Sorry Romney

[Partha]

You understand the New Testament rewrote the rules, right?

You mean all those smitings were undone because Jesus said so? Or that God didn't say what's reported in the old Testament? Or just that the New Testament is a happy face put on a vengeful God who's full of wrath?

[Trollbait]

Faith and religion are only a bad thing if you are not willing to reinterpret your faith based on new information and ideas. Organized religion tends to be bad at revising dogma, but most of the people of faith I've met are actually very bright and skeptical of their own faith, and always willing to admit new ideas and thinking. Of course, there are idiots on both sides of the argument that refuse to budge positions, or that argue with derision rather than logic.

Exactly so!

Now...for those of you who do not understand or have some serious misconceptions about New Testament/Old Testament and what it means to worship and Angry, Loving, Vengeful, Benevolent, Jealous God...

Man is born in sin stemming from the original sin.

The wages of sin are death.

In the old days it was enough that a good Israelite would sacrifice an animal to cleanse himself of his sins. He would place his sin into the animal and kill the animal with the assistance of a priest.

The parts of the Bible where God gets very angry you will see passages like "turned away from God".

The people had stopped following God's law.

So in God's plan was a way to make it so people really only had to make one choice.

He would deliver to the people a single sacrifice. That sacrifice would be so huge that it would cover all sins of all mankind for all eternity as long as the individual person accepted the truth of the sacrifice.

He made himself flesh and blood. He suffered monumental torture.

He was beaten and crucified.

He died and spent three days in torment.

He took all the past, present, and future sins of mankind and placed them upon Himself.

If you accept THAT truth then all other things are irrelevant.

All of the out of context scriptures, the parsings, the minutiae......they are NOTHING compared to that singular truth.

If you have accepted that truth then you are truly saved.

A homosexual who has been saved is going to heaven.

A murderer who has been saved is going to heaven.

A prostitute who has been saved is going to heaven.

The smoker, the drinker, the gambler , the adulterer.....if they are saved they are going to heaven.

Now a minister whom I respect greatly would say that if they are truly saved they would no longer do any of those things because Christ would fill their hearts but that is a discussion for another time.

[Garrdor]

The sun god needs his fill of blood to stay illuminated in the daytime sky.

4 leaf clovers give you good luck. FOR REAL.

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT...

THE SAYING IS FUCKING OLD. LIKE A LEGEND. CMON LETS GET SOME GOOD LUCK PEOPLE LOL

[Rsak]

Partha,

Agnosticism is not the absence of religion. It is in fact one of the profound beliefs that Freedom allows one to discover. Just as Atheism's communing with God is the affirmation that he does not exist. The position of Freedom requires religion and religion requires freedom does not exclude Agnosticism or Atheism. The problem is that you have such a myopic view on what a religion is that you can't even attempt to understanding the underlying position about the relation between freedom and religion. It is apparently much easier to frame the topic under the guise of Romney hates Atheists rather then to understand what he actually said.

[Garrdor]

Rsak,

Do not fall to the path of fear!

ACCEPT HIS LOVE AND JUST GET OVER IT

[Rsak]

Why would I want to worship a heathen god like the Sun God when the mighty Cthulu Bunny will kill him in the apocalypse to come.

[Klast Brell]

If he is all powerful why did he put himself though a masochistic torture ritual? After all. If he could curse humanity for all eternity with a wave of his hand surely he could uncurse it just as easily.

[Embar Angylwrath]

If he is all powerful why did he put himself though a masochistic torture ritual? After all. If he could curse humanity for all eternity with a wave of his hand surely he could uncurse it just as easily.

He wanted to set an example to others and shosw them the power of selflessness and sacrifice. Precisely because he DIDN'T have to endure what he did, but chose to anyway, makes the sacrifice more powerful.

Let me ask you this, Klast. If your children were in danger of irrecovably harming themselves, how much would you endure to save them?

[Garrdor]

Yes, Klast.

Don't you see the error of your ways?

YOU MUST FEEL THE POWER OF JEEEEEEEESUS!

Or you will be missing the REST of your hair when Satan's fiery breath is upon you.

[Trollbait]

If he is all powerful why did he put himself though a masochistic torture ritual? After all. If he could curse humanity for all eternity with a wave of his hand surely he could uncurse it just as easily.

Embar laid it out fairly well.

Yes. God can do anything He wants to do.

What He did is make a set of rules and He follows those rules.

Unlike mankind God is infallible and does not break a covenant He has made.

The forgiveness of sin required a sacrifice as He had laid down in His law....He provided the sacrifice Himself. All that is required now is for each person to know that the sacrifice has taken place and to accept it.

[Garrdor]

THE TRUE PROPHETS

[Klast Brell]

If he is all powerful why did he put himself though a masochistic torture ritual? After all. If he could curse humanity for all eternity with a wave of his hand surely he could uncurse it just as easily.

He wanted to set an example to others and shosw them the power of selflessness and sacrifice. Precisely because he DIDN'T have to endure what he did, but chose to anyway, makes the sacrifice more powerful.

Let me ask you this, Klast. If your children were in danger of irrecovably harming themselves, how much would you endure to save them?

Lets see. If this was translated to me saving my children it would play out something like this. I have my first kid and leave the TV on, but tell him not to watch any R rated movies on HBO or I will punish him. While I am standing there looking at him he grabs the remote and slowly changes the channel to HBO. I could have blocked the channel using parental controls but I chose not to. I was standing right there and watching him. I could have stopped him from changing the channel, but I didn't. As a matter of fact I actually saw him key in the numbers for the HBO channel, and just sat there on the couch waiting for him to press the enter key on the remote.
As son as the TV flips over to HBO I kick him out of the living room and tell him he can never watch any cable ever again.
I tell him If he brings me a beer from the fridge Every once In a while I wont take away his college fund. I have some more kids and they are banned from the living room and can't watch cable either because of what their brother did before they were even born. But they get the same deal with the beer.
Eventually I decide to hire some guy to beat the living shit out of me in front of the kids. I tell them its for their own good, and move out of the house. I leave them a note saying they can rape and murder each other for all I care, as long as they are sorry and promise to love me they will still get their college fund.

Now If I was GOD and had true omnipotent power (Real Ultimate Power) I would bat an eyelash and they would all be saved without having to do any extra work. Not need for all the theater. No need to have myself tortured to death. And no need for them to have to take any extra steps either.

To say that we are doomed to hell unless we take certain steps and god can do nothing about it; that reminds me of an episode of the Simpsons where Bart tells Lisa "I'm just going to walk towards you swinging my fists. It's not my fault if you get hit" Of course it's gods fault. He is omniscient so he knows whats going to happen, and he is omnipotent so he has the ability to save you no matter what. To put it in your terms You have the ability to save your kids but you do nothing, because they might just save themselves.

[superwalrus]

If God sees all the evil of the world, can do something about it but doesn't then he is malevolent. If God sees all the evil of the world and cannot do anything about it he is impotent. So which is it? Because I sure as shit see a ton of evil in the world.

Walrus

[Ddrak]

If God sees all the evil of the world, can do something about it but doesn't then he is malevolent. If God sees all the evil of the world and cannot do anything about it he is impotent. So which is it?

False dichotomy. He chooses to do nothing so we retain our own free will. Nowhere has anyone said the God *can* do nothing about it, they have said that he simply chooses to do nothing about it, because to choose otherwise would be the antithesis of God's plan for men.

Dd

[superwalrus]

so he wants us to live in a world full of horror and death? I understand what you're saying and why you're saying it... but it still sounds like if God did exist he is childish and immature and constantly wants to test his little creations for no apparent reason other than rules he made up.

Walrus

[Ddrak]

so he wants us to live in a world full of horror and death? I understand what you're saying and why you're saying it... but it still sounds like if God did exist he is childish and immature and constantly wants to test his little creations for no apparent reason other than rules he made up.

Well, if he exists as I believe, he doesn't *want* us to live in a world of horror and death but moreso, he doesn't want to force us to live in a world of his making no matter how much better it would be. He leaves the choice up to us and the world becomes what we make of it - essentially the only way we can retain free will.

I don't think God very much likes the fact that people continually choose "wrong" and fuck things up, and I don't think it's anything remotely like a "test", but to remove that choice would be to remove everything that makes us human and turn us into little more than play-dolls. In essence, I think it's the opposite of childish and immature but very much the "if you love something, set it free" philosophy.

Of course, if you don't believe God exists then the whole thing boils down to exactly the same result - you still have free will and you still retain your own personal choice.

Dd

[Partha]

But you're not American, if Mitt Romney is judging you.

[Arkaron]

I've always been facinated with Jesus' statement of "Why hast thou forsaken me?"

It's as if Jesus isn't sure that God is going to go through with the deal.

[Trollbait]

I've always been facinated with Jesus' statement of "Why hast thou forsaken me?"

It's as if Jesus isn't sure that God is going to go through with the deal.

It is a very interesting thing for Jesus to say, being the Son of God and all.

To understand it you need to realize that though he was God, Jesus was made into flesh. He was a man with all of man's fallacies and limitations of the flesh.

At that moment I believe it was the doubt of the man Jesus and that He was going through incredible pain and anguish.

When taken into context with the scene before where Jesus prays that "this cup could pass from my lips" you see that there was a struggle within the man part of Jesus because he knew precisely what kind of tortures he would have to suffer.

[Trollbait]

To say that we are doomed to hell unless we take certain steps and god can do nothing about it;

Again you fail at understanding.

God can do something about it but he does not because that would interfere with our free will.

that reminds me of an episode of the Simpsons where Bart tells Lisa "I'm just going to walk towards you swinging my fists. It's not my fault if you get hit"

I find it incredibly telling that you get your philisophical and theological veiwpoints from cartoons....

To put it in your terms You have the ability to save your kids but you do nothing, because they might just save themselves.

No....we cannot save ourselves. We can choose to be saved and God's actions.....that Jesus died on the cross for our sins...is what saves us. God has already saved us. He has already committed the action. We just have to accept it.

If you want a real understandable analogy I have one for you in the form of the following anecdote:

There was a huge flood in a small town and a man of great faith in God saw a news cast with an order for evacuation.

The man said to his neighbors as they evacuated, "I'll stay! I have faith that God will save me!"

The flood got higher and a boat came, and the rescue worker in it said "Come on mate, get in!"

"No" replied the man. "I have faith that God will save me!"

The flood got very high now and the man had to stand on the roof of his house.

A helicopter soon came and the Coast Guard rescuer inside offered him help. "No, I have faith that God will save me!" he said.

Eventually the waters rose and the man drown.

He got by the gates of heaven and he said to God, "Why didn't you save me? Do you not love me? Am I not your child?"

God replied, "For goodness sake! I sent a boat and a helicopter. What more do you want!"

God has already done his part. Now we get the easy part of just accepting the truth of what He has done.

You can question the method but to say that God is standing aside and letting His children burn in hell is absolutely false.

As Dd has already said the entire premise of the man and God relatioship is that God granted mankind free will to make choices. He did not create a bunch of mindless drones. In order to preserve his creation and not violate free will this is the method that He chose to save us.