[quote]Headhunter wrote:<<< And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it." John Galt
[/quote]PREPOSTEROUS NONSENSE MAN!!! Someone most assuredly DID come to say that:[quote]1-Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, “You shall not eat from any tree of the garden”?” 2-The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3-but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, “You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.”” 4-The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! 5"For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”[/quote]He’s still saying it today. Ya know, the blood and resurrection life of the only begotten Son of God can make you free so you don’t have to be his ventriloquist dummy anymore. Wouldn’t it be wonderful??? To actually live free instead of in the delusion that you are?
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Lol! Very good, T.
[/quote] Takes bow… in Jesus name of course =]
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Can I prove my points with illogical fairy tales written as bedtime stories hundreds of years before the Bible was written?
So…Adam and Eve had not yet eaten from the tree, so they didn’t know that what they were doing was wrong. They were Innocents. But God punishes them anyway, kind of like whipping a baby with a belt because it spills its bottle. Wow, some God you got there…
People actually believe this hodge podge of nonsense; no wonder the world is so irrational.
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No more nonsensical than believing that, in a world without God, man still matters.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Hit the epistemology or metaphysics thread HH. You are so far behind you’re about to lap yourself. Seriously.
It’s a simple principle though if some actual philosophical theological discussion scares you. God said no. They did it anyway. This is called disobedience and when perpetrated against an infinite eternal and flawlessly holy God it is an unholy, eternal crime, worthy of a just and eternal sentence. You’ll get that soon enough after God subdues your insolent stiffnecked heart and will like He did mine.
I’ll take ya to church. You’re in Michigan right? Come on. I’ll drive. You can tell me all about the faucethead or fountainhead or whatever on the way there. You’ll love it. The place will be full of people like me. Though they won’t look much like me =]
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So, Adam and Eve didn’t know right from wrong, didn’t know yet it was wrong to disobey God, disobeyed God (like a baby ‘disobeyes’) and God decides to punish them horribly.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!! Your God doesn’t sound very compassionate. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Hit the epistemology or metaphysics thread HH. You are so far behind you’re about to lap yourself. Seriously.
It’s a simple principle though if some actual philosophical theological discussion scares you. God said no. They did it anyway. This is called disobedience and when perpetrated against an infinite eternal and flawlessly holy God it is an unholy, eternal crime, worthy of a just and eternal sentence. You’ll get that soon enough after God subdues your insolent stiffnecked heart and will like He did mine.
I’ll take ya to church. You’re in Michigan right? Come on. I’ll drive. You can tell me all about the faucethead or fountainhead or whatever on the way there. You’ll love it. The place will be full of people like me. Though they won’t look much like me =]
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[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Hit the epistemology or metaphysics thread HH. You are so far behind you’re about to lap yourself. Seriously.
It’s a simple principle though if some actual philosophical theological discussion scares you. God said no. They did it anyway. This is called disobedience and when perpetrated against an infinite eternal and flawlessly holy God it is an unholy, eternal crime, worthy of a just and eternal sentence. You’ll get that soon enough after God subdues your insolent stiffnecked heart and will like He did mine.
I’ll take ya to church. You’re in Michigan right? Come on. I’ll drive. You can tell me all about the faucethead or fountainhead or whatever on the way there. You’ll love it. The place will be full of people like me. Though they won’t look much like me =]
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So, Adam and Eve didn’t know right from wrong, didn’t know yet it was wrong to disobey God, disobeyed God (like a baby ‘disobeyes’) and God decides to punish them horribly.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!! Your God doesn’t sound very compassionate. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!
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No point in trolling them with the LOLOLOL stuff. You bring up a classic flaw with the old testament, and perhaps it’s supposed to be more of an allegory. Problem is people tend to flip flop when it comes to interpretation from certain lessons being allegorical or literal/orthodox. Because there are so many combinations you will find many different beliefs, and some people among the faithful conveniently flip flop. Not accusing anyone here, just saying it happens.
The interesting thing is seeing how conservative Christians justify their political beliefs. As far as I can tell they don’t consider Christ a role model, because they don’t live their lives the way Christ did, they don’t even attempt it. However many seem eager to tell others how to live their own lives.
The Bible is not a book for non-Christians. The Bible is for Christians.
The Bible is part of a larger deposit of faith.
Without proper understanding of how to read the Bible, you’re walking along cliff at night without a stick or light.
You need the magisterium, not to create a deposit of faith, but to serve it. Not to create truth, but to teach it or interpret it.[/quote]
This is a problem isn’t it? When one small group controls interpretation that causes a problem when they are too stuck in their ways to seriously entertain alternative interpretations. There are brilliant people out there that make mistakes, Aristotle didn’t understand momentum and thought if he dropped say a stone from the top of the mast of a ship that was moving quickly enough, the rock would drop in the water.
Similarly these people who had authority on the bible in the past believed in all sorts of strange things. It wasn’t so strange to think the world was flat in the past, or that planets weren’t perfect the closer they got to God. Galileo seemed to have some issues with being imprisoned in his own home for his discoveries which went against the current church doctrine at the time.
Rather than automatically dismissing outside interpretations, it seems rather important to have an outside/ foreign eye scrutinize things. We are people, and so we are fallible, that includes religious, “authorities.”
The Bible is not a book for non-Christians. The Bible is for Christians.
The Bible is part of a larger deposit of faith.
Without proper understanding of how to read the Bible, you’re walking along cliff at night without a stick or light.
You need the magisterium, not to create a deposit of faith, but to serve it. Not to create truth, but to teach it or interpret it.[/quote]
Nah. Traditional interpretation is certainly helpful and insightful, but it is still just the work of fallable men.
For the longest time, for example, all denominations read “Israel” to mean the “Church” because Israel did not exist, was almost certainly not going to exist, and Jews sucked in their opinion.
Obviously, this traditional interpretation was completely wrong.
[quote]Severiano wrote:
This is a problem isn’t it?[/quote]
No, not if you believe in truth.
This is pure conjecture. First you seem to be assuming that it is a problem, then you assume that they are stuck in their ways, when if it’s the truth when Jesus taught it, it is the truth today. I know, it sucks. But, it is the truth.
Third, you assume that they do not seriously entertain alternative interpretations. Not only is this false, this is blatantly and patently false historically. Most heresies took great hold of those in the Church (ie. Arianism, Iconoclast), a “minority” of the Church held to the truth and defeated the popular interpretation.
Aristotle wasn’t promised by Jesus to protect him from wrong teaching in the matters of physics. However, he did promise to protect the Church in matters teaching faith and morals.
Actually, it’s funny you say this, because this is a strange erroneous belief, perpetuated by Protestants around the Reformation about Catholics to attempt defame their intelligence.
Yet, the Church was his Patron. To blame the entire Catholic Church as a whole is like blaming Jews for being greedy communists. Maybe you can do some research and tell me which part of the Church wished to silence Galileo and the reason why he was on house arrest (hint: it was for his safety ).
I see, so you are making the assumption that anyone can make a valid interpretation of scripture? Please, where is that in the Bible.
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
You need the magisterium, not to create a deposit of faith, but to serve it. [/quote]
Ah, the shabby truth comes out – we’re supposed to be servants.
Who will we serve? The ‘mystical interpreters’, those with the voices in their heads, said voices being God.
Or those who are ‘specialists’, can read the secrets inside the Book.
This society sounds so wonderful, a lot like North Korea is wonderful.[/quote]
We’re all servants to someone just as people serve us. That’s how society works. The only exception would be if you’re a hermit in the woods and formed all your tools and stuff you need to live from the nature around you… But then again, nature is serving you and you would serve nature in one form or another.
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
You need the magisterium, not to create a deposit of faith, but to serve it. [/quote]
Ah, the shabby truth comes out – we’re supposed to be servants.
Who will we serve? The ‘mystical interpreters’, those with the voices in their heads, said voices being God.
Or those who are ‘specialists’, can read the secrets inside the Book.
This society sounds so wonderful, a lot like North Korea is wonderful.[/quote]
Service I have no issue with; I serve my family, my friends, and the people of my community through the fire department that I work full time for. The issue, IMHO, isn’t about service, but rather service to what? For me, I’ll choose to serve something real and tangible, not the mythological teachings of a religion born out of a time of extreme ignorance in the human race; no thank you.
But your right, Headhunter, the christian idea of heaven really isn’t too far from what North Korea is; a “celestial North Korea” as Hitchens was fond of saying. Jim Jeffries has a great bit on this, I’ll try to dig it up.
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
You need the magisterium, not to create a deposit of faith, but to serve it. [/quote]
Ah, the shabby truth comes out – we’re supposed to be servants.
Who will we serve? The ‘mystical interpreters’, those with the voices in their heads, said voices being God.
Or those who are ‘specialists’, can read the secrets inside the Book.
This society sounds so wonderful, a lot like North Korea is wonderful.[/quote]
We’re all servants to someone just as people serve us. That’s how society works. The only exception would be if you’re a hermit in the woods and formed all your tools and stuff you need to live from the nature around you… But then again, nature is serving you and you would serve nature in one form or another. [/quote]
I apologize. That sentence could have been written better. People don’t serve the magisterium. I was saying that magisterium is needed (no comma) not to create a deposit of faith, but to serve it (the deposit of faith). The bishops serve us, and the pope serves the bishops, and Jesus serves the whole Church. That’s why the Pope is called the servant of servants.
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
You need the magisterium, not to create a deposit of faith, but to serve it. [/quote]
Ah, the shabby truth comes out – we’re supposed to be servants.
Who will we serve? The ‘mystical interpreters’, those with the voices in their heads, said voices being God.
Or those who are ‘specialists’, can read the secrets inside the Book.
This society sounds so wonderful, a lot like North Korea is wonderful.[/quote]
Service I have no issue with; I serve my family, my friends, and the people of my community through the fire department that I work full time for. The issue, IMHO, isn’t about service, but rather service to what? For me, I’ll choose to serve something real and tangible, not the mythological teachings of a religion born out of a time of extreme ignorance in the human race; no thank you.
But your right, Headhunter, the christian idea of heaven really isn’t too far from what North Korea is; a “celestial North Korea” as Hitchens was fond of saying. Jim Jeffries has a great bit on this, I’ll try to dig it up.[/quote]
You guys must have either terrible reading comprehension or you used to all be fundamentalist before you were atheist. Heaven is described in many ways: Banquet, walking, and perpetual supernatural intercourse are my favorite. Beer and wine, food, hiking, sex. Not much better than that. No one except those who are biased against religion have described Heaven as celestial North Korea? Why…I still have yet to figure out why.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
The irony of this statement coming from my old friend Pat is simply beyond words.[/quote]
This brings up another point. There are people in this world who have read the bible and understand it far better than you, pat, and I’m sure many of them disagree with your views on it.
Does that mean you haven’t read the bible? No? Well then I guess you must be “dumb as Hell”. After all, it’s one or the other, right?[/quote]
No he read it. He didn’t understand it, but he read it.Then he proceeded to insert a bunch of garbage that wasn’t and isn’t there.[/quote]
What about the members of Westboro? Surely you don’t agree with them, and they live eat and sleep the bible![/quote]
I would say there share many traits. And I detest Westboro. Yeah, they know the words, but they cherry pick the meanings. Basically it breaks down like this, some people use the bible to suit their own purposes. You can recognize them by the fact that they cherry pick certain parts, out of context and use that to bring glory to themselves. Others, read the bible, have a hard time accepting all of it, but sturggle humbly to live the word.
So if you see people using the bible to make themselves great (Westboro) then you have the former, if you see people who are trying to be better people then you have the latter.
the word of God is a powerful thing, and when it’s misused it’s often tragic.[/quote]
Sure, but they would say the same thing about you. Certainly they think they are better people for their bat-shittery. What makes you better than them? I have nothing but your words to go on, so how can I determine who really understands the word of God better?
And don’t say “read the bible”, if it were that simple, Westboro wouldn’t exist.
To live as though god exists means to believe, if you don’t believe you can’t just fake it so there is really no wager to be made.[/quote]
If I were Christian I would argue that one doesn’t necessarily go to hell based on lack of faith. Doubting Thomas the apostle never seemed to have faith, he had knowledge in the story. If people went to hell for lack of faith, then Thomas would be in hell because he required knowledge of Christs resurrection before professing his faith. In essence, I’m not even sure he ever had faith in Christ until after he had knowledge Christ is God in the story leads to several unexpected conclusions.
If this is true, then there is no need to have faith in Christ at all. If God judges the heart, then faith doesn’t necessarily even have to factor into anyone going to heaven or hell. Not a very good recruiting tool for religion though
Faith is a type of unjustified belief by definition.
Knowledge is traditionally defined as a justified, true belief (but this is arguable)
Which is what Thomas seemed to have in the story… So the way I understand it, requiring knowledge to believe in God seems perfectly reasonable given the information in the story. I don’t think this is what the story is trying to teach, but what I explained follows, unless you want to say St. Thomas the apostle is in hell.
This applies to Pascals wager in the sense that Faith isnt’ required. Problem is this leaves room for Atheists to go to heaven as well
To live as though god exists means to believe, if you don’t believe you can’t just fake it so there is really no wager to be made.[/quote]
If I were Christian I would argue that one doesn’t necessarily go to hell based on lack of faith. Doubting Thomas the apostle never seemed to have faith, he had knowledge in the story. If people went to hell for lack of faith, then Thomas would be in hell because he required knowledge of Christs resurrection before professing his faith. In essence, I’m not even sure he ever had faith in Christ until after he had knowledge Christ is God in the story leads to several unexpected conclusions.
If this is true, then there is no need to have faith in Christ at all. If God judges the heart, then faith doesn’t necessarily even have to factor into anyone going to heaven or hell. Not a very good recruiting tool for religion though
Faith is a type of unjustified belief by definition.
Knowledge is traditionally defined as a justified, true belief (but this is arguable)
Which is what Thomas seemed to have in the story… So the way I understand it, requiring knowledge to believe in God seems perfectly reasonable given the information in the story. I don’t think this is what the story is trying to teach, but what I explained follows, unless you want to say St. Thomas the apostle is in hell.
This applies to Pascals wager in the sense that Faith isnt’ required. Problem is this leaves room for Atheists to go to heaven as well :)[/quote]
Hey, you once asked me if I would go to Church with you. I’ll go if Christ shows up with grievous wounds and lifts some weights with me! Heck, I’ll dedicated my life to him if that happens. I wouldn’t have belief, I’d have knowledge, and that is what I require just like Thomas did.
I know my interpretation may bug you a bit Brother Chris, not trying to pick a fight, but I am curious as to what you think of my interpretation and conclusion.
To live as though god exists means to believe, if you don’t believe you can’t just fake it so there is really no wager to be made.[/quote]
If I were Christian I would argue that one doesn’t necessarily go to hell based on lack of faith. Doubting Thomas the apostle never seemed to have faith, he had knowledge in the story. If people went to hell for lack of faith, then Thomas would be in hell because he required knowledge of Christs resurrection before professing his faith. In essence, I’m not even sure he ever had faith in Christ until after he had knowledge Christ is God in the story leads to several unexpected conclusions.
If this is true, then there is no need to have faith in Christ at all. If God judges the heart, then faith doesn’t necessarily even have to factor into anyone going to heaven or hell. Not a very good recruiting tool for religion though
Faith is a type of unjustified belief by definition.
Knowledge is traditionally defined as a justified, true belief (but this is arguable)
Which is what Thomas seemed to have in the story… So the way I understand it, requiring knowledge to believe in God seems perfectly reasonable given the information in the story. I don’t think this is what the story is trying to teach, but what I explained follows, unless you want to say St. Thomas the apostle is in hell.
This applies to Pascals wager in the sense that Faith isnt’ required. Problem is this leaves room for Atheists to go to heaven as well :)[/quote]
Thomas, first was a man of faith. Second, Thomas never ceased seeking. There in lies the difference. Everybody wants to ‘get knocked off their horse’ or see some big miracle. Well, that shit ain’t gonna happen. These men you lift up as examples of doubt were first seekers. Not seeking for reasons not to believe, but seeking reasons to believe. God reveals himself when you seek, not when you reject.
Those of us who believe know what I mean because we have all experienced it. You lot think we just believe in some ancient book because we’re scared of going to hell. Well, if that were all it was about we would have all given up along time ago, because simply avoiding hell isn’t worth it. There is some thing tangible and real, but it’s personal and cannot be articulated. If we say we experience something, you either say we’re delusional or liars. But it doesn’t make sense for every single one of us to be liars… Some may be, and historically we have had no shortage of liars, but when it’s there and it’s real. It cannot be denied.
I liken it to an acid trip… You cannot articulate what it’s like to somebody who hasn’t done it, but everybody whose done it, knows. Faith is very similar. When you have had the real experience that comes from faith, you know.
You get you Thomas or Paul experience through faith, not through stubborn disbelief…
We have free will. Standing there with your arms folded saying, “I won’t believe until you make me believe.” won’t get you anything. You’re going to be standing there an awful long time and nothing will ever happen.
Nobody, not even God is interested in forcing you to believe in him.
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