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nbcrusader said:


What is stopping you?

If the Bible is only the thoughts of men, it wouldn't be worth following and would likely have disappeared generations ago.



says you.

i believe that the Bible is only the thoughts of men. perhaps good thoughts, but mortal thoughts.

only i'm not telling the courts to endorse that belief through monuments.

again: secularism. it's the only thing that allows you to believe in the way you want to believe.
 
Well I know that the bible is not just words or thoughts from men, but words of wisdom from God written by prophets called of God. And how do I know this, I have prayed and asked God, and he has confirmed it to me, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
 
macphisto23 said:
And how do I know this, I have prayed and asked God, and he has confirmed it to me, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

Or is that the Spenta Mainyu? The origin of the ambiguous "Holy Spirit" is Zoroastrian and it's an archangel.

But that's interesting. When I prayed and asked God, He said the Old Testament was written by minions of the Persian King Cyrus the Great, with the New Testament being a mesh of the Jewish Christian "Church of Jerusalem," but mostly dominated by the Gentile Christian "Church of Antioch," and formally canonized by the early Catholic Church in the 4th century AD. So who shall I believe?

Melon
 
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melon said:


Or is that the Spenta Mainyu? The origin of the ambiguous "Holy Spirit" is Zoroastrian and it's an archangel.

But that's interesting. When I prayed and asked God, He said the Old Testament was written by minions of the Persian King Cyrus the Great, with the New Testament being a mesh of the Jewish Christian "Church of Jerusalem," but mostly dominated by the Gentile Christian "Church of Antioch," and formally canonized by the early Catholic Church in the 4th century AD. So who shall I believe?

Melon

If you sincerely prayed to God and asked him with true purpose, and he gave you that awnser through the Holy Ghost or some revelation, then i can not tell you otherwise. But I have sincerely prayed and asked God, it wasnt easy to get an answer, as I did not know how I would get an answer from god, and I was very confused at the time with religion, etc... But through fasting and prayer, and a sincere heart, I recieved an answer to my prayers through the power of Holy Ghost, and I can not deny it, because it is feelings undeniable, and it is a peace and love I had never felt before, I cant explain it because I would just be taking away from the experience.
 
cardosino said:
Muslim...fair trial.......bwahahaha!!!!!!!!

Do you know ANYTHING about Islamic countries ???

That's a really rude and insulting statement. What do you know about countries where the majority of persons practice Islam? Have you any personal experience that would lead you to make this claim?

I'm not Muslim but I grew up in the largest Muslim country in the world, am living in a country where about 90% of the population follow Islam and my boyfriend is a Muslim. When you make blanket statements like that which assume that all Muslims and all interpretations of Islam are the same, it is insulting and downright ignorant.
 
macphisto23 said:
Well I know that the bible is not just words or thoughts from men, but words of wisdom from God written by prophets called of God. And how do I know this, I have prayed and asked God, and he has confirmed it to me, by the power of the Holy Ghost.


no. no you do not know this. you cannot know this.

you can have faith, you can believe, but you CANNOT know.

this is what drives people crazy about some Christians. they pretend to know, when religion is all about faith. you *choose* to believe because you cannot know. i in no way mean to demean what ever religious experience you might have had, and while i'm sure the experience was very real, it was real TO YOU and would not necessarily be real to anyone else.

a little humility, please.
 
Irvine511 said:



no. no you do not know this. you cannot know this.

you can have faith, you can believe, but you CANNOT know.

this is what drives people crazy about some Christians. they pretend to know, when religion is all about faith. you *choose* to believe because you cannot know. i in no way mean to demean what ever religious experience you might have had, and while i'm sure the experience was very real, it was real TO YOU and would not necessarily be real to anyone else.

a little humility, please.

Before I recieved an answer from God I believed, now I KNOW, and believe. Its not an issue of humility at all, I dont understand your point there?
 
Irvine511 said:
this is what drives people crazy about some Christians. they pretend to know, when religion is all about faith. you *choose* to believe because you cannot know. i in no way mean to demean what ever religious experience you might have had, and while i'm sure the experience was very real, it was real TO YOU and would not necessarily be real to anyone else.

a little humility, please.

Please, a little humility. Actually, Biblical teaching shows that our faith comes from God - so it is not a choice as you suggest. It comes from God so that we cannot boast about our choice.
 
macphisto23 said:


Before I recieved an answer from God I believed, now I KNOW, and believe. Its not an issue of humility at all, I dont understand your point there?



no. you do not. you cannot know. god cannot be proved, and if you were to "prove" the existence of god, you'd be missing the point.

you have FAITH, not facts.

you say you received a message from god. if we're going to use your word as truth, then it's just as legitimate for me to say that you're utterly delusional.

but i would never say that, because i respect the fact that people have religious experiences. but i resent it when people use their highly subjective emotional experiences as objective truth.
 
nbcrusader said:


Please, a little humility. Actually, Biblical teaching shows that our faith comes from God - so it is not a choice as you suggest. It comes from God so that we cannot boast about our choice.



i am dumbfounded by this. we clearly don't live in the same world. you ASSUME the inerrancy of the Bible, so you're drawing a conclusion from a hugely debatable starting point.

you choose to believe. you have made a decision to believe the words in the Bible. for you to tell yourself anything else is delusional. faith comes from your own will, and i don't care what the Bible says. you cannot use Scripture to prove Scripture -- what kind of closed, self-justifying system is that? and that's precisely the point. at it's core, ALL religions are belief systems. you have bought into one, and more power to you.

to insist that your choices and experiences are then evidence of empirical truth is what demands humility, not my assertion that, while real to you, emotional experiences of faith are in no way, shape, or form objectively true.

the need for humility is in your court, sir, not mine.

i have no problems with the way you live your life, but i have a big problem when you insist that the way you live your life is the only way for life to be (correctly) lived.
 
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Irvine511 said:



you cannot use Scripture to prove Scripture -- what kind of closed, self-justifying system is that?

Exactly.

The only absolutes in life is that you were born and you will die. Everything in between is faith.
 
Interesting that you can make absolute statements about absolutes.

Scripture defining Scripture is the best interpretation methodology.

Sorry you don't like my "closed, self-justifying system" called Christianity.
 
nbcrusader said:
Interesting that you can make absolute statements about absolutes.

Scripture defining Scripture is the best interpretation methodology.

Sorry you don't like my "closed, self-justifying system" called Christianity.

Well let's put it this way, throughout history no one's yet to proven any other absolutes other than those two.

NBC you state that other religions have books that aren't absolute truth. But they do the same thing they use scripture to interpret scripture, so what's the difference? There has to be something beyond scripture proving scripture.
 
nbcrusader said:
Interesting that you can make absolute statements about absolutes.

Scripture defining Scripture is the best interpretation methodology.

Sorry you don't like my "closed, self-justifying system" called Christianity.



i'm sure it's a perfect interpretation methodology, which is why your posts on Scriptural interpretation and religious practice are logically sound.

however, it has no external justification outside of itself. you cannot prove it in the way you can prove gravity, that the sun rises in the East, or even evolution. it is a faith system, and as you say, it can only be proved on it's own terms.

and i do not tremble with respect simply because you call your belief system Christianity. it is no better and no worse than any other religion.

don't you see the difference between your assertion that your faith is fact and my assertion that there is no way to know if faith is fact? while knowing that you cannot know is, in some ways, a totalizing statement, it's far more logically sound than your assertion that you do know.
 
Faith was here before fact. fact is faith based. You have to believe, have faith in, the person who tells you the information, so you can use it yourself.

EG: You can see that the sun rises in the east, but who told you it was the east? Therefore, you have faith!
 
Doc Ocho said:
Faith was here before fact. fact is faith based. You have to believe, have faith in, the person who tells you the information, so you can use it yourself.

EG: You can see that the sun rises in the east, but who told you it was the east? Therefore, you have faith!

Specious reasoning. Superstition was here before fact, but that doesn't mean we should resort to superstition to run our world.

Secondly, the sun rises in the east, because we determine what is north, south, east, and west based on the evidence. You don't need to have faith that the Earth is round or that we revolve around the sun. We have scientific proof now, and is the furthest from "faith based."

Melon
 
Irvine511 said:




no. you do not. you cannot know. god cannot be proved, and if you were to "prove" the existence of god, you'd be missing the point.

you have FAITH, not facts.

you say you received a message from god. if we're going to use your word as truth, then it's just as legitimate for me to say that you're utterly delusional.

but i would never say that, because i respect the fact that people have religious experiences. but i resent it when people use their highly subjective emotional experiences as objective truth.

What does it mean to believe in something without a doubt, doesnt that make it true?
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:


Well let's put it this way, throughout history no one's yet to proven any other absolutes other than those two.

NBC you state that other religions have books that aren't absolute truth. But they do the same thing they use scripture to interpret scripture, so what's the difference? There has to be something beyond scripture proving scripture.

Jesus Christ fulfilling Scripture?
 
nbcrusader said:


Jesus Christ fulfilling Scripture?



again, according to Scripture.

it is not fact that he is the Messiah, and fulfillment is a rather subjective opinion.
 
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macphisto23 said:


What does it mean to believe in something without a doubt, doesnt that make it true?



no. it remains a belief. a sincere, emotional, powerful belief, but a belief all the same.

fact: bananas are yellow.
belief: bananas are delicious.
 
Irvine511 said:
again, according to Scripture.

it is not fact that he is the Messiah, and fulfillment is a rather subjective opinion.

Fulfillment of Scripture is recorded.

Christ rising from the dead is recorded.

People willing to die instead of denying Christ is recorded.

It is a fact you can either accept or dismiss. Not opinion.
 
nbcrusader said:


No, most was written well before Christ. And there are hundreds of prophecies fulfilled by Christ.

How much of the OT spoke about the coming of Christ? I admit I don't know as much about the OT than I do with the NT.
 
nbcrusader said:
No, most was written well before Christ. And there are hundreds of prophecies fulfilled by Christ.

It is matter of faith. Secular scholars--and even my Catholic high school religious education--is forced to admit that lot of prophesies were likely arbitarily fulfilled to make people believe that Jesus was the Messiah. That is, Jesus' followers were so convinced that He was the Messiah, that the Gospels were written to ensure belief, not to ensure accuracy to what actually happened.

In the most extreme of circles, it was argued that the source texts in which the New Testament was written off of were based on Gnostic sources and that the Gnostics were interested in faith and the result of that faith, rather than any actual concrete existence. In other words, these circles argue that Jesus never existed, but the idea of Christ had more value to Gnostics. The New Testament texts all date from around A.D. 70 or afterwards, and is presumed to have been based on earlier source texts, but none have been found.

The fact that Judaism wasn't originally Messianic at all makes it a matter of faith, not fact.

Melon
 
nbcrusader said:


Fulfillment of Scripture is recorded.

Christ rising from the dead is recorded.

People willing to die instead of denying Christ is recorded.

It is a fact you can either accept or dismiss. Not opinion.



and where is it all recorded? in Scripture. something you can choose accept as literal truth, or you cannot.

i've also never said this things were opinion. they are *beliefs*.

fact #3 has nothing to do with proving or disproving that Jesus was the son of God, or even that there is a God. people are willing to die for many strange reasons.
 
I haven't been keeping up with the discussion here, but I found this interesting article from www.sojo.net about the Supreme Court decisions and it's from a Christian perspective that's not right wing.



The Supreme Court got it right on religion
by David Batstone

This week the Supreme Court issued two controversial judgments on the display of religious monuments in public places. The two 5-4 rulings allowed the Ten Commandments to remain as part of an exhibit of monuments on the grounds of the Texas statehouse but barred postings of the same biblical text in two Kentucky courthouses.


The Supreme Court baffles me at the moment. At least the unpredictability of its judgments makes for highly suspenseful drama. Regardless, the majority opinion got it right this week. I readily admit to my detractors that we are dealing in shades of gray here. What I would like to draw attention to is the intention behind each decision.


The justices clearly affirmed the valuable contribution that religion makes to civic life. The Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas Capitol is one of 17 monuments and 21 historical markers that adorn a public park that envelopes the Capitol. Symbolically, the exhibit celebrates that religion has shaped American history and merits a place smack-dab in the middle of the public square.


"Of course, the Ten Commandments are religious," Chief Justice Rehnquist noted in his comments bolstering the majority opinion. He then added the linchpin: "Simply having religious content or promoting a message consistent with a religious doctrine does not run afoul of the Establishment Clause."


Some secularists are bent on stripping the role of religion in public life, of course. But they are dead wrong when they take the "separation of church and state" to mean that people of faith should keep their religious sentiments hidden away in the privacy of a closet in their home.


No Christian, Jew, Muslim, or other person of faith should feel coerced to suppress their faith in the workplace, at the social security administration office, or at school. Get over it, secularists, "G--" has never been a taboo subject in American society and never will be. People are free to show up in public wearing their faith on their sleeves.


The Supreme Court ruling against the Kentucky monuments had a quite different intention. In Kentucky, monuments displaying the Ten Commandments were posted alone by orders of county governments. They added secular documents only after a suit was filed - evidence that the government's motivation was religious, the Court said.


The key question in each case hinged on whether the display of religious monuments violates the First Amendment's prohibition against an official "establishment" of religion. The state, in other words, cannot identify itself with a particular religion. American legal tradition thereby protects the integrity of citizens to pursue their own religious traditions without the interference of the state.


Many Christian conservatives interpreted the Kentucky decision as yet another expression of hostility to their faith, and a deviation from the intent of the Constitution's framers. They operate under the assumption that "America is a Christian nation." But they are as wrongheaded as the secularists. I, for one, don't want the government to start speaking for God or claiming God's blessing, even if it is my faith tradition being referenced. Why would any devout Christian or Jew want a county courthouse to equate its application of law to the deep moral justice that the Ten Commandments demands?


In sum, the intention of the Court's decision was to undergird the free expression of religion, yet prevent the association of the state with a sole religion. Lest we lose ourselves in the application of law to these two particular cases, can we at least come to agreement regarding the importance of this distinction for American civic life?
 
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