Ask about Christianity? (help appreciated)

[BraveHat]

[Zag]

[j_s*]

[j_s*]

edit to my previous post: I realized I misquoted my references; the first commandment is "I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods besides me" and the quote I quoted is what Jesus says in the new testament. Same principle still applies with the correct info.

Sorry for the mistake; I shouldn't try to reply to forum posts while also participating in work meetings... :-p

[Scurra]

[Zag]

[Zag]

[Scurra]

[bgg1996]

[MNOWAX]

This may derail the topic a little, but does anyone here who is a Christian, believe that people who are not Christian are immoral? Not worth being saved? Heathens? Do you believe the general Christian populace sees us as that?
_________________
The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[Scurra]

I imagine that - as usual - the answers to those questions are ones of definition rather than "fact". Which is, of course, why people looking for a scientific approach to religion are doomed to be continually disappointed (and rather too often then dismiss it) since scientific principles have to be based on universally agreed terms - at least to a sufficient level for the discussion to be meaningful. Meanwhile philosophy spends all its time wrestling with terms that are barely agreed by two people, let alone universally agreed.

Not to mention that your question assumes that the world is divided into two single homogeneous groups - Christians and non-Christians - and that all members of each group need to be considered as identical in order to produce a meaningful answer.

Setting all that to one side however... "Immoral" means not adhering to a moral code. To be immoral requires a conscious decision* to violate agreed social standards in a significant way - again, always assuming that those social standards are indeed generally shared. And for me that's the key point - generally shared is the contentious bit, not immorality. The key difference I can see between Christians and non-Christians in this context is that Christians have an additional sort of support structure that reinforces those agreed social standards - and, I have to admit, not always in a good way; especially when they come into conflict with other social standards, when "Immoral!" is the default term of abuse for someone on the other side of such a dispute (no matter how meaningless the term is without having agreed definitions on both sides.)
*there are, of course, those who violate agreed social standards without an apparent conscious decision. The ignorant are generally not a problem (sometimes "ignorance of the law" really is a defence!) but there are clearly some who do not comprehend the concept of other people. If I were feeling mischievous, I might call them Libertarians, although obviously I am referring to those for whom the generally accepted term is Psyco/Sociopath. They are not immoral either.

"Heathen" is most certainly true, but it's just a descriptive term, nothing more. It's no more pejorative than atheist - or Christian, come to that. It ceased to be a meaningful term outside of certain communities a long time ago.

"Not worth being saved". Now this is the interesting one because it makes all sorts of definitional assumptions. We can largely agree on what "immoral" and "heathen" might mean in general broad terms, but "worth" and "saved"?! Even the Christians on here might have a lively debate about those words. For what it's worth, I personally don't find it a useful phrase (nor do I like the term Born Again much) but I would have to leave it to others to explain what they might mean by it. For me, my faith is the recognition that there might be something more outside of our self-imposed tribalism. And my sin is to continually let that tribalism get in the way and, worse, to imagine that I am the most important person in the universe. My experience and observation tells me that whilst solipsism is a common human identity developmental stage, I tend to have more respect for those who have managed to get past it.
If I were to consider the phrase "worth being saved" to simply mean that someone came to that realisation (that the universe is bigger than themselves) then yes, obviously, I think that everyone is "worth being saved"! If I were to consider it to mean that everyone had to adopt my own personal theology then no, I think that would be a very bad thing indeed.
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[BraveHat]

[Quailman]

I know a several people who call themselves Christian yet I consider them to be heathens.

There are many different categories with Christianity and some hold that non-members of their brand of Christianity are heathens. I was raised as a Presbyterian and am currently a member of the Methodist Church. AFAIK, neither would consider someone who is not a Christian beneath them. As BraveHat said, "only God can judge."

I've been in other so-called Christian churches and been made to feel like a heathen, in that they excluded me from their rituals and made me feel like my presence was merely being tolerated until the service was over and I could get out.

[Chuck]

[extropalopakettle]

What is the basis for a Christian accepting the Bible as we know it today?

I can accept certain books of the Bible being taken as a factual account of Jesus' life and teachings, and from that, perhaps along with personal revelations, eventually coming to believe in the divinity of Jesus.

Albert Einstein, while certainly no Christian, once said in an interview:

Interviewer: "You accept the historical existence of Jesus?"

Einstein: "Unquestionably. No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. ... ... No man can deny the fact that Jesus existed, nor that his sayings are beautiful. Even if some of them have been said before, no one has expressed them so divinely as he."

But did Jesus ever teach that some day, his disciples would write accounts of his life and teachings, and of their own experiences, and that these would be lost and, long after the deaths of their authors, would later be found, along with other writings, and a bunch of guys, disciples of the disciples of the disciples, many generations removed, would look them all over, and take some, and put aside others, and then they'll collect some together and put them in a particular order and call it the "New Testament", and preface that with some selected books from the Torah, which they'll call the "Old Testament", and they'll call it all "the Bible". And they'll translate it to English and other languages, and revise it, and print it ... and when all that happens, this "Bible" you will accept in its entirety as the word of God, with no further questioning. Is that Jesus' teaching? If the Holy Spirit tells you that, does he specify which version of Bible from what century?

If Jesus or the Apostles mentioned "scripture", do we assume they meant the "Bible" that didn't yet exist then, the 20th century Bible? If they meant scripture that did not then exist, how do we know they didn't mean scripture that doesn't yet exist, like "the Gospel according to extropalopakettle".

What is the basis for a Christian accepting the Bible as we know it today?

[Scurra]

[extropalopakettle]

Thanks for the very well put and educated reply. The reason I ask the question is that I sometimes get in debates with Christians (and I'm a Christian myself, though hardly very pious - but I agree with what you've said - and with, for instance, Einstein's words about the first 4 books of the New Testament) ... the reason I ask, is I hear many literalists, who believe in believing every word of the Bible as God's word, talk about it as if their belief did not come from examination and evaluation of everything that was said, but from some assurance from God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit that the Bible is the truth, whether that assurance was in the Bible itself, or a personal revelation. I can ignore the begging-the-question type circularity of taking the Bible's own assurance of it's own truth as evidence of such, but the fact that any such assurance (as some might read it) would have to have been written before the Bible as we know it existed can't be ignored. And as for a personal revelation from the Holy Spirit that the Bible is truth, if I had one, it would have to be kinda precise for my satisfaction: Which version of the current day Bible? Or some scrolls that existed in the 2nd century?

I can't dismiss all literalists as complete idiots, but surely this question has crossed their minds. (I've asked elsewhere, and been told to ask Jesus for guidance, with an open heart and mind, and I'll be amazed at what will happen)

[BraveHat]

[Zag]

I'm puzzled what you mean by "indicting." I'm pretty sure you mean a different word, but I haven't figured out what it is.

How do you explain that different people have this same feeling, the "overwhelming sense of Truth" and yet come to different conclusions? One group says that the Bible is the literal fact, while another allow for a metaphorical interpretation of, for instance, Genesis. Are those people (the ones that disagree with you) not really feeling it? Misguided? Getting a different truth from the Holy Spirit than you are? Have a different spirit guiding them?

I do realize that from your perspective, your own sense of truth is far more important to you than someone else's. However, consider it from my angle, where I have no reason to give yours any more weight than those of the Westboro Baptist Church members. (Well, OK, I do have reason: You are not obviously insane, and they are. This doesn't rule out the possibility that you might be -- the jury's still out. )

[Deception]

So I just post a question? I've done a search of this thread and can't find this anywhere so..

Is the pious loved by God because it is the pious, or is the pious pious because it is loved by God?

Simplified version:

Is "good" loved by God because it is good, or is good good because it is loved by God?

Also, for fun:

Would God be able to answer (with either yes or no as demanded by the questioner) the question of: "Is statement X false?" wherein statement X states: "This statement is false" and still answer correctly?

[Trojan Horse]

I'll take the second question, because it's far easier.

Statement X, "This statement is false", has no definitive truth value. It's neither true nor false. You know that, I know that, and God knows that. So if you asked God "Is statement X false?", God would say "No".

Then again, if you asked God "Is statement X true?", you'd again get a "No". And if you tried to force God to pick either "true" or "false", God wouldn't oblige. So, what's the problem?

If you're that eager to set a trap, perhaps you should take a cue from Raymond Smullyan. Ask God if statement Y is true, where statement Y is the following: "God will never believe that this statement is true." Think about it.

[BraveHat]

[BraveHat]

[Zag]

Thanks for the responses, BH. I think I understand what you mean by indict, but that's not really what it means. (The key word in the definition is "charging." That is, indict takes an object, as in "I indict you (with committing some offense)."

#1 didn't answer my question. It answered a different question, but not the one I asked.

#3 evades the question, but implies one of those other explanations that I suggested -- that those others aren't really feeling the truth from the Holy Spirit that I feel.

#2, however, is a very reasonable and credible answer to the question that neither contradicts (what I believe to be) your core beliefs, nor insults the other people with similar but not exactly the same beliefs. Had you only given this answer, I would have found it more convincing than the approach you took, which was to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks. Anyway, I'll accept this as a reasonable explanation of what seemed a contradiction to me.

[Deception]

[Trojan Horse]

So if you asked God "How many sides does a triangle have? One, two, or four?", and God said "None of the above, it's three", then that means God's not all-powerful?

[extro...*]

[BraveHat]

[BraveHat]

[BraveHat]

_________________
"I am declaring it a terrible tragedy for me to die. You may disagree..." --Antrax

[Deception]

[BraveHat]

[Deception]

Did God craft that definition? I would think not, so it isn't necessarily accurate of God.

If you can find for me in the Bible, a quote which states that God is "omnipotent" as by modern definition, then you have a case. However I'm under the impression that God, as depicted in Christanity, is an all-knowing, all-capable, all-righteous god.

Also, since you didn't react to what I wrote about my first question, I'll tell you why I'd expect you to know my question. It is a common issue known as the Euthyphro dilemma. You can do the research if you like, but I'll just say that the only nearly credible response a Christian can take is to say that being omnipotent doesn't mean being able to do anything, but being the most powerful being. I need to dig in the bible in order to dig up quotes to see if it holds any water in relation to what the bible directly says about God, but I don't like the response, and I just skipped to it because you're making the same claim.

A side question: Given that we can't precisely discern Gods' motives, is it not questionable to serve him? Isn't it dangerous to give your life to a God whose motives are unknown?

[Trojan Horse]

I'm going to be V/LA starting on Tuesday (VERY early). So please don't look at my absence and think I just ran away from the conversation.

[Zag]

Why would you say He can't sin? (Positing, for a moment, that He exists) He can, but chooses not to. Similarly, he could control a person's every action, but He has imposed on Himself a restriction that he gives us free will, so he doesn't.

The more interesting question is how mankind can possibly have free will in the face of a truly omniscient deity. If he is omniscient, then he knows before any of us is born everything that person will do. However, if you redefine omniscience to mean 'knows everything that is knowable,' then Heisenberg and the rest of quantum mechanics provides an out -- there are facts and future events that are literally unknowable. So someone who is omniscient can still be surprised (if you accept this definition).

[BraveHat]

[Deception]

I guess I can look through the bible eventually, but that is going to be very boring. I have several bibles in my house (why are there multiple versions of the holy-scripture?), but am reluctant to go quote-hunting.


Is a limited god worth serving?


Well if you aren't accepting the most common Christian response to the Euthyphro Dilemma then I guess you have a problem because that dilemma puts some question to your religion.

As for your pilot analogy, I trust him because I know the following:

He has been checked through special training
In order to fly, he must have a very good resume
He is checked (as are his staff) before each flight to make sure nothing is "off".
Hired through a personal interview (not unstable)

So, unlike God, this pilot is kept in check by rules and regulations, and we have authority to monitor him, and as such can be sure of his motives and will to do a good job (money).

God is different; if God exists, there is nothing to keep him in check. In essence, he may do whatever he pleases (but he is bound for some reason by human logic) if he exists. Now, if his motives are in question (and they most certainly are), then we should not give our lives to him, as we have no guarantee he will act in our best interests.

[BraveHat]

[extro...*]

[Deception]

BraveHat, you can not simply use the argument "by believing in God you accept he is of pure motives" and "God is not capable of doing evil", because that is only true once you believe. However, that seems to be a problem. Something is right, not because it is right, but because you accept it as right?

You must be able to show reason for Gods' motives not being poor independent of "because they aren't". If I start out not believing in God, then there is no reason for me to because Gods' motives are unknown, and to do what you're doing and give my life to do that is madness! Sure, I get to say, "I gave my life to a divine and kind god", but how do I know that? Well I would know that because I believe! Why do I believe? Because I want to serve a kind god! Why do I know he's a kind and just god? Because I believe!

It's a terrible circle and shows why your answer is unsatisfactory.

Also, human logic has changed over the years. If we "discovered" logic as it has been divined by god, then we wouldn't be changing it, and there wouldn't be so many problems. Are you really going to sit here and tell me that logic was gods' making? I'm sorry but I simply refuse to accept that god crafted a logical system which we have been refining for centuries (and STILL ARE) and which still has a plethora of issues it brings up.

@extro: Your answer was "good is good because it is loved by God". Gods' nature is what good is, therefore good is good because it is gods' nature, it is loved by god.

I would actually respond then to you the same I responded to BraveHat, as why should we believe that God will act with good intent and reason?