Ah, but you guys are always saying that GOD Himself wrote the documents in one breath, and then saying that God works in mysterious ways in another. And trying to distill the many sects' interpretations down to just ONE truth is indeed like trying to nail the proverbial jelly to the tree.

His legendary inscrutability is just another device made to serve the purposes of the evangelical Believer trying to defend Faith against the onslaught of Probability, Logic and Reason.


-Kerry O.

Well and man writes something so ambiguous it will never be completely deciphered which is actually in the clerics favor and then pre prophecies that the book will be "attacked" by those who question it.

I tell ya there were some very manipulative men in the creation of this religion.

Actually Dragoness, there are plenty of facts in evidence. I object to how those are applied at times. In this case, I object that Spider keeps drawing conclusions about me based upon falsehoods and claiming that flaming is going on. His entire position about my understanding the Bible is based upon the falsehood that I have not read the Bible.

I am also still trying to figure out exactly how the Ten Commandments are laws that are not civil/ceremonial in their very nature.

The first and second and fourth are all about having no other Gods/idols before God and the acts permissible on the Sabbath. That necessarily includes ceremonies which worship other gods, and even describes those things. The fifth through the tenth are all about how we are supposed to act regarding our parents and neighbors/society. Those are quite clearly civil matters. So, if we hold what Spider said earlier as true, then the Ten Commandments do not apply because those are matters of civil/ceremonial matters.

It would take a complete destruction of the meaning of the terms "civil" and "ceremonial" to justify his earlier claims without the argument being self-contradictory and absurd.

Probability, Logic and Reason???













Just let it go......

How many times do I have to explain it?

Civil laws include punishments.

Ceremonial laws require rituals.

Do the 10 commandments include punishments or rituals?

CS can't understand the difference between ceremonial laws, civil laws and moral laws, but he most certainly has read and studied the Bible and his interpretation is as good as anybody elses. I'm cereal you guys. I'm being so super cereal right now.

Post the Ten Commandments.

What kind of twisted interpretation could possibly hold that those laws do not necessarily presuppose/imply punishment for breaking them?

Why follow them then?

You could just show me where what you say here is in the Bible. I'd be happy with that, for a start.

The moral law dictates how people should act and how they should treat each other.

The civil laws enforce the moral laws through society. So while the 10 commandments include a law against murder, there are actual civil laws that dictate what kind of punishments should be applied for which kinds of sins were commited. Example accidentally killing someone verses pre-meditated murder.

The ceremonial law describes the penance that the sinner should perform, if he or she violates the moral law. So if you killed someone and nobody caught you, you were still expected to perform the necessary penance rituals.

Like I said, your claims completely disregard and contradict what those terms are used mean today. You're claiming that the Ten Commandments do not include punishment because they are not civil/ceremonial laws. Civil means between people. Murder is a criminal offence, as is theft and bearing false witness under oath. The punishment varies but both have consequences. All laws are written to be followed, and necessarily presuppose consequences should they be broken. The laws in the Bible which are attributed to God should be no different, unless of course you can justify that claim.

I reject your gratuitous assertions. An interpretation being put forth on the Bible's behalf, needs the biblical content that it supposedly interprets in order to assess the quality of the interpretation. Show me where your claim here is supported in the Bible. Show me where it makes these distinctions that you are attempting to make. If there is no such support, then there is no reason to believe your claims.

A gratuitous assertion is an assertion of fact without evidence or argument to support it. I offered an argument, so....



There is no place in the Bible where the laws are called "Moral", "Civil" (or Judicial as Thomas Aquinas called it) or "Ceremonial". It's like this: Throughout the ministry of Jesus and later his disciples, they rejected those laws we call "Civil" and "Ceremonial". If you don't want to believe this, then don't. I'm not going to argue the point with you anymore.

Wait... Didn't this recent conversation get started by "gratuitous assertions"?

Never did see any evidence of those, just questions like someone didn't know about what they questioned...

Notwithstanding all the rest, to even attempt to claim that the Ten Commandments do not include punishment is unintelligible. It is contrary to what constitutes being a law. It ts incoherent with anything I've ever heard another Christian say on the subject.

I suggest you look up the meaning of gratuitous assertion Spider.

Your argument is about the understanding of the Bible. In particular, you've claimed that it takes being a Christian to understand what it says. You've also contradicted that. You've attempted to ridicule me as though I do not understand it. That marks the irony at work.

Your argument has been that certain laws no longer apply on the grounds that they were civil/ceremonial. That argument does not hold unless you can show that that is the case. The Bible fails to support the argument you've given. It is not in the Bible. You know, the one that you keep wrongfully asserting that I have not read. The one that you belivee that I do not understand.

It seems that I understand it well enough to know that your claims about it do not come from it.

It seems to me that you're calling 'an eye for an eye' in the OT a 'civil law', and perhaps the blood sacrifice instructions as 'ceremonial laws'. Those aren't the only kinds of civil/ceremonial laws Spider. While I would agree that Jesus rejected those laws, at least one of them openly, that does not make them and only them, fit into the descriptions which you've given.

First and foremost, they are/were your God's laws as it clearly claims in the Bible. Being commanded by the God of Abraham in the text which purports his authorship makes that so.

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

There you are Dragoness,

A prima facie example of 'Christian' love at work, according to Spider. It seems your OP is gaining merit in some respects, although I personally know much better acting Christians.

I find it interesting that people who know little or nothing about Christianity, have never read a Bible written in American English, or attended even one Bible Study, have set themselves up as "religious experts" based only on something they have read or heard somewhere.
I've also noticed that whenever they wish to "entrap" somebody, they will choose a topic such as homosexuality, then persecute the messenger rather than taking it up with the one who gave the message. Do they really think that one or more of us can collectively change something that was written thousands of years ago? Why don't they post their argument with the God that gave the message instead? OR, why don't they read that part of history to find out the reason it was posted to begin with?