Hi/Bye

[createdtoworship]

The standard stuff with a little bit of weird. Jesus is God, he died for our sins because he loves us. And there will be this guy trying to put a computer chip in our right hands or foreheads.

hey I won't be monitoring this thread, I simply wanted to give you some verses (if they are confusing, please read my last post)

!!!ONLY THOSE THAT REPENT OF EVERY SINGLE LUST OF THE EYES, AND LUST OF HE THAT DOES THE WILL OF GOD WILL HAVE ETERNAL LIFE:


“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father in not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”-1 John 2:15-17


“If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.”-1 John 2:29


“And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.” -1 John 2:25


“These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and they ye may believe in the name of the Son of God.” -1 John 5:13


evidently being born of God and knowing God are two different things, you can be born of God, yet not know Him and fellowship in His sufferings- 1 John 4:7


!!!WHOEVER SINS HAS NOT SEEN GOD, HE THAT DOETH GOOD WORKS IS SAVED:


“Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him. Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous.” -1 John 2:6-7


18 We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not. -1 John 5:18


!!!WHOEVER IS BORN AGAIN DOES NOT SIN, HE THAT DOESN’T DO GOOD WORKS IS A CHILD OF DEVIL:


7 Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. 8 He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. 9 Whosoever is born[1]a of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. 10 In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. -1 John 3:7-10


!!!PERFECT OBSERVANCE OF EVERY LAW; IN ORDER TO OBEY BETTER THAN PROPHETS AND = IN ORDER TO BE PERFECT FOR SALVATION:


19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. -Matthew 5:19-20


Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect1 -Matthew 5:48


39 And he spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch? 40 The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master. -Luke 6:39


!!!IF YOU LACK LOVE YOU ARE DEAD AND HAVE NOT OBEYED THE GOSPEL:


“He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.”-1 John 3:14


7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born[2]a of God, and knoweth God. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. -1 John 4:7-8


“And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us. “-1 John 3:23-24


22 Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: 23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.

24 For[3]d all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: 25 But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. – 1 Peter 1:22-25


!!!WHOEVER IS BORN AGAIN DOES NOT SIN:


“We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not. “-1 John 5:18


!!!MUST SURVIVE THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION IN ORDER TO BE ETERNALLY SAVED:


13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. –Matthew 24:13


!!!ONLY OVERCOMMERS WILL EAT OF THE TREE OF ETERNAL LIFE IN HEAVEN:


“Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; 2 I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: 3 And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted. 4 Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. 5 Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. 6 But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.- Revelation 2:1-7


8 And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive; 9 I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. 10 Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. 11 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death. - Revelation 2:8-11


[1]a is born: or, has been born

[2]a is born: or, has been born

[3]d For: or, For that

 

[com7fy8]

If your justification for beliefs is simply faith and if you are willing to sacrifice the quality of life for both yourself and others for the sake of your beliefs, then what's the difference between that and being Muslim?

I think I understand what you mean. A more clear example of this could be how at times in history certain Bible claiming people have been very cruel and destructive to others who did not go along with their beliefs and culture. Like this, there have been certain Muslims who have chosen their beliefs, then have hurt and hated and killed and tortured ones who did not go along with them.

And while anyone, Muslim or Bible claiming, uses force and psychological terrorism to try to make others conform to one's ideas, this keeps the person from finding out how to love. So, ones into this are missing out on so much!!

"nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock." (1 Peter 5:3)

But Christian faith is not only about ideas and copy-cat culture and beliefs, but we need "faith working through love", our Apostle Paul does say in Galatians 5:6. And in James chapter two, we have how "faith without works is dead" (James 2:20), and in this same chapter James gives three examples of what he means by works of faith > each example, I see, here, is an action of personal loving in which there is personal communication with God or any human being loved. And James 1:27 talks about what real "religion" is.

But ones decoy our attention away to criticizing what is not God's way of religion, instead of calling our attention to what James says about "religion" (James 1:27).

It seems to me, how . . . for a number of people . . . the Bible means a lot of arguing and paying for seminary and books and scholarly explanations, instead of discovering in us how God's grace personally works in each of us (Philippians 2:13) to have us discovering and living what He means

 

[Cappadocious]

You asked what I meant by my question.

Okay. Here was my confusion: You were willing to talk about the Roman Catholics apart from talking about faith (you didn't say, "I don't want to be Roman Catholic because it requires blind faith," you said something like, I don't want to be Roman Catholic because of the sex scandals). This made me think that you would be willing to discuss other non-evangelical churches apart from the issue of faith. Since this doesn't appear to be the case, sure.

So you're saying, if I get you right, something like: You're telling me to assign blind faith in something, so why does it matter what the object of the blind faith is? Why not Islam?

I take it that by blind faith you mean something like holding something to be true apart from the right sort of account, reason or justification.

Well, let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that all religions are false, but due to a weird fact about your nature,
you're going to place blind faith in one of them, anyway. Are there any good reasons to choose one over the other?

I can think of a few potential reasons, like:

1. Intuitive aesthetic appeal.
2. Accordance with what one takes to be true or preferable ethical principles.
3. Difficulty in adhering to the practices entailed by faith in the religion in question.

So if you found Sikhism or Lutheranism better along 1, 2, or 3, you would have reason to prefer them to Islam when considering what faith to hold.

Get what I'm saying?

 

[Commander Xenophon]

Firstly, I do not care if there is a referee or not. I'm here to enlighten and be enlightened, not to win. Winning or losing is an incidental byproduct of what is (hopefully) a good conversation and I will know if I've won or lost with or without moderation on the debate. The things I consider to be enlightening are when I discover that certain arguments against Christianity fail. I'd like to know such a thing so I don't use the arguments in the future.

Secondly, I appreciate that you operate with the principle of charity. You are correct, I did not mean that there is ever good reason to commit genocide. My point is simply that there are, or at least were, some countries that punish sedition with execution, and the gospel is explicitly labeled as sedition in some such countries. Other times the gospel is blasphemous to the native religion and is treated with violent hostility. While such actions are not acceptable in any sane society, there is still a bit of responsibility on the part of the Christian if they are wilfully committing suicide.

Lastly, you need to be careful when you say there is never a good reason to commit genocide because the Bible depicts Jews committing atrocities and war crimes at the behest of their warlord deity.

Just to be clear, the function of @St_Worm2 isn't to decide who wins the debate, but instead, if I misrepresemt your argument and do a strawman or ad hominem or another logical fallacy against you, which is not a violation of the rules (if you think Ive broken the rules you should report me to the mods), but which is against our club's standards of debate, you can complain to him and if he thinks you have a point, he will make me edit my post. That's his job.

Now, I want to ask a question which is directly pertinent to how we interpret the genocidal aspects of the Old Testament or the "imprecatory Psalms:" are you familiar with the dispute between the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools of Biblical exegesis in the fourth century? The former favored a strictly allegorical interpretation, the latter a strictly literal interpretation. So if you read Alexandrian theolgians like Origen, you will come across radically different interpretations of the Old Testament which basically reject it as a purely historical narrative. This is an approach I think we should pay some attention to, given that the literal historicity of it is not well attested by archaeologocal evidence.

So when in the Psalms we read, "Blessed shall be he who dashes Thy little ones against the rocks," apparently in reference to the children of Babylon, this sounds horrible, if we read it literally. John Wesley, like most Protestants and Catholics of that era, familiar only with the Antiochene method, deleted that Psalm from the modified Book of Common Prayer he supplied the Methodists in North America, and others like it, saying that it was wrong for any Christian congregation to pray such Psalms. Newer editions of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer delete the controversial verses from the imprecatory Psalms; Wesley just replaced them with hymns written by his brother Charles and some evangelical Canticles.

But if we read the Psalm allegorically, there is a very different meaning. It is a principle of the Bible that all prophecies must come true: in the case of Babylon, it can't, because the population migrated due to shifts in the Euphrates from old Babylon to Seleucia-Cstesiphon (the Babylon of the "Babylonian Talmod") and thence to Baghdad. And no one has ever gone through and massacred the inhabitants of that city.

In the Bible, Babylon is used as a typological reference for the capital of wordliness and decadence (Sodom and Gomorrah, of immediately intolerable sin), and Jerusalem, of holiness. So, the children of Babylon can be interpreted as meaning the sins resulting from the decadence of worldly society: gambling, prostitution, the luxury of the wealthy and the suffering of the poor, gluttony, avarice, drug abuse, wife abuse, misogyny, serial misogyny, sexual perversion, however you define that (most people consider at a minimum bestiality, paedophilia and incest to be perverted), rape, and a million other worms that infest our society. Someone who overcomes these temptations and removes themselves from the world to live a life of holiness in the desert has dashed the children of Babylon against a rock; I believe this verse is a prophecy of the Christian ascetics like St. Anthony and St. Paul the Hermit.

If I subscribed to a strictly Antiochene model, the verse would contradict other principles of Biblical exegesis and would be at best, spiritually worthless.

In Orthodoxy we tend to use a mixed approach, interpreting some Old Testament verses literally and others figuratively. As a historical work, the Old Testament becomes progressively less reliable the further back one goes; a literal interpretation of it becomes most reliable starting with Ezra-Nehemiah, which describe the founding of the religion of Second Temple Judaism and the implementation under Ezra the Priest of the thrice daily Jewish prayer and continual reading of the Torah which became the basis of Christian worship.

We have strong reasons to believe King David and King Solomon were historical persons, and we have strong reasons to believe the small kingdom they established fractured and was overrun by the Assyrians and Babylonians, and the Jews proper are descendants of a privileged group largely of nobility who were taken to Babylon as slaves. As we go back further, we find the Old Testament generally tends to follow a historical course very similiar to West Semitic Paganism, and Semitic Paganism and Egyptian Paganism as preserved by archaeological evidence.

I believe that much of what these ancient religions hold in common, like the flood story, has some basis in reality (perhaps a regional calamity, since we know a global flood did not occur; Zoroastrianism interestingly suggests the world froze instead and views the North as the direction of evil, hinting at ancestral oral traditions of a climate change event).

In the end, for me, the historicity of the Old Testament really doesn't matter; when I read it, I am usuallt not reading it as literal history, but as allegory using symbolical types to convey moral lessons (like Jerusalem = good, Babylon = bad), and most importantly, Christological prophecy.

It doesn't matter what the inspired writers of the Old Testament thought they were writing; as St. Peter writes, no prophecy is its own interpretation. What matters is what they meant to the early Christians, how they testify to our Lord; everything in them must be reread in light of what our Lord said, and this requires some pretty radical reinterpretation. We have to throw out the competing literal interpretations of Rabinnical Judaism and Antiochene Christianity and embrace a model where the entire Old Testament becomes typologocal prophecy and moral teaching, read according to symbolism defined clearly in the book of Revelations. It is through this lens of typological symbols that the historical incidents in the Old Testament which apparently contradict the Gospel message can make sense, without recourse to variations on dispensationalist theology, or other unpleasant aspects of Calvinist exegesis, whoch has come to dominate Protestantism, even non-Calvinist evangelical Protestants like John Wesley (who, although he rejected Calvin, seems to have mostly read the Old Testament through Calvins eyes and seems to have preferred to just disregard, excise or gloss over the dark passages that seem to describe genocides), which I believe is logically fallacious as it requires special pleading.

The Sufi Muslims took a similiar approach with the Quran, reinterpreting Jihad as an internal struggle, but alas in their case, it wound up being too little, too late.

Its also not suicide if someone demands you change your beliefs with the threat of force; if we say that it is, we basically shift the blame halfway every ideologically-driven murder ever committed. So everyone the Communists killed, and the Muslims are killing, becomes guilty of suicide, so that the guilt for their death is now distributed between them and their murderer. I don't believe we should do this; I believe in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression.

 

[JacksBratt]

If your justification for beliefs is simply faith and if you are willing to sacrifice the quality of life for both yourself and others for the sake of your beliefs, then what's the difference between that and being Muslim?

The difference is..... if I talk to someone about my "faith in Christ" ( remember in my answer to your question in an earlier post I explained that when Christians say they have "faith" it is meant to be understood that it is "faith in Christ".)
and this person rejects my information or invitation to accept Christ... I can still love this person as a human and work with them, play sports with them, accept them.

What does Islam say about people that do not follow their invitation to follow Mohammad.?

“About sixty-one percent of the contents of the Koran are found to speak ill of the unbelievers or call for their violent conquest; at best only 2.6 percent of the verses of the Koran are noted to show goodwill toward humanity. About seventy-five percent of Muhammad’s biography (Sira) consists of jihad waged on unbelievers.”

–Dr. Moorthy Muthuswamy

I work with Muslims and I have no trouble with them. The problem I do have is when some take the Koran word for word and use it as a license to do hateful things.

I would like to ask why you always seem to use the Muslim faith as a comparison to Christian faith. I don't want to assume but one could assume that it is due to the fact that you are well aware of the total opposites we are seeing here and this comparison is abrasive to Christians. One a God who is the personification of love and tells us to turn the other cheek and one that, so it seems, allows for violence and hurtful acts towards the "infidels".

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Okay. Here was my confusion: You were willing to talk about the Roman Catholics apart from talking about faith (you didn't say, "I don't want to be Roman Catholic because it requires blind faith," you said something like, I don't want to be Roman Catholic because of the sex scandals). This made me think that you would be willing to discuss other non-evangelical churches apart from the issue of faith. Since this doesn't appear to be the case, sure.

So you're saying, if I get you right, something like: You're telling me to assign blind faith in something, so why does it matter what the object of the blind faith is? Why not Islam?

I take it that by blind faith you mean something like holding something to be true apart from the right sort of account, reason or justification.

Well, let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that all religions are false, but due to a weird fact about your nature,
you're going to place blind faith in one of them, anyway. Are there any good reasons to choose one over the other?

I can think of a few potential reasons, like:

1. Intuitive aesthetic appeal.
2. Accordance with what one takes to be true or preferable ethical principles.
3. Difficulty in adhering to the practices entailed by faith in the religion in question.

So if you found Sikhism or Lutheranism better along 1, 2, or 3, you would have reason to prefer them to Islam when considering what faith to hold.

Get what I'm saying?

The rape scandals are reason enough to not trust the leadership of the Catholic Church whatsoever. I reject them outright before even thinking about the issue of blind faith because I cannot trust them.

I appreciate you going along with my hypothetical about blind faith. But then why not just pick hedonism if you want the belief system that is most gratifying?

 

[Nihilist Virus]

The difference is..... if I talk to someone about my "faith in Christ" ( remember in my answer to your question in an earlier post I explained that when Christians say they have "faith" it is meant to be understood that it is "faith in Christ".)
and this person rejects my information or invitation to accept Christ... I can still love this person as a human and work with them, play sports with them, accept them.

What does Islam say about people that do not follow their invitation to follow Mohammad.?

“About sixty-one percent of the contents of the Koran are found to speak ill of the unbelievers or call for their violent conquest; at best only 2.6 percent of the verses of the Koran are noted to show goodwill toward humanity. About seventy-five percent of Muhammad’s biography (Sira) consists of jihad waged on unbelievers.”

–Dr. Moorthy Muthuswamy

I work with Muslims and I have no trouble with them. The problem I do have is when some take the Koran word for word and use it as a license to do hateful things.

I would like to ask why you always seem to use the Muslim faith as a comparison to Christian faith. I don't want to assume but one could assume that it is due to the fact that you are well aware of the total opposites we are seeing here and this comparison is abrasive to Christians. One a God who is the personification of love and tells us to turn the other cheek and one that, so it seems, allows for violence and hurtful acts towards the "infidels".

You are saying that Christianity is a religion of love. In reality I see it expressed with hate. Muslims say that Islam is a religion of peace. In reality I see it as a religion of violence.

And then you ask me why I compare the two.

 

[Kenny'sID]

The rape scandals are reason enough to not trust the leadership of the Catholic Church whatsoever. I reject them outright before even thinking about the issue of blind faith because I cannot trust them.

Fair enough, and I'm glad to see you just refer to the leadership.

 

[Cappadocious]

I appreciate you going along with my hypothetical about blind faith. But then why not just pick hedonism if you want the belief system that is most gratifying?

Ah. I didn't mean appealing=pleasurable. I meant appealing as in, in accord with some valued significance, which may be pleasure or may be some other thing we perceive as good or valuable.

And if you think pleasure + pain reduction are the only goods (I think we have good reasons to think this isn't the case) the Epicureans would still want to say, hedonism doesn't get you the most of those things!

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Just to be clear, the function of @St_Worm2 isn't to decide who wins the debate, but instead, if I misrepresemt your argument and do a strawman or ad hominem or another logical fallacy against you, which is not a violation of the rules (if you think Ive broken the rules you should report me to the mods), but which is against our club's standards of debate, you can complain to him and if he thinks you have a point, he will make me edit my post. That's his job.

Now, I want to ask a question which is directly pertinent to how we interpret the genocidal aspects of the Old Testament or the "imprecatory Psalms:" are you familiar with the dispute between the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools of Biblical exegesis in the fourth century? The former favored a strictly allegorical interpretation, the latter a strictly literal interpretation. So if you read Alexandrian theolgians like Origen, you will come across radically different interpretations of the Old Testament which basically reject it as a purely historical narrative. This is an approach I think we should pay some attention to, given that the literal historicity of it is not well attested by archaeologocal evidence.

So when in the Psalms we read, "Blessed shall be he who dashes Thy little ones against the rocks," apparently in reference to the children of Babylon, this sounds horrible, if we read it literally. John Wesley, like most Protestants and Catholics of that era, familiar only with the Antiochene method, deleted that Psalm from the modified Book of Common Prayer he supplied the Methodists in North America, and others like it, saying that it was wrong for any Christian congregation to pray such Psalms. Newer editions of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer delete the controversial verses from the imprecatory Psalms; Wesley just replaced them with hymns written by his brother Charles and some evangelical Canticles.

But if we read the Psalm allegorically, there is a very different meaning. It is a principle of the Bible that all prophecies must come true: in the case of Babylon, it can't, because the population migrated due to shifts in the Euphrates from old Babylon to Seleucia-Cstesiphon (the Babylon of the "Babylonian Talmod") and thence to Baghdad. And no one has ever gone through and massacred the inhabitants of that city.

In the Bible, Babylon is used as a typological reference for the capital of wordliness and decadence (Sodom and Gomorrah, of immediately intolerable sin), and Jerusalem, of holiness. So, the children of Babylon can be interpreted as meaning the sins resulting from the decadence of worldly society: gambling, prostitution, the luxury of the wealthy and the suffering of the poor, gluttony, avarice, drug abuse, wife abuse, misogyny, serial misogyny, sexual perversion, however you define that (most people consider at a minimum bestiality, paedophilia and incest to be perverted), rape, and a million other worms that infest our society. Someone who overcomes these temptations and removes themselves from the world to live a life of holiness in the desert has dashed the children of Babylon against a rock; I believe this verse is a prophecy of the Christian ascetics like St. Anthony and St. Paul the Hermit.

If I subscribed to a strictly Antiochene model, the verse would contradict other principles of Biblical exegesis and would be at best, spiritually worthless.

In Orthodoxy we tend to use a mixed approach, interpreting some Old Testament verses literally and others figuratively. As a historical work, the Old Testament becomes progressively less reliable the further back one goes; a literal interpretation of it becomes most reliable starting with Ezra-Nehemiah, which describe the founding of the religion of Second Temple Judaism and the implementation under Ezra the Priest of the thrice daily Jewish prayer and continual reading of the Torah which became the basis of Christian worship.

We have strong reasons to believe King David and King Solomon were historical persons, and we have strong reasons to believe the small kingdom they established fractured and was overrun by the Assyrians and Babylonians, and the Jews proper are descendants of a privileged group largely of nobility who were taken to Babylon as slaves. As we go back further, we find the Old Testament generally tends to follow a historical course very similiar to West Semitic Paganism, and Semitic Paganism and Egyptian Paganism as preserved by archaeological evidence.

I believe that much of what these ancient religions hold in common, like the flood story, has some basis in reality (perhaps a regional calamity, since we know a global flood did not occur; Zoroastrianism interestingly suggests the world froze instead and views the North as the direction of evil, hinting at ancestral oral traditions of a climate change event).

In the end, for me, the historicity of the Old Testament really doesn't matter; when I read it, I am usuallt not reading it as literal history, but as allegory using symbolical types to convey moral lessons (like Jerusalem = good, Babylon = bad), and most importantly, Christological prophecy.

It doesn't matter what the inspired writers of the Old Testament thought they were writing; as St. Peter writes, no prophecy is its own interpretation. What matters is what they meant to the early Christians, how they testify to our Lord; everything in them must be reread in light of what our Lord said, and this requires some pretty radical reinterpretation. We have to throw out the competing literal interpretations of Rabinnical Judaism and Antiochene Christianity and embrace a model where the entire Old Testament becomes typologocal prophecy and moral teaching, read according to symbolism defined clearly in the book of Revelations. It is through this lens of typological symbols that the historical incidents in the Old Testament which apparently contradict the Gospel message can make sense, without recourse to variations on dispensationalist theology, or other unpleasant aspects of Calvinist exegesis, whoch has come to dominate Protestantism, even non-Calvinist evangelical Protestants like John Wesley (who, although he rejected Calvin, seems to have mostly read the Old Testament through Calvins eyes and seems to have preferred to just disregard, excise or gloss over the dark passages that seem to describe genocides), which I believe is logically fallacious as it requires special pleading.

The Sufi Muslims took a similiar approach with the Quran, reinterpreting Jihad as an internal struggle, but alas in their case, it wound up being too little, too late.

Its also not suicide if someone demands you change your beliefs with the threat of force; if we say that it is, we basically shift the blame halfway every ideologically-driven murder ever committed. So everyone the Communists killed, and the Muslims are killing, becomes guilty of suicide, so that the guilt for their death is now distributed between them and their murderer. I don't believe we should do this; I believe in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression.

In all of that you don't explain the deeper meaning of the genocides of Joshua. What is the Alexandrian exegesis of something like, "Slaughter them all, except you may take the virgins for yourselves as war booty"?

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Ah. I didn't mean appealing=pleasurable. I meant appealing as in, in accord with some valued significance, which may be pleasure or may be some other thing we perceive as good or valuable.

And if you think pleasure + pain reduction are the only goods (I think we have good reasons to think this isn't the case) the Epicureans would still want to say, hedonism doesn't get you the most of those things!

Then we should say that the only valued significance of a belief system is whether or not it's true. Blind faith in no way can lead you to truth except by blind luck.

 

[Cappadocious]

Then we should say that the only valued significance of a belief system is whether or not it's true.

Maybe that's how it should be, but as it stands, it has a lot of other values for beings like us! For example, a lot of us value achievement, and belief systems offer niches for this good.

Blind faith in no way can lead you to truth except by blind luck.

Right. In analytic circles this is called an unjustified belief. But we also want to say that any explanation will ultimately bottom out in something basic or fundamental: In other words, no matter what, eventually we'll stop getting an answer to, "what explains that?"

So we find ourselves somewhere in the middle. We want an account that's elegant enough, coherent enough, etc. while expecting to eventually run into some basic or fundamental stuff.

The tricky part is figuring out what enough is!

 

[JacksBratt]

You are saying that Christianity is a religion of love. In reality I see it expressed with hate. Muslims say that Islam is a religion of peace. In reality I see it as a religion of violence.

And then you ask me why I compare the two.

How do you see Christianity as a religion of hate? Can you give me some examples?

Also, I answered a question of yours and you have not yet responded to my answer.

Please see post #125

 

[GoldenKingGaze]

Confusion can result from God hating sin, sin being in the flesh, and the soul and spirit and flesh are in each case, one thing.

 

[Noxot]

In all of that you don't explain the deeper meaning of the genocides of Joshua. What is the Alexandrian exegesis of something like, "Slaughter them all, except you may take the virgins for yourselves as war booty"?

it is a symbol which is in the same archetype as when the Israelites took the riches from egypt ( in their exodus) or when in a parable the evil servant knew that his Lord reaped where he did not sow.

 

[GoldenKingGaze]

In Joshua's actions, judgement was executed upon any Canaanite that had gone full course and not repented before this time God's wrath came upon them with warning. They had been doing evil acts of worship and other crimes. Even if the people living with the Canaanites were non Canaanite or Hebrew strays, punishment came upon them, not race murder, so "genocide" is a misnomer.

 

[Sistrin]

Yes and I cite Revelation 3:16 for that.

But then you are not God, are you?

 

[Sistrin]

To directly address your OP questions:

Am I wrong in thinking that Christians are held to a higher standard than I am?

Yes, you are. All men are held to the same standard. We fail or chose not to achieve it at different levels. Some fall prey to the ills of the world, some give up, others reject it outright. But the standard is the same for everyone.

In my time here I've seen hatred, mockery, and willful ignorance. What I haven't seen is love or intelligent discourse. Are atheists treated that way because we're not wanted here?

I can speak only for myself in regard to how atheist are treated here, but I can guarantee you atheist are not treated harshly because they are not wanted. If they are treated harshly it is because of the assumed superiority inherent in every argument atheist tend to make. As a rule atheist believe they have achieved some higher state of consciousness in regard to religion in general and Christianity in particular. The majority of them believe Christians are idiots. Or at the least they are smarter than any Christian they encounter. When any argument you make stems from those two precepts, you shouldn't be surprised when you encounter a bit of push-back.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

In Joshua's actions, judgement was executed upon any Canaanite that had gone full course and not repented before this time God's wrath came upon them with warning. They had been doing evil acts of worship and other crimes. Even if the people living with the Canaanites were non Canaanite or Hebrew strays, punishment came upon them, not race murder, so "genocide" is a misnomer.

So then because Hitler killed gays and gyspys along with Jews, he did not attempt genocide either?

 

[Nihilist Virus]

it is a symbol which is in the same archetype as when the Israelites took the riches from egypt ( in their exodus) or when in a parable the evil servant knew that his Lord reaped where he did not sow.

You aren't telling me the meaning of it, you are just telling me that it is the same as other symbols.