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I'm not going to address such people who understand neither science nor their own religion.

A starting point for them.

Revelation 13:18. Is that so hard to know?

And a reasonable interpretation of the phrase 'for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666' is that while 7 is the number of completion, and the number 3 often found to refer to completion.

From a reasonably useful site:

"Interestingly, man was created on the sixth day of creation. In some passages of the Bible, the number 6 is associated with mankind. In Revelation “the number of the beast” is called “the number of a man. That number is 666” (Revelation 13:18). If God’s number is 7, then man’s is 6. Six always falls short of seven, just like “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Man is not God, just as 6 is not 7."

If you reject the Bible and/or God, then this is merely informative for you - knowing what other people believe and why is rarely a bad thing, and should not be offensive, unless you're offended by the truth, which in this instance is merely the truth of others' beliefs. You're free to believe what you will.

Please quote the passage which suggests that Jesus revoked Leviticus 20:13.

Please read.

Your ignorance can only be matched by your arrogance. Assuming that this is ignorance and not an intentional twisting of the truth, I'll try to help you understand: The passage in Deuteronomy that you reference is part of what's know as the "old covenant." https://www.gotquestions.org/o... I see what you're trying to do there with the Matthew reference, and I think you know that you're misleading others. If you really don't know, you can educate yourself here: https://www.gci.org/bible/matt... First thing that pops up in a search - not hard to find.

Sounds like a very long winded case trying to show why the old testament laws do not apply to Ckristians despite Christ him self saying they do in no uncertain terms according to Matthew 5.17-18, I'm still wondering what your point is?

Your ignorance can only be matched by your arrogance. Assuming that this is ignorance and not an intentional twisting of the truth, I'll try to help you understand: The passage in Deuteronomy that you reference is part of what's know as the "old covenant." https://www.gotquestions.org/o... I see what you're trying to do there with the Matthew reference, and I think you know that you're misleading others. If you really don't know, you can educate yourself here: https://www.gci.org/bible/matt... First thing that pops up in a search - not hard to find.

You're obviously an intelligent guy. If you're willing, please read the following two links. It shouldn't take too long.
Proving God's Existence
Does God Exist

Thanks, but I stopped reading comic books and fantasy novels decades ago.

And if god really does exist and faith healing works, why has god never healed an amputee?

You're obviously an intelligent guy. If you're willing, please read the following two links. It shouldn't take too long.

Proving God's Existence

Does God Exist

Question: "Old Testament vs. New Testament - What are the differences?"

What source of information is flawless and can be believed without question? Why do people exhibit good critical thinking skills when it comes to Wikipedia, but swallow wholesale what they get from Encyclopedia Britannica, CNN, Fox News, the Bible, etc?

Perhaps because those others tell them to believe, while Wikipedia tells them *not* to believe, but think critically? Compare:

http://www.newyorker.com/humor...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://www.gotquestions.org/Bi...

to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

What Christians believe ... well it is mostly not bases in the Bible anyway.

You're right that some denominations cling to traditions that flat-out contradict the Bible. Others are diligent in citing scripture for their beliefs. I've found that Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, fall in the latter category. I don't agree with all of their interpretations, but I admire their diligence.

Sex only in the missionary position?

Not in the Bible. A husband and wife can use any position they agree on. Just make sure to use safer sex precautions with your spouse because you wouldn't want sexually transmitted infections to defile your "temples of holy spirit."--1 Corinthians 6:19-20.

No sex before marriage?

That's in the Bible. "God will judge fornicators."--Hebrews 13:4.

No contraception?

I think some denominations' ban on contraception comes from confusion between conception methods that prevent fertilization (such as rhythm, barriers, and antiovulants) and abortifacient methods that prevent a fertilized egg from developing. Christians who follow the Bible are free to use nonabortive birth control and should refrain from judging one another in this respect.--Romans 14:10-13.

The interpretation comes from the ancient Hebrew writings which (supposedly) outline what the big guy said. As there have been a few years since the writings were created, and not many people still understand that form of language, they've misinterpreted what those writings said.

This was compounded by the Christians not understanding what the original words were and changing the meaning.

I'm not making this up. Go read the history of how this particular commandment has been misinterpreted for ages.

Here is a good explanation of why people get it wrong and this onecomes from the Jewish perspective (ignore the vegetarianism portion).

Worth a read, even for those who doubt God..

Is there any conclusive proof for God?

So, still no plausible combination of proposed scriptural change and actual political advantage that would be offered by it. You could have at least parroted some Dan Brown, even if that would put us at laughable levels of historical scholarship.

The rest of your post is all over the map, lots of insults and very little useful content, but to answer what you appear to be staking out as your main relevant counterpoint, on "clean foods"...

Here's a straightforward rationale found with a simple google search, linked mainly for the verse citations. As we see, the number of verses supporting that there was an actual rescoping of expectations corresponding to a direct spiritual rationale, is not singular, but has multiple mutually-reinforcing verses within scripture.

http://www.gotquestions.org/foods.html

On your last part on "finding truth", there is no necessary contradiction between how you came across a truth, and whether it is truth. If you want the formal name of the fallacy of this thinking, it is a Genetic Fallacy. Overall, you simply have rejected a-priori a particular source for your personal reasons, and will fog over resolving questions for yourself with whatever degree of refusal to do the work of discerning what's true (among which are the very basic, stated tools of evaluating internal logical consistency) that is necessary.

The lack of a doctor's prescription doesn't automatically make using Ritalin medically unethical.

The lack of a medical need does.

If I miss my doctor's appointment and only have 2 days of pills left and I bum the same pill from a friend on the 3rd day, I wouldn't call that medically unethical. It might be illegal and therefore unethical according to my or my friend's personal code of ethics (example of such a code of ethics), but it's not medically unethical.

Slavery is ok according to biblical texts.

The employment arrangement translated "slavery" was not the same as slavery in the antebellum United States. For example, servants can be traded to another owner, but so can modern-day athletes.

God in the old testament is a petty tyrant

God is petty only to those who choose not to know him.

With words. It's what I'm doing here.

And if it doesn't work?

I'm not aware of any in my country, but I'm all for giving them a fair trial and then locking them up for a good long time.

That seems to conflict with the previous idea of loving your enemy and forgiving them. Or is jail a form of forgiveness? Also that's a very secular approach.

Deacon is one literally mentioned. My minister/vicar/preacher (or whatever it's called) claims there were more, though.

That seems to be a contentious issue. As far as I gather, the bible contains arguments both for and against, people pick whatever they like more. Note how the site mentions that women should still be restricted by the limitations mentioned by Paul.

Not for today perhaps, but for those days, everything he wrote was incredibly progressive.

Ok, so why still have it in the current bible?

I'm not sure those limits are really imposed by christianity, but I'm all for removing limits.

How do you decide which limits are okay to remove?

I fully agree there.

So why do you need religion at all? If you'd tell to your own God, "wait a sec, what am I doing this for?" then clearly you're exercising judgement that's not coming from your religion. Your sense of right and wrong therefore doesn't have a divine source to it. Might as well go all the way then.

I've heard another "Christian" say global warming is a good thing if it's part of the rapture (that 19th century weirdness from cutting and pasting bits of the Bible until it says what you want). I've put their self description in quotes because it was one of those groups that think the poor and the sick are being punished by God so should never be helped but merchants in the temple are fine.

Many Christians believe in a Millennial Kingdom which will be reestablished here on earth. If this particular person believed so, then he would not believe global warming is a good thing. Not that God wouldn't allow it to happen, but that God would punish those who try to prevent the kingdom from coming. This means that if global warming has its way and the earth is no longer habitable, I'm pretty sure God would do something about it, including but not limited to restoring it to Eden-esque perfection, and punishing those responsible for Earth's demise.

I count global warming as something both preventable and possible, and therefore punishable.

Naked was great until we ate from the Tree of Knowledge (stupid women... they're inferior for a reason). Once we had knowledge, we could know shame and sin, and nakedness leads to sin, so on go the clothes.

No, I'm not making this shit up. Someone about 1600 or so years ago made it up first.

Being a muslim, I can see how you got this wrong, but the Trinity was never outlined in the bible.

Uh...

Is the Trinity in the Bible? * What does the Bible teach about the Trinity?

You're both right and wrong in that it was established at the council of Nicea (I always spell that wrong and am probably doing it now) but has informed later editions of the bible.

Your understanding of the verse is likely incorrect. Read http://www.gotquestions.org/age-limit.html/

Interpreting what is meant by scripture is difficult, and Christians and non-Christians alike are guilty of gross misunderstanding of many verses (or whole sections) in the Bible.

Well, the ;) meant I was joking.

And the unless you're Cathlic was about the previous statment "open for interpretation." What I was tought was: way back when, Catholics were not allowed to interpret the Bible. That was the Pope's job. The peasants couldn't even read the latin, so that kept it the job of the clergy. This was one of MANY reasons for the protestant reformation. http://www.gotquestions.org/Protestant-Reformation .html (paragraph 2)

I know that's no longer the case, and may not have been as true as was taught.

But anyway, I was just poking a little fun.

Anyway, glad to see another Christian (assuming again, damn) on /.

Searching google for "bible gambling", the first hit gives us this:

Question: "What does the Bible say about gambling? Is gambling a sin?"

Answer: Gambling can be defined as "risking money in an attempt to multiply the money on something that is against the odds." The Bible does not specifically condemn gambling, betting, or the lottery. The Bible does warn us, however, to stay away from the love of money (1 Timothy 6:10; Hebrews 13:5). Scripture also encourages us to stay away from attempts to "get rich quick" (Proverbs 13:11; 23:5; Ecclesiastes 5:10). Gambling most definitely is focused on the love of money and undeniably tempts people with the promise of quick and easy riches.

Okay, I set my prefs to be plain old text so hopefully this post isn't all jacked. Thanks for the help on that; it was starting to annoy me, as I'm sure it was annoying you.

I was in the wrong for inferring that. I just question some of their practices as being unbiblical. I am learning from Catholics, like you, about some of practices and stuff that go on there.

Yes, but you've heard the Word of God and aren't subject to universal revelation. Those people know there is a Creator and do what everyone knows is morally right. They are doing God's will at that point and have a faith in the Creator.

This site gives Biblical references that all Christians are saints.
http://www.gotquestions.org/saints-Christian.html
But praying to them to pray to God seems like an unnecessary step. Jesus taught us how to pray for ourselves. I agree in asking Christians to pray for problems we might have but never to ask God to forgive us or as the only way that I can communicate with God. I still pray for my needs but also the needs of others.

Ah, I guess some of my Catholic knowledge comes from tv. I thought priests in confession would have the person say the rosary a certain number of times depending on the severity of the sin. Which if they do is odd since the Bible says all sin is equal in the eyes of God. So lying is the same as murder, wrong is wrong.

One thing though I would suggest is to read the Bible often and not be afraid to question things in your church. Most of the Catholics I know that are in a non-denominational church now started that way. After reading the Bible the Catholic church seemed to miss a lot of the stuff the Word of God has to offer. I'm not trying to convert you at all. If you have accepted Christ and your faith is valid then the church you're at shouldn't matter. I just know the ex-Catholics at our church realized that they had never been saved and that is a problem.

Yes and I've heard that many Catholic scholars believe that Catholicism is the perfect combination of Christianity and paganism. I'm more in the boat of getting my theology straight from God through his Holy Word. If the Bible says I should only be praying to God than that's what I'll do. If the Bible says that confessing my sins to man and asking forgiveness from God is wrong than I probably shouldn't be doing it. I'm not saying that the Catholic Church is all bad; they just have a lot of contradictions to the Bible though. Here is a website that outlines some of them. The Catholic Church does admit that their theology is a mixture of pagan and Christian beliefs. "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?" 2 Corinthians 6:14-15 http://www.gotquestions.org/Catholic-Biblical.html

The Right Wingers will not debate the issues; they always respond in one of three ways:


1. "The Bible says ...."

They refuse to accept the existance of anything that challenges the infallibility of their interpretation of the Bible.

"Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers. He also said, 'Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem." Genesis 9:25-27 (justifying the ownership of slaves)

"The Bible clearly and consistently tells us that homosexual activity is a sin (Genesis 19:1-13; Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9). God does not create a person with homosexual desires. A person becomes a homosexual because of sin (Romans 1:24-27)" http://www.gotquestions.org/gay-marriage.html


2. "Most people believe ..."

Right wingers fully believe that they are in the majority and that because their "majority" believes one way that they can't possibly be wrong. Also, everything that the GOP says is what the "majority" believes.


3. Some sort of wierd, twisted assertion:

"The world is less than 10,000 years old; carbon dating and fossils are wrong".

"If you allow gay marriages, then you have to allow people to marry their dogs"

"If marriage means everything, it means absolutely nothing. It will mean nothing to same-sex as well as opposite-sex couples. The current decline of the institution of marriage will be accelerated. Increasing numbers of couples will elect to simply 'live together'." Dr. James C. Dobson, of Focus on the Family (regarding gay marriage)

"This sort of marriage is not in the best interest of children." "God has a plan for marriage and this isn't it." "Allowing this kind of marriage will pave the way for all sorts of moral depravity." Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving (regarding interracial marriage)

• the Spanish Inquisition
• the Crusades
  Wiki article
  But, it's alright, because those weren't "real" chrisitans. Ref
• the burning times - The extermination of Witches and other heretics
  50 - 100,000 burned to death or hung Ref

At least two persons have been arrested for allegedly assaulting a Hindu woman and setting her house on fire in Orissa after she refused to change her religion

International general secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad Pravin Togadia and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi received a combined death threat Tuesday ...
The death threat claiming to be from the "Christian community"

who created god?

and if something as complex as god doesn't require a creator - then neither do we

The bible repeatedly condems fornication (I googled it: http://www.gotquestions.org/sex-before-marriage.ht ml)

I don't see it exactly defining what fornication is, but it's been defined as sex outside of marriage for quite a while now.

What marriage is, though, is never really defined.

Noah's ark. This topic has been investigated by heaps of people, that was just the first link returned by google, there may be better ones.

Natural selection does occur. Animals procreate and mix their DNA together and create a new combination of genes. This process does not create any more information, but different features of the animal are selected. In a small population with heavy inbreeding the animal becomes more specialised, information is lost, and the amount of variation among the offspring is reduced. This is not the result of random mutation, which destroys information, it is a pre-programmed ability. For example, from a basic wolf, we now have all the various dog breeds.

After the flood and massive climate changes, there were short periods of ice ages. This would have created the neccessary land bridges for animals and people to migrate to all of the main continents. Though people may have used boats and may have transported some kinds of animals.

The oceans are *now* very deep. there is easily enough water to cover the earth to a depth of 3km if the ground layer at the time was flat. There is plenty of evidence of tectonic plate movement, I would assert that this took place over a short time frame. As the plates collided the mountains would have been raised up. The water would have then flowed very rapidly off of the land masses carving the great canyons and river basins of the world.

This seems to be a reasonable introduction. disclaimer, I haven't read it all so I can't say if I agree with everything presented.

I'm sure there are lots of things that were politicised around the time Bush came to office. He seems to have focused on Gay Marriage, Stem cell research and killing Arabs. I expect he still eats pork and shell fish so he hasn't quite dropped back right wing Christian roots.