"I offered it. You rejected it."

[Brutus1964]

Medicine Woman

You ask for proof when the only way back to God is through faith. If God wanted to prove himself then he would just come down and show himself. God created man for the sake of man, not for Himself. If God only wanted people to stand in awe of him for eternity then that is what he would have created. Instead he created beings with free will. He wants all of his creations to return back to him but not by force. We all must choose our own path. The only way this can happen is if we first come to him with faith then he will reveal himself in his own time in his own manner.

 

[Duroc]

Medicine Woman, I apologise if it seemed like I was preaching. I was mere expressing my views and using the Bible for support.

There is considerable archeological evidence to support the Bible and Jesus' existence. Few historicals will argue that he was not a real person. In terms of the books in the bible, they were basically established by 200 AD. I can recommend this site to you: http://www.bible-origin.com/

 

[one_raven]

Jesus Christ had to come to earth and be crucified in order to attone for our sins. The principles of Justice and mercy demanded it. If you have justice then mercy is cheated, and if you have mercy then justice is cheated. Each must exist together but they are diametrically opposed. God gave us free agency and allows us to choose right from wrong. However, when he did that he condemed us to never be able to return to him because we are imperfect and will always stray. If we stray then he must satisfy justice, but at the same time he cannot cheat mercy. Therefore God sent his only begotten son Jesus Christ to pay the price of Justice, that way he can also provide mercy and each side will be satisfied.

I have to say, that is the best answer for that question I have ever heard.
Thank you.
Well thought out, reasonable and concise.

Still, though, it falls short for me.
I've had teh flu for a few days and am npt quite all here right now, so I don;t really want to respond at-length right now, but I will.

 

[one_raven]

it is a M Y T H....a story. an allegory. it is not reallly.....REALLY meant to be taken as actually happening, except by the authoritarians who devized it thus

duendy,
I don't believe in the Christian God.
I am not arguing the reality of it, simply the theory and interpetation of it.
Kind of like critiquing a great literary work.
Have a little imagination.
Try it. You might find it's fun.

 

[duendy]

duendy,
I don't believe in the Christian God.
I am not arguing the reality of it, simply the theory and interpetation of it.
Kind of like critiquing a great literary work.
Have a little imagination.
Try it. You might find it's fun.

hmmm, don't worry mate, i have more than enough of imagination.

Look, IF you ARe critiquing a literary work, then surely you must be exploring ALL its many layers, right? ESPECIALLY the deeper much more interesting and exciting layers, no? But all i see with this debate about the Bible, and other threads of a similar topic, is debate about the ORTHODOX interpretation/superficial layer of it! That to me is very much lack of imagination.

In fact when you DO open up, and get bold, and delve deeper into the interpretations, you find thqt IMAGINATION itself is demonized by Judaic-Christian mythology! For Imagination, HONOURED and encouraged, is in the more ancient mytholgy of Goddess religion which the former suppressed

 

[Medicine*Woman]

Brutus1964: Medicine Woman, You ask for proof when the only way back to God is through faith. If God wanted to prove himself then he would just come down and show himself.
*************
M*W: You clim Jesus to be God. Wasn't that what Jesus was supposed to have done -- "come down and showed himself?"
*************
Brutus1964: God created man for the sake of man, not for Himself.
*************
M*W: You will hear from many christian members on this forum who will say that God created man to worship and be obedient to God. If God had created man for the sake of man (not that I believe in any of this crap), all I can say is that its been a load of fun, God-dude, thank you for giving us a little happening thing here for our entertainment, we couldn'ta done it without you, babe. You da man.
*************
Brutus1964: If God only wanted people to stand in awe of him for eternity then that is what he would have created. Instead he created beings with free will. He wants all of his creations to return back to him but not by force. We all must choose our own path. The only way this can happen is if we first come to him with faith then he will reveal himself in his own time in his own manner.
*************
M*W: Your idea that God created man for man is so totally ridiculous! That's like saying God created humanity for the sake of humanity. Now, we all know that that's NOT true -- look at the world today! OTOH, if we take humanity which mankind created (humanity + humanity = God - or a similarity of what God would be).

 

[Brutus1964]

Medicine Woman

M*W: You claim Jesus to be God. Wasn't that what Jesus was supposed to have done -- "come down and showed himself?"

Yes Jesus Christ as God did take upon him flesh and come down to Earth and did reveal himself to be the Son of God. But he did not come in all his godly glory. He came as a man so it still requires faith to believe him.

M*W: You will hear from many Christian members on this forum who will say that God created man to worship and be obedient to God. If God had created man for the sake of man (not that I believe in any of this crap), all I can say is that its been a load of fun, God-dude, thank you for giving us a little happening thing here for our entertainment, we couldn’t done it without you, babe. You da man.

Yes many main stream Christian religions teach that God made us for the whole purpose of worshiping him. I do not believe that. God did not create us for egotistical reasons. He created us for our benefit. He gave us free will so we could make mistakes and grow. He gave us commandments and we worship him so we can return back to him and continue growing forever. His glory is to help us find our way back to him.

M*W: Your idea that God created man for man is so totally ridiculous! That's like saying God created humanity for the sake of humanity. Now, we all know that that's NOT true -- look at the world today! OTOH, if we take humanity which mankind created (humanity + humanity = God - or a similarity of what God would be).

God gave us humanity but he also gave us free will. With it comes the good with the bad. God does not create the bad but he does not stop it from happening because that is the price for free will.

 

[one_raven]

That to me is very much lack of imagination.

Well, then, I guess you just shouldn't waste your valuable time with this shallow thread then.
Thanks for stopping in.

 

[duendy]

Well, then, I guess you just shouldn't waste your valuable time with this shallow thread then.
Thanks for stopping in.

oh no.....i'm stopping. yer aint gettin rid o'me THAT eazzzy!

so dont go all stroppy and sulky. DEB A T E! thats what we here for init?

 

[one_raven]

oh no.....i'm stopping. yer aint gettin rid o'me THAT eazzzy!

so dont go all stroppy and sulky. DEB A T E! thats what we here for init?

Well, see, I was trying to, but you essentially told me that the topic I chose in this particular thread was simple surface-level crap, and you wanted to debate something deeper, such as whether or not God exists.

I am tired of that worn-out old debate and didn't want to bother with it, and I have no intention of changing the subject of this thread.

I posted this for a specific reason.
It is one of two ways I am thinking about going with one of the premises in a book I am working on, and I wanted to see what people think of this route and how they react to it.

The two options I see are:
1.) God turned his back on humanity when they killed his son.
2.) Jesus was God manifest in teh flesh and did it simply to experience what pain of the flesh feels like, because, although thre is no such thing as the traditional view of pre-destination, mankind is simple enough to read and predict. He knew he would be persecuted if he took the stand he did.

Perhaps I misunderstood, and if I did, by all means correct me and feel free to reword your reply.
If I did understand you correctly, then are't you wasting your time in here?
There are lost of threads debating whether or not God exists.
I personally could care less if he exists or not.

 

[one_raven]

Look, IF you ARe critiquing a literary work, then surely you must be exploring ALL its many layers, right? ESPECIALLY the deeper much more interesting and exciting layers, no? But all i see with this debate about the Bible, and other threads of a similar topic, is debate about the ORTHODOX interpretation/superficial layer of it!

One of the points of the book is to specifcally challenge and question what the orthodox views of many different religions are and question what people believe.
This is one small aspect of it.

 

[duendy]

but you cant approach the questions you are inquiring abut ONLY from a superficial perspective, already!...what you goin on about

things are too serious in the world to NOt challenge such naive beliefs

 

[one_raven]

But the book, you see, is ABOUT God.

I can't very well argue that God does not exist in a book that is ABOUT him.

I am not writing a text book, mind you.
As I said, I don't believe in the Christian God.
It's fiction.
It is meant to challenge theists and atheists as well by presenting an image of God that fits squarely into many of the world's main religious beliefs (past and current).

It is a fictional story that presents an historical God that DOES exist and attempts to portray his life and times to show the source of many of the stories and beliefs about him and about science.
Basically it attempts to create a consistent alternate reality that very well could be our current reality.

So, to answer this you would have to pretend to assume that God does exist, and assume that Jesus did exist.

 

[duendy]

But the book, you see, is ABOUT God.

I can't very well argue that God does not exist in a book that is ABOUT him.

I am not writing a text book, mind you.
As I said, I don't believe in the Christian God.
It's fiction.
It is meant to challenge theists and atheists as well by presenting an image of God that fits squarely into many of the world's main religious beliefs (past and current).

It is a fictional story that presents an historical God that DOES exist and attempts to portray his life and times to show the source of many of the stories and beliefs about him and about science.
Basically it attempts to create a consistent alternate reality that very well could be our current reality.

So, to answer this you would have to pretend to assume that God does exist, and assume that Jesus did exist.

OK....well they DO esist for many. and when you read many Western NDEs they seem to exist in the Imaginal Realm, as do other gods for other cultures in that mode

but i wonder does this make them TRUE?
i explore this with the attitude that IF these images, gods. spirits, create DIVISIVE beliefs, as in opposition towards Nature and the feminine and so on then they need to be not accpeted irrationally

I cant really dig at the moment how yer gonna swing it. you say that this book is going to challenge fundys?....can you expain a bit more how?

 

[one_raven]

Interpolation of world religions, current scientific knowledge and history to paint an all encompassing alternative that is internally consistent.
Taking known beliefs and replacing them with alternate truths that are at least as consistent as current beliefs.

I'm not sure what you are asking.
Are you asking for a synopsis?
I have tried that, and it proved harder to write a synopsis than it has been to write the book itself. The parts I have written so far, anyway.

 

[one_raven]

It also brings a few scientific beliefs up for scrutiny and challenge.

 

[Brutus1964]

Could the speed of light and time be relative to scale? For instants, relative to us an atom moves very quickly because it exists in such a smaller scale than we do. On the other hand a galaxy looks like it is a snapshot in space. It hardly moves at all relative to us. If we were at the same scale as a galaxy then we would see the galaxy move very quickly. We would look out to super clusters and they would appear to move slowly, but how fast would they move if we were the same scale as the super clusters?

Scientist's are basing the age of the universe on our scale. How long is 15 billion years to something the size of a galaxy, or a super cluster, or even to the universe itself? If you were the size of the galaxy you would see how fast it is actually spinning. 15 billion years to us would seem like a very short time to you. By the time you could bat an eye millions of generations of people would have come and gone. To us you would not appear to be moving at all.

For example, you look at your watch. It is 12:00 noon. You instantly grow the size of the galaxy and you notice the galaxy is rotating quite briskly. You then wait till your watch turns to 1:00 pm. Only one hour has past for both you and the galaxy. However, when you shrink back down to normal size you find that millions or even billions of years have passed on earth.

The volume of the Sun is 1,299,400 times bigger than the volume of the Earth; about 1,300,000 Earth’s could fit inside the Sun. This would mean that one day for the sun would be like 297 years for the Earth. So to the Sun the Earth is really whipping by fast. This could also explain why it takes a sun so long to fizzle out. That is just the Earth relative to the Sun. How much bigger is the Earth relative to us. Are there any mathematicians out there that can figure this out? My guess is that 1 day for the Earth is like billions of years for us. Just a side note but it kind of puts a new spin on the Bible account that it took six days for God to create the heaven’s and the Earth.

 

[one_raven]

I've never though of that before.

Could that be why times seems to move more slowly when you are a kid and speed up as you get bigger?
I'm not sure how this fits into the subject (I may just be missing something), but I do think it makes for an interesting discuission.

 

[Brutus1964]

One Raven.

That very well could be. But the scale between a child and an adult is so insignificant that it would be too small to perceive. For example the scale of a mosquito is significantly smaller than a human being. They only live for a couple of weeks for us, but at their scale it is probably a good long life for them. A redwood tree can live for a 1000 years to us, but to the tree it is just a regular lifespan.

The reason I posted my theory about scale being relative to time is because people have questioned how God could have taken only six days to create the universe and the Earth when clearly it is billions of years old. The six days referred to in the Bible could have been billions of years in our reckoning. I for one believe God created the heavens and the Earth using natural methods. They are natural because God made them that way. He causes the laws of physics to do what they do. How ever the universe came to being it was God that caused it to happen.

 

[Silas]

I've never though of that before.

Could that be why times seems to move more slowly when you are a kid and speed up as you get bigger?
I'm not sure how this fits into the subject (I may just be missing something), but I do think it makes for an interesting discuission.

No, I believe the real reason that time moves slowly when you are a kid and speeds up when you get bigger, is that each second you live as a child, each minute, each hour is so much greater a proportion of your entire life's experience so far. On your 5th birthday, you've lived just under 44,000 hours - so an indiviudal hour seems very very long. When you're two years old, you've only lived for 730-731 days (compared to nearly 15,000 for a 40-year old), so each day is immense.

Conversely there is no real reason to suppose that a time sense changes in accordance with your size, though I concur that a being that somehow evolved to be the size of a star cluster, say, would indeed possess a time sense much much slower than ours, enabling it to see galaxies actually moving, etc. God, of course, can see time pass at whatever rate he chooses.

Brutus1964, I really don't see much point in bringing in an apologetic about the creation of the Universe to this discussion. The passage of days is clearly defined in terms of evening and morning, which means they're actual days, as seen from Earth - obviously not the case in reality. You have yourself professed the supposed allegorical nature of the Bible. Your actual belief that scientific understanding and the evidence for the age of the Universe is correct and valid and that everything has happened (including the laws of physics) in accordance with God's will is far more intellectually defensible, in my view. I've just been reading Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, in which he found that so far from being the Word of God, most of the Bible is actually blasphemous towards Him.

one_raven I believe the entire Christian mythos is based on the concept that Jesus came in order to die on the Cross for our sins. The Gospels, however, do not state that he died for our sins. They do not state that he was intending to actually stage some kind of anti-Roman revolt, neither do I get the sense that he intended - during his normal physical lifetime to establish a kingdom and rule over it.

I've no doubt that all of the grace-and-favour, died-for-our-sins stuff crucial to Christianity is all Pauline, but I'm not as willing as Medicine Woman to continually deeply libel a man who's been dead for nearly 2,000 years and who's moral character is not really determinable after that period of time. I'm not denying that Paul and I would not exactly have seen eye-to-eye on many issues, but you make him sound worse than Hitler sometimes.

Lori_7, on the contrary, not only can God "fail", but his continued and repeated failures are more or less a principal theme of the entire Bible.