sigh...
which scripture states that a ' person needs to accept that Jesus "died" to pay for their salvation'

How about No man can come to the father except by me, that ring a bell? Seems pretty clear to me.

sigh...
which scripture states that a ' person needs to accept that Jesus "died" to pay for their salvation'



it is all these 'ifs' that make the debate become tiring and at some points seem pointless,, truly

God spoke to us in His Word.. HE said dont be surprised if the world hates you.. It first hated me.. Doesnt seem like that will ever change. The world believes that God is unfair, ridiculous even. They would rather believe a lie than the TRUTH. The world will only trusts in the created thing NOT the CREATOR. Believing only what they can see. And not a Word that you have said. They all lean on their own understanding.
God has said that there is a way that seems right to a man, but that way leads to death. This is an illustration of a man that lives according to the pattern of this world, philosophy , science, and other things that ring of truth to him or her. Anything accept faith.. NO WAY. NOT FAITH. Thats ridiculous.
NO one says that you have to believe , but you cant argue the fact that there are things pertaining to this life that are more than just what meets the eye.
A day will come when the end of life as you know it will seem very short. Perhaps then you will have interest in eternal spiritual matters. Remember! What is your life. YOu are just a vapor that is here for a moment and then vanishes.
And how shall you escape if you willingly ignore such a great salvation. There is no other WAY. But you are free to choose one way or the other , the choice is yours. LIFE OR death

Attempting to side-track the issue into a discussion of "which verse says that" seems like a total waste of time. In fact, it's precisely that kind of approach to the religion that keeps it going. People argue aimlessly over what the scriptures actually mean.

That's a pointless approach IMHO.

Clearly if Jesus was indeed the "only begotten son" of this God born of a virgin and crucified on a pole, all of that had to have been part of "God's Plan".

Why would an all-powerful God have permitted his son to be crucified on a pole if that wasn't a part of his plan? And if it was part of his plan, then what would have been the significance to that event?

You can't very well just shrug the crucifixion off as being an unimportant element in this religion. It's crucial to the very core of the story.

Besides, how many Christians would agree that it's ok to reject the idea that Jesus died to pay for your sins?

Here, you want a verse:


1Cor.15:3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

I don't know precisely which scriptures the author of Corinthians is referring to, but obviously whoever wrote Corinthians seems to be under the belief that the scriptures say that Christ died for our sins. This is at least one reference to that, and there must be more references since Corinthians is referencing this very thing.

What is "Christianity" today anymore?

It's clearly not a reflection of the original scriptures because everyone is just rooting them them picking and choosing what they'd like to believe and what they'd like to reject.

Well, if that's the popular trend today in "Christianity" then what's wrong with someone rejecting the virgin birth of Jesus, or that God spoke to a crowd from a cloud. Or that Jesus and a multitude of saints were raised from their graves after the crucifixion.

I'm mean, if we're going to just pick and choose what we care to believe then anything you believe could be call "Christianity", including my conclusion that Jesus was just a mortal man like the rest of us.

If we're all permitted to come away with our own interpretations and conclusions than my conclusion that Jesus was most likely a misunderstood Mahayana Buddhist has just as much merit as anyone elses conclusions.

Sorry that's no loving parent to me. There's no free choice if your choice is limited to one way or another with threats of death if you don't comply. Doesn't work, never has never will. I don't care how you try to justify it. A human parent who treated their kid like that would be villified and rightly so. But if God does it's holy? No way.

so, in the choice of life or death, what third option would YOU have added,, as a loving parent?

Freedom to choose your experience. I would educate them surely, but not say.......do it my way or die. That's pretty much what the Bible God does, and that is NOT love.

Beyond the bible if we evaluate the facts something disturbing comes up, God created everything. That means God also created Evil if God created good.

That means god is Good and God is evil. God plays both sides of the fence.

That is a fact.

How about,,,educating them to the path and letting them choose their direction

That's sort of my point though, the Bible God doesn't work like that, but rather uses threats and intimidation to get what he wants from his children. It's far from free will and loving, let me show you what I mean.

Here's how I'd educate my child:

"Ok son you will be faced with many choices in your life. With each choice will come a decision, through which you can choose one path or another path. Some paths will be better than others, but it is up to you to choose which direction you take in each instance. Understand however in so doing, you must be prepared to deal with the consequences of your choices be them good or bad. You will be responsible for them, as you made the choice to act as you did. So choose wisely if you wanna have a good life. I will always be there though even when you mess up, to pick you up when you fall."

To go even further with that, I might say:

"Ok you have two choices, you can choose to go one way, but realize that if you choose this path you take a good deal of risk, and there could potentially be bad consequences if you take it. On the other hand if you take the other path, you will have an easier time of things and will be more likely to be happy in the long run. However, the choice of the path you take is yours and yours alone, I will not force you to decide one way or the other, and will be with you no matter what decisions you make."

Now let's compare that to the Bible God.......

"You must do exactly as I say and follow the things and people I tell you to follow. Do this and you will be happy and live, but fail to do any of it and you will die and be burned forever and forever, with no chance to make up for your mistake. I will desert you."

Which one do YOU think is more loving?

I think the former is a pretty useless , sugar coated, way to guide a child,,, no real 'direction' just

'some things end badly and some things dont'...NO KIDDING!!


I think the latter is dishonest and broad, as 'happiness' is a very subjective measure and life is a given (until our flesh expires),,,

I didnt study from a book which said either thing though,,,

Of course you would disagree because it goes against your beliefs. No surprise there.

From my perspective your reply here is nothing more than an insult and an unsubstantiated "wave-off" to all the topics that I've mentioned.

Are you denying that the God in these religious stories is associated with a need for blood sacrifices before it can forgive people their so-called sins?

Are you denying that Jesus was supposedly the "sacrificial lamb" of this God? Sacrificed unto God himself as "payment" for the sins of man?

You religious people who like to propagate this stuff always ignore the REAL ISSUES and attempt to wave them off by artificially attacking the education and/or knowledge of anyone who disagrees with your point of view.

The biblical story of "God" is filled with gore, and utter stupidity, IMHO. Don't tell me that I'm not educated in the topic.

The bible presents a picture of a God who supports male-chauvinism, favors a single culture over all others (at least in the old testament), and constantly sends conflicting and contradicting messages. This "God" is also indeed associated with a need for blood sacrifices before he will even consider "forgiving sins".

It's gory. Period. There's no getting around it.

In fact, the very Christian theme of Jesus as "The Christ" being butchered and hung on a pole as the "symbol" of what is required for "salvation" in this religion is truly sick and sad, IMHO.

~~~~~~

Are you in denial that this is the crux of the Christian story of God?

~~~~~

Who could this God have needed to "appease" via this blood sacrifice of his only begotten son?

Mankind? No, that makes no sense. Mankind is supposed to be the creature that is in Hot Water with God. There would be no need for this God to be appeasing mankind in order to forgive them of their sins.

Satan? Did God need to "sacrifice" his only begotten son to Satan in order to appease Satan? No, we can't have that either because that gives Satan too much power to force this God to jump through hoops.

The only thing left is that this God supposed did this for his own personal enjoyment or need. And that implies a pretty sick demented God, if you ask me.

~~~~~~

You speak about approaching this with a degree of intellect and knowledge, well let's try to do that.

Has there ever been a time in your life when you were consciously and knowingly rebellious against your creator and purposefully wanted to do thing so spite God?

If so, then perhaps I can understand how you could believe in this religion.

But if this isn't true for you, then what sense do these accusations make?

If there was never a time in your life when you were knowingly and willfully choosing to rebel against, or reject your creator, then what sense does it make that you should now need to seek "repentance" for you "evil ways".

This is absurd. That's the only way I know how to put it.

~~~~~~

For me the question of the Bible is extremely simple. Just ask yourself the following questions:


Is this biblical picture of a God who needs everyone to seek salvation by accepting a hideous gory act that was supposed performed to "pay for their sins" something that sounds like it came from an all-wise all-righteous God? Or is this a story that sounds like the work of mortal men who were trying to create a religion from which no one could be 'exempt'?

As far as I'm concerned, it has all the hallmarks of a man-made scam. Including an extremely violent early history where it was made popular by simply threatening to kill anyone who refused to accept it as the "Word of God".

So does it make sense that this religion is the handiwork of men who lusted for religious and political authority over the masses?

IMHO, yes most certainly.

On the other hand, do these tactics sound like the tactics that would be used by a supposedly all-intelligent, all-wise, and all-powerful God?

I don't know about you, but for me these tactics don't even begin to approach what I would consider to be "wise" or "intelligent".

We're talking about a supposedly "all-powerful" God here who can do anything he so desires without limitation. You expect me to believe that such an unlimited and infinitely wise being would stoop to having his son butchered on a pole as the central theme for obtaining his LOVE?

You can't be serious.

Like I say, getting out concordances and microscopically trying to twist every verse of these stories in an effort to try to make the story seem "sensible" simply isn't going to work.

The BIG PICTURE makes no sense. Tweaking individual verses isn't going to help the BIG PICTURE. You'd have to teak them all until you've changed the entire story around so much that it actually became a different story. But that's not possible.

The story is that this God had his son crucified in order to "pay" for the sins of man. That's the bottom line and that cannot be changed by tweaking individual verses.

So to shove these important issues under the carpet by claiming that someone doesn't understand this story, or is uneducated about it is nonsense.

The Christian story has God basically PLANNING out the crucifixion of his son to "pay" for the sins of mankind. It's a sick demented picture of a God.

Period.

There's no excuse for it.

Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Exodus 32:14
And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.

Joshua 23:15
Therefore it shall come to pass, that as all good things are come upon you, which the LORD your God promised you; so shall the LORD bring upon you all evil things.

Judges 9:23
Then God sent an evil spirit

1 Samuel 16:14
But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him.

2 Samuel 12:11
Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house

Let's read the scripture, shall we? "I form the light, and create darkness". Light and darkness are clearly opposites. God is showing how his power spans the extent of human experience. How let's read the next phrase: "I make peace, and create evil". Is peace the opposite of evil? No, it's not. So let's go to the original Hebrew.

In Hebrew, the word used is "ra`". ra` has dozens of different meanings, depending on the context. If you look at the different definitions of ra`, you'll find "calamity". Now if you think of peace as not the opposite of war, but as the all encompassing peace of no war, no famines, no plagues, no droughts, you see that "calamity" is the correct word. We see throughout the Old Testament that God grants a general peace and happiness to his people from time to time, so these definitions of the words fits right in with the rest of the bible.



Once again, "evil" is our good friend "ra`". This word in context would mean some harm. God was contemplating punishing the Israelites for their disobedience. The word "repended" here is nacham in the niphal tense, which comes out to mean something like "to be sorry, be moved to pity, have compassion"



Interesting...You took the quote and replaced the comma at the end with a period.

Therefore it shall come to pass, [that] as all good things are come upon you, which the LORD your God promised you; so shall the LORD bring upon you all evil things, until he have destroyed you from off this good land which the LORD your God hath given you.

Once again, "evil" is our "ra`". Once again, this is implying that God is going to allow harm to fall upon the Israelite.



God protects all men to some degree from evil spirits. God allowed evil spirits to work to anger the people of Shechem towards Abimelech. God did nothing here, except deem that the evil man Abimelech didn't deserve his protection.



Similar to the scripture above, God removed some of His protection form Saul, which allowed evil spirit(s) to torment him.



Once again, "evil" is "ra`", which means God allowed bad things to happen.

The rest is pretty much the same. I know this probably hasn't changed any mind, but I felt the truth should get a word in the storm of venom and hate being spewed.

mg1959 wrote:

Dude, I don't even read your stuff. It's very hard for me to get past the first couple lines of anger that you have. If you wanted to approach things as a proper student of any topic that would maybe be different for me. But honestly you seem like you have a chip that won't go away but only gets fed by someone's desire to believe in their own view.

That's because you aren't comprehending what's being addressed.

I couldn't care less what your "personal views" are. You're personal views are of absolutely no concern to me. If you're posting from a personally defensive point of view that's your problem, not mine.

Do I have anger concerning the proselytizing and spreading of religious propaganda and religious bigotry? Sure I do!

I'm angry about all the midwives that had been tortured and burnt to death in the name of the Biblical God. I'm angry about a religious doctrine that could be used to support a madman's holocaust. I'm angry about the people who died in the 9/11 attack by religious zealots who had also been inspired to act via religious beliefs concerning this very same dogma.

You bet I am. The Abrahamic religions have been the cause of enough damage to enough people. Let's make a positive move toward dismissing these ancient and destructive superstitious beliefs based on a "Jealous Godhead" who hates heathens and "sinners".

Let's get over it and move forward to something more constructive and positive.

There's no need to continue to support these destructive myths.

Why do that?

Do you have any real clue that by loaning your support to these Abrahamic religions you are actually loaning your support to everyone else who believes in them, even if their views of these ancient myths are radically different from yours.

The only way that humanity is going to get out from under this kind of religious bigotry and violence is to renounce it altogether.

It's WAY OVERDUE.

Let's move on to something positive and quit supporting these ancient beliefs in angry judgmental Gods.