Mike, the Bible can be accepted and it can be rejected. The question of whether it contains proof positive.....is open to interpretation. That is, even if it is proof positive, some will reject it anyway.

And to illustrate, some folks apparently find ways to conclude that Jesus was a great man and profound, wise religious philosopher who rational and sensible and who claimed to be the Son of God, but was not.

Huh? Make sense of that for me if you would please, Kang.

Convincingly? I don't think so.

To use a passage in the old testament, in the year 2006, as the moral justification for discriminating against someone for their sexual predilection is just nonsense and highly irrational.

As I said before similarly irrational people find justification for terrorism in the Koran. Another fine old text. What do you say to them? They got it wrong? They got the wrong book and you have the right one?

Give me a break!

Livi, this is where your understanding of Christianity if flawed (although your understanding of many Christians may not be). Specifically, Yes, homosexual activity does make a person less worthy, as did a lot of things that I did in high school and college. The very fundimental, underlying and bedrock concept of Christianity is that none of us is worth as a result of our actions. None (excepting Jesus). So we're all in the same boat. But if homosexuals want the Church to say it's OK -- that won't happen. Not just because of the story of Sodom, but more specifically because of the passages in Leviticus. The Church can not say that homosexuality is OK any more then it can say that murder, fraud, extortion, the love of money or countless other sins are OK.

What it does say though is that if you admit that your actions are wrong, if you genuinely repent and feel sorry about your actions, and try to turn over a new leaf, that God can forgive you. They reason that an omniputant being can forgive a mortal, is because that omniputant being became human, and forgave us for all of the abuse that we heaped upon him. Short of repeating one of the creeds -- whole old fashioned, formal language might turn you off -- that's the best way that I can describe it.

As far as Christians that act as you described. They are unfortunately common. Jesus made some pretty clear points and critisism in the story of the "Good Samaritan". Just about everyone knows the story....

- Man gets set-up by robbers and is beaten up and left for dead.
- First a priest (an analogy for the pinacle of believers) comes by, sees the man and walks by avoiding the beaten man.
- Next a Levite (one of the Chosen Tribe who were to be holier then the rest) comes by and does the same thing.
- Finally a Samaritan (the antithesis of the ancient Hebrews, perceived of as being born to a heritical group, unclean, never seen at the temple, etc. etc.) stops and helps the beaten man. He sets him up in a hotel, pays for his car.

Jesus then makes the point that it was the Samaritan who acted as he should have, not the priest or the Levite. So please, don't judge all Christians by what you see on TV, waving their hands and swaying, or by Michael Jackson who thanks God for making Thriller the top selling albums. While the Bible says that God is happy that Michael refers to him in public, it doesn't make Michael Jackson a good Christian, if even a Christian at all. There are examples in the Bible of demons acknowledging God. While you may or may not believe in deamons or God, my point is that even the core text of Christianity admits that saying "Thank God" does not a Christian make.

I was specifically asked for my views.

And if i end up as god, YOU are in serious trouble for your tone! ;)

What a load of crap. :rolleyes:

You may not have been briefed in on this, but Gay/Bi men brought aids to the Western World and are almost entirely responsible for it's early spread throughout society.

And as far as i'm concerned being gay is not pre-determined, but rather is just another psychosis.

I thought it was the US Army, some kind of experiment I read.

Predilection is not a sin. Read more carefully.

The reason God's teaching gets rejected is for convenience. Sounds as though you would prefer to conclude that homosexual behavior is acceptable. As I say, this is the reason for rejection. It makes selfish decisions seem acceptable. But in the backs of our minds we know that morality is not always convenient. But we do the best we can to reduce the inconvenience as much as possible and one clever way to shake free of feelings of responsibility is to reject God or at least, reject the Bible and make up our own story about God.

jluetjen stops just short of completing his story. Jesus despised, more than any other, the Pharises. They were the religious leaders of the time who had become self-serving. they pretended to be pious but in fact were hypocrites. And worse, they were hypocrites who were spiritual leaders.

Yeah.... :rolleyes:

If you don't ask, i won't tell. LOL... :D

And this makes it different from this morning's newspaper or CNN online in which way???
- Contains second and third had stories? Same in both.
- Contains accepted wisdom and superstition? Same in both
- Anectotal morality tales? Check
- Bits of history? Check
- Originally written in various languages? no difference here either!
- Has no coherent source? Same for both
- Can be interpreted by the reader? Check for both
- Is full of tales of extraordinary violence, rape, incest, fraticide, infanticide and bestiality? Most of those were covered on CNN this week alone, although I may need to search a bit for the bestiality.

Do you trust CNN? or the newspaper?

Or all the more opportunities to have compassion for them. Go back to the "Good Samaritan" story above.

Compassion for self-inflicted stupidity is not my cup of tea.

Contempt for idiots is. ;)

Trust CCN? You're kidding right?

This is fairly typical of the miss-informed view of the Bible and its followers that seems to abound these days. Dottore, you know just enought to be dangerous, but not nealry enough to understand or much less to pass judgement.

Not a single Christian I know, or have ever heard from, would stand for discriminating against anyone for anything. The Bible very clearly, through the words of Christ Himself, extols us to accept and love everyone. No matter what. That includes gays.

Gays have managed to swing the debate to "discrimination", in one very visible issue, because they cannot legally marry each other. They can legally marry, just like the rest of us, just not each other. That is not discrimination. They are asking for special priveledges and muddying the waters by claiming being denied those priveledges equals discrimination. It simply does not; they want to re-define "marriage". Go ahead and live together; just don't look to re-define a term as old as mankind (with a very clear meaning) to suit your purposes.

This has been hashed over time and again here and elswhere, but once again for your edification: The Gospels relieve the burden, responsibility, and most importantly, the AUTHORITY for men to enforce God's Law. Jesus absolved us of all of that. Anyone here on Earth that is still doing so and claiming Scriptural authority to do so is WRONG.

The Quran, on the other hand, includes the same Law. God's Law, they just call Him "Allah" instead. The Quran mentions no Savior, like Jesus Christ, that came to "fullfill" the requirements of that Law. The Quran still holds its followers responsible for following and ENFORCING that Law. That Law, if you read the Old Testament or the Quran, is very unyielding and brutal. We see that today in the Muslims that have spectacularly taken it upon themselves to enforce that Law over their fellow Muslims, and over the rest of us as well. The difference between them and Christians is that these Muslims are following their book to the letter.

I don’t understand your question. I thought I explained that. I gave two explanations. One explanation is that his claims to be the son of god were misunderstood. By this I mean he meant a more casual relationship, like the father/coach analogy, but it was taken literally, like a real father/son. The second was that what he said when he was alive and what got written down some decades later are two different things. In other words, when he was alive, his relationship with god was correctly understood. They understood he did not mean a literal father/son relationship. But some decades later, it mistakenly got written down as literal father and son.

There are probably other explanations as well. What is it about these two logical explanations that you do not understand? You might not believe them, but do you understand the argument?

In my mind, both of these explanations are far more reasonable than some guy being the literal son of god. That just doesn’t make sense. The almighty god can have only one son? What’s up with that? Jesus died for us? But wait, he’s not dead, he’s alive. “God gave is son…” But wait, god has his son. And the miracles in the bible are so full of reasonable doubt that taking them literally is absurd. The virgin birth? Come on, we know what happened there. The whole story is so illogical it boggles my mind. How can someone possibly be accurately quoted decades after the fact? That doesn’t happen today, let alone 2,000 years ago. All of this, in my mind, makes the more reasonable, logical alternatives the obvious truth.

I guess it just seems odd to me that people who have spent large portions of their lives studying and "accepting" the bible would then come to find it untenable. Not because they found some tidbit that they didn't agree with and the whole thing fell apart, but because they were no longer able to accept things on faith.

I think it goes much deeper than accepting or rejecting scriptures, though. Some people can read the bible and come away with nothing from the experience and others find it so compelling that it alters their lives. I don't think it is a question of conscious "rejection", though. Some people are just incapable of believing. Many people try to believe, but it just doesn't work. It's no more complicated than that. These people are no better or worse than those that believe.

One interesting commonality among all of these threads is that it is apparent that believers and non-believers view the world thru totally different glasses. What seems completely obvious to the believer makes no sense to the non-believer and vice versa. I have to imagine that not believing in a supreme being is such a foreign concept to many that they just cannot relate to a world without god. For others, the idea that there is some higher power that is responsible for everything around us makes no sense at all.

No one here is going to sway another's beliefs, but I find it fascinating to see how some people view the world. Myself included.

Mike

Consider Hunanup... (bear with me ;) )

He lived in a small village and one day he went into town to buy some groceries for his family. On the way, he ran into Dehu who conspired to defraud Hunanum out of everything of value that he had on him. So Dehu concocted a scheme such that Hunanum no way to avoid it. When Hunanum seeked to back out of the situation and drove over a portion of Dehu's property. Dehu used this pretext to assault Hunanum and take over his possessions.

After recovering, Hunanum tried to recover his possessions polititely, but to no avail. Hunanum then appealed to the courts, but they couldn't decide. Finally he appealed to the highest court in the land who ruled that he should be reimbursed (plus punitive damages) by Dehu. As far as we know, this was done.

Here you have examples of social order, heirarchy, family structure, complex economic relationships, rule of law, an orderly judicial system with checks and balances, as well as a precise and detailed means of recording the events. It also dates by to about 2050 BCE in Egypt during the time of the Pharaohs, before most scholars agree that Abram even had left Ur. The "high court" in this case was the "King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Neb-Kau-re, the blessed". I found this story (I've condensed it for the sake of space) in a book I found at B&N a couple of years ago titled "The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness Ancient Egypt", edited by Jon E. Lewis, and is known as "The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant". I really like it because it shows how much the "ancient" people were like us. Hunanum, who cares for his family, works for a living and tries to do the right thing. Sound familiar???

I am glad to respond.

First, as I say, amateurs commonly sidestep question like this by inferring the writings were inaccurate. Historicians don't do this. They consider the written text to be faithful to the events themselves. While it is true that the apostles did not write the gospels in their own handwriting, it is not true that the events and the writing were separated by many many years. Jewish and Hebrew oral tradition has been shown to be reliably, stunningly accurate. And when a document is dated to have been written perhasp as early as 40 AD, that's seven years after Christ's crucifixion. If it's dated at 70 AD, that's 37 years after His death.

Okay, you're talking about the "son of God" v. "Son of Man" controversy. Again, that controversy does not exist in the scholar community. Historicians know what that phrase meant, and its meaning is quite clear. But let's set that aside. Jesus also said, on more than one occasion, point blank, that all authority over Heaven and Earth has been given to him by God. That's a pretty flat-footed statement. No wishy-washiness in that. If he was an ordinary man with no supernatural powers, then what do you conclude about him making these statements? Yes, you can conclude that the real story has been clouded by the poor memories of the story tellers, or by mistakes in literary interepretations.........but that's not what people say after receiving graduate degrees in this subject area and spending decades reviewing the record.

One of the soundbites I have come to understand and find pivotally insightful now is:

"Some things have to be believed to be seen."

Whether you understand this or not depends on whether you are on the inside or the outside. Folks on the inside will smile knowingly at this statement.

I remember hearing that quote, I love it.

Who said that? Was it David Koresh, Marshall Applewhite or Jim Jones?

Did you read the articles I linked to earlier? There are plenty of historians that agree with my logic. Heck, they are the ones that came up with the ideas, not me.

I still stand by statements regarding those other illogical aspects of the story.