified at the idea of a baby being a sinner, or even at the loose idea of sin being hereditary, but it's not so hard to imagine. A crack addict will have a baby addicted to crack, and that's of no fault of the baby, but it's still true. Sin is not an act, it's a state of being. So, just like a baby will be a crack addict and incapable of doing crack, a baby will be a sinner and incapable of sinning. This is why God saves them outright.

 

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.

 

It says he wept, for one. You can't treat this as if it occurs in a vacuum either. You must take into account everything else said about children, of which is under discussion.

 

If you say so.  It sounded like they didn't even have time to give the baby a name.  That can't compare.

 

I say so.

 

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 last sentence was the most important part. They aren't judged by their belief, it just allows the penalty to be paid.

 

The devils have dead faith.  Are they in heaven?  Nope.  If faith is dead, how can you expect to be saved with it? 

 

This is absurd. For one, where would you get the idea that the devils have dead faith? What do they have to have faith in? They can't be saved, because Jesus didn't die for them, and they're not even the same... species is too weak a word... essence as us. Using them as a comparison is insanely off base.

For faith to die, it had to have been alive at some point. It saved you then, and once saved, there's no going back. James' point, on the other hand, was that an empty claim of faith with no external evidence is usually not faith at all, it's just that; an empty claim.

 

Still a contradiction.  Paul says to be justified, you just need belief.  And James says you need works along with belief.

 

Did you even read it? All you did was state the same thing again. I know Calvin can be a little hard to follow, but come on. Ok, try this... if you graduate from high school, they give you a diploma, but if you drop out, go down to the printers and get yourself a diploma, are you a high school graduate? Let me throw a baptism analogy in while I'm here. If you get sick and miss your graduation ceremony, are you not a graduate?

 

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.

 

Yeah, and learning the difference between right and wrong was what they did. That's what I mean by exception that proves the rule. It was a very simple situation, God told them not to do something and they did. God didn't give them sin as a punishment, he told them not to do it because it was sin. As if he had told them not to touch the stove because it would burn them.

 

 

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?

 

Job was in the middle of a spoken conversation with God at the time, foo.

 

It is talked about in the old testament. Isaiah 14, for one. But it's different. Hell is an English word, remember. Sheol is sometimes described as a place of torment, but it can't be Hell because of what the NT says about hell. It could almost be saying that we all go to a kind of holding cell when we die, and some are tormented there, why and how is unknown. Maybe because they know what's going to happen and it's just a matter of waiting now. And eventually those people are thrown away, never to be in the presence of God again. It's a complicated issue.

 

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.

 

I hardly think Jonah meant that they should be killed and then go to heaven. The point is, Jonah said "No, don't show any mercy." and God didn't say, "No they, deserve mercy." or "I work in mysterious ways." or "Just do what I told you." he showed mercy on behalf of these 120,000. That means they are in a seperate class than the rest of the sinful city. This does not directly display his eternal judgement, but it is an indication. If he says they deserve mercy, which he did, if he does end up killing them, it's only natural to expect that he would show mercy to them where it really matters, if he will on the superficial level of the Earth.

 

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

 

That's exactly my point. Regardless of what's in the story, a story is a story. But you've said the Bible can be dismissed because there's a God in it. If there was a story about the Civil War with a hobbit in it, would that then mean the Civil War didn't happen? I validate your overall point, but you're talking out of both sides of your mouth. On the one hand, you say the Bible can be verified in some things, and on the other, you say God being in it negates the whole thing.

Realistically, God being in it should negate nothing except God himself, if you take that stance. And then it's just a question of Is There A God? all over again. Philosophically, I say yes. Abiogenesis for one. Now, if there is, the question is, can we know him, and which one is he? The Bible is one idea. But you attempt to discredit it because of the very thing it's being read for.

 

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.

 

Except that those stories contain illegiemizers with no counterbalance, unlike the Bible.

 

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?

 

But does it mean there's evidence against the civil war? You have applied this principle to the Bible. What sets the Bible is apart is that is is entirely self contained in it's logic. God by his very nature overrides what would disprove him. This may look simple, but try to write a book comparable to the Bible which is as logically self sufficient (without ripping it off), you'll find it to be pretty much impossible. Even the closest comparisons, the Koran and such, fall under scrutiny. The Bible just doesn't.

There is evidence of God, by the way. The universe.

[Nighthawk 0]

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?

 

It's spontaneous generation. Evolution is commonly used to refer to the joint processes of abiogenesis, common ancestry and speciation, and this is how I have used it several times in this thread.

 

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. 

 

The point eludes you. If there is no God, an earthquake just happens and is not bad or good. If you believe this (which, as a confessed atheist, you are bound to), what does the existance of God change? If we establish that unto itself, an earthquake is not bad, a God creating a world in which they occur does not therefore make it bad.

 

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.

 

Yes, that's much of the reason theistic evolution is foolishness. But there are two flaws in your statement. One, if there is no God, evolution is neither cold, nor brutal, it just is. With no God, nothing is good or bad. Two, if God created the world in six days, after which time it became corrupted with sin, it becomes irrelevant.

 

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?

 

Wrong, because unless God is good, there is no good. What do we have to compare with or measure it by otherwise? If God is evil, that would mean there is a higher standard by which God may be judged, which there is not. If he is a liar, we're doomed because we have no way of overcoming his lies. Furthermore, if the standard of good comes from God, and God is a liar, there is for all intents and purposes, yet again no good or evil at all. This time not because there is no standard, but because we have no information about said standard.

 

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.

 

Overly simplistic logic. Is it wrong to steal bread to feed your starving family?

 

You really think nothing could be considered right or wrong without a God?  What the hell?

 

I can't believe you'd question it. If we, say, innoculate the smallpox virus into extinction, is that good or bad? Well, it depends on your perspective. It's certainly not good for smallpox. With no God, everything exists with no governing standard, because no one can say whose perspective prevails. Even something like torture. Is that bad? Not for sadists, no. Whose to say their perspective is wrong? Majority. That's what it all comes down to. Without God, there is no right or wrong, only majority, which is an extension of self preservation.

 

But no one deserves to suffer for an eternity.  Why do think everyone would deserve to suffer?  Because Adam and Eve ate an apple?

 

Why do you think they wouldn't? You seem to think people are basically good, so why do you think this?

 

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.

 

Say this again with the assumption that he exists. It doesn't work.

 

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.

 

That might sound good, but it isn't true. Your emotional capability is one thing, but you are most certainly intellectually capable of believing it, which is the realm of sense and evidence. The fact that many people smarter than you do believe it is testament to this.

This is a self defeating argument anyway because it's essentially saying "Even if I wanted to believe in God, he won't let me."

 

What about donating money to charity is pain and suffering?

 

The point was that you used an arbitrary definition.

 

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.

 

So you're not as big a hippie as you could be.

 

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. 

 

That's a fallacy. If evil was good, then you couldn't ask the question of whether it was good to create evil. There wouldn't be any. The real question should be, by the way, is it good to create the ability to choose evil? It is.

 

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.

 

Cruelty being evil is your standpoint, not mine. You've used God being cruel as evidence of his nonexistance more than once. Your idea of hell being pointless is no longer relevant because all you've said is that "Nobody deserves it because that's just what I think." So you need to come up with something else or concede the point.

 

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.

 

That's not answering it, that's restating the question. Why could no crime fit that harsh of a punishment? Cause that's how you feel?

 

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.

 

This just downplays the significance of rejecting God. If that's worse than killing and terrible crime, then it's very much relevant. Everyone on the planet is fully capable of coming to a saving belief in God (if they genuinely aren't, God will save them anyway). Saying otherwise is just whining. If you claim that you can't believe in God because it doesn't make sense from an intellectual standpoint, you're a liar because people smarter than you studied it longer and better than you and believed it. If you claim you can't because you're "emotionally incapable" (whatever that means), it's called sin. Nobody is so deeply entrenched in sin they're incapable of escaping it, because all that's required is God's help, yours for the asking.

 

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.

 

Hey, did you know I'm black? I listen to hip hop, I walk with a swagger, my black friends call me nigga and I even wear my cap backwards. But... my skin says I'm white. So, if Hitler did all of those things, but Catholicism says killing people is wrong... he's not a Catholic. This is why James says those things about works. Claiming the name of something is meaningless if your actions clearly demonstrate that you're not adhering to it's precepts at all. I'm glad it came out that you don't understand this because it's an important part of the discussion at large.

It's in the Bible too. The Pharisees spent their entire lives devoted to every nuance of scripture. They memorized the entire old testament. They didn't sin (theoretically). But Jesus said they were some of the worst sinners of all.

 

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.

 

Why wouldn't I be ok with it? The only way I wouldn't be is if killing was a worse sin than rejecting God. Unless you're saying some sins are just too harsh to be forgiven... but if you say nobody deserves to go to hell, I don't think you'd say that. So, unless Hitler is beyond forgiveness, this point isn't a point anymore.

 

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?

 

Absofuckinglutely. God never told you to do anything you'd morally object to though.

 

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.

 

God was Austrian? That... that sounds like a difference. Yes, the difference is that Hitlers does not have the authority to make such judgements, while God does.

 

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?"

 

Well, yes it would make him loving. That's really not difficult to theoretically comprehend. You must be quite slow if you're incapable of addressing concepts using guidelines you disagree with. It's not hard at all.

 

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.

 

That's what we had initially and we ruined it. If he did it again, we'd ruin it again, and he knows this, so he's not going to. Furthermore, why should he?

 

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.

 

I wouldn't think you'd consciously hate it for this reason, but I think you do. If it were true, everyone who hears it would know it on some level. They would supress and deny because they love sin, but it doesn't make it untrue. They hate it because they can't escape it.

If it was all based on positivity (and if that's what you want, you suck), then at the first sign of inconvenience we would abandon it because it has no tangible essence, it's just a promise, the same way we don't want to go to school when we're in first grade. Sure, we need to go to school to make money and survive and be happy, and somebody might try to explain that to us, but we don't listen or care.

Furthermore, consider why someone would want you to be a christian. Financial gain? Commonly yes, but God likes those people less than you, so it doesn't count. Why else? Because they want you to be with God and happy forever. God and Christians are not threatening you with torture. As you alluded to, it's a self deafeating concept. It's "This is the way it is, I want to help you because I love you." not "Do this because if you don't I will punish you." I've explained that God has no choice but to send you to Hell, if you consider Hell the absence of his presence, which I do and is a fair assumption. The fact that he went so far out of his way to help you shows how much he isn't threatening you. If you take all of this and on top of it willfully fight God more, you deserve what you get.

Yes, by the way, most professing Christians are not, and spread fear and hate motivated by greed and ego. This has no effect on truth.

 

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.

 

No, it's intelligent. Assuming it's true, which it isn't, but even if it were, it's the best course of action. If God's a prick who'll torture you for not believing in him, believe in him, or you're an idiot.

What they should do, however, is look at the verse and agree with it because it's so obviously just and true.

 

Now take all the things I've just said, and you'll see why your Santa Claus analogy is wrong and why I can't respond to it.

[TheBigSwigg 0]

The devils have dead faith.

 

I'm pretty sure their faith isn't dead. They know that God's there.

James said that faith was dead without good works.

That applies to humans. Demons & Angels aren't human. Therefore, my statement stands.

[chaosrage 0]

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

[chaosrage 0]

I just kind of have to laugh.  There are no words.

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

[chaosrage 0]

What you're asking is the equivalent of asking for proof that the Bible contains a man named Jesus. Even the most cursory study will demonstrate it.

And, no you cannot. If you're angling at the infant salvation issue, allow me to make a bold statement. Babies do deserve to go to Hell. I know I'm a sick bastard, but hear me out, I'll reference it again in this reply. I just believe he doesn't send them there out of mercy alone.

Maybe it might not send us there out of mercy alone, but that goes against what he said and there's nothing to make us think that he would. If a cursory study will demonstrate it, then it should be easy to do it. However, you'd also have to demonstrate that all babies receive the holy spirit for the point to really to be valid.

 

Well, for one, and could mean both things... it just doesn't sound that way in English. It's not a wrong translation so much as a confusing one. I have explained why that would be the case, and whatever you regard as liberal translations , the Greek is the Greek. And the Greek word can mean a number of things. We need context to determine which, and context we have. If you don't like the verse in Acts to support salvation without baptism, although I don't know why you wouldn't, I can give you others.

 

That's why it's a wrong translation, because it doesn't sound that way in English. The more accurate one would be 'even'. Now I don't speak Greek, and I doubt you do. I just think it's a little odd that none of the translations use even. Why would they all ignore the context?

 

There's one grain of truth. They're born sinners, a state, by the way, of which Adam and Eve are given too much credit. Baptism is not required for them, as it isn't for anyone else, but especially not for them as it is a rite for those already saved, of which babies are incapable of being. They do not go to the lake of fire, as God saves them through an act of mercy.

If this were not true, I would be saying that we are all born as something of a clean slate, and at some point in time we sin, and are condemned to hell at that point in time. This is not my statement at all. You might be horrified at the idea of a baby being a sinner, or even at the loose idea of sin being hereditary, but it's not so hard to imagine. A crack addict will have a baby addicted to crack, and that's of no fault of the baby, but it's still true. Sin is not an act, it's a state of being. So, just like a baby will be a crack addict and incapable of doing crack, a baby will be a sinner and incapable of sinning. This is why God saves them outright.

 

All I wanted to see was if you'd acknowledge that they're born sinners. If they're born sinners, why would you expect God to save them? God by his nature must put sin away from him, remember? He can't show mercy simply because he feels like it. He has no choice. Otherwise, most of your arguments would be void, and he could just as easily save all of us but chooses instead to send us to hell because he's a dickhead. He CAN'T save them outright. Babies are sinful, so something must be done to them to put away their sin. The Holy Ghost can't just go to them and save them anymore than it could go to us. As for the crack addict analogy, do babies deserve to be addicted to crack because their parents did it? Did they DESERVE to be shot in the head because they're addicted to it? It is horrifying, not because it's true since it isn't, but because some people believe it's true. Babies can't do anything to deserve something bad to happen to them, let alone torture, let alone torture for a 100 years, let alone eternal torture. Please tell me you were high on crack yourself when you wrote that.

 

It says he wept, for one. You can't treat this as if it occurs in a vacuum either. You must take into account everything else said about children, of which is under discussion.

 

I meant after he died.

 

I say so.

 

You're wrong though.

 

The last sentence was the most important part. They aren't judged by their belief, it just allows the penalty to be paid.

 

Either way, they need belief.

 

This is absurd. For one, where would you get the idea that the devils have dead faith? What do they have to have faith in? They can't be saved, because Jesus didn't die for them, and they're not even the same... species is too weak a word... essence as us. Using them as a comparison is insanely off base.

For faith to die, it had to have been alive at some point. It saved you then, and once saved, there's no going back. James' point, on the other hand, was that an empty claim of faith with no external evidence is usually not faith at all, it's just that; an empty claim

 

Because James said it? They believe in God. Yet, they can't be saved because faith isn't enough according to James. I'm not the one that made the comparision. James did. Take it up with him. That last part is an interpolation. He doesn't say an empty claim isn't faith. What he says is you need to have more than faith.

 

Did you even read it? All you did was state the same thing again. I know Calvin can be a little hard to follow, but come on. Ok, try this... if you graduate from high school, they give you a diploma, but if you drop out, go down to the printers and get yourself a diploma, are you a high school graduate? Let me throw a baptism analogy in while I'm here. If you get sick and miss your graduation ceremony, are you not a graduate?

 

James says that you need to graduate from high school and get a diploma to be a high school graduate while Paul says you just need the diploma. How is that not a contradiction? Sorry, I'm still not following you. One of my friends missed the ceremony and they wouldn't give him a diploma. He had to go to the ceremony the next year to get it.

 

Yeah, and learning the difference between right and wrong was what they did. That's what I mean by exception that proves the rule. It was a very simple situation, God told them not to do something and they did. God didn't give them sin as a punishment, he told them not to do it because it was sin. As if he had told them not to touch the stove because it would burn them.

 

He punished them for their sin by kicking them out of the garden of Eden. Plus he turned the stove on and put the baby next to it.

 

Job was in the middle of a spoken conversation with God at the time, foo.

 

It is talked about in the old testament. Isaiah 14, for one. But it's different. Hell is an English word, remember. Sheol is sometimes described as a place of torment, but it can't be Hell because of what the NT says about hell. It could almost be saying that we all go to a kind of holding cell when we die, and some are tormented there, why and how is unknown. Maybe because they know what's going to happen and it's just a matter of waiting now. And eventually those people are thrown away, never to be in the presence of God again. It's a complicated issue.

 

Uh, Job was in a spoken conversation with God as much about like I would be if I yelled "Yo, hey God, there is a hell!" God never responded to him. Sheol might be a complicated issue, but hell isn't. Jesus says that those who believeth not are damned and cast into the fire. He's very clear on that. Everyone will be tormented there. Perhaps God changed his mind, or perhaps in exchange for Jesus dying for your sins, he created the hell of fire. No matter what Job said, if you don't believe in Jesus's hell, maybe you should be Jewish instead of a Christian.

 

I hardly think Jonah meant that they should be killed and then go to heaven. The point is, Jonah said "No, don't show any mercy." and God didn't say, "No they, deserve mercy." or "I work in mysterious ways." or "Just do what I told you." he showed mercy on behalf of these 120,000. That means they are in a seperate class than the rest of the sinful city. This does not directly display his eternal judgement, but it is an indication. If he says they deserve mercy, which he did, if he does end up killing them, it's only natural to expect that he would show mercy to them where it really matters, if he will on the superficial level of the Earth.

 

We don't know if Jonah wanted them to go to heaven. All is we know is Jonah wanted them to be killed. He didn't speak of condemnation. God said he wouldn't kill them. Then centuries later, he did it anyway. He didn't show them mercy if he killed them! The only way you could make that argument was if he let all the people who didn't know their right from their left live and never ever destroyed the city. Then you could say "He spared them, so why would he send them to hell?" They probably are condemned.

 

That's exactly my point. Regardless of what's in the story, a story is a story. But you've said the Bible can be dismissed because there's a God in it. If there was a story about the Civil War with a hobbit in it, would that then mean the Civil War didn't happen?

 

When did I say everything in the bible didn't happen? Never. If there was a story about the Civil War with a hobbit, it wouldn't be evidence of a hobbit. It wouldn't be evidence of a Civil War either. The story can be dismissed because it has a hobbit in it, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. That doesn't mean LOTR isn't true either.

 

I validate your overall point, but you're talking out of both sides of your mouth. On the one hand, you say the Bible can be verified in some things, and on the other, you say God being in it negates the whole thing.

Realistically, God being in it should negate nothing except God himself, if you take that stance. And then it's just a question of Is There A God? all over again. Philosophically, I say yes. Abiogenesis for one. Now, if there is, the question is, can we know him, and which one is he? The Bible is one idea. But you attempt to discredit it because of the very thing it's being read for.

 

As history? Yes. Otherwise, Hercules is history. If dragons and hobbits were in Gone With the Wind and we didn't know who wrote it, it would negate the entire thing. Because we don't know what parts were true and what parts were made up. The question would be Was There Hobbits and Dragons? The answer is no, because we don't have any evidence of them. Well.. we actually found evidence of hobbits, so we should probably drop that whole hobbit thing and replace them with zombies or something.

 

Except that those stories contain illegiemizers with no counterbalance, unlike the Bible.

 

Wouldn't a real King named Arthur and Troy be counterbalances?

 

But does it mean there's evidence against the civil war? You have applied this principle to the Bible.

 

Adfh dkdfkd dskjhdf jjh djjd siweh sjhdaj sakjsh skjhdkj?

 

It's not evidence against the civil war and it's not evidence against dragons! Fucking listen. The bible isn't evidence against God. It just isn't evidence FOR God. Anymore than the Illad is evidence of Greek Gods. Anymore than fossils of hobbit sized humans are evidence that Sauron, the deceiver has come back and is looking for his ring of power.

 

What sets the Bible is apart is that is is entirely self contained in it's logic. God by his very nature overrides what would disprove him. This may look simple, but try to write a book comparable to the Bible which is as logically self sufficient (without ripping it off), you'll find it to be pretty much impossible. Even the closest comparisons, the Koran and such, fall under scrutiny. The Bible just doesn't.

There is evidence of God, by the way. The universe.

 

By now, you HAVE to know I don't think the bible is logically self sufficient. I think it falls under EVERY area we can test. And it is impossible. That's not evidence of God, that's evidence of the magic Space Goat.

[chaosrage 0]

It's spontaneous generation. Evolution is commonly used to refer to the joint processes of abiogenesis, common ancestry and speciation, and this is how I have used it several times in this thread.

........ Spontaneous generation hasn't been a scientific theory in like hundreds of years. Abiogenesis isn't spontaneous generation. No one who knows what they're talking about would use the theory of evolution to refer to abiogenesis.

 

The point eludes you. If there is no God, an earthquake just happens and is not bad or good. If you believe this (which, as a confessed atheist, you are bound to), what does the existance of God change? If we establish that unto itself, an earthquake is not bad, a God creating a world in which they occur does not therefore make it bad.

 

Hello? I already explained to you what it changed. If a strong wind knocks a brick off of a building and it hits you in the head, it's neither good or evil because nature is mindless. It just happens. However, if someone picked up the brick and threw it at you, it would be evil because it was deliberately thrown and intended to kill you.

 

Yes, that's much of the reason theistic evolution is foolishness. But there are two flaws in your statement. One, if there is no God, evolution is neither cold, nor brutal, it just is. With no God, nothing is good or bad. Two, if God created the world in six days, after which time it became corrupted with sin, it becomes irrelevant.

 

It's not because sin didn't make evolution. Sin didn't make earthquakes. God did. In fact, it could be argued that without evolution, there wouldn't be sin. (Except for the retarded not believing in God kind) Evolution rewards greed. Hate and violence comes from greed.

 

Wrong, because unless God is good, there is no good. What do we have to compare with or measure it by otherwise? If God is evil, that would mean there is a higher standard by which God may be judged, which there is not. If he is a liar, we're doomed because we have no way of overcoming his lies. Furthermore, if the standard of good comes from God, and God is a liar, there is for all intents and purposes, yet again no good or evil at all. This time not because there is no standard, but because we have no information about said standard.

 

First, nice job avoiding the question again. How do you know? Well, the answer is obvious, you don't know. And if you DON'T know, then you have no reason to call him good since you admit that we can't judge him for ourselves. Okay, so we might be doomed because we have no way of overcoming his lies, there may not be any good or evil at all, fine, you have no way of knowing if this is true or not. God could be a liar and that could all be the way it is. So stop calling him good when you don't have a clue what he is. Second, if you say unless God is good, there is no good, why can't I say unless God is evil, there is no evil? If it's possible for him to be the definition of good and have good and evil exist, then it's possible for him to be the definition of evil and have good and evil exist. If he created both, he'd have to be both anyway. Just to be clear on this, he did create both. (Isaiah 45:7) Third, why doesn't there have to be a higher standard by which God is judged if he's good? Why does it only work if we call him evil? Essentially, what you're saying is "you can judge him but ONLY if you agree with me and JUDGE HIM TO BE GOOD." How you can sit there and expect to get away with this bullshit? Finally, we know God is a liar from the bible verses where he admitted to lying.

 

Overly simplistic logic. Is it wrong to steal bread to feed your starving family?

 

I wouldn't consider stealing bread to feed your starving family an evil act. However, I'd consider killing children to punish their parents an evil act. You don't have to agree, but if you think it's a good act, it has to be good for everyone to do it. If two people get in a fight and one of them goes to the other's home after its over and chops his kids' heads off, maybe we shouldn't put him in jail. Maybe we should give him a medal instead.

 

I can't believe you'd question it. If we, say, innoculate the smallpox virus into extinction, is that good or bad? Well, it depends on your perspective. It's certainly not good for smallpox. With no God, everything exists with no governing standard, because no one can say whose perspective prevails. Even something like torture. Is that bad? Not for sadists, no. Whose to say their perspective is wrong? Majority. That's what it all comes down to. Without God, there is no right or wrong, only majority, which is an extension of self preservation.

 

Oh, so what you're really saying is that there still would be a right and a wrong, it would just be an opinion. Well newsflash, it's an opinion even if God exists. You pick and choose your own authority. No one else does it for you. Your authority can be God or Hitler or Santa Claus or me. Just don't expect everyone else to be as retarded as you. You're basically a nazi arguing that Hitler is the standard of right and wrong because he says he is and unless Hitler is good, then no one is good, since if he wasn't the standard, then no one would be the standard.

 

Why do you think they wouldn't? You seem to think people are basically good, so why do you think this?

 

How, when I've been saying all along that even the most evil people that ever lived don't deserve to suffer for eternity? To do something to deserve an infinite amount of torture, you'd have to do..... an infinite amount of evil. That's not possible... at least not humanly possible. God might qualify.

 

Say this again with the assumption that he exists. It doesn't work.

 

It's rejection of the belief in God, nothing else. If I don't believe I'm going to win the lottery and I win, am I rejecting my win?

 

That might sound good, but it isn't true. Your emotional capability is one thing, but you are most certainly intellectually capable of believing it, which is the realm of sense and evidence. The fact that many people smarter than you do believe it is testament to this.

This is a self defeating argument anyway because it's essentially saying "Even if I wanted to believe in God, he won't let me."

 

Intellectually capable doesn't have jackshit to do with it. No one has any facts that prove God. All they have is faith. Some people might think they have evidence, but guess what? I don't. To some people, the universe might be evidence of God, to others, it's just evidence of the universe. I can't force myself think that it's evidence if I don't think that it's true. What you're saying is "A lot of people smarter than you has red as their favorite color, so you should be able to make red your favorite color too!" You can tell yourself all day that red is your favorite color, but is your favorite color really red or are you just lying to yourself? Come on, do it. Make red your favorite color in 24 hours or I'll come through the computer and eat your soul.

 

The point was that you used an arbitrary definition.

 

Pain and suffering isn't arbitrary. You may like pain, but that doesn't mean it isn't pain.

 

So you're not as big a hippie as you could be.

 

Yep, old crazy hippie chaosrage thinking infants don't deserve to be eternally tortured for something they didn't do. Have you ever considered that I might be normal and you might be a psychopath? I think most people would agree with me. Even most christians would usually make things up rather than defend original sin by saying infants deserve to be tortured.

 

That's a fallacy. If evil was good, then you couldn't ask the question of whether it was good to create evil. There wouldn't be any.

 

Exactly my point. The statement that God is good is a fallacy because it can't be good to have evil. Yet God, not only creates evil, but allows it to exist.

 

The real question should be, by the way, is it good to create the ability to choose evil? It is.

 

Is it good to choose evil? No. Then why do you think it would be good to have the ability to choose evil? Is it good to have the ability to choose to murder someone? Before you start with any robot crap, keep in mind that you already acknowledged that we wouldn't be able to kill our grandmothers because it goes against our natures. We DON'T have the ability to choose to do it. Is that a bad thing? Would it be bad if no one else had that ability either? Unless you're of the opinion that murder is good, both answers would have to be "no".

 

Cruelty being evil is your standpoint, not mine. You've used God being cruel as evidence of his nonexistance more than once. Your idea of hell being pointless is no longer relevant because all you've said is that "Nobody deserves it because that's just what I think." So you need to come up with something else or concede the point.

 

I never said that it was a fact that he was evil, just that he was cruel. I think it holds a little more water than "Everyone deserves it because that's what God thinks. Oh, and I can't tell if what he thinks is actually good because I can't make a judgement about him."

 

PS. I'm only arguing for his nonexistance is because you said I can't say that he isn't good. This is what tends to happen when you define God as a feeling. If you don't like it, then you can take that back and I'll change my argument to him just being evil. Yet if I get you to admit that we can call him evil, is it still the Christian God?

 

That's not answering it, that's restating the question. Why could no crime fit that harsh of a punishment? Cause that's how you feel?

 

Yep.

 

This just downplays the significance of rejecting God. If that's worse than killing and terrible crime, then it's very much relevant. Everyone on the planet is fully capable of coming to a saving belief in God (if they genuinely aren't, God will save them anyway). Saying otherwise is just whining. If you claim that you can't believe in God because it doesn't make sense from an intellectual standpoint, you're a liar because people smarter than you studied it longer and better than you and believed it. If you claim you can't because you're "emotionally incapable" (whatever that means), it's called sin. Nobody is so deeply entrenched in sin they're incapable of escaping it, because all that's required is God's help, yours for the asking.

 

All that's required to believe in the Easter Bunny is the Easter Bunny's help, yours for the asking. Do you believe in the Easter Bunny now? I just asked BTW. Nothing happened! Guess that means he really doesn't exist. Or you're wrong and I really am that deeply entrenched in sin. (whatever that means) There's no significance of rejecting God because people are only making the best decision they can make with the intelligence that he gave them. If we don't believe, it's because we're flawed humans making reasonable human mistakes, the way God intended for us to turn out.

 

Hey, did you know I'm black? I listen to hip hop, I walk with a swagger, my black friends call me nigga and I even wear my cap backwards. But... my skin says I'm white. So, if Hitler did all of those things, but Catholicism says killing people is wrong... he's not a Catholic. This is why James says those things about works. Claiming the name of something is meaningless if your actions clearly demonstrate that you're not adhering to it's precepts at all. I'm glad it came out that you don't understand this because it's an important part of the discussion at large.

It's in the Bible too. The Pharisees spent their entire lives devoted to every nuance of scripture. They memorized the entire old testament. They didn't sin (theoretically). But Jesus said they were some of the worst sinners of all.

 

He is a Catholic. I'm sure you know they never excommunicated him, right? Catholicism doesn't say killing people is wrong. Remember the Crusades? Killing was what God's chosen people did in the OT, not always under orders. Let's look at the war crimes of Moses.

 

"And the children of Israel took ALL the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods."

 

"And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all these women alive?"

 

"Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women and children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

 

You said before that it didn't mean God wanted them to do it, but are you going to argue that they were no longer chosen people based on that? Let's see what else is in the bible. “He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed” (Exodus 22:20). “If thou shalt hear... certain men... saying, Let us go and serve other gods . . . Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword” (Deuteronomy 13:12-15). “That whosoever would not seek the Lord God of Israel should be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman” (2 Chronicles 15:13). "And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him" (Levitcus 24:16) Hitler was just being a good christian.

 

Why wouldn't I be ok with it? The only way I wouldn't be is if killing was a worse sin than rejecting God. Unless you're saying some sins are just too harsh to be forgiven... but if you say nobody deserves to go to hell, I don't think you'd say that. So, unless Hitler is beyond forgiveness, this point isn't a point anymore.

 

Then that's why you wouldn't be. If you're okay with it, just say it (and explain why) so I know where you're coming from. Or better yet, let's just skip ahead so I can say the only reason you're ok with it is because you're a scared little bitch afraid of hell. I say that some sins are too harsh to be forgiven, and still nobody deserves to go to hell.

 

Absofuckinglutely. God never told you to do anything you'd morally object to though.

 

I morally object to him. If believing means I accept him, then I morally object to that.

 

God was Austrian? That... that sounds like a difference. Yes, the difference is that Hitlers does not have the authority to make such judgements, while God does.

 

To the Christian, God has the authority to make such judgements. To the Nazi, Hitler has the authority to make such judgements. No difference.

 

Well, yes it would make him loving. That's really not difficult to theoretically comprehend. You must be quite slow if you're incapable of addressing concepts using guidelines you disagree with. It's not hard at all.

 

If I said I was incapable, then I must be. I didn't address it because you wanted me to say God is loving based on those guidelines, and he would be, but your guidelines are crap. "If he wants to kill everybody but decides to not to kill 1 or 2, you should praise him for it". Sorta like saying "Imagine that up is down, now the sky is down, right? AHAHA!" Um yeah, but it's a pretty fucking stupid point to make. The sky is still up, you're just saying something that isn't true to make it look like it's down.

 

That's what we had initially and we ruined it. If he did it again, we'd ruin it again, and he knows this, so he's not going to. Furthermore, why should he?

 

Once again, we didn't ruin it. Two of our ancestors who didn't know right from wrong ruined it. The obvious solution is to do it again, but this time let us know right from wrong. If I can figure it out, God should be able to figure it out if he thinks hard enough. He should do it because he's supposed to be love and he was the one that fucked it up the first time around. A good god would make an Earth-like place for people who die and don't want to be with him, unless this wouldn't be good to do something like that, but it would.

 

I wouldn't think you'd consciously hate it for this reason, but I think you do. If it were true, everyone who hears it would know it on some level. They would supress and deny because they love sin, but it doesn't make it untrue. They hate it because they can't escape it.

If it was all based on positivity (and if that's what you want, you suck), then at the first sign of inconvenience we would abandon it because it has no tangible essence, it's just a promise, the same way we don't want to go to school when we're in first grade. Sure, we need to go to school to make money and survive and be happy, and somebody might try to explain that to us, but we don't listen or care.

Furthermore, consider why someone would want you to be a christian. Financial gain? Commonly yes, but God likes those people less than you, so it doesn't count. Why else? Because they want you to be with God and happy forever. God and Christians are not threatening you with torture. As you alluded to, it's a self deafeating concept. It's "This is the way it is, I want to help you because I love you." not "Do this because if you don't I will punish you." I've explained that God has no choice but to send you to Hell, if you consider Hell the absence of his presence, which I do and is a fair assumption. The fact that he went so far out of his way to help you shows how much he isn't threatening you. If you take all of this and on top of it willfully fight God more, you deserve what you get.

Yes, by the way, most professing Christians are not, and spread fear and hate motivated by greed and ego. This has no effect on truth.

 

Every professing Christian spreads fear and hate because that's what Christianity is. If God and Christians weren't making threats with torture, then hell wouldn't even be in the picture. We wouldn't be talking about it. We would just be talking about how great heaven is. If your kids don't want to go to first grade, will you hold up a knife and say you'll stab them in the face? And I don't know if you're blind or you're ignoring this by choice, but God does have a choice of not putting people who believe in him out of his presense. Earth is proof of that. Babies going to heaven, at least according to you, is proof of that.

 

No, it's intelligent. Assuming it's true, which it isn't, but even if it were, it's the best course of action. If God's a prick who'll torture you for not believing in him, believe in him, or you're an idiot.

What they should do, however, is look at the verse and agree with it because it's so obviously just and true.

 

It's not intelligent or unintelligent. It's cowardly, although it might still be the best course of action if you're a christian. That's what makes it sad. It forces people to think that torturing even one person for eternity is just and babies are deserving of eternal torment because it's the best course of action to think that way.

 

Now take all the things I've just said, and you'll see why your Santa Claus analogy is wrong and why I can't respond to it.

 

Yeah, I know. The analogy is wrong because you like evil God better than evil Santa.

[chaosrage 0]

The devils have dead faith.

 

I'm pretty sure their faith isn't dead. They know that God's there.

James said that faith was dead without good works.

That applies to humans. Demons & Angels aren't human. Therefore, my statement stands.

Says who? You? James says "You think that believing in God is enough? Well remember that the demons believe in him too, so strongly that they tremble in terror! Fool! Faith without works is dead!"

 

Meaning of course that faith isn't enough to save you.

[chaosrage 0]

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.

Even though God is outside of time, the choice still has to happen first if his knowledge is dependent on it. It's like the analogy someone made with the VCR tape. You're outside of the timeline, you can rewind and fast forward, but everything still has to be written on that tape for you to know about it. Now let's say, God comes up to you and tells you what you'll do tomorrow. Now what happens tomorrow? Do you have to do what he said or can his knowledge be wrong?

 

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.

 

I have no idea what you're trying to get at right here. I saw the essay but didn't read it. It was long winded and insanely boring. Summarize it plz.

 

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.

 

Not really. If I had a seizure and did it, I wouldn't have control over myself and couldn't choose not to do it. That's not the power to do anything, I'm just going along for the ride. I couldn't phyically make myself have a seizure if I knew what would happen. Again, no power. Of course you realize this, so you're left with redefining the word omnipotence.

 

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.

 

Alright, if his power is limited, you can say he has unilmited power if you're lying. I agree with that.

 

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.

 

Limited unlimited power, eh? Can I quote you on that? Also, self imposed limits on his power would be him making himself not omnipotent, and that's incoherent. It's like making himself not God.

 

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.

 

Proving himself better than their gods is proving himself. If they didn't throw down their gods and worship him, sometimes he killed them or had his followers kill them. Then if they didn't convert, he killed more. That would be overthrowing their belief system. Hell, just Jesus coming down to Earth and resurrecting is overthrowing people's belief system. That doesn't mean everyone has to do it, not everyone would do it if God showed himself again, but it would be moronic to say he didn't prove himself. This isn't one of your better arguments.

 

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.

 

Since it doesn't prove it, God existing wouldn't overthrow the theory of Evolution. Therefore, he has no excuse for not showing himself.

 

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.

 

No, but we created them nonetheless. If God has has full authority over what he created, we should too.

 

If you really did understand that, that would be some trick, so yes, quite the cool place to be able to pull that off.

 

About as cool as being in a town full of zombies.

 

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.

 

Once again, you don't know. Perhaps he wants you to come to a belief about God through analysis and study, and thinks you're a fool for using the spiritual aspect. He wants you to use the brain he gave you and not take his word for everything. Like a puzzle. Or as you put it before, a challenge.

 

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.

 

The bible is filled with violence, murder, genocide, infanticide, intolerence, eternal damnation, etc... But God is supposed to be good and love. That's a perfect reason to think he wants you to use compassion and reject him.

 

If he's omnipotent, he can do both. If he isn't, then the bible is wrong, and he can't.

 

I meant everyone in the world, not everyone in the thread.

 

If not everyone in the thread understands it, then everyone in the world doesn't understand it. Duh.

 

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.

 

I didn't think it was supporting anything. You actually believe there was an atmospheric layer of water? So there was a logical reason for the water, but after the flood, God made all the water disappear? Or did aliens take it into outer space?

 

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, he didn't because he didn't exist and they didn't know any better. They did write it down, but you think it's meant to be metaphorical or something, which is a dumb thing to think because we know they actually believed those things.

 

No, just the Bible. It's not the same as mud people, or anything else for that matter. It is unto itself.

 

You haven't backed that up at all though.

 

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.

 

It means he won out over the rest. That's all. If Mithra had won, you'd be defending him and calling Jesus a nobody.

 

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.

 

The reason you believe in Jesus over Mithra is because he's more popular? You must have worded that wrong because you can't have meant to say that. 1. No, I don't remember that book. 2. If there's no evidence for something, and a story predating it by hundreds of years is nearly identical, it's a sure sign that it was just copied. 3. They're both lies, but if I had to believe in one, I would believe in the one that came first, not the plagiarized story. Give me 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.

 

Acts came before Luke, so if Acts is 40 years after, Luke is even later. I didn't think I had to point that out. If nothing was written about 1964 until 2004, and there's no evidence that anything was written for 40 years, it would be a 40 year game of telephone and VERY unreliable as far as what people are quoted as saying.

 

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 couldn't have said a sentence and died twice, saying a different sentence both times.

 

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.

 

If the Amalekites lied, that would be a contradiction. It doesn't say God allowed it to happen. It says God slew him, second contradiction. Plus, the Philistines slew him, third contradiction. Man, that guy had a lot of lives!

 

It makes it more accurate. We could have had just one of these statements and it be true, this allows a fuller understanding.

 

Nope, if they cared about being accurate and had contradicting stories, they would say "This group of people believe blah blah" and "this other group believes blah blah".

 

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.

 

So your take is that if we can't believe a story because it has zombies, all of history is a lie?

 

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.

 

Does evidence of Hercules make the Illad a history book?

 

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.

 

Just like the Flat Earth society is evidence of a Flat Earth and the Heavens Gaters are evidence of a spaceship behind the hale-bopp comet. Oh wait, that's not evidence of anything! Just evidence of people with stupid beliefs. If Josephus didn't actually write about Jesus and it was tacked on to him by a bishop in the third century, we should throw out everything he said about Jesus.

 

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.

 

Except Nebuchadnezzar wasn't Belshazzar's son or related to him at all. Belshazzar's father was part of a faction that overthrew the old king. And he was a sitting king, but not a real king. Third ruler in the kingdom. Does that mean Daniel was made co-co-regent? Did Daniel become the last king after Belshazzar died? No, so that's fucking vague. Third ruler of what in the kingdom?

 

This is just muddled records, if anything, the same as when everyone knew Belshazzar wasn't real.

 

Back then I don't think we had evidence of Belshazzar. Now we have Babylonian records. They say Belshazar existed, but a Darius the Mede didn't.

 

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.

 

The same purpose making up Mithra served and the same way Mithra got converts. How come those crowds of thousands of Jews didn't get automatically converted when they saw a famous guy performing miracles? Maybe because it never happened. Jesus didn't create the religion or propagate it, it was all done after his death. He's so unimportant he doesn't even need to have existed. Even if he existed, it would have probably died were it not for "Paul". You couldn't say that about Buddhism or Islam because Siddhartha and Mohammed were the creators. We might have their names wrong or have know no real facts about them, but they're.... the ones who did it. I don't expect any evidence of Abraham and Noah, but that doesn't change the fact that there isn't evidence. Although for Noah, we would expect evidence of a flood and there isn't any.

 

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.

 

Did you? It says there's no trace of him saying it before the 15th century.

 

Yeah, it really was. Time to take you back to talkorigins.

All About Archaeopteryx

 

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 if yalad in the Hifil means direct physical offspring, that would mean there's no gaps. I don't know if it does or not. I don't care enough to check. Fuck these long posts.

 

Well, those aren't really "records" now are they?

 

No, but it shows that people were around much earlier than the Bible says, just the same.

 

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.

 

Of course it matters what they believed. It's an insight to what they meant. If they believed one thing, they probably wouldn't have meant what they wrote to be the opposite of what they believed. You have to take that into account. Like you said, Noah was the only one who could write an account of the flood. But again it's funny how there is no archaelogical evidence of a global flood, isn't it?

 

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.

 

Same story, same cup. Everyone is just looking at the one particular cup and seeing something different. And every single christian believes their own particular version of Christianity is the real one. Cultural bias is picking Christianity because it's accepted by society and rejecting Mithraism because no one cares about it anymore. You have to go into some detail about how abiogenesis proves a god.

[Nighthawk 0]

Maybe it might not send us there out of mercy alone, but that goes against what he said and there's nothing to make us think that he would.  If a cursory study will demonstrate it, then it should be easy to do it.  However, you'd also have to demonstrate that all babies receive the holy spirit for the point to really to be valid.

 

Remarkably easy, yes. Romans 8:9, Ephesians 1: 13-14. If you did read the Bible, I suppose you've now forgotten everything.

No, because they aren't saved by the same means everyone else is. They die, and then God saves them. At the judgement.

 

That's why it's a wrong translation, because it doesn't sound that way in English.  The more accurate one would be 'even'.  Now I don't speak Greek, and I doubt you do.  I just think it's a little odd that none of the translations use even.  Why would they all ignore the context?

 

That's not what wrong is. The word niggard is still proper English, but try using it in casual conversation, it will be misunderstood most every time. That doesn't mean it's wrong. I'm not fluent in Greek, but I possess a working knowledge of it.

An exegetive and has no true English equivelent. Even is just one example itself, you could also say "which is" or "of". Knowledge of how translations work will demonstrate these kind of situations occuring frequently, but since most Christians (ie Catholics, although buffered by many Protestants) believe in a baptismal regeneration anyway, there isn't a significant movement for correction.

 

All I wanted to see was if you'd acknowledge that they're born sinners.  If they're born sinners, why would you expect God to save them?

 

Because they can't accept or reject him. It would hardly make sense to set up God's fairly complex and epic plan for salvation and then exempt billions of people from it for pretty much no reason at all.

 

God by his nature must put sin away from him, remember?  He can't show mercy simply because he feels like it. 

 

It's not just because he feels like it, it's because they can't choose. The entire concept is hinged on choice. If you're exempt from choice, you're exempt from Hell. Makes sense to me.

 

He CAN'T save them outright.  Babies are sinful, so something must be done to them to put away their sin.  The Holy Ghost can't just go to them and save them anymore than it could go to us.

 

It's also true that God is willing to remove anyone's sin, what stands in his way is rejection. If a baby has no attachment to sin, and cannot reject, they're not in the same position in that sense either.

 

As for the crack addict analogy, do babies deserve to be addicted to crack because their parents did it?  Did they DESERVE to be shot in the head because they're addicted to it?

 

You took the analogy too far. All that showed was how a baby could be a sinner without sinning.

 

It is horrifying, not because it's true since it isn't, but because some people believe it's true.  Babies can't do anything to deserve something bad to happen to them, let alone torture, let alone torture for a 100 years, let alone eternal torture.  Please tell me you were high on crack yourself when you wrote that.

 

We're in agreement. It isn't true. Saying they deserve hell is a theoretical statement since they don't go.

 

I meant after he died.

 

If we establish that he was sad before he died, his behavior after he died is clearly a contrast.

 

I say so.

 

You're wrong though.

 

Do yourself a favor and get this idea out of your head because it will be extremely offensive to a lot of people. You're naive, which is ok, but it's not ok to be obstinant about your naivete. This has overtaken your description of the NASB as a liberal translation as the stupidest thing you've said.

 

Either way, they need belief.

 

No... for one thing, who is the Bible written for? Infants? Unless it was written for infants, there's no need to say "You must belief unless you can't." because if you couldn't, you couldn't read or understand that. The Bible contains information relevant to it's audience.

 

Because James said it?  They believe in God.  Yet, they can't be saved because faith isn't enough according to James.  I'm not the one that made the comparision.  James did.  Take it up with him.  That last part is an interpolation.  He doesn't say an empty claim isn't faith.  What he says is you need to have more than faith.

 

You do. If you don't have works, it demonstrates that you don't have faith. Try this one: You can claim to be good at basketball, but if you can't make free throws, that's evidence that you're not. Is making free throws required to be good at basketball? No, as many pros demonstrate. I trust you'll be able to expand this analogy without my explaining it further.

 

James says that you need to graduate from high school and get a diploma to be a high school graduate while Paul says you just need the diploma.  How is that not a contradiction?

 

Ok, I'll phrase it this way... going by what Paul said, you will still have works, as an absolute. The people he was writing too didn't question that, they were having difficulty with the issue of whether they saved you. The people James was writing to thought that once saved you were allowed to do whatever you want, and he points out that if you are really saved, that wouldn't be where your heart and mind were at anyway. Different people, different points, same truth.

This would only be a problem if James were the only book we had, but it isn't, which is precisely why there are 27 books in the NT. Taken together, we can properly interpret what he means.

 

One of my friends missed the ceremony and they wouldn't give him a diploma.  He had to go to the ceremony the next year to get it.

 

I pity the education received at such an institution. But, he was still a high school graduate because he still knew everything they taught him in high school.

 

He punished them for their sin by kicking them out of the garden of Eden.  Plus he turned the stove on and put the baby next to it.

 

The garden wouldn't have sustained itself anyway, as the entire world was cursed by sin. He could have left the stove off, but then we wouldn't have choice.

 

Uh, Job was in a spoken conversation with God as much about like I would be if I yelled "Yo, hey God, there is a hell!" God never responded to him. 

 

What? Most of the book is Job saying things that are wrong and God correcting him. Remember, sweetie, this is a different Job than the one in Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible.

 

Sheol might be a complicated issue, but hell isn't.  Jesus says that those who believeth not are damned and cast into the fire.

 

What did I just say about Hell being an English word? Jesus said Gehenna, which was a dump, which was burning. So he could have meant thrown into the fire figuratively for being thrown away. Now you begin to see what I've said all along.

 

We don't know if Jonah wanted them to go to heaven.

 

Yes we do. That's like saying when the KKK lynched somebody, they were really doing it to send them to heaven.

 

God said he wouldn't kill them.  Then centuries later, he did it anyway.  He didn't show them mercy if he killed them!

 

For starters, he didn't say he wouldn't kill them, he asked a rhetorical question. The point was that these 120000 were in a different class than the rest of the city, and what about them was different? They didn't know right from left, they didn't reject God because they didn't know any better. Regardless of whether he killed them later, that is still true. It's a statement about infants and stupid people in general because otherwise he only meant the ones in that city at them time specifically, which is ridiculous. It's a statement that he looks at them differently than regular sinners.

You keep dodging the issue but if you look it square, you'll see it's true.

 

The only way you could make that argument was if he let all the people who didn't know their right from their left live and never ever destroyed the city.

 

No, because all you need is evidence that they're viewed differently, which you have. Anything else besides a verse explicitly saying God sent them to hell doesn't matter.

 

When did I say everything in the bible didn't happen?  Never.  If there was a story about the Civil War with a hobbit, it wouldn't be evidence of a hobbit.  It wouldn't be evidence of a Civil War either.  The story can be dismissed because it has a hobbit in it, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.  That doesn't mean LOTR isn't true either.

 

Good. You've contradicted this before.

 

As history?  Yes.  Otherwise, Hercules is history.  If dragons and hobbits were in Gone With the Wind and we didn't know who wrote it, it would negate the entire thing.  Because we don't know what parts were true and what parts were made up.  The question would be Was There Hobbits and Dragons?  The answer is no, because we don't have any evidence of them.  Well.. we actually found evidence of hobbits, so we should probably drop that whole hobbit thing and replace them with zombies or something.

 

Actually I saw zombies myself once, down in New Orleans. That's a fun story, remind me to tell it sometime.

This whole point is backwards, because the Bible's not history. It is, but not in the same way as other things. If God is real (God transcends history), then the Bible is true and God being in it doesn't negate it. If God is false, then his being there negates some of the history. In order for the Bible not to be evidence of God, it must be discredited. If you discredit it by saying God's presence negates it's history, this is obviously circular reasoning. Therefore, in order to discredit the Bible, you must not use the standard method of supernatural negation, because it presuppoes it's untruth to begin with.

 

 

Wouldn't a real King named Arthur and Troy be counterbalances?

 

No, a counterbalance would be a reason in the story to explain the presence of dragons and lack of evidence thereof.

 

But does it mean there's evidence against the civil war? You have applied this principle to the Bible.

 

Adfh dkdfkd dskjhdf jjh djjd siweh sjhdaj sakjsh skjhdkj?

 

It's not evidence against the civil war and it's not evidence against dragons! Fucking listen. The bible isn't evidence against God. It just isn't evidence FOR God. Anymore than the Illad is evidence of Greek Gods. Anymore than fossils of hobbit sized humans are evidence that Sauron, the deceiver has come back and is looking for his ring of power.

 

I think you've finally got it. Just because the Bible isn't evidence for God, doesn't mean it's evidence against God. Now that I've backed you into a corner, you might deny you implied it was, but rest assured, you did. Establishing this fact regarding relevancy of evidence has been a valuable watermark in the discussion.

You can't say that the Illiad isn't evidence of Greek Gods either, by the way. It obviously is. It's not compelling evidence, but evidence and proof are not the same thing. The only way it wouldn't be evidence was if we had already established (as is the case) that Greek Gods are not real. This shows the bias in your thinking.

 

By now, you HAVE to know I don't think the bible is logically self sufficient.  I think it falls under EVERY area we can test.

 

I've given you fair forum and validly countered every point you've made. You could only make such a statement were this not true. What you have is, at best, a stalemate. Nothing else of comparison can accomplish this.

 

That's not evidence of God, that's evidence of the magic Space Goat.

 

Space Goat is a god. I said it was evidence of a God, not which one. Establishing that there was one is rather important, however.

[TheBigSwigg 0]

The devils have dead faith.

 

I'm pretty sure their faith isn't dead. They know that God's there.

James said that faith was dead without good works.

That applies to humans. Demons & Angels aren't human. Therefore, my statement stands.

Says who? You? James says "You think that believing in God is enough? Well remember that the demons believe in him too, so strongly that they tremble in terror! Fool! Faith without works is dead!"

 

Meaning of course that faith isn't enough to save you.

I never said that Demons were getting saved, I just said they have faith, which your quote just agreed with.

[Guest SP-1]

Of course Demons believe there's one God. They were once Angels. They were in the throne room. They were THERE.

 

It's not a matter of faith with demons, nor was that the point James was trying to make.

 

Works don't save. They cannot, and are not part of the salvation equation. They ARE an outward sign of the inward change. If you are truly saved, the works will be an overflow of that. Not a partnership to accomplish it.

 

Chaos, I don't respond to your ideas on bible translation because its pretty clear that:

 

A. You don't have a clue what you're talking about.

 

B. You believe it anyway to such a degree that its pointless.

[Nighthawk 0]

........ Spontaneous generation hasn't been a scientific theory in like hundreds of years.

 

Which is exactly why it's so stupid.

 

No one who knows what they're talking about would use the theory of evolution to refer to abiogenesis.

 

I did, so you're wrong about that.

 

Hello?  I already explained to you what it changed.  If a strong wind knocks a brick off of a building and it hits you in the head, it's neither good or evil because nature is mindless.  It just happens.  However, if someone picked up the brick and threw it at you, it would be evil because it was deliberately thrown and intended to kill you.

 

The point continues to elude you. If an earthquake isn't bad, someone making it happen doesn't suddenly make it bad.

Someone throwing a brick at you isn't "bad" either. What if you threw a brick at someone because you wanted to kill them? Wouldn't it be good? If not, it's because if you were allowed to throw bricks at people, someone might throw one at you. Self preservation, not morals.

 

It's not because sin didn't make evolution.  Sin didn't make earthquakes.  God did.  In fact, it could be argued that without evolution, there wouldn't be sin.  (Except for the retarded not believing in God kind)  Evolution rewards greed.  Hate and violence comes from greed.

 

Well, no, sin did make those things. Read your Bible again.

 

First, nice job avoiding the question again.  How do you know?  Well, the answer is obvious, you don't know.  And if you DON'T know, then you have no reason to call him good since you admit that we can't judge him for ourselves.  Okay, so we might be doomed because we have no way of overcoming his lies, there may not be any good or evil at all, fine, you have no way of knowing if this is true or not.  God could be a liar and that could all be the way it is.  So stop calling him good when you don't have a clue what he is. 

 

Don't believe anything because you don't know for sure? Don't walk out the door tomorrow! It might be a mirage and your house is really teetering on the edge of a volcano! I don't care what you say, you can't know for SURE!

 

Second, if you say unless God is good, there is no good, why can't I say unless God is evil, there is no evil?

 

When did I say you couldn't?

 

If he created both, he'd have to be both anyway.

 

How's that? I'm warning you now, this is a trap. No matter what you say, I'll prove it wrong.

 

Third, why doesn't there have to be a higher standard by which God is judged if he's good?  Why does it only work if we call him evil?  Essentially, what you're saying is "you can judge him but ONLY if you agree with me and JUDGE HIM TO BE GOOD."  How you can sit there and expect to get away with this bullshit?

 

When did I say anything remotely similar to that? I said the only way you can attempt to judge God is by the standards he's allowed. If he's evil and wants you to think he's good, you're going to. Your response to this would be to believe nothing. Feel free, I won't stop you. I don't know why you think everyone's on a crusade to save you.

 

You don't have to agree, but if you think it's a good act, it has to be good for everyone to do it.

 

That's retarded. Is it good for children to work in a factory? Is it good for children to send their parents to bed without supper? Is it good for epileptics to play nintendo in front of the christmas tree?

 

Oh, so what you're really saying is that there still would be a right and a wrong, it would just be an opinion.

 

Not an opinion, a perspective. An act can be good for one and bad for another, and they are both correct, since neither has prevalence over the other. Hence, there is no right or wrong, since each cancels out the other.

 

You're basically a nazi arguing that Hitler is the standard of right and wrong because he says he is and unless Hitler is good, then no one is good, since if he wasn't the standard, then no one would be the standard.

 

You say this like it means something. Someone was wrong once, so now you're wrong? Guess what, one time I argued with a guy that Mountain Dew was better than Mello Yello, and in the end, he admitted I was right. So you've basically admitted I was right. I win.

 

 

I'll get to the rest of this later. By the way, I see the root of your error. You're a postmodern existentialist, which is leading you invariably toward nihilism (www.dictionary.com). This is as outdated as spontaneous generation. It's sort of cute, really.

[Guest SP-1]

Well I could have told you that, IDRM.

[chaosrage 0]

Remarkably easy, yes. Romans 8:9, Ephesians 1: 13-14. If you did read the Bible, I suppose you've now forgotten everything.

No, because they aren't saved by the same means everyone else is. They die, and then God saves them. At the judgement.

How does that show that no one receives the holy spirit until they're saved? All you showed was that they need it to be saved. The Holy Ghost earns us salvation. If any man doesn't have the spirit, God doesn't have you. No shit. That's not the same thing. You can read those verses thinking that you need both and it makes just as much sense. Again, it doesn't even matter because if it was true you can't prove that babies get the Holy Ghost when they die. So you have no point. Show me that God saved them at the judgement. You can't because it doesn't say that.

 

That's not what wrong is. The word niggard is still proper English, but try using it in casual conversation, it will be misunderstood most every time. That doesn't mean it's wrong. I'm not fluent in Greek, but I possess a working knowledge of it.

An exegetive and has no true English equivelent. Even is just one example itself, you could also say "which is" or "of". Knowledge of how translations work will demonstrate these kind of situations occuring frequently, but since most Christians (ie Catholics, although buffered by many Protestants) believe in a baptismal regeneration anyway, there isn't a significant movement for correction.

 

Niggard isn't wrong, most people just don't know what it means. 'And' meaning 'even' is wrong because 'and' doesn't mean 'even'. Look it up if you don't know. And I'll trust the experts' translations over your working knowledge and keep on thinking you're full of shit.

 

Because they can't accept or reject him. It would hardly make sense to set up God's fairly complex and epic plan for salvation and then exempt billions of people from it for pretty much no reason at all.

 

They can't accept or reject him because they don't believe, just like atheists and people who believe in a different God. It would hardly make sense to exempt them, but he does it. It would hardly make sense to create people that he knows won't believe in him and are destined to go to hell, but he does it. It would hardly make sense to kill the innocent children and animals along with the guilty in the flood and the cities he smited, but he did it. It would hardly make sense to expect someone who would kill the innocent along with the guilty to make exceptions for the innocents to be saved, but you do.

 

It's not just because he feels like it, it's because they can't choose. The entire concept is hinged on choice. If you're exempt from choice, you're exempt from Hell. Makes sense to me.

 

Makes sense to me too, but the fact is God can't do anything for them. At least that's what you said. Following the same logic of why he sends us to hell, God by his nature must put those who sin away from him. He can't make them give it up either. There's nothing he can do about it.

 

It's also true that God is willing to remove anyone's sin, what stands in his way is rejection. If a baby has no attachment to sin, and cannot reject, they're not in the same position in that sense either.

 

No one would reject him if they saw proof of him, so this is false. Most people aren't attached to sin, they just don't believe... hey, like babies. Same position.

 

You took the analogy too far. All that showed was how a baby could be a sinner without sinning.

 

The analogy was supposed to back up your claim that babies deserve eternal torture. So I asked you if babies addicted to crack deserve to be that way? (Do babies deserve to have sin?) Do they deserve to be killed because they're addicted to it? (Do babies deserve eternal torture because they have sin?)

 

We're in agreement. It isn't true. Saying they deserve hell is a theoretical statement since they don't go.

 

It's not theoretical since you think they really do deserve it, you just think God is so nice and merciful that he saves them from it. But you can take it back if you like.

 

If we establish that he was sad before he died, his behavior after he died is clearly a contrast.

 

We've already established that he wasn't fasting because he was sad. It was to see if God would show mercy. He didn't, so he stopped. That's why his behavior changed.

 

Do yourself a favor and get this idea out of your head because it will be extremely offensive to a lot of people. You're naive, which is ok, but it's not ok to be obstinant about your naivete. This has overtaken your description of the NASB as a liberal translation as the stupidest thing you've said.

 

Please don't pretend like you give a shit about babies when you said they deserved to be tortured forever. I think that's just a little more offensive than anything I or anyone else could say. What I said was true and you would know it if you weren't so screwed up in the head. I care what someone who would defend a murderer finds offensive about as much as I would care what a murderer finds offensive.

 

No... for one thing, who is the Bible written for? Infants? Unless it was written for infants, there's no need to say "You must belief unless you can't." because if you couldn't, you couldn't read or understand that. The Bible contains information relevant to it's audience.

 

Was the quote "You have to believe to be saved."? Oh, that's right, the quote was "Those that believe are saved, and those that don't are damned." For a second there I thought you had a point.

 

You do. If you don't have works, it demonstrates that you don't have faith. Try this one: You can claim to be good at basketball, but if you can't make free throws, that's evidence that you're not. Is making free throws required to be good at basketball? No, as many pros demonstrate. I trust you'll be able to expand this analogy without my explaining it further.

 

It'd be more accurate to say someone claimed to be good at basketball but never shows anyone how good he is. Does that mean he isn't good at basketball? It's possible, but it's also possible that he really is good.

 

James 2:17 "Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone."

 

See, he isn't saying they don't have faith. He's saying the faith is dead because it's alone.

 

Ok, I'll phrase it this way... going by what Paul said, you will still have works, as an absolute. The people he was writing too didn't question that, they were having difficulty with the issue of whether they saved you. The people James was writing to thought that once saved you were allowed to do whatever you want, and he points out that if you are really saved, that wouldn't be where your heart and mind were at anyway. Different people, different points, same truth.

 

So everyone that believes does good works? There's no such thing as a person who believes in God and doesn't do good? Well we can strike that down right now because you already admitted there's many people who believe and don't do what God wants.

 

This would only be a problem if James were the only book we had, but it isn't, which is precisely why there are 27 books in the NT. Taken together, we can properly interpret what he means.

 

You know, you're right.

 

"For we must all appear before the jugment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad." 2 Cor 5:10

 

"For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works." Matthew 16:27

 

"If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments." Matthew 19:17

 

"But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; Who will render to every man according to his deeds." Romans 2:6

 

"The Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work." 1 Pet 1:17

 

I pity the education received at such an institution. But, he was still a high school graduate because he still knew everything they taught him in high school.

 

He was a high school graduate but he couldn't get his diploma. If you believe in God, and you don't do good works, you still believe in God, but you won't get into heaven. Now do you get it?

 

The garden wouldn't have sustained itself anyway, as the entire world was cursed by sin. He could have left the stove off, but then we wouldn't have choice.

 

First, they didn't have a choice. How many times do I have to say that? If you put a baby on a stove and put the burner on and tell him not to touch it, they're not making a choice to go against what you're saying and touch it anyway. They do it because they don't know any better. They don't know that they'll get burned. Second, pretending they had a choice for a minute, how the fuck is the choice of a baby touching the stove remotely important? I don't know about you, but I'd keep them away from the stove and make sure the stove is turned off. I don't care that I'm taking away their free will to burn themselves. Then again, I'm not some asshole who thinks babies deserve torture.

 

What? Most of the book is Job saying things that are wrong and God correcting him. Remember, sweetie, this is a different Job than the one in Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible.

 

I thought you read the bible. The book of Job is the book where God lets Satan torment Job because he has a bet with him. Most of the book is Job arguing with his friends about God. God only shows up at the end to say "Who are you to question me? I know more than you. Haha!" And then Job says he's sorry. God doesn't talk to Job until chapter 38. Did you really think he was in a spoken conversation with him at chapter 3?

 

What did I just say about Hell being an English word? Jesus said Gehenna, which was a dump, which was burning. So he could have meant thrown into the fire figuratively for being thrown away. Now you begin to see what I've said all along.

 

Restful people don't wail and gnash their teeth. Job was obviously talking about a different afterlife than Jesus. Either Job was wrong or Jesus was wrong. Take your pick.

 

Yes we do. That's like saying when the KKK lynched somebody, they were really doing it to send them to heaven.

 

Actually, it's not like saying that because I didn't say Jonah wanted them to go to heaven. In fact, I said they probably went to hell. The point is heaven and hell isn't the issue here. Jonah simply said he wanted Ninevah to be overthrown and never mentioned heaven or hell. So stop fucking talking about it.

 

For starters, he didn't say he wouldn't kill them, he asked a rhetorical question. The point was that these 120000 were in a different class than the rest of the city, and what about them was different? They didn't know right from left, they didn't reject God because they didn't know any better. Regardless of whether he killed them later, that is still true. It's a statement about infants and stupid people in general because otherwise he only meant the ones in that city at them time specifically, which is ridiculous. It's a statement that he looks at them differently than regular sinners.

You keep dodging the issue but if you look it square, you'll see it's true.

 

Well, Jonah wanted the city to be destroyed. He said it would happen in 40 days. Of course it didn't happen because 120,000 of the people were stupid. Yes, he looks at them differently than regular sinners. But I've still shown you with the flood and Saul's massacre that he doesn't really care about them and punishes them with the rest. Why do you keep dodging that? The people of Ninevah didn't anger God like the other cities because many of them were so stupid. They must have gotten smarter a century later though, perhaps there were only around 50,000 or so people who didn't know the right from their left then.

 

No, because all you need is evidence that they're viewed differently, which you have. Anything else besides a verse explicitly saying God sent them to hell doesn't matter.

 

Wrong, the fact that he still destroyed the city shows you they weren't spared. Your KKK analogy completely backfires on you here. Why would he kill them all and then send them to heaven? Think about it.

 

Good. You've contradicted this before.

 

Good? So you admit that the story of the civil war with a hobbit can be dismissed because it has a hobbit in it? Not only haven't I contradicted it but you just agreed with my argument that the bible can be dismissed because it has a God in it.

 

Actually I saw zombies myself once, down in New Orleans. That's a fun story, remind me to tell it sometime.

This whole point is backwards, because the Bible's not history. It is, but not in the same way as other things. If God is real (God transcends history), then the Bible is true and God being in it doesn't negate it. If God is false, then his being there negates some of the history. In order for the Bible not to be evidence of God, it must be discredited. If you discredit it by saying God's presence negates it's history, this is obviously circular reasoning. Therefore, in order to discredit the Bible, you must not use the standard method of supernatural negation, because it presuppoes it's untruth to begin with.

 

Just like if hobbits are real, then LOTR is true. Your point? Until we find evidence that hobbits are real, it's still not history. No matter how much of a big LOTR nerd you are, it still isn't history. Yeah, I'm using supernatural negation. I've never seen any evidence of anything supernatural. That's reason enough for me to discredit the bible. I haven't seen any evidence of dragons and magic. That's reason enough to discredit the story of King Arthur. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It can still be true, but a billion of other weird shit can be true as well. Who cares. Do you believe that you live in a computer program because a movie said you are? Why not? OMG u cant discredit the matrix by presupposing it's untruth! Do you go around believing in elves, leprechauns, mud men, space goats, the tooth fairy, Batman, etc..? No, you would probably say they don't exist by the same reasoning you hate. If you want to be consistant, you would have to say the same thing about God. I say none of those things exist and neither do any gods.

 

No, a counterbalance would be a reason in the story to explain the presence of dragons and lack of evidence thereof.

 

Merlin made the dragons disappear. Now there's a counterbalance. On an equal level with "Where the fuck did all that water go?"

 

I think you've finally got it. Just because the Bible isn't evidence for God, doesn't mean it's evidence against God. Now that I've backed you into a corner, you might deny you implied it was, but rest assured, you did. Establishing this fact regarding relevancy of evidence has been a valuable watermark in the discussion.

You can't say that the Illiad isn't evidence of Greek Gods either, by the way. It obviously is. It's not compelling evidence, but evidence and proof are not the same thing. The only way it wouldn't be evidence was if we had already established (as is the case) that Greek Gods are not real. This shows the bias in your thinking.

 

Ok. there was a murder. The gun at the crime scene was traced to you, it has your finger prints on it. The bullets in the victim match the gun. The victim was your girlfriend who just broke up with you. There's 100 eyewitnesses ready to testify. You go to court, get on the stand, and say you're innocent. You tell them an alien from outer space came in a UFO and stopped time, shot your girlfriend, and put the gun in your hand. Is this evidence to you? If you want to think it's evidence, well that's fine by me, it doesn't help your argument that God has more evidence than hobbits or Greek Gods if you want to think of it that way. Why? Because they have the same amount of evidence, a book. Remember that we have fossils of hobbit-sized creatures and we found the location of Troy from the Illiad, on top of having records from historians talking about Hercules. The bias is your thinking that those stories aren't true and the bible is true.

 

I've given you fair forum and validly countered every point you've made. You could only make such a statement were this not true. What you have is, at best, a stalemate. Nothing else of comparison can accomplish this.

 

It's too bad that I've responded to every single one of your counter points telling you how they weren't valid. You could only say that were that not true. And it's only a stalemate if you consider "a wizard did it" arguments to be valid. I've been trying to explain to you for about the past 10 pages why they aren't.

 

Space Goat is a god. I said it was evidence of a God, not which one. Establishing that there was one is rather important, however.

 

Nah, he isn't a god, he's just a regular goat. He sneezed and the universe came out.

[chaosrage 0]

I never said that Demons were getting saved, I just said they have faith, which your quote just agreed with.

They have faith, just dead faith. Dead faith means faith is alone, not that it doesn't exist....... according to James.

[chaosrage 0]

Which is exactly why it's so stupid.

Spontaneous generation is stupid. Abiogenesis.... on the other hand isn't.

 

I did, so you're wrong about that.

 

The fact that you would call abiogenesis evolution proves that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. For further proof, you seem to think abiogenesis means spontaneous generation.

 

The point continues to elude you. If an earthquake isn't bad, someone making it happen doesn't suddenly make it bad.

Someone throwing a brick at you isn't "bad" either. What if you threw a brick at someone because you wanted to kill them? Wouldn't it be good? If not, it's because if you were allowed to throw bricks at people, someone might throw one at you. Self preservation, not morals.

 

No, it wouldn't be good. I might think it was good but if I got caught, I'd still get thrown in jail. You can say it comes down to majority if you like. I guess if God didn't exist, you think we shouldn't have jails because there's no right or wrong. What a crock of shit. And I'm pretty sure I could throw a brick at someone and never get caught or have one thrown at me. In essense, it's still self preservation because morals come from survival traits, but not in the same way that you think.

 

Well, no, sin did make those things. Read your Bible again.

 

If the bible says it, then the bible is wrong. It's ridiculously stupid to think that disobeying God automatically created earthquakes and evolution on it's own.

 

Don't believe anything because you don't know for sure? Don't walk out the door tomorrow! It might be a mirage and your house is really teetering on the edge of a volcano! I don't care what you say, you can't know for SURE!

 

Funny, I don't remember saying don't know for sure. I said you can't know at all. You can't even say it probably is one way or the other because you can't judge him. Believing in God is like believing your house is on the edge of a volcano by the way.

 

When did I say you couldn't?

 

"Evil is what God is not, by definition."

 

How's that? I'm warning you now, this is a trap. No matter what you say, I'll prove it wrong.

 

Because if evil is what God is not, by definition, he couldn't be responsible for evil. Simple.

 

When did I say anything remotely similar to that? I said the only way you can attempt to judge God is by the standards he's allowed. If he's evil and wants you to think he's good, you're going to. Your response to this would be to believe nothing. Feel free, I won't stop you. I don't know why you think everyone's on a crusade to save you.

 

Right here. You just said it again. We can only judge God if we agree with you that he's good. We have to think he's good or believe nothing. Wrong bitch, that's not my response. My response is to think he's evil.

 

That's retarded. Is it good for children to work in a factory? Is it good for children to send their parents to bed without supper? Is it good for epileptics to play nintendo in front of the christmas tree?

 

If it was good for children to work in a factory for one reason, it'd have to be good for all children to work in a factory for the same reason and good for all epileptics to play Nintendo. What's your point?

 

Not an opinion, a perspective. An act can be good for one and bad for another, and they are both correct, since neither has prevalence over the other. Hence, there is no right or wrong, since each cancels out the other.

 

When everyone has a different but equally correct perspective, that's what people call an opinion.

 

You say this like it means something. Someone was wrong once, so now you're wrong? Guess what, one time I argued with a guy that Mountain Dew was better than Mello Yello, and in the end, he admitted I was right. So you've basically admitted I was right. I win.

 

If I had the same argument as that guy and I admitted he was wrong, then I would be admitting that you're right. It's a perspective that Hitler was wrong. Since you said he was wrong, I guess that means you think he is. Since you're using the same argument a nazi would use to defend Hitler, you are actually admitting that you're wrong. Even if you don't realize it.

 

I'll get to the rest of this later. By the way, I see the root of your error. You're a postmodern existentialist, which is leading you invariably toward nihilism (http://www.dictionary.com/). This is as outdated as spontaneous generation. It's sort of cute, really.

 

That's great.

[chaosrage 0]

I think I'm done with this thread. If you don't get it after all this time, I don't think you ever will. These posts are getting way too long.

[Guest SP-1]

Intelligent discussion may resume now.

[k thx 0]

Shit! A Christian!

 

::runs and hides::

[Hogan Made Wrestling 0]

What does Banders Kennany think of this thread?

[k thx 0]

69

[Nighthawk 0]

Thank god he finally quit. Just so it's established, anyone who reads this and thinks chaosrage isn't stupid, speak up. I really want to know.

 

I'll destroy his last few posts and be done with it.

[Nighthawk 0]

How does that show that no one receives the holy spirit until they're saved?  All you showed was that they need it to be saved.  The Holy Ghost earns us salvation.  If any man doesn't have the spirit, God doesn't have you.  No shit.  That's not the same thing.  You can read those verses thinking that you need both and it makes just as much sense.  Again, it doesn't even matter because if it was true you can't prove that babies get the Holy Ghost when they die.  So you have no point.  Show me that God saved them at the judgement.  You can't because it doesn't say that.

 

This was talking about baptism, not infant salvation. So you can see how he attempted to shift the focus when his error was shown. The verse, I quoted, by the way, said that the Holy Spirit was the promised seal of salvation, meaning that when you receive the Spirit, it confirms that you are saved. Taken in context with the verse that says the Gentiles could be baptized because they had received the Holy Spirit, I have proved salvation without baptism.

 

Niggard isn't wrong, most people just don't know what it means.  'And' meaning 'even' is wrong because 'and' doesn't mean 'even'.  Look it up if you don't know.  And I'll trust the experts' translations over your working knowledge and keep on thinking you're full of shit. 

 

I don't know what he was trying to say with his first sentence. If niggard is interpreted wrong, it doesn't change the true meaning of the word, which is exactly what I said. And, in English, can be used in an exegetive sense, such as "Did you tighten those screws enough?" "Yeah, they're good and tight.". This has rendered his closing statement impotent, but I should point out that he chose to accept somebody else's opinion in the face of explanation, with no knowledge of his own, and I as I have just shown, got it wrong. This is precisely what's wrong with the so called "rationalist" you generally meet, one of the points of this thread.

 

They can't accept or reject him because they don't believe, just like atheists and people who believe in a different God.  It would hardly make sense to exempt them, but he does it.

 

Here, he has placed infants on the same intellectual level as atheists. While I could make a witty remark, I'l let it speak for itself.

 

It would hardly make sense to create people that he knows won't believe in him and are destined to go to hell, but he does it.

 

It does make sense, unless you're stupid. Here, he has failed to realize that only creating people who will be saved is removing choice, and essentially repeating the angelic creation.

 

It would hardly make sense to kill the innocent children and animals along with the guilty in the flood and the cities he smited, but he did it.  It would hardly make sense to expect someone who would kill the innocent along with the guilty to make exceptions for the innocents to be saved, but you do.

 

He never quite got how killing wasn't such a big deal.

 

Makes sense to me too, but the fact is God can't do anything for them.  At least that's what you said.  Following the same logic of why he sends us to hell, God by his nature must put those who sin away from him.  He can't make them give it up either.  There's nothing he can do about it. 

 

The only reason we don't give up sin is because we want to keep it. If a baby has no attachment to sin, there's nothing stopping God from forgiving it.

 

No one would reject him if they saw proof of him, so this is false.  Most people aren't attached to sin, they just don't believe... hey, like babies.  Same position.

 

A very short sighted and culturally arrogant statement to begin with. His statement of sin shows that he doesn't know what it is. It's a shame he quit because I'd have liked to see him try to support that most people aren't attached to sin.

 

The analogy was supposed to back up your claim that babies deserve eternal torture.  So I asked you if babies addicted to crack deserve to be that way?  (Do babies deserve to have sin?)  Do they deserve to be killed because they're addicted to it?  (Do babies deserve eternal torture because they have sin?)

 

No, it was supposed to show how they could be sinners without sinning. Note that it's the second time I had to explain that.

His other questions become negated by the claim that babies are saved. Here, he has ignored my statements and attacked the elements of them that he was already familiar with, being unable to connect the larger picture.

 

It's not theoretical since you think they really do deserve it, you just think God is so nice and merciful that he saves them from it.  But you can take it back if you like.

 

Deserving hell is another thing he never quite understood despite multiple explanations. He couldn't escape the idea of Hell being a place earned by evil deeds, when it was in fact, our natural state, that being, opposed to God. If you don't go to hell, you don't deserve it, because if you did, you would have been sent. The question is, why didn't you deserve it? It's a valid question because it would have to be something quite unusual to be brought out of your natural state of being. Saying you deserve to go to hell is akin to saying you are human.

If chaos was still here, he would say "So all humans deserve to go to hell? They never did nothing!" The answer is just out of his grasp.

 

We've already established that he wasn't fasting because he was sad.  It was to see if God would show mercy.  He didn't, so he stopped.  That's why his behavior changed.

 

We didn't establish that. Notice how he can appear to have a point by building three or four effects on what is essentially a lie?

 

Please don't pretend like you give a shit about babies when you said they deserved to be tortured forever.  I think that's just a little more offensive than anything I or anyone else could say.  What I said was true and you would know it if you weren't so screwed up in the head.  I care what someone who would defend a murderer finds offensive about as much as I would care what a murderer finds offensive.

 

Notice here how he changed to personally attacking me when he had no valid argument left. For the record, I never claimed to care about babies at all, I made an observation based on my greater life experience.

Also see how he attempted to explain how I couldn't understand that it was no big deal when a baby dies because I don't care about babies. One of the shining lowlights of chaosrage, and he has had many.

 

Was the quote "You have to believe to be saved."?  Oh, that's right, the quote was "Those that believe are saved, and those that don't are damned."  For a second there I thought you had a point.

 

Hey, he admitted that I have a point. Marvelous. Shame he has to undermine it with stubborn ministrations. Actually, the quote was "he that believeth not" or "does not believe", which is a conscious act, ie rejection, what I have said all along. And furthermore, putting this aside, his response didn't address what I said at all.

 

James 2:17 "Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone."

 

See, he isn't saying they don't have faith.  He's saying the faith is dead because it's alone.

 

He proved his own point wrong.

 

So everyone that believes does good works?  There's no such thing as a person who believes in God and doesn't do good?  Well we can strike that down right now because you already admitted there's many people who believe and don't do what God wants. 

 

See how he changed it from good works into perfection? He's quick, but I'm quicker. Now that this argument's shot down, he's agreed with me.

 

You know, you're right.

 

"For we must all appear before the jugment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad."  2 Cor 5:10

 

"For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works." Matthew 16:27

 

"If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments." Matthew 19:17

 

"But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; Who will render to every man according to his deeds." Romans 2:6

 

"The Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work." 1 Pet 1:17

 

You know, I could demonstrate the proper interpretation of each of those verses, and I'm really tempted to, because it's fun, but the fact remains that this changes absolutely nothing. Just take what I said about James and say the same thing about all those verses.

Most of those verses are talking about something completely different though.

 

He was a high school graduate but he couldn't get his diploma.  If you believe in God, and you don't do good works, you still believe in God, but you won't get into heaven.  Now do you get it?

 

But nobody believes in God but doesn't do good works. That was James' point. The rebuttal to his ridiculous objection can be seen above.

 

First, they didn't have a choice.  How many times do I have to say that?  If you put a baby on a stove and put the burner on and tell him not to touch it, they're not making a choice to go against what you're saying and touch it anyway.  They do it because they don't know any better.

 

Adam and Eve weren't babies, for one, and this analogy is just getting silly. God did not "put them on a stove and put the burner on", he told them not to eat from one tree. One tree in the whole garden. Notice also that they didn't have any intention of doing so until they had dealt with the serpent. Notice that Eve tells the serpent that she's not going to eat because God said not too. There goes the idea that they didn't know any better.

 

They don't know that they'll get burned.

 

God told them specifically. The serpent told them God had lied. chaos would probably say that they had equal reason to believe God or the serpent... no... I don't think even he's quite that stupid.

 

Second, pretending they had a choice for a minute, how the fuck is the choice of a baby touching the stove remotely important?  I don't know about you, but I'd keep them away from the stove and make sure the stove is turned off.  I don't care that I'm taking away their free will to burn themselves.

 

It's not a baby on a stove. I tried to keep away from the metaphors with chaos because he tended to get lost in them. If God had not allowed any option to sin, he would just be making angels again.

 

Then again, I'm not some asshole who thinks babies deserve torture. 

 

He was right about that. He's some idiot who equates the story of Adam and Eve with a baby on a stove.

 

I thought you read the bible.  The book of Job is the book where God lets Satan torment Job because he has a bet with him.  Most of the book is Job arguing with his friends about God.  God only shows up at the end to say "Who are you to question me?  I know more than you.  Haha!"  And then Job says he's sorry.  God doesn't talk to Job until chapter 38.  Did you really think he was in a spoken conversation with him at chapter 3? 

 

He thinks I said that God and Job had a debate throughout the book. Moses did that... but most of this book is Job saying things that are wrong. And God correcting him. My meaning would be obvious in a conversation among two people who have read the book, which this is, but this shows that he has no interest in debate, he's merely looking for inlines of superficial attack to gloat over and claim victory.

 

Restful people don't wail and gnash their teeth.  Job was obviously talking about a different afterlife than Jesus.  Either Job was wrong or Jesus was wrong.  Take your pick.

 

See how he pretends that the original point of this quotation doesn't exist? Job says that to die as an infant meant rest, demonstrating that it's not hell. What an idiot.

 

Actually, it's not like saying that because I didn't say Jonah wanted them to go to heaven.  In fact, I said they probably went to hell.  The point is heaven and hell isn't the issue here.  Jonah simply said he wanted Ninevah to be overthrown and never mentioned heaven or hell.  So stop fucking talking about it. 

 

If he didn't want them to go to heaven, he wanted them to go to hell. This is another example of chaos' ignorance of Judaism. "Stop fucking talking about it" is a pretty good rebuttal. I wish I could use that.

 

Well, Jonah wanted the city to be destroyed.  He said it would happen in 40 days.  Of course it didn't happen because 120,000 of the people were stupid.  Yes, he looks at them differently than regular sinners.  But I've still shown you with the flood and Saul's massacre that he doesn't really care about them and punishes them with the rest.  Why do you keep dodging that?

 

He's agreed with my point. He knows well I dodged nothing, so he just pretends that I didn't already answer him. Killing is not the same as judging.

 

The people of Ninevah didn't anger God like the other cities because many of them were so stupid.  They must have gotten smarter a century later though, perhaps there were only around 50,000 or so people who didn't know the right from their left then.

 

Interesting yet meaningless observation. Also ignores the mention of animals.

 

Wrong, the fact that he still destroyed the city shows you they weren't spared.  Your KKK analogy completely backfires on you here.  Why would he kill them all and then send them to heaven?  Think about it.

 

Ok, so maybe this wasn't completely obvious to any idiot, but here's the answer: he didn't kill the infants and animals specifically. If God wants to destroy a city, and spares a large group of the people in that city, they will them grow up, commit abominations, rebuild the city and continue to thrive, and God's smiting most of city before accomplished nothing except killing those specific people.

 

Good?  So you admit that the story of the civil war with a hobbit can be dismissed because it has a hobbit in it?  Not only haven't I contradicted it but you just agreed with my argument that the bible can be dismissed because it has a God in it. 

 

He just said that if there's a cival war story with a hobbit in it, the civil war didn't happen.

 

Just like if hobbits are real, then LOTR is true.

 

No. Wasn't he just vehemently saying that you couldn't use this logic?

 

Yeah, I'm using supernatural negation.  I've never seen any evidence of anything supernatural.

 

If it's supernatural, you couldn't have evidence of it, because that's the nature of the supernatural. I explained that before. It was also a large part of the paragraph he's currently flailing at.

 

No, you would probably say they don't exist by the same reasoning you hate.  If you want to be consistant, you would have to say the same thing about God.  I say none of those things exist and neither do any gods.

 

I explained this to him as well. The proof for God is spiritual, just like God is a spirit. Then, because that's supernatural, the natural side of the Bible is proven by your experience of God. If it can't be disproved (which it can't be, as my opposition has admitted, albeit under duress, as they came in thinking they could disprove it with ease), that's all the burden required because the starting point has already been gained through experience, unlike other fantastic creatures, which do not, by the way, have anything remotely comparable to the Bible.

 

Merlin made the dragons disappear.  Now there's a counterbalance.  On an equal level with "Where the fuck did all that water go?"

 

See how he ignores what I said about the water? He thinks if I said it long enough ago, it doesn't count. This is how stupid people argue. They just go in circles.

 

Because they have the same amount of evidence, a book.  Remember that we have fossils of hobbit-sized creatures and we found the location of Troy from the Illiad, on top of having records from historians talking about Hercules.  The bias is your thinking that those stories aren't true and the bible is true.

 

Again, the Bible's proof is experiential, which is what sets it apart from those other things.

 

It's too bad that I've responded to every single one of your counter points telling you how they weren't valid.  You could only say that were that not true.  And it's only a stalemate if you consider "a wizard did it" arguments to be valid.  I've been trying to explain to you for about the past 10 pages why they aren't. 

 

Notice how he uses an insulting metaphor and then continues as if that was literally what I said? Also sees how he ignores all the points he conceded and the none I conceded. Look back and see for yourself.

 

Nah, he isn't a god, he's just a regular goat.  He sneezed and the universe came out.

 

That's the same thing. I'd explain it but he's not here to understand.

[Nighthawk 0]

 

Spontaneous generation is stupid.  Abiogenesis.... on the other hand isn't.

 

Everyone look at this. Oh how I wish he were here to be pointed and laughed at.

 

The fact that you would call abiogenesis evolution proves that you don't have a clue what you're talking about.  For further proof, you seem to think abiogenesis means spontaneous generation.

 

Everyone look again. Ha ha!

 

No, it wouldn't be good.  I might think it was good but if I got caught, I'd still get thrown in jail.

 

Which would mean it's only bad if you get caught. Most people learn about that when they're 4 or so.

 

You can say it comes down to majority if you like.

 

He concedes, but thinks he didn't, because he didn't understand it.

 

I guess if God didn't exist, you think we shouldn't have jails because there's no right or wrong.  What a crock of shit.

 

Self preservation involves jails. I'm not sure whether he understood this and pretended not to avoid shame or if it really went over his head. It wasn't a hard thing to grasp.

 

And I'm pretty sure I could throw a brick at someone and never get caught or have one thrown at me.  In essense, it's still self preservation because morals come from survival traits, but not in the same way that you think. 

 

See how he said something that sort of sounded like a point, but didn't actually contain any information?

 

If the bible says it, then the bible is wrong.  It's ridiculously stupid to think that disobeying God automatically created earthquakes and evolution on it's own.

 

This is a point that everyone should learn, because you all did it. Using extravagant adjectives doesn't make your point any more valid. It might show that you are impressed by such things. Take away his flowery language, and all he said here was "Nuh uh."

 

Funny, I don't remember saying don't know for sure.  I said you can't know at all.  You can't even say it probably is one way or the other because you can't judge him.  Believing in God is like believing your house is on the edge of a volcano by the way. 

 

This was why arguing with him was difficult. You couldn't build on any points because he was only able to handle one thing at a time. If God were inclined to lie to you, he could make you believe whatever he wanted, therefore, believing God is evil can only means God wants you to think he's evil for some reason. God is either telling the truth, or you can outsmart God.

 

When did I say you couldn't?

 

"Evil is what God is not, by definition."

 

What an ignorance of simple concepts. Something can be the truth, that didn't stop him from believing something else. He knew that full well, otherwise he thinks I said that God was both evil and good, which he obviously didn't. That's how poorly he thought out his arguments.

 

How's that? I'm warning you now, this is a trap. No matter what you say, I'll prove it wrong.

 

Because if evil is what God is not, by definition, he couldn't be responsible for evil. Simple.

 

If evil, by definition, is what God is not, he is the only one who can be responsible for the nature of evil as it is defined by him. It's not like I didn't warn him.

 

Right here.  You just said it again.  We can only judge God if we agree with you that he's good.   We have to think he's good or believe nothing.

 

This is true, as I have shown. God is either telling the truth or you're smarter than him.

 

Wrong bitch, that's not my response.  My response is to think he's evil.

 

A person can think he's bananna dingleberry too, but what relevance this response has to intelligent discussion, I don't know. It is mathematically impossible to believe God is evil, and his whiny objections only show that he's not really very good at math either.

 

If it was good for children to work in a factory for one reason, it'd have to be good for all children to work in a factory for the same reason and good for all epileptics to play Nintendo.  What's your point? 

 

Notice how he intentionally bypassed the crux of the issue? What did he think I wasn't going to notice? Adults are different from children, epileptics are different from non epileptics, and God is different from us.

 

When everyone has a different but equally correct perspective, that's what people call an opinion. 

 

An opinion is a belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof, which is clearly not the case in the scenario I described, as there is positive knowledge that each opposing perspective is correct. He couldn't have really meant that... I think he just assumed I wouldn't respond anymore after he said he quit.

 

If I had the same argument as that guy and I admitted he was wrong, then I would be admitting that you're right.  It's a perspective that Hitler was wrong.  Since you said he was wrong, I guess that means you think he is.  Since you're using the same argument a nazi would use to defend Hitler, you are actually admitting that you're wrong.  Even if you don't realize it.

 

This was one of his favorite tactics. He makes a statement which I debunk, he then responds as if I have validated some predicate and repeats the same statement, incorporating elements of my response so as to appear more correct. He's now said that anyone who uses the same argument, regardless if it's being used in totally independent and unrelated contexts, must reach the same conclusion. I'm beginning to feel like I've taken advantage of him.

 

I'll get to the rest of this later. By the way, I see the root of your error. You're a postmodern existentialist, which is leading you invariably toward nihilism (http://www.dictionary.com/). This is as outdated as spontaneous generation. It's sort of cute, really.

 

That's great.

 

[TheBigSwigg 0]

I never said that Demons were getting saved, I just said they have faith, which your quote just agreed with.

They have faith, just dead faith. Dead faith means faith is alone, not that it doesn't exist....... according to James.

ONE MORE TIME: The rules of faith apply to humans differently than they apply to demons and angels. Therefore the verse in James doesn't count for them the way that it would for us.

[Nighthawk 0]

But he's not coming back to read that. Might be nice to stretch this out to 20 pages though.

[Nighthawk 0]

I think everyone should be impressed with what I've accomplished here.