Walmart apologizes for Christmas sweater with apparent drug reference

Contenders Edge said:

The dank side of postmodernism being what you have apparently appealed to as you yourself have presented no real arguments; just baseless and misguided accusations founded in ignorance.

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The Bible has been revealed to be a human document and we should read the Bible critically, with the best tools of modern scholarship, and not with the kind of blind faith in religious tradition that you assume is necessary for being a Christian.

Contenders Edge said:

We have given a multitude of reasons as to why the authority of scripture should be accepted and can be trusted.

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I don't find evangelical fundamentalist readings or interpretations of the Bible at all credible or persuasive, anymore than I find the mythology of Scientology to be persuasive.

There are multitude of books written, articles published, websites and blogs produced (including my own) in defense of the Gospel and scriptural authority and if they were all put together, that long list would run for miles and would probably circle the globe many times over.

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And one can write alot of hot air, too. Merely having written alot about a subject does not in itself make that subject true or credible.

As far as taking pot-shots against minority groups, I am not sure what you mean by that as that statement conveys a number of different meanings, but this much I can say; we can love people and not necessarily like everything they do or agree with everything they say, teach, propagate, and promote.

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Implying that gays have an agenda other than to live lives in equality is hateful, it shows animus against gay and lesbian persons by assuming ill-will.

If gays do have animus against Christians, it is perfectly understandable. Christians have inspired murderous hatred, death, and cruel punishments against gays for centuries.

Speedwell said:

I may be, but as there are over two billion Christians in the world and not more that a hundred million or so of your sort I'm not too worried about it.

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And how would you know where they all stand in comparison to what you call my sort?

Contenders Edge said:

And how would you know where they all stand in comparison to what you call my sort?

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Catholics, the largest Christian church in the world, use the historical critical method in reading the Bible. So do the majority of mainstream Protestants, of whom there are hundreds of millions.

@Contenders Edge

Just to be fair I visited your blog:

Contender's Edge


You have this to say as "news":

The Geller Report---Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour Party (the sister party to the anti-Christ party in America) are known enemies to the Jews and Israel, but if they should win the general parliamentary election this year, it is because the people who chose them are every bit as evil as they. This could also potentially turn Britain from ally to another adversary of America.

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You demonize people with different perspectives, who don't see the world in your stark polemicist, and frankly ignorant terms, calling them "evil" or "anti-Christ", for no other reason than they aren't your own. That's hardly a demonstration of an ethical worldview. That kind of crass polemicism is really just propaganda and doesn't do anything to elucidate truth.

The rest of your website seems to deal in pseudoscience and conspiracy theory. For instance, this page is full of science-denial:

Contender's Edge: Articles

I actually don't see much there actually trying to persuade me of the truth of the Gospel, as you understand it. But I do see alot of hate, polemic, and vitriol that convinces me your ideas are not worth taking seriously.

FireDragon76 said:

The Bible and slavery - Wikipedia

1 Corinthians 14:34

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And yet women were allowed speak under certain circumstances: 1 Corinthians 11:5.

As for slavery, I asked you to show me what the Bible itself says about the matter, not what someone else says about it.

Contenders Edge said:

And yet women were allowed speak under certain circumstances: 1 Corinthians 11:5.

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So gracious they were "allowed" to speak at all, I guess. Fortunately, many of us have grown to respect women as equals who do not require our permission to speak.

FireDragon76 said:

The Bible has been revealed to be a human document and we should read the Bible critically, with the best tools of modern scholarship, and not with the kind of blind faith in religious tradition that you assume is necessary for being a Christian.

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What has revealed the Bible to be a human document instead of the inspired Word of God that it says that it is? And we do not need to rely on scholars to understand what it says. The text was designed to speak for itself and to be its own interpreter:

"It is not in heaven that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it." Deuteronomy 30:12-14

FireDragon76 said:

Catholics, the largest Christian church in the world, use the historical critical method in reading the Bible. So do the majority of mainstream Protestants, of whom there are hundreds of millions.

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And there are those of us who just approach the text at face value in its full counsel which is a method used before the introduction of the historical critical method which causes men to distrust the Bible.

Contenders Edge said:

What has revealed the Bible to be a human document instead of the inspired Word of God that it says that it is?

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Israeli software supports theory that Bible was written by multiple authors

And we do not need to rely on scholars to understand what it says. The text was designed to speak for itself and to be its own interpreter

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Not true. That's a religious tradition of interpretation, not the actual biblical text. The Bible itself is not one book, but many books spanning thousands of years from multiple sources with varying theological viewpoints.

"It is not in heaven that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it." Deuteronomy 30:12-14

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Where in the Bible does it give a list of the books to be considered the "Word of God"? It doesn't. Human beings decided that. Human beings cobbled together the original sources to make the Torah and Tanakh, as well. The Bible didn't come out of the mouth of God or drop down from the sky.

FireDragon76 said:

So gracious they were "allowed" to speak at all, I guess. Fortunately, many of us have grown to respect women as equals who do not require our permission to speak.

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The scriptures have afforded far more liberties than what you give them credit for; your contention has had to do with the church assembly.

Contenders Edge said:

The scriptures have afforded far more liberties than what you give them credit for; your contention has had to do with the church assembly.

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I believe in the spiritual equality of women. Denying them the ability to speak in church in any capacity is misogyny.

Contenders Edge said:

No, they are not pure fabricated fantasy. Christians in America have been frequently persecuted in America by the LGBT community and I have several examples of such stories that have been proven true, just as you claim to have hundreds of examples of LGBTs being persecuted.

But where LGBT people are being punished, persecuted, and murdered for their orientation are in the very nations in which the same things are being done to Christians.

In America and other similar nations, LGBTs do not have to worry about being punished or killed for their behavior nearly as much as those living in an Islamic country where such things do routinely happen.

And contrary to your accusations, no one is forcing anyone to kow tow to the Christian faith. The opposite, however, has been the case far more often than the other way around.

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The modern 'Christian' definition of persecution, having to follow the same laws as everyone else. Some of today's Christians would consider it persecution to be forced to carry a soldiers pack for a mile. Yet your Christ instead told you to carry it an extra mile. Not just following the same laws as everyone else but going a step farther.

Contenders Edge said:

The scriptures have afforded far more liberties than what you give them credit for; your contention has had to do with the church assembly.

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I have been told at the time when Paul wrote that letter the man and women were 'seated' separately and that previously women were not permitted or at least not encouraged to read the Jewish texts. The result was often women trying to ask their husbands what something meant during a service. It seem quite reasonable to want that to stop and for those questions to be asked later.

In that the trend seems good. The problem is that there are some who want to undo any progress that has happened with the trend continuing and roll things back to that point.

FireDragon76 said:

Israeli software supports theory that Bible was written by multiple authors

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That's old news. No one is denying that.

FireDragon76 said:

Not true. That's a religious tradition of interpretation, not the actual biblical text. The Bible itself is not one book, but many books spanning thousands of years from multiple sources with varying theological viewpoints.

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A face value interpretation is not tied to any tradition. It is something we do all the time until we fall for the lie telling us that what we read does not appear to be what it seems and place our faith in what others tell us about what we are reading rather than just accepting the text for what it is.

And granted while the scriptures were compiled by various authors, they do not reflect various viewpoints, but have demonstrated unfailing consistency on any given matter they address from the first verse in Genesis to the last verse in the book of Revelation.

FireDragon76 said:

Where in the Bible does it give a list of the books to be considered the "Word of God"? It doesn't. Human beings decided that. Human beings cobbled together the original sources to make the Torah and Tanakh, as well. The Bible didn't come out of the mouth of God or drop down from the sky.

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Actually, the scriptures did come directly from the mouth of God over the course of time whose words were written down by the ones who received it. The scriptures themselves testify to that. And what we have contained in the scriptures is what God has allowed and inspired to be there.

keith99 said:

The modern 'Christian' definition of persecution, having to follow the same laws as everyone else. Some of today's Christians would consider it persecution to be forced to carry a soldiers pack for a mile. Yet your Christ instead told you to carry it an extra mile. Not just following the same laws as everyone else but going a step farther.

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What defines Christian persecution: suffering ridicule, discrimination, ostracization, punishment, and even violence for following the dictates of our faith, especially when it means having to violate laws and policies running contrary to Christian teaching and yet we endure persecution and the risk thereof because we know that it is God before whom we must give an account, not any man.

Rebecca4Christ said:

I've been curious,so I'll ask you....
Why does an Athiest desire to join a Christian forum? Sincere question, please answer in like manner.

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Before answering I want to point out that this has been ask many times and there are even some threads that start with that question. Often asked not as a sincere question but as an attack. Be forewarned that you may get some venom that should have been directed towards others.

I first came here because of a thread on a bicycling forum. It started with a lot of pretty stupid things said on various Christion websites. I have the nasty habit of checking things. I expected that the posted selected were cherry picking. Sadly in general I was proved wrong. For most sites they were typical. This site was different. There were many insightful posts.

So I joined. It was months before I noticed a high percentage (but far from all) of the insightful posts were from non-Christians.

I listed myself as agnostic when I joined. Over time this site has in general degraded as I see it. But there are also ups and downs. At one point there was a decided downward trend in the areas I frequent where people who identified as atheist were routinely attacked without cause.

Technically the terms atheist and agnostic deal with different things. Agnostic means one does not claim (special) knowledge. Atheist means one does not believe in any god(s). I am an agnostic atheist. I do not believe in any god, but also do not claim certainty or special knowledge.

I've always been willing to step up. I got tired of people being attacked and instead of remaining silent I changed my identification from agnostic to atheist. I started a thread explaining why I did so. Looking back it was quite gratifying because it motivated a lot of decent Christians to post when they had been silent before.

If I recall correctly the most common answer when this has been asked has been some variation of 'I was a Christian when I joined' by a considerable margin.

keith99 said:

I have been told at the time when Paul wrote that letter the man and women were 'seated' separately and that previously women were not permitted or at least not encouraged to read the Jewish texts. The result was often women trying to ask their husbands what something meant during a service. It seem quite reasonable to want that to stop and for those questions to be asked later.

In that the trend seems good. The problem is that there are some who want to undo any progress that has happened with the trend continuing and roll things back to that point.

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Well meaning defenders of the Christian faith have relied on the same reasoning that you have presented. Unfortunately, there is nothing in scripture that alludes to the historical and cultural context of the time, but that does not mean that the Apostles view women as being inferior to men. The question that should be asked is what was there in women that the Paul observed that was no so observed in men that would have led him to write the following passage: 1 Corinthians 14:34.

And if we do not know the answer, that is because we do not have the understanding of human nature that they did, much less that of both genders.

FireDragon76 said:

There's about 500 million or so Pentecostals or Evangelicals who all broadly share the same superstitious, premodern worldview. But that's only a small fraction of the 2 billion Christians in the world.

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Even so, not nearly all of them take the hostile and aggressive attitude towards other forms of Christianity exhibited by our own Christian Right.

Speedwell said:

Even so, not nearly all of them take the hostile and aggressive attitude towards other forms of Christianity exhibited by our own Christian Right.

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That may be true. Australian Pentecostals don't seem as polemical.

I think it has to do with a uniquely American religious mythology that the US has a covenant with God revolving around a kind of religious extremism based on intolerance and totalitarianism.