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Is Astrology a science?

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GodsGrace101

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1. Yes, you are correct I don't get my beliefs from Calvinism. How does that make me not a Calvinist? or more to the point, how does that mean I deny being a Calvinist or Reformed? Must a Calvinist get his ideas from Calvin or Calvinism? I got mine from the Bible.

Trust me Mark,
A person cannot read the bible and come away a Calvinist.
One must be doctrinated to that belief system.

What if I told you I believed in purgatory and got my belief from the bible.
Would that sound reasonable to you?

2. Mere Assertion. WHERE do I remove LOVE, MERCY and JUSTICE from His very being, except in your mind?
No comment.
3. If you know what the Reformed believe, why do you keep misrepresenting it?
No comment.
 
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GodsGrace101

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1. Yes, you are correct I don't get my beliefs from Calvinism. How does that make me not a Calvinist? or more to the point, how does that mean I deny being a Calvinist or Reformed? Must a Calvinist get his ideas from Calvin or Calvinism? I got mine from the Bible.

2. Mere Assertion. WHERE do I remove LOVE, MERCY and JUSTICE from His very being, except in your mind?

3. If you know what the Reformed believe, why do you keep misrepresenting it?
See, I was right about no. 1

Most probably I'm right about nos. 2 and 3 also.

But this conversation bores me to tears.
 
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Mark Quayle

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1. You've said, more than once, that you don't know about calvinism,or at least, that you don't get your beliefs from calvinism.
2. You misrepresent God the same way every other calvinist does --- by changing His very nature.
You remove LOVE, MERCY AND JUSTICE from His very being.
3. Um. I've told you several times now that I go by John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. I mean, have you ever heard of it??
Please stop telling me I don't know what the reformed believe. Thanks.
By the way, you may find many Calvinists that will tell you, should you ask, that Calvinism isn't Calvin, nor his institutes.
 
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Mark Quayle

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Trust me Mark,
A person cannot read the bible and come away a Calvinist.
One must be doctrinated to that belief system.

What if I told you I believed in purgatory and got my belief from the bible.
Would that sound reasonable to you?
Why should I trust you? You don't know how I came to believe what I do. I did not know it was essentially Calvinism (nor Reformed) until a while after I came to it.

God's Sovereignty and Man's Inability are more than obvious from both Scripture and experience, and rather ironically (I say because Christendom seems to disdain logic past a certain point) by simple logic. I perhaps haven't told you about the hours upon hours, day after day, month after month, year after year, in agonizing Bible reading and studying, weeping prayer and despair I've been through as a result of the taught notion that "it is all up to us", and that God reacts to us, instead of the other way around. That had a lot to do with what I have come to realize as truth. I now reject completely much of what I was taught, such as, "God can't use us until we are obedient!" Ludicrous, illogical claim, and unBiblical.

In another response you say that Calvinism denies God's love, mercy and justice. God's justice, mercy and love are all one and the same attribute in God, though we seem to have to separate them to deal with them. If you don't know the burning power of God's purity, you don't understand the horror that sin is, and if you don't understand sin, you don't understand God's justice, mercy and love.
 
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Mark Quayle

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Here's your last sentence:

—I told you. By the Spirit of God. "Born of the Spirit". Do you honestly think that aside from the work of God in them, a person can have genuine faith, of himself, by mere decision? "HOW?"

Yes, Mark, a person becomes a born again believer BY HIS DECISION.
NOT, by some arbitrary decision made by God -
arbitrary - based on nothing.
Back to my original statement...
HOW can we trust a God that does not allow us to know His requirements to become saved?
So you think Calvinism teaches God decides by "arbitrary decision", "- based on nothing". It does not. Even if all it claimed was that the decision is made by God by his own council, that should be more than enough to destroy any notion of comparative validity, integrity or ability of mere creatures to make such a decision, let alone when one considers the fact that apart from Christ we can do nothing, and worse, that the spiritually dead are UNABLE to submit to nor to please God. (And, like before with other things, don't distort what I say here to mean that we don't decide. We certainly do decide, but our decision is not what our Eternity is hinged on.)

You ask: "HOW can we trust a God that does not allow us to know His requirements to become saved?"
He DID let us know. You can try to go with one or the other of two requirements: You can choose to live a life without sin, (for all the good that choice will do you.) Or you can be born again, of the Spirit. And that, you cannot do either, though you can try to choose it. But how can one at enmity with God even WANT to choose to be born again?

And don't distort this to claim that I mean that salvation is not by faith. Salvific faith is 'generated' by the Holy Spirit —not by human integrity, ability and will.
Now, let's stop derailing this thread.

You interrupt the thread to object to me talking to an atheist, and now you get to say when we stop this back and forth!!? ;)
 
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Astrid

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Is it metaphorical...
or did God literally take all the coccoliths (whatever they are) and stock pile them?
Your sentence no. 1 conflicts with your statement no. 3.
Cocolithophoes are single celled algae
that form attractive calcium carbonate
shells and are the major source of limestone.
They can be so abundant as to be visible from
a satellite.

The chalk at Dover did not get buried deep
enough to be compressed into limestone,
dolomite or marble.
 
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GodsGrace101

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Cocolithophoes are single celled algae
that form attractive calcium carbonate
shells and are the major source of limestone.
They can be so abundant as to be visible from
a satellite.

The chalk at Dover did not get buried deep
enough to be compressed into limestone,
dolomite or marble.
OK
I don't understand what this implies, and I haven't been here from the beginning of the thread, so twice the problem.

Are we discussing young earth or the such?
What difference does it make if the chalk at Dover was not buried deep enough IF there are marble quarries all over?
 
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GodsGrace101

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One would think it would be understood
how beyond shameful it is to make up
nonsense, and post it as fact in support
of the God one claims to respect.
Yes, apparently I showed up too late.
 
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Astrid

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OK
I don't understand what this implies, and I haven't been here from the beginning of the thread, so twice the problem.

Are we discussing young earth or the such?
What difference does it make if the chalk at Dover was not buried deep enough IF there are marble quarries all over?
You didn't know what cocoliths are.
Thought you might like a little info on them.

" Flood" geology is bogus, including any an allof
the so called " proofs" such as "polystrate fossils,"
or grand canyon.
 
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AV1611VET

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@AV1611VET 's avatar states that science could take a hike.
Maybe he has absolutely no trust in science?
Can't remember...

I believe true scientists are gifts to us from God.

In other words, as God calls some into the pulpit as pastors, some to the mission field as missionaries, He calls some to the lab as scientists.

I use SCIENCE CAN TAKE A HIKE only to convey the idea that any science that disagrees with the Bible can't be trusted.

Here are my standards:

1. Bible says x, Science says x = go with x
2. Bible says x, Science says y = go with x
3. Bible says x, Science says ø = go with x
4. Bible says ø, Science says x = go with x
5. Bible says ø, Science says ø = free to speculate on your own

Prime Directive: Under no circumstances whatsoever is the Bible to be contradicted.


In addition, I believe God hid "Easter Eggs" into His creation, to be discovered at the proper time.

Deuteronomy 29:29 The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.

Oil being my favorite example.

And when the right time comes, God raises up a scientist to find these "Easter Eggs."

Proverbs 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.
 
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AV1611VET

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Is it metaphorical...
or did God literally take all the coccoliths (whatever they are) and stock pile them?
Your sentence no. 1 conflicts with your statement no. 3.

Swept implies using a broom.

Prefer that word to "stockpiled," as "swept" is more of a clean-up term.

But yes, I believe He literally put those white shells (chalk) there.
 
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AV1611VET

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"Flood" geology is bogus, including any an all of the so called " proofs" such as "polystrate fossils,"
or grand canyon.

I prefer miracles to natural explanations.

Miracles makes it sound like God was behind it.

But then, that's because He was.
 
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GodsGrace101

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So you think Calvinism teaches God decides by "arbitrary decision", "- based on nothing". It does not. Even if all it claimed was that the decision is made by God by his own council, that should be more than enough to destroy any notion of comparative validity, integrity or ability of mere creatures to make such a decision, let alone when one considers the fact that apart from Christ we can do nothing, and worse, that the spiritually dead are UNABLE to submit to nor to please God. (And, like before with other things, don't distort what I say here to mean that we don't decide. We certainly do decide, but our decision is not what our Eternity is hinged on.)

You ask: "HOW can we trust a God that does not allow us to know His requirements to become saved?"
He DID let us know. You can try to go with one or the other of two requirements: You can choose to live a life without sin, (for all the good that choice will do you.) Or you can be born again, of the Spirit. And that, you cannot do either, though you can try to choose it. But how can one at enmity with God even WANT to choose to be born again?

And don't distort this to claim that I mean that salvation is not by faith. Salvific faith is 'generated' by the Holy Spirit —not by human integrity, ability and will.


You interrupt the thread to object to me talking to an atheist, and now you get to say when we stop this back and forth!!? ;)
Sure.
The girl is always right.
Any smart guy knows this.


Later
 
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dlamberth

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Do some here believe cliffs were etched by God?
Only in the sense that the Divine can be found not only in the coccoliths piling up over time, but also the in the wind and waves of the Ocean that eroded the cliffs exposing the white chalk that we see today.
 
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AV1611VET

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Only in the sense that the Divine can be found not only in the coccoliths piling up over time,

They didn't pile up over time.

God made the earth ready for Noah to disembark and replenish it.

Noah didn't have to clean up after God.

God cleaned His own mess up.
 
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dlamberth

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They didn't pile up over time.
Coccoliths piled up over tens of millions of years as the skeletons of algae sank to the bottom. With a mountain building period during the Alpine orogeny, the deposits were raised above sea level where they were eroded into the present shape.
 
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AV1611VET

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Coccoliths piled up over tens of millions of years ...

If that's true -- which it isn't, but I'll humor you:

If that's true, why didn't the Flood, which occurred in 2348 BC wash them away?
 
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Mark Quayle

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See, I was right about no. 1

Most probably I'm right about nos. 2 and 3 also.

But this conversation bores me to tears.
Your post #273 gives me permission to go here: At the risk of sounding chauvinistic, is this the flip of the feminine hand that directs the world's traffic? The regal dismissal of the bothersome subject? See, I don't have to play that. I don't have to let you win. You don't get the last word and expect me to bow, because to me you are just another who makes false claims about me and Calvinism/Reformed Doctrine and Scripture. Male or female counts for nothing here.

See, you were wrong about no. 1. I do not claim to not be a Calvinist, but only that I didn't get my beliefs through Calvinist (nor Reformed) indoctrination. Your logic is circular: You claim that all Calvinists get their beliefs by indoctrination, then when I show you one who didn't, you accuse me of saying I'm not a Calvinist.

You were also wrong about 2 and 3. Strange you should say, "probably". You don't even know?

If you are bored, go away.
 
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GodsGrace101

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Your post #273 gives me permission to go here: At the risk of sounding chauvinistic, is this the flip of the feminine hand that directs the world's traffic? The regal dismissal of the bothersome subject? See, I don't have to play that. I don't have to let you win. You don't get the last word and expect me to bow, because to me you are just another who makes false claims about me and Calvinism/Reformed Doctrine and Scripture. Male or female counts for nothing here.

See, you were wrong about no. 1. I do not claim to not be a Calvinist, but only that I didn't get my beliefs through Calvinist (nor Reformed) indoctrination. Your logic is circular: You claim that all Calvinists get their beliefs by indoctrination, then when I show you one who didn't, you accuse me of saying I'm not a Calvinist.

You were also wrong about 2 and 3. Strange you should say, "probably". You don't even know?

If you are bored, go away.
OK
You're too serious for me anyhow.
 
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