Reply With Quote
Gfy tails
Problem for Christians is that Jesus hitched his wagon to the Old Testament.
You can't be a fundamental Christian without acknowledging Jesus' crazy OT Daddy.
Gfy tails
And yet there were Christians who read the book where Jesus never said to kill nonbelievers and ended up deciding they needed to kill nonbelievers. Similarly, there are Muslims who read the book for they were told to kill disbelievers wherever they find them and they decide not to kill disbelievers. Seems to me the only thing that makes a religion "good" or "bad" are the people who believe in it and how they choose to interpret their holy text.
gin & koch (get it!)
Gfy tails
Fair enough. I should have been more specific in my initial request. I was referring more to Jesus ever asking believers to murder or hurt nonbelievers. Christian Salvation is through Jesus. That's more the direction I was headed. It's a very different ballgame to start pulling OT verses. That's not difficult to do.
Again, in the context of Christian faith, I don't see how anyone could ever compare the violence associated with it to that of Islam. Sure, call it a Mulligan, but at least they used their Mulligan. For the record, I don't blame a single person for questioning the Christian faith and their basic beliefs. Christians are the people most responsible for making people not want to be Christians.
The best explanation of God ordering the killing of Men, Women and Children in the Old Testament. Christians were born from the New Testament.
"
God lawfully has the right to execute judgment upon anyone. The Bible says that all people have sinned against God and are under his righteous judgment. Therefore, their execution is not an arbitrary killing nor is it murder. Murder is the unlawful taking of life. Killing is the lawful taking of life. For example, we can lawfully take a life in defense of our selves, our families, our nations, etc.
When God authorizes the nation of Israel to wipe out a people, it is a lawful execution due to their rebellion and sin against God. Furthermore, such an extermination can be seen to be merciful by delivering the young into the hands of the Lord and possibly saving their souls by not giving them time to become "utterly sinful".2 Additionally, further generations that would have arisen from the perverse culture, are likewise prevented from coming into existence and spreading their sin.
Finally, one of the reasons that the Lord is so strong in the Old Testament and orders the killing of people is to ensure that the future messianic line would remain intact. The enemy, Satan, began his attempt to destroy God's people in the Garden of Eden, by also trying to corrupt the world (which led to Noah's Flood), by trying to destroy Israel with attacking armies, and by encouraging Israel to fall into idolatry by exposure to other cultures as well as intermarrying women from those cultures. The result of both the idolatry and the interbreeding would have been the failure of the prophecies that foretold of the coming Messiah which specified which family line the Messiah would come through. The Messiah, Jesus, would be the one who would die for the sins of the world and without that death there would be no atonement. Without the atonement, all people would be lost. So, God was ensuring the arrival of the Messiah via the destruction of the ungodly."
Christians believe, teach if you aren't baptized and "accept Christ as your Lord God and Savior", you can't go to heaven. And it was "Christian" Euro-Americans that nuked non-Christian, non-white Japan.
Again, no religion is inherently violent, the violence is a result of how individuals choose to interpret the teachings/texts of their religion of choice....
This thread needs some jack sommerset. God bless.
That's the whole point. It's not like that stuff isn't still in the Bible, which is supposed to be the Word of God after all.
Who's to say the Muslims won't at some point? If they ever decide who their Mahdi is, that dude could do the same thing.Again, in the context of Christian faith, I don't see how anyone could ever compare the violence associated with it to that of Islam. Sure, call it a Mulligan, but at least they used their Mulligan.I don't blame anyone for questioning any religion. Fortunately "none of the above" is a choice for religion as well.For the record, I don't blame a single person for questioning the Christian faith and their basic beliefs. Christians are the people most responsible for making people not want to be Christians.
American "Christian" dominionists/supremacists/End Timers obviously prefer, prior ize the OT to the NT, almost to the point of ignoring the NT's revolutionary lessons.
But Jesus is God and God was already perfect. Why did he need to change his whole business plan?
I think religion inherently encourages narcissism which lead to violence. It leads people to think they're on this planet for a greater, idiosyncratic reason and god intends for them to accomplish something.
George W. Bush used Christianity to justify it and convince himself he was put on this planet to become president and go nation building in the middle east when he was the family up who found Christianity because of an AA meeting which fed his extreme narcissism. The fact 30% of this country believes the rapture will occur before their deaths demonstrates more extreme narcissism, because the logic behind thinking the rapture will definitely come before you die is that there's NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO way Jesus is gonna miss out on the opportunity to meet someone as awesome as me!
He never changed it. He ensured its completion.
People missing the point here.
If there is a cartoon published of Jesus, we don't expect a violent backlash. Maybe in the middle ages, but not TODAY.
I imagine God got tired of Jesus questioning his decisions to kill during OT times, so he booted Jesus down to earth and had him killed too.
It's still in the Bible, yes. But the requirements for Salvation are no longer the same. For Christians, the OT serves as more of a historical record of the difficulties associated with salvation before Jesus.
The Islamic requirements for salvation haven't changed. As backwards and archaic as Christianity sounds, to even the most diehard atheist, Islam is like a more violent, more brutal, bas ized version of it. That's what really gets me, because you get some of the most liberal atheists who hate Christianity but go out and pimp Islamic faith. Maybe one day they change their basic belief system (mulligan if you will), but until then it is what it is.
where do you get this from? By definition, Christians believe in something greater than themselves, the an hesis of Narcissism.
Agreed 100%. The thread basically just went off on a tangent, but I think the consensus was current day Islam is much more backwards and brutal than current day Christianity.
His business plan required a living sacrifice, a being.
Better way to put it.
neh. The contradictions are there for all to see.
seems the easy way out to refer to religous belief or a specific faith as the primary impetus for certain types of terrorism. if one were to eradicate zealotry, i'm pretty certain that inevitably some other catalyst would gladly subsitute itself for religion as inspiration for violence. if given a choice to examine the nature of rebellion i'd be far more compelled to reread camus than entertain anything a narcissistic half-ass comedian would have to say about it.
Last edited by rjv; 04-22-2013 at 11:50 AM.
I have a legitimate question for atheists:
From a logical standpoint, does it not make more sense to believe in something as simply a fallback option for eternity? We can pretend like we know what happens after death - which depends on whether you believe a soul really exists - but we really don't know. So why not, at the very least, accept a belief system to hedge your bets?
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
