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MQTA said:awesome post!
Lokmer said:Slander and innuendo in one sentence, how efficient of you. I state an (admittedly strong) opinion about the pointlessness about doctrinal disputes, and am greeted in return with this. Very sporting of you.
Well, in order to be a fair challenge, you should probably let us know what counts for good points in a testimony, in your book.
Universalist Christianity (a subspecies of Christianity that's been around since the second century at least).
Jainism
Buddhism
Most pagan mystery cults from the 5th c. BCE to the 4th c. CE
Hermeticism
Neo-paganism
Although it's hardly humanism, a competing religious philosophy has done so: Communism (in China and Russia).
The philosophy of humanism itself (religious and non-religious, since humanism isn't incompatible with Christianity) is what enabled modern medicine to push its way past Christian objections and benefit humanity. The Germ Theory of Disease, anathema to 16th and 17th century Christians of all stripes, enabled the development of both vaccines and antibiotics.
The study of anatomy by dissection of cadavers, a practiced opposed and banned by Catholics and Protestants alike throughout Europe for centuries, was carried out by radically liberal Christian, diest, and atheist humanists. All of modern medicine rests upon the secularization of government and the desacrilization of the body. Genetic engineering and biotech, which is the current state of the art, likewise continues to find its major opposition only in
R two camps: Religious conservatives
I can't. But I can show you a secular country (the United States) led by a Masonic President (FDR) with the support and encouragement of his bisexual occultist wife (Elaenor) who did defend Britain against the onslaught of the predominantly God-fearing, Christian armies of Nazi Germany headed by a lifelong Catholic and Luther devotee named Adolf (Hitler, not Eichman).
Geepers, man, any good concert can do that. Even villians and theives like Peter Poppoff and Benny Hinn manage to pull that off while picking people's pockets. I hardly think this is a good epistemic qualification for the truth of a proposition.
Well, since "born again" Christians only started appearing in the mid 19th century after the 2nd Great Awakening (something you should know if you're such a Charles Finney devotee), this shouldn't be too hard.
Yes, let's. And let's then continue with the Christians who instituted a far worse form of slavery
than was known in Roman times and carried the shameful institution on, in the name of God and with VERY explicit biblical justification, for 300 years, and who then did all they could to keep the freed slaves in economic survitude for a further 100 years after that. Let's talk about the agnostics like Robert Ingersol, agitated for social justice and abolition, of Unitarians who made up the bulk of the abolitionist movement and ALL of its major thinkers,
and who explicitly denied the doctrine of the trinity and did not believe in the diety of Christ,
I challenged or of atheists like Fredrick Douglass who pushed northern Christian abolitionists to put their money where their mouths were. Let's talk about the explicitly Christian doctrines of manifest destiny and the divine right of kings, of Jesus' and Paul's words about slaves submitting to their masters. Let's talk about Thomas Paine, who made the American Revolution possible and then was ostracized because he has the temerity to criticize his slaveholding colleagues
Let's also talk about the Christian theocratic apartheid state of South
Africa.
But, when we do, we should also point out that this is the same religion that opposed women's right to vote in both the U.S. and Britain,
We can play games like this all day.
No religion has. Norman Bourlog, a freethinker, bears that honor, having saved more than a billion lives with his work, at his own expense, in poor countries.
That's not true either. The Quakers were devout, literal, fundamentalist believers in the NT at that time, as were the Methodists. (They both later became more "liberal." Not) It was all the Methodists and Quakers at the time I am talking about- over a hundred years before Jefferson. However if you can give me a noteworthy example of a "unitarian" decrying slavery as the Quakers and Methodists did, please provide it.The Unitarians and the Quakers, the former is a non-Christian splinter sect and the second was a persecuted non-orthodox sect of Christianity (and is now basically Unitarian Universalist in persuasion).
The orthodox Chrisitans were the slavery establishment in the country
Done. Are you going to make good on your commitment and convert to Unitarianism or Diesm or Agnosticism now?
So sad, yet so common: Triumphalist bluster made up of rehtorical flourishes, deamagoguerey, and half-truths.
Well, if that's the case, somebody had to do it.
The church had 15 centuries of control over the western world and certainly didn't do much with the "fat" that Jesus left behind. If these are the fruits of Christ, then it is freethinkers, unitarians, diests, and humanists who are the true Christians - as Jesus said: "By their fruits shall you know them
Somehow, rad, you never seem to get around to mentioning things like this....HERE
Originally a male school, the idea of the university is that men would pay for their schooling with work and chores on the campus and surrounding land. Shortly after the inception of this the board of the college realized there was no one to perform the traditional duties of a house. Therefore the first female students were accepted into a formal university. More often than not this milestone is misrepresented as liberation of the female student who finally received her validation. In actuality these women were viewed as a domestic workforce necessary for the schools survival.30 Regardless, these women were grateful for the opportunity of education and therefore took care of the household duties.
The average week of the ladies was set up to facilitate these chores. Mondays were set aside for laundry and mending of the mens clothes. The rest of the week was spent cooking, cleaning after the men and studying in their spare time. The education of ladies always came secondary to the duties of maintaining the school. Not surprisingly, even secondary institutions like Oberlin followed the decisive academic gender split so common of the day. Oberlins ladies were separated in a department that specialized in religion, French, and literature, and shut out from the mens studies, which included Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Oberlin College was not shy to admit that their goal was to train the women to serve as discrete, genteel, pious, and frugal wives for ministers."31 Throughout the entire Oberlin experience there was never a comment recorded about the quality of the learning environment of the female. This omission further justifies the motives of the men when allowing the coeducation of their institution.
a tremendous untapped resource for national development, and one that men had not permitted to flower." -Horace Mann32
Arguments were made that the presence of women assured the mental tranquility of the male students and provided an environment conducive to male learning
What would prove to you that someone was born again as Jesus meant it?radorth said:I merely opined that one cannot revert to an old nature if they have a new one as the Bible says.
{snip}
Is it possible you were not truly born again as Jesus meant it? Prove you were born again as he meant it, and I will retract my opinion.
Rad
gladiatrix said:Somehow, rad, you never seem to get around to mentioning things like this....
Grizzly said:Wow. Nice work Lokmer!
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. - Anne Lamott
Cat59 said:Rad
Earlier on, you posted this: (not to me, I know, but it doesn't matter who the recipient is, it's the principle that counts)
What would prove to you that someone was born again as Jesus meant it?
All of modern medicine rests upon the secularization of government and the desacrilization of the body.
do you ever site organizations that don't make me want to expatriate?radorth said:
numberprophet said:do you ever site organizations that don't make me want to expatriate?
my point is that you have never furnished an unbiased source. i don't need to read it, because when i see it's from the "Revolution Against Evolution" website i know the author has other puropses in mind than pure scholarship. it's always "start at point B, and fudge your way back to point A".radorth said:Any facts you want to dispute, such as who first put Pasteur's theories to the test in an operating room? You really didn't read it did you? It was quite lengthy, so you just made a reactionary judgement. Correct?
numberprophet said:my point is that you have never furnished an unbiased source.
If it can't be proved, it can't be proved, doubt can have nothing to do with it.radorth said:You can't prove it, especially when you doubt it yourself. That's the point.
Rad
Lokmer said:or of atheists like Fredrick Douglass
Cat59 said:If it can't be proved, it can't be proved, doubt can have nothing to do with it.
Thank you for your answer.
Lokmer said:No religion has. Norman Bourlog, a freethinker, bears that honor, having saved more than a billion lives with his work, at his own expense, in poor countries. He won the nobel prize in the mid '70s and **invented** (by bioengineering and hybridization) most of the food you and other people around the world eat today.
Cat59 said:I'm obviously doing a really bad job of explaining to you exactly what I am asking, as I think you have got hold of the wrong end of the stick.
The OP (and subsequent posters) spoke about about past beliefs and experiences that to them were very real but which some people have characterised as not being real conversion experiences. Because, the argument goes, if these people were really born again, they could not fall away. So they were never truly born again or converted or whatever word you want to use, in the first place.
What I am asking is not about me, or anyone else on the thread.
I just want to know what you believe characterises someone who has been born again, so that you can say "This person will never fall away" "This person has a new nature" or whether that statement is impossible for anyone to say, even about themselves.
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