When scientist start to develop there own "beliefs" that must be believed in order to be an accepted in to the community, they have crossed the line in to what we would call a "religion" and excomunication, as the word is used today, is exactly what shunning those who don't ascribe to the accepted beliefs is.
Well, I wouldn't have responded if you hadn't posted this:
Did Jesus exist? Who the fuck knows. It was 2000 years ago. He could have been a she, she could have been a thief who raped hordes of people.
No, Jesus realy did exist, there aren't any credible historians who would tell you otherwise, it's as much if not more historical fact as just about any major figure in history.
And second, because I'm already responding, no one is saying your only a good person if you go to church, etc (well at least not any one who has a clue about the gospel).
SCO is far too small to get much notice. Sure losing $30 Million is bad, but compared to the $30 Billion that Frank Dunn managed to lose, its a rounding error, and few of the "big boys" take much notice.
The requirement for the landing gear to be manualy lower the landing gear was pushed for by the astronauts, but not for job security. Opening the landing gear at the wrong time results in dead astronauts, and at the time, they weren't up to trusting a computer with that job. Astronauts have pleanty of job security, as there is still no replacement for the jobs they do while in space, and likely won't be for quite some time.
Because of the nature of God is perfection and purity. He designed us to live in perfect intimacy with him, a connection that was broken when man first sinned. God cannont remain in the intimate relationship he wants when we are tainted. The rejection from heaven would be better described of as a seperation from him. That is the real crux of hell, the eternal seperation from God. Since we are sinnful we require atonement for our sins before we can be made pure and once again have that relationship with him. Since he is perfect in everything, he is also perfect as a judge. If a judge let a murder off the hook because he loved him and felt he deserved a second chance we would be furious. Like wise with God, letting us off the hook would be an imperfect thing to do, something he can not do. It's like parents with children, you love your children, but this doesn't let them off the hook when they screw up, it may hurt to give them the punishment they deserve, but it is the right thing to do. This is where Jesus comes in, in essence, he purchased our dept, and became the rightful lord of all humanity. Thus by allowing Jesus as the lord of our lives we are made pure before God by the virtue of Jesus's purity.
The line is drawn at allowing you to reject him, and thus suffer the consequences, or not to. If you can't reject him, you can't love him, and you realy have not free will at all. It is mans choice to reject God and rebel against him with sin that causes the problems, so there is no middle ground that would allow any important free will with out us being puppets.
Yeah, you would slaughter the Tiwanese army in a land battle, but theres all that water in between, and your navy doesn't stand a chance against the US 7th fleet. Still either way, the US doesn't want war, and that is the main reason Taiwan doesn't declare independance.
What do you have to suggest that God is guiding your responce? The writers of the new testement were men who God clearly used through out there lives. Many of them were from the 12 desiples who spent the lasts of Jesus's days with him. There works line up, they pass all the tests.
There is a difference between limiting you childs free will, and forced control. Brainwashing isn't benificial to either the parent of the child. Why do you let your child out into the world, where they can find all the things that can destry them? Why give them the chance to turn away from you, why not keep them in the house until your dead so they will always be with you? Would it mean a thing that your child loves you if they had no choice? Even though I don't realy like the movie, AI is an exelent movie about this. The question does have an answer, it's because with out free will there can be no love, and he is little more than a puppet master.
There is only one cleaning of the slate, in the flood. God gave you choice, sure he knew where it would end up, he knew many people whould choose to reject him, but whould you realy be better off with no choice in the matter, whould our love for him mean anything then? Yes God is forgives, and loves, but he also judges, thats what the people of Sodom forgot.
You right, the bible doesn't tell alot of things that are unnessesary. The whole idea that God is going to unfairly punish those have never heard of him depends on you believing that he is mean and vindictive. But it's also the evidence that you used to show that God is mean and vindictive, the preposition is the conclusion, a major logical falicy. It is an unanswered question as to how exactly he will deal with those people, but looking through the evidence that is availible from what we do know about God, he is loving, caring and fair.
First off, none of the leaders of the crusades or all the "holy wars" in the middle and dark ages were led by men who actualy believed they were following the word of God. They were polititians who were using the religion do fit there purposes, and there dreams. Go read the bible, we are called to check and double check any thing that is a supposed "word from God" against the bible, and if it doesn't match, it's not from God. No message saying "go kill inocent people in my name" would ever pass this simple test. Christianity definately requires faith, but it isn't a blind faith, the bible we have today is identical to what it was when it was writen, and this can be proven through archaeological finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls (in the original language, obviously the translations were translated from this). The bible is the most incredible book ever, though it was writen by the hands of many different men, over the course of thousands of years, you can't find a single contradiction, or flaw, thats a feat that no other book is even close to.
The problem I have with religion is that it encourages the wrong attitude. People ought to follow the Golden Rule because they respect their fellow man, not because "God will strike you down if you sin!" or they're guilt-tripped into doing it to "Honor Jesus becauses he died for your sins."
I've seen way too many people who feel like they depend on God's help to make it through the day, and that they are worthless and incapable of accomplishing anything on their own. I've seen way too many people who feel "dirty" or "evil" or "sinful" for doing perfectly normal, innocuous things, just because their preacher told them it was bad. Even worse, I've seen way too many people who think they require someone else to preach to them, because "otherwise, how could I be a moral person?"
As a christian I agree that anyone who is being moral because of a fear that God will strike you down, or do to guilt is doing it for the wrong reasons, and if you read the bible you will find that these are not the reasons why christians should do good. We should be moral because of our love for God and our desire to be more like Jesus. The bible says that feelings of Guilt for sins we have been forgiven are not from God, and we should pray against those feelings. That and no one requires some one else to preach for them, thats why we have the bible, so we can read for ourselves, there are a great deal of
"christians" who are "christians" because they go to church every sunday. That doesn't make a person a christian, and no where in the bible will you ever find any passage saying that church attendance was required. The reason christians go to church together is for fellowship, no to let someone else do our thinking or tell us how to live, I dont think I have ever gone to a church where the pastor hasn't said, "Don't take the things I say for granted, read the passages your self, and pray about it." So please, don't take for granted the popular views of chrisians as truth. If you want to see what christianity is about your going to have to look a little deaper.
If you are realy looking for some answers, and are willing to put some effort into finding the answers, I would suggest "More than a Carpenter" (sorry for the spelling if wrong) and "Evidence that Demands a Verdict" both by Josh McDowell.
The question of what happens to people who have never heard the gospel is still a rather large question in the church, and will be until the end. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that God is by nature ultimately fair. As you look through the bible it is clear that what is in the heart is what saves people or condems them. The bible says that God has placed the basic knowlegde of a need for him on the hearts of every human. So I would say it makes most sense that God will judge the heart of those who haven't heard, but that isn't something I can say with any convition since there is little scriptural evidence one way or another. The question realy comes back to the person who asked it, if you want to have a rock to through at God, that is what you will use it for, but if you looking for who God realy is, you will find that in all his doings he is fair and loving, and wishes salvation upon all of mankind.
Paul is clear on what is his opinion, what is a culturaly dependent, and what is gosple, ie word of God. The opinion should be looked at as words of wisdom, and always in the context of his life and the place he was at. The culturaly dependant things are usualy aplications of the God's word in complicated situations, and might be analagous to case studies. We can draw solid conclusions from these teachings. And obviously those that were meant as gosple should be taken as the word of God. As to how the early church decided what was to be cut and what would be included, God guided there desisions in the process, just as he guided the writers of the books.
Ok, done. I've read every book in the bible (or the major sections of every book, I haven't read psalms, proverbs, deuteronomy, etc continualy all the way through, though over the years I'm very confident that I have at one time or another goten every part of them). I've also gone one step further and checked out a number of bible sceptic sites that go through the bible and show all these supposed problems, and I haven't yet come across a single contradiction, hypocritical passage, or anything that didn't fit. So if you would be so kind as to show some examples it would go alot further than the vague references with nothing to back them.
He didn't sit back and do nothing, he paid the full price for everything you did wrong so you could be saved. If you choose to reject him and his salvation, it's not Gods fault, it's yours. He gave you free will so you could choose to love him or not, and you have used that free will to reject him.
Its a little thing called freedom, Adam and Eve were sinless, but they had the freedom to do as they pleased, even if it included rejecting Gods word. Sure he could set us free, by forcing it upon us, but what good would it be for us or him if we were just mindless robots. There would be nothing special about love if were forced, in fact thats what makes it love, the fact that it isn't forced, it is a choice. As for the whole heaven argument, no, sin will be completely gone, there will be no concept of sin. This doesn't take away our freedom, we already made our choices, that time is done.
With our ICBM force, it is the warhead themselves that require the proper codes to detonate the weapon, and since there is a great deal of precision required in detonating a nuke, there realy is no way around it. So even if there was a way to bypass the security, and launch, it be a dud. True, it would likely start a real war, but that is beyond the scope of the bombs security. Also, as the grandparent stated, the security, for the ICMB's is just as much human as it is technical, with multiple levels of oversight, so no one person, or even two or three could actualy launch.
The "Exit an Logoff" is for public computers. So you can purchase your games and play them on multiple computers, so kids with bad internet connections, or computers, can play at there local lan center on what ever computer is availible.
Bandwidth is cheap enough, even getting ripped off you wont pay more than $2 per GB of bandwitch, and making a profit of even $.3 per song at 30MB will be enough to pay for all the bandwidth required even if they were getting ripped off. I'm currently not paying more than about.30 per GB and I'm sure apple gets far better rates with the volume they are purchasing. Sure it may quadruple there bandwidth costs, but the bandwidth costs are only a very small fraction of the overall costs, and easily absorbed.
For those of you who missed it, DHMO is aka "water". And yes I did shamelessly steal this from the first link you find when you search for the "petition to ban water" from google, but that site redirects to playboy.com so I though it best.
Slashdot Mirror
When scientist start to develop there own "beliefs" that must be believed in order to be an accepted in to the community, they have crossed the line in to what we would call a "religion" and excomunication, as the word is used today, is exactly what shunning those who don't ascribe to the accepted beliefs is.
Did Jesus exist? Who the fuck knows. It was 2000 years ago. He could have been a she, she could have been a thief who raped hordes of people.
No, Jesus realy did exist, there aren't any credible historians who would tell you otherwise, it's as much if not more historical fact as just about any major figure in history.
And second, because I'm already responding, no one is saying your only a good person if you go to church, etc (well at least not any one who has a clue about the gospel).
SCO is far too small to get much notice. Sure losing $30 Million is bad, but compared to the $30 Billion that Frank Dunn managed to lose, its a rounding error, and few of the "big boys" take much notice.
The requirement for the landing gear to be manualy lower the landing gear was pushed for by the astronauts, but not for job security. Opening the landing gear at the wrong time results in dead astronauts, and at the time, they weren't up to trusting a computer with that job. Astronauts have pleanty of job security, as there is still no replacement for the jobs they do while in space, and likely won't be for quite some time.
Because of the nature of God is perfection and purity. He designed us to live in perfect intimacy with him, a connection that was broken when man first sinned. God cannont remain in the intimate relationship he wants when we are tainted. The rejection from heaven would be better described of as a seperation from him. That is the real crux of hell, the eternal seperation from God. Since we are sinnful we require atonement for our sins before we can be made pure and once again have that relationship with him. Since he is perfect in everything, he is also perfect as a judge. If a judge let a murder off the hook because he loved him and felt he deserved a second chance we would be furious. Like wise with God, letting us off the hook would be an imperfect thing to do, something he can not do. It's like parents with children, you love your children, but this doesn't let them off the hook when they screw up, it may hurt to give them the punishment they deserve, but it is the right thing to do. This is where Jesus comes in, in essence, he purchased our dept, and became the rightful lord of all humanity. Thus by allowing Jesus as the lord of our lives we are made pure before God by the virtue of Jesus's purity.
The line is drawn at allowing you to reject him, and thus suffer the consequences, or not to. If you can't reject him, you can't love him, and you realy have not free will at all. It is mans choice to reject God and rebel against him with sin that causes the problems, so there is no middle ground that would allow any important free will with out us being puppets.
Yeah, you would slaughter the Tiwanese army in a land battle, but theres all that water in between, and your navy doesn't stand a chance against the US 7th fleet. Still either way, the US doesn't want war, and that is the main reason Taiwan doesn't declare independance.
What do you have to suggest that God is guiding your responce? The writers of the new testement were men who God clearly used through out there lives. Many of them were from the 12 desiples who spent the lasts of Jesus's days with him. There works line up, they pass all the tests.
There is a difference between limiting you childs free will, and forced control. Brainwashing isn't benificial to either the parent of the child. Why do you let your child out into the world, where they can find all the things that can destry them? Why give them the chance to turn away from you, why not keep them in the house until your dead so they will always be with you? Would it mean a thing that your child loves you if they had no choice? Even though I don't realy like the movie, AI is an exelent movie about this. The question does have an answer, it's because with out free will there can be no love, and he is little more than a puppet master.
There is only one cleaning of the slate, in the flood. God gave you choice, sure he knew where it would end up, he knew many people whould choose to reject him, but whould you realy be better off with no choice in the matter, whould our love for him mean anything then? Yes God is forgives, and loves, but he also judges, thats what the people of Sodom forgot.
You right, the bible doesn't tell alot of things that are unnessesary. The whole idea that God is going to unfairly punish those have never heard of him depends on you believing that he is mean and vindictive. But it's also the evidence that you used to show that God is mean and vindictive, the preposition is the conclusion, a major logical falicy. It is an unanswered question as to how exactly he will deal with those people, but looking through the evidence that is availible from what we do know about God, he is loving, caring and fair.
God is also fair and just.
Ok, your first post made some sense, as to what you were saying, but this one I'm not so sure what you are saying.
First off, none of the leaders of the crusades or all the "holy wars" in the middle and dark ages were led by men who actualy believed they were following the word of God. They were polititians who were using the religion do fit there purposes, and there dreams. Go read the bible, we are called to check and double check any thing that is a supposed "word from God" against the bible, and if it doesn't match, it's not from God. No message saying "go kill inocent people in my name" would ever pass this simple test. Christianity definately requires faith, but it isn't a blind faith, the bible we have today is identical to what it was when it was writen, and this can be proven through archaeological finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls (in the original language, obviously the translations were translated from this). The bible is the most incredible book ever, though it was writen by the hands of many different men, over the course of thousands of years, you can't find a single contradiction, or flaw, thats a feat that no other book is even close to.
The problem I have with religion is that it encourages the wrong attitude. People ought to follow the Golden Rule because they respect their fellow man, not because "God will strike you down if you sin!" or they're guilt-tripped into doing it to "Honor Jesus becauses he died for your sins." I've seen way too many people who feel like they depend on God's help to make it through the day, and that they are worthless and incapable of accomplishing anything on their own. I've seen way too many people who feel "dirty" or "evil" or "sinful" for doing perfectly normal, innocuous things, just because their preacher told them it was bad. Even worse, I've seen way too many people who think they require someone else to preach to them, because "otherwise, how could I be a moral person?"
As a christian I agree that anyone who is being moral because of a fear that God will strike you down, or do to guilt is doing it for the wrong reasons, and if you read the bible you will find that these are not the reasons why christians should do good. We should be moral because of our love for God and our desire to be more like Jesus. The bible says that feelings of Guilt for sins we have been forgiven are not from God, and we should pray against those feelings. That and no one requires some one else to preach for them, thats why we have the bible, so we can read for ourselves, there are a great deal of "christians" who are "christians" because they go to church every sunday. That doesn't make a person a christian, and no where in the bible will you ever find any passage saying that church attendance was required. The reason christians go to church together is for fellowship, no to let someone else do our thinking or tell us how to live, I dont think I have ever gone to a church where the pastor hasn't said, "Don't take the things I say for granted, read the passages your self, and pray about it." So please, don't take for granted the popular views of chrisians as truth. If you want to see what christianity is about your going to have to look a little deaper.If you are realy looking for some answers, and are willing to put some effort into finding the answers, I would suggest "More than a Carpenter" (sorry for the spelling if wrong) and "Evidence that Demands a Verdict" both by Josh McDowell.
The question of what happens to people who have never heard the gospel is still a rather large question in the church, and will be until the end. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that God is by nature ultimately fair. As you look through the bible it is clear that what is in the heart is what saves people or condems them. The bible says that God has placed the basic knowlegde of a need for him on the hearts of every human. So I would say it makes most sense that God will judge the heart of those who haven't heard, but that isn't something I can say with any convition since there is little scriptural evidence one way or another. The question realy comes back to the person who asked it, if you want to have a rock to through at God, that is what you will use it for, but if you looking for who God realy is, you will find that in all his doings he is fair and loving, and wishes salvation upon all of mankind.
Paul is clear on what is his opinion, what is a culturaly dependent, and what is gosple, ie word of God. The opinion should be looked at as words of wisdom, and always in the context of his life and the place he was at. The culturaly dependant things are usualy aplications of the God's word in complicated situations, and might be analagous to case studies. We can draw solid conclusions from these teachings. And obviously those that were meant as gosple should be taken as the word of God. As to how the early church decided what was to be cut and what would be included, God guided there desisions in the process, just as he guided the writers of the books.
Ok, done. I've read every book in the bible (or the major sections of every book, I haven't read psalms, proverbs, deuteronomy, etc continualy all the way through, though over the years I'm very confident that I have at one time or another goten every part of them). I've also gone one step further and checked out a number of bible sceptic sites that go through the bible and show all these supposed problems, and I haven't yet come across a single contradiction, hypocritical passage, or anything that didn't fit. So if you would be so kind as to show some examples it would go alot further than the vague references with nothing to back them.
He didn't sit back and do nothing, he paid the full price for everything you did wrong so you could be saved. If you choose to reject him and his salvation, it's not Gods fault, it's yours. He gave you free will so you could choose to love him or not, and you have used that free will to reject him.
Its a little thing called freedom, Adam and Eve were sinless, but they had the freedom to do as they pleased, even if it included rejecting Gods word. Sure he could set us free, by forcing it upon us, but what good would it be for us or him if we were just mindless robots. There would be nothing special about love if were forced, in fact thats what makes it love, the fact that it isn't forced, it is a choice. As for the whole heaven argument, no, sin will be completely gone, there will be no concept of sin. This doesn't take away our freedom, we already made our choices, that time is done.
With our ICBM force, it is the warhead themselves that require the proper codes to detonate the weapon, and since there is a great deal of precision required in detonating a nuke, there realy is no way around it. So even if there was a way to bypass the security, and launch, it be a dud. True, it would likely start a real war, but that is beyond the scope of the bombs security. Also, as the grandparent stated, the security, for the ICMB's is just as much human as it is technical, with multiple levels of oversight, so no one person, or even two or three could actualy launch.
The "Exit an Logoff" is for public computers. So you can purchase your games and play them on multiple computers, so kids with bad internet connections, or computers, can play at there local lan center on what ever computer is availible.
Bandwidth is cheap enough, even getting ripped off you wont pay more than $2 per GB of bandwitch, and making a profit of even $.3 per song at 30MB will be enough to pay for all the bandwidth required even if they were getting ripped off. I'm currently not paying more than about .30 per GB and I'm sure apple gets far better rates with the volume they are purchasing. Sure it may quadruple there bandwidth costs, but the bandwidth costs are only a very small fraction of the overall costs, and easily absorbed.
For those of you who missed it, DHMO is aka "water". And yes I did shamelessly steal this from the first link you find when you search for the "petition to ban water" from google, but that site redirects to playboy.com so I though it best.