Religion III - Friday the 13th

[inmate running the asylum]

Posted by Mardi

Sorry for my subtlety. Allow me to be both accurate and direct. Jesus said we should love God and love people.

You still are not being direct! I wonder if you are capable of answering directly. :doh: Jesus said a lot of things, besides just love God and love people. Jesus also said nonbelievers would burn in hell forever, if they did not believe in him.

So let me ask you again then? Are you claiming that Jesus says nowhere in the Bible, that if you do not believe in him, you will be punished by burning in hell? To my knowledge the Baptist religion and most Christian religions have always taught, that nonbelievers will burn in hell for not believing that Jesus died on the cross for their sins.

So if YOU personally are saying you do not believe this, then at least I will not place you in the same category as organized religon. :gus:

[Yomar]

Originally posted by inmate running the asylum

Jesus also said nonbelievers would burn in hell forever, if they did not believe in him.

I think you are mistaking Jesus with Jerry Farwell. As I understand it (and I may be wrong, I know you have far greater knowledge about the Bible than I do) Jesus said something to the effect that through him was the only way to God?

If this is what you are referring to, I've always had a problem with the interpretation that if you do not believe that Jesus was the Son of God, you are going to Hell. It seems too out of character for that to be his meaning. Jesus was a teacher, and so my interpretation of what he meant was that following the example he was setting was the only path to God, not so much worship me or burn in hell forever.

[inmate running the asylum]

Post Number 23:

23-1 - No Yomar,....... I don't think I am wrong about Jesus saying we will burn in hell, if we do not believe in him. Check it out in a Bible, but below are the verses. Mardi knows this, but whether he believes this or will admit it, I don’t know. This is one of my biggest gripes against Christianity, because it is another religion like so many in history, with a built-in reward-punishment system. Do what the priests say and believe, or suffer the consequences: punishment, death, etc.

23-2 - Most Christian religions -- Catholic, Baptist, etc -- teach that if you do not believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, you are a nonbeliever and at the Last Judgment by Jesus, you will wind up being judged accordingly and burn in hell forever. Here is some of what Jesus says and he is very clear on the matter:

23-3 - Jesus says: And if thy hand offend thee, cut if off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their [sic] worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. [Mark 9:43-44 -KJB]

23-4 - In bygone ages people took the above verse so literally, that they even went so far as to have themselves castrated, in a bid to ward off the temptations of sex. Among the more famous people were Origenus, Photos, Ignatius and Methodus, all patriarchs of Constantinople, who castrated themselves. Self mutilation was so common around the Vatican, that Pope Leo I had to issue a bull in 397 A.D. threatening excommunication and forbidding eunuchs from entering the priesthood.

23-5 - In fact Pope Benedict III instituted a secret ceremony in the 9th century designed to verify papal virility and that the pope was a man. Prior to the new pope being enthroned, he had to raise up his robes and sit on a porphyry chair that had a hole cut in its center. The cardinals then approached the chair from behind, knelt down and palpated the pope-elect's genitals before intoning to the effect: "the pope has testicles!" [Note: I read this in a book and did not believe it myself until I also videotaped a cardinal interviewed at the Vatican, who showed the actual chair. It use to be shown to tourists, but is now somewhere in one of their museums. Another reason this chair was used, was to assure the cardinals that the pope was a man and not a woman. Legend had it that there had been a Pope Joan in drag, known as John 12th around 855, who ruled for 2 years. There had been a statue of her in a plaza for over 200 years, before the Vatican finally had it removed!]

23-6 - Jesus says: And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be SAVED; but he that believeth not shall be DAMNED*. [Mark 16:15-16] *note: The Catholic Bible says condemned.

23-7 - Jesus says: And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. [Matt. 10:28]

23-8 - Jesus says: The Son of man shall send forth his angels and they shall gather out of the kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity. And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. [Matt. 13:41-42]

23-9 - There are also other verses, such as Jesus’ parable of the “rich man and Lazarus” which describes hell as a place where the rich man is tormented in flames. [Luke 16:19-28]

[Yomar]

That’s some pretty scary stuff. I hope I'm not a thing that offends...

But in all fairness, the theme does seem to be that one should believe in God and one should resist temptation, but it doesn't really imply to me anyway that Jesus is promising that these awful things will befall anyone that does not believe that Jesus is literally the Son of God. I know most if not all of Christianity says this, but it is interpretive. No argument about the carrot and stick though.

[inmate running the asylum]

Post Number 24:

24-1 - Yomar, it is all superstitious baloney which has been passed down from ancient times, from generation to generation by grandparent to parent. It can be scary as you say, however, when any theocracies are able to get ruling power and enforce their beliefs on people, as occurred in Iran and with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

24-2 - So Yomar, if you happen to hear televangelists on television asking for donations of money for charities or to SAVE PEOPLE'S SOULS, remember that this is nothing but a big con. Just remember what the Roman Catholic inquisitor, Francisco Pena stated in 1578 during the Inquisition: "We must remember that the main purpose of the trial and execution IS NOT TO SAVE THE SOUL of the accused but to achieve the public good and put fear into others.” Inquisition and Society in Spain by Henry Kemen, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985) 161

[mardi gras skin]

You still are not being direct! I wonder if you are capable of answering directly. Jesus said a lot of things, besides just love God and love people. Jesus also said nonbelievers would burn in hell forever, if they did not believe in him.

Jesus was asked, in a nutshell, what is the greatest commandment? What is the key to life and faith? Here is what a Pharisee (a guy who completely disrespected Jesus) asked him:

An expert in the law tested [Jesus] with this question:

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"

Now, at this point Jesus could have said anything. He could have said, "Believe in me or burn in hell." He could have said, "Always wear clean underwear." But whatever he says next will wrap up everything else he'll say and do. The answer to this question is the key, because the greatest commandment would be what God wants us to do above all else. So here's what Jesus said.

" 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

The "love God" part is a quote from Deuteronomy 6:5 and the love people part is a quote from Leviticus 19:18. Jesus said that these are the linchpins to understanding faith in God.

Here is the vision. Love God, love people. This isn't just one of many things Jesus said, this is the core of what Jesus said. Everything else hanges on these.

The application, including the language describing separation from God, is sensitive to society. The bulk of your problems are not with the core vision, apparently, but with the application that you view as barbaric. In the same way, your sensitivities would be alien to that culture. Even more alien than current Afghanistan culture is to us today.

And again (for about the 20th time) here's what I think about hell. We either accept God on his terms or we reject him. That's our choice. The result of our choice is that we will either be with him or without him. Jesus isn't looking for "sinners" to throw in hell. He's looking for all of us to be a part of his family. Some us chose to be a part of his family and some of us don't. It just seems weird to me that you would think God should force people to accept him so that they can avoid eternal separation.

[inmate running the asylum]

Posted by Mardi

And again (for about the 20th time) here's what I think about hell. We either accept God on his terms or we reject him. That's our choice. The result of our choice is that we will either be with him or without him.

So let me ask you again for the 21st time. If we choose to reject or disbelieve in Jesus, according to what YOU believe, we just wind up without Jesus but no one burns in hell. Correct? :gus:

Posted by Mardi

It just seems weird to me that you would think God should force people to accept him so that they can avoid eternal separation.

There is nothing weird about it at all, based on what the Catholic and Baptist religion has been teaching for hundreds of years. I heard nothing but hell-fire and brimstone sermons from Baptist preachers growing up, and here is how my Catholic Bible-dictionary defines damnation. "Condemnation to everlasting punishment or the punishment of hell itself. The general opinion on this externally caused pain is that it will be caused by fire."

But I am not telling you anything you do not already know. So apparently Mardi you are a majority of one versus 1.2 billion Catholics and Baptists who believe people do burn in hell.

By the way I have a couple more questions for you. As I recall you told me in another post, that you believe that angels are real but are spirits. Now I want to know:

1. If you believe Satan is real and in control on earth?

2. Whether you believe devils exist?

3. And what are Satan and devils, EVIL spirits?

[mardi gras skin]

The general opinion on this externally caused pain is that it will be caused by fire."

But I am not telling you anything you do not already know. So apparently Mardi you are a majority of one versus 1.2 billion Catholics and Baptists who believe people do burn in hell.

By the way I have a couple more questions for you. As I recall you told me in another post, that you believe that angels are real but are spirits. Now I want to know:

1. If you believe Satan is real and in control on earth?

2. Whether you believe devils exist?

3. And what are Satan and devils, EVIL spirits?

The general opinion is that separation from God involves fire. It is described as a general opinion because there are minority opinions. I personally know several Baptist ministers who aren't sold on the physical fire aspect of hell. In the OT, heaven is described as involving impossibly great amounts of agricultural wealth. In the NT, heaven is described as an impossibly wealthy city. At the same time hell is described in impossibly awful terms...imagine burning forever. These are physical descriptions of spiritual realities. One is better than can be described, one is worse than can be imagined. In the end I don't know what hell is like, other than it is a horrible "place" to be.

I believe that there are angels ("angelos" means "messenger") that exist. Some of them have fallen and Lucifer is named in the Bible as the chief adversary (ha satan is translated "the adversary").

[The Sisko]

I fully realize that this thread has pretty much run it's course. However, I did promise a few weeks ago to list what I meant by the inaccuracies in the Bible and I'm a man of my word so here goes.

For beginners, how about the admission of the authors of the R.S.V. of 1971. They clearly state in their preface "We owe to it an incalculable debt. Yet the King James Version has grave defects." They then go on to describe those defects and why they felt it required a whole new version of the Bible. Yet and still, that begs the question do those who studied and believed the "defective" version go to hell ?

Next, the fact that many of the books of the Bible weren't even written by the alleged author(s). Yet the Bible, even today's versions, still say that various passages were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke or whomever. Check this link for more info. on this. http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/authornt.html

For more blatant things, how about where the Bible contradicts itself ? 2 Samuel 24:13 and 1 Chron. 21:11 where one passage says 7 years of famine and the other says only 3.

Then there's 2 Chron. 36 and 2 Kings 24 where Jehoiachin is said to be 8 years old in one and 18 in the other.

Of course, those are just small errors with numbers (of which there are more, but two is enough for purposes of illustration)that could have happend by a simple error in transcription in a time when copiers were non existant.

Then, how about 2 Samuel 24 "And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel and he moved David against them to say, Go number Israel and Judah. " and 1 Chron. 21 "And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel." Now that's some pretty serioius stuff when you can't even figure out whether it's God or Satan who's doing the commanding.

Then there's another biggie. I'm sure most if not all Christians remember learning John 3:16 growing up. I did anyway and can still recite it from memory. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son...." Only problem is God had ANOTHER BEGOTTEN SON. Nonsense you say ? Well, check out Psalms 2:7 "I will declare the decree. The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my son, This day have I begotten thee."

Then there's the fact that 2 Kings 19 and Isaiah 37 read the same word for word in spite of the fact that they are ascribed to different authors at different times. I guess somebody was into plagarism. Either that, or God forgot that he "inspired" someone to write that passage already.

Yes, there is more. However, for the purposes of this discussion I think this is enough for everyone to see exactly what I meant. Also, I want to point out that I did not say the things I did about the Bible to offend anyone. Rather, it was to reinforce my point that christian scholars do in fact know that many errors exist in the Bible and in current christian doctrine however, they continue to support it by their silence on the subject.

[wdj]

first off, i know that i'm getting in on this way late. i just happened across this site and read through this post because it snagged my interest.

inmate, you seem to be a fairly smart person. however, you really are making some enormous jumps in logic to be able to hold your position. there are a lot of points in between that you are completely skipping. let me go through a few things that i thought of...

1. You base your opinion (a very large part of it anyway) of all Bible-following religions and of the Bible itself on the actions of the Catholic Church. This is a HUGE error on your part and shows some awfully lazy thinking (“Well, the Catholic Church does it & they’re the biggest, so that must mean that everybody does…”) When was the last time the Pope quoted a scripture? Does he even have a Bible with him when he speaks? Ask a Catholic if he takes his Bible to mass, and if so, how often the priest leads the church in reading from the Bible. You seem to think that the Catholic Church is the personification of what's in the Bible, however it's clear that the Church has almost NOTHING to do with the Bible. In fact, the Catholic Church is very open about the fact that they hold church tradition above the Bible. If they find a conflict between the Bible and their tradition, they will always side with tradition. It can be shown that all of the Church’s negative actions that you mention are against Bible teaching. Therefore, these negative actions must be attributed to church tradition, and as a result cannot be viewed as a reflection of what’s in the Bible…

Your made some HUGE (and terribly naive) assumptions in thinking that the Catholic Church 1) follows and/or represents the Bible and 2) is representative of all bible-following religions. Those assumptions could not be further from the truth and your arguments based on those assumptions (i.e. the Bible isn’t a holy book because it spawned the Crusades) are worthless. You are also entirely illogical when you suggest that all organized religion is corrupt, misleading, brutal, etc, etc… just because the Catholic Church has shown these qualities. That would be paramount to me concluding that all lawyers are corrupt and dishonest just because there’s one well-known lawyer that’s corrupt and dishonest…

2. You hold the Bible to standards that you won’t apply to other writers, or even yourself. To paraphrase, your standard is that a) when two statements contradict each other, at least one is false and if one part of an account is false, then the whole thing is false. I believe you in saying that those principles are commonly used in the legal system, but I would challenge your use of them together. If the sequential use of these rules (a followed by were applied in courts, judges would regularly have to throw out the entire testimony of any witness whose testimony contradicts that of another witness. In truth, our legal system requires the jury to hear all of the testimony and find the truth that’s somewhere in between the two accounts.

Let me ask you this: If one person told you that a mouse was a living creature, and another person told you that a mouse was not a living creature, is this a contradiction? If this were testimony in court, would you make the case that both statements cannot be true and so the entire testimony of the witnesses must be disregarded? Would you not stop for a moment and realize that one person might be talking about a four-legged mouse and the other might be talking about your computer mouse? The statements might seem contradictory, however they are both true depending on the subject and the context – two things that you conveniently leave out when you bring up an apparent contradiction.

In another case you use the example of Hebrew men who spoke with god and then contrasting it with Jesus saying that nobody can get to god except through him. If you took the time to actually think about what the situations were and learn what the Bible was saying, then you’d realize that this is no contradiction at all. To simplify, in Hebrew times the law stated that sacrifices for the purpose of covering one’s sins were required before someone could have an audience with God. Jesus’ life was worth far more than animal sacrifice, and therefore it superceded the need for any future animal sacrifices. Therefore, Jesus’ sacrifice served the same purpose (covering sins) as animal sacrifices did previously – and for that reason it can be said that we go to God ‘through’ Jesus. I don’t have a Bible at my fingertips to quote the exact scriptures on this explanation, however you can find the sacrificial requirements of the Mosaic Law in Deuteronomy. In the NT, there are several mentions of how Jesus’ sacrifice is for the purpose of forgiveness of our sins. It’s such a simple explanation that I’m a little suspicious of you. If you really did not understand this, then I doubt your claims of religious training and I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re basing your thoughts solely on what you reading from these scholars & critics that you so highly of. The only other explanation is that you do understand this concept and yet quote it as a “contradiction” anyway – which makes one suspicious of your intellectual honesty.

That brings up another question: when you found all of these apparent contradictions, did you spend any time at all trying to think of a reasonable explanation? I’m convinced that you didn’t. (Of course I can’t prove it, and you probably won’t admit it, but I think it’s a reasonable conclusion based on your tone, the way you’ve presented these, the fact that you ignore Mardi’s explanations, and my past experience speaking with others who share your opinions.) Anyway, if you want to form your own opinions of “contradictions” without stopping to consider that an explanation might exist, that’s fine. However, most people try looking at things objectively, examining things from more than one angle, and looking for other possible explanations. My point is that you are using some VERY weak examples of apparent contradictions that can be explained quite easily. You’re coming out with your guns blazing saying that there are hundreds of contradictions in the Bible, but by apparently not even looking for these possible explanations yourself, you’re really just firing a lot of blanks.

3. You allege that since we do not have the original copy of the Bible, and that what we have is merely a copy of a copy of a copy, we cannot trust that it is even anywhere close to the original text. Obviously, we do not have the original copies of the Bible so we are in fact unable to prove the accuracy with which it was copied – however, for the very same reason, you are unable prove that it is NOT accurate. You are taking a big leap by saying that since we can’t prove it’s accuracy, by default it is INaccurate.

Are you familiar with the Dead Sea Scrolls? They are portions of the book of Isaiah that have been dated to about 600BC (if I’m not mistaken). When compared to the more modern Hebrew texts (from several hundred years later) that were used to translate many Bibles today, the only differences are slight nuances in punctuation that have no effect on the message of the scripture. Does this mean that all texts have been copied this accurately? Possibly not, but the point is that your allegation that it’s not possible for text to be accurately copied over many years is entirely incorrect.

This is getting quite long. I might write a little more later. I’d be interested to see how you explain the way the Bible was WAY ahead of science on issues like the shape of the earth, good sanitary practices, and archeology.

[The Evil Genius]

Thought this was fitting...lets hope this thread will never denigrate into this

Man Shot Dead over Heaven and Hell Argument

Tue Jul 30, 9:54 AM ET

GODLEY, Texas (Reuters) - An argument over who was going to heaven and who was going to hell ended with one Texas man shooting another to death with a shotgun, police said on Monday.

Johnny Joslin, 20 was allegedly shot by Clayton Frank Stoker, 21, on Sunday. The two had spent Saturday with two other men night bar hopping in Fort Worth, about 40 miles northeast of Godley.

Johnson County Sheriff Bob Alford said a witness who was the designated driver for the group told police the four men were sitting at a table outside a trailer park after their night on the town and entered into an argument about religion. The talk became heated when the subject turned to who would go to heaven and who would go to hell.

Stoker said he would settle the argument and went into a house and returned with a shotgun, which he loaded and placed in his mouth, Alford said the witness reported.

"The victim Joslin then took the gun out of Stokers mouth, saying, 'If you have to shoot somebody, shoot me,'" Alford said, citing the witness report.

The shotgun went off, hitting Joslin in the chest and killing him.

Stoker, a Johnson County corrections officer, has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder, Alford said.