Paul was executed some 30 years after Stephen was murdered. He wasn't punished for that. Paul was a changed man and his crimes (they weren't crimes under Jewish law!!!!) were committed before he became a Christian. It's interesting that you use a Jew (Saul, before his conversion) to call Christians militant. Saul converted to Christianity shortly after Stephen was murdered, so your history is way off.

Parables are meant to be misleading.

Everyone,

This is just a friendly reminder to keep the debate civil. Debate the post/topic, not the poster

Thank you and have a great New Year,

Kim

No, they aren't. By definition, they are meant to simplify complex concepts.

Truly.

All I ever see are people who appear to be in total denial of that fact.

And the bottom line is truly simple:

If the claim of the religion is that people who refuse to believe in the bible are purposefully choosing to "defy God", then there can be absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the religion is false.

And evidently that's what this religion is trying to claim. So it necessarily has to be false. Its very own thesis proves that it's false.

It's a done deal.

There's really no need to even go beyond that.

By "religion", do you mean the Bible?

Does it matter?

If the religion is claiming to be based on what the bible says, then it's the claim of the religion that the bibles says this.

If the bible doesn't support this claim, then the religion itself is bogus and confused about what its own foundational doctrine says.

So either way it fails.

You either have a religion that's outright wrong about its very own foundational doctrine.

Or you have a doctrine that doesn't support the claims of the religion.

In fact, both of these cases are actually the same case, just stated from different perspectives.

So since they are the same case, it truly doesn't matter.

Yes, it does matter. You yourself have said the bible cannot make that claim. "Religion" is not a person, so you have to define what you mean by it. If you mean "people", then say it. It apears to me that you can't distinguish between a book, a philosophy and people.

Neither the Bible nor the religion makes that claim, so it's a strawman arguement, and a weak one at that...

It can't be a "strawman argument" because I wasn't even arguing with anyone until you came along.

I simply made a comment to Dragoness.

Now it appears that you have semantic concerns about the meaning of "religion".

Let me put it to you this way.

Modern day Christians claim that a person must accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior in order to be accepted by God (i.e. "saved" for eternal life versus being condemned to spiritual death for having rejected God)

The Modern Day Christians claim that this is indeed what the ancient original "Christians" were saying in the Bible. (i.e. The original "Christians" being the actual authors of the Bible).

Therefore, in this sense, the Bible and modern Christianity are necessarily one in the same thing. Unless, of course, you're attempting to suggest that modern Christianity has misunderstood or misinterpreted the Bible.

If you've going to take stance and look at the Bible itself as the original "religion". In other words, the views of the people who actually wrote the Bible were expressing their religious convictions, then we get into the nasty situation of arguing about the interpretations of those ancient scriptures, which are apparently wide open to interpretation and arguments.

However, let's go there. Let's stop the buck with the actual authors of the Bible and recognize that they were indeed writing down their "religious views".

Then the question becomes very simple.

Do you believe that the authors of the Bible were saying that if you refuse to believe in their writings you are rejecting God?

If you say, yes, then my original statement to Dragoness stands. The authors of the Bible themselves are necessarily spewing false lies because the proposed scenario is nonsense.

On the other hand, if you say, no, then all you're doing is refuting modern day Christianity by refusing to support their views of what they claim the authors of the Bible were saying.

So like I say, it truly doesn't matter. It fails either way.

If you say the modern day Christianity is wrong. Then you are claiming that the Bible doesn't support modern day Christianity. And we're done. It's not important to believe in the Bible.

On the other hand, if you say that the Bible does support the claims of modern day Christianity, then we're right back at square one again and my original statement to Dragoness stands.

So there's no way to support Christainity in this scenario.

At best, all you can do is claim that modern day Christianity has the Bible all wrong.

But that would be a moot point.

A whole bunch of if's and therefore's doesn't make sense...

If you can't decide what you believe or know (which you admit to not knowing anything for sure), then at best, all I can claim is that you have the Bible all wrong.

It's totally irrelevant whether I have the Bible right or wrong.

What I think of the Bible doesn't matter.

All I said to Dragoness is that any "religion" OR "doctrine", that claims that to disbelieve in it equates to willfully and knowingly rejecting God, must necessarily be false.

That's what I said to Dragoness.

Now, if the Bible makes that claim, then it must necessarily be a false doctrine.

If it doesn't make that claim then fine.

It doesn't matter to me one way or the other. Because if it makes that claim then it must necessarily be false. And if it doesn't make that claim, then all the evangelizing and proselytizing by the Christians is totally groundless nonsense.

So it doesn't matter at all what I think of the Bible. I could be totally clueless to what the Bible has to say and my observation would still hold true.

No cigar...

You said the religion and used the Bible to clarify which religion you were talking about.


Thank you for admitting that...

Jeffrey Dahmer was also a 'changed man' via his prison conversion and if certain Christian Evangelicals are to be believed, is spending his days in his own mansion walking streets of gold.

Not that I believe he is, but it illustrates the point that religionists care more about their dogmas and doctrines than they do justice.


-Kerry O.

isn't because of ethical reason why parables are not used on a birth certificate because parables placed on a birth certificate would constitute as being "Fraud"

Isn't this a parable?

yes... a parable is a parable for "Fraud"

Good, I don't smoke anyway, so it's no loss.



It doesn't matter. The basic observation applies to any religion or doctrine that makes such a claim.



No problem.

It doesn't matter what anyone thinks of the Bible, the basic truth I've stated still holds.

You said earlier:


No I don't admit to not knowing anything for sure. I know for sure that I am that I am.

What I've confessed to is that in matters of knowing things that are beyond the knowledge of any human being I am indeed agnostic as everyone necessarily must be.

Agnostic simply means without knowledge.

Everyone is agnostic when it comes to the knowledge of whether or not a supreme being or "God" exists.

There are two kinds of people:

Those who are honest enough with themselves to confess to themselves that they are indeed necessarily agnostic in matters of knowledge of the existence of any God.

And then there are those who live a life of pretense, pretending to themselves that they can know something that they obviously can't know.

This is where people confuse 'faith' with 'knowledge'. They start to believe that faith is equivalent to knowledge.

It also appears that once they go there, they totally lose the ability to even be honest with themselves.

If you ask me if I know for certain that a supreme conscious being exists who has an egotistical persona and the knowledge and power to know and intervene in the affairs of mankind at his or her whim, I would necessarily have to say, "No I do not know that for certain".

That's the only honest answer. Anything else would be a lie.

Yes many religious people try to hold out the idea that they do indeed possess such knowledge.

That right there shows that such people have totally lost any ability to be rational.

All humans are agnostic with respect to God.

So all that exists are those who are honest enough to confess it, and those who are in denial and refuse to confess the truth, even to themselves.

As many non-religious people have often pointed out, obsessive religious people are simply people who don't have the ability to face the truth. Because the truth is that all humans are necessarily agnostic with respect to any personified gods. (i.e. without knowledge of the existence of any supposed personified gods.)

That's just a fact of life.

Not true. If agnostic means without knowing, then we are not agnostic. How do you know the world is round? Read it out of a book. How do you know history? Read it out of a book. And so on and so on. The scriptures we are given contains all the knowledge there is about our father. So in turn we are absolutely not agnostic for we KNOW our father which art in heaven exists. If one is willing to open their heart to God, he will then give one all the knowledge one would need.

Your argument here can be applied to all religions and philosophies, even including atheism.

So basically all you're saying is that we have no more reason to believe in one religion or spiritual philosphy over any other because according to you all knowledge comes from books, and books can be found that makes every manner of claim.

By the way, I totally disagree that all our knowledge comes from books. As a scientist I gained much of my knowlege via the actual experience of performing experiments myself. There are many ways that we can verify that the earth is round directly without relying on information in books.

You can't verify the supertitious claims made in the Bible. You're stuck with having to place faith in hearsay rumors. Moreover once you reach that point then you may as well believe the hearsay rumors of Zeus, or Thor, or Oden, or any of the other hearsay rumors.

So your approach to religion places all religions and mythologies on equal footing. All you are basically saying is that all religions and mythologies have precisely the same merit because they are all nothing more than a matter of faith about something we've read in books.

For example, according to you then, Wicca has precisely the same merit as the Bible. It's just a matter of which books you'd like to believe in.

Actually we know the earth is round because noone has fallen off of it yet.