Cult of Dusty

[Rose]

Funny, but true...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=swdzmkOmAa8

[CWH]

Funny, but true...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=swdzmkOmAa8

Not all preachers are con men. Many non-preachers and non-Christians are also con-men. I have friends who gave up their high paying jobs such as engineers, managers, doctors, nurses to become preachers earning a meagre salary compare to what they were getting in their previous jobs. It's a calling, it's a sacrifice. They are doing an honest job and getting an honest salary. Please be fair and consider their sacrifices when you gave that statement that preachers are con-men. Many Jesus apostles were also earning good salary.... tax collectors, fishermen and yet they gave up everything they had to follow Jesus. They could have also become billionaires by raising the dead, casting out demons and curing the sick yet they were not interested in earthly riches but heavenly rewards. In the end many were martyred. Their examples and sacrifices are admirable. Would we do the same for Jesus?

Matthew 19:27Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?

28And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

29And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

30But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.


May God Bless our lives. :pray:

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Not all preachers are con men. Many non-preachers and non-Christians are also con-men. I have friends who gave up their high paying jobs such as engineers, managers, doctors, nurses to become preachers earning a meagre salary compare to what they were getting in their previous jobs. It's a calling, it's a sacrifice. They are doing an honest job and getting an honest salary. Please be fair and consider their sacrifices when you gave that statement that preachers are con-men. Many Jesus apostles were also earning good salary.... tax collectors, fishermen and yet they gave up everything they had to follow Jesus. They could have also become billionaires by raising the dead, casting out demons and curing the sick yet they were not interested in earthly riches but heavenly rewards. In the end many were martyred. Their examples and sacrifices are admirable. Would we do the same for Jesus?

Matthew 19:27Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?

28And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

29And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

30But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.


May God Bless our lives. :pray:
Who said that "all" preachers were con-men?
Who said that there were no non-Christian con-men?
Who said that there were no people who gave up high paying jobs to be preachers?

Your response would be more interesting if it dealt with what the video actually says.

Have a great day! :yo:

[Timmy]

Hi all!:yo:
i'm bak.
.......................:winking0071:

Hello Richard and Rose!
You remain in these prayers, and when i think of your initials together: R&R, well you get it...Washington BTW is my favorite state.

Dusty's attitude is kix, and this BWF premere video makes me want to watch them all. At least the guys got smultz; however, his defensiveness betrays his own confidence and that claim to atheism.

How many people who truly believe something does not exist say anything about it at all, or go so far as to make a video about it?
(Who does he think he can save anyway?)

Still, this is the stuff that makes for G_d being able to change hearts...his and/or others.:congrats:

There is good reason Yeshua said through His revelation to Apostle/Prophet John, " I desire that you were hot or cold, but because you are lukewarm, i will vomit you out of my mouth." (see chapt. 3)

Though his opinions are more than likely based on face-value experiences, he shows whatszup' with the aDIMance of a whole lot of manimals. It is the guilt of both defamers and faith claimers, no matter what seid of the fence these sheeple roam.

The Bible is a goldmine and it takes a whole lotta' deep digging to hit the main vein. Then again, what is of any lasting import that comes easy?
The Bible?
Boring?
Maybe because all he has found is a smidgeon or two of gold dust on the surface.
Has Dusty's own indolence pushed him to mock and scoff off scripture...oir is it just fear?
(He will--if not now, at death--see who laughs last, even as He now laughs (Ps. 37.13))

A Yiddish quote could be stated here, like "money has no eyes, and that is why it ends up in the wrong pockets" yet detailing this in relation to his comments on such would only serve to detract from the issues addressed and exhibited through his attitude: personal biase based on feelings of fear with minimal fact to support these ideations from those feelings.

People love dirty laundry especially when it comes to those who claim Thee Name yet are found out...which is greatly appreciated here more than any person reading this can even imagine. It clears the playing field. So, i'm cheering him on for bringing this con issue to the forefront. :sCo_hmmthink:

Actually, on this train of thought, countless atheists have been met who are more civil than those who claim to be xians; but, in their critique of others, it's asked, "Just because one lays a claim to 'know' Yah, does Yah really 'know' them?"

What really tickles though?.. are all these "so-called-atheists", who can be so civil about so many things, yet when it comes to that three lettered word
--(and this has always (so far) been proven to be in revolt against only the One True G_d of the Bible: who creates and destroys both good and evil (as we concieve of it here on earth)--
whom "they claim" not to believe that He even exists, yet my how red faced and all bent out of shape they become when experessing the very issue of G_d's influence in personal affairs.

Why does someone who believes that SOMETHING does not exist get so adamant, rialed up, and defiant, if not downright nasty about something "they say" is fiat nox?
Whose lying anyway?
Their very actions betraying their own so-called beliefs,
the question is always asked, "Which one is it? Do you believe in G_d or not?"...and why out of all the multiple millions of books in the world would you read the Bible (more than once) since you do not believe it?

It is not believed here that this distain is truly for God so much as current Western exoteric post-modern existential misunderstandings promoted about G_d and what advocates call G_d's ways. These false notions are then promoted as being godly and xian, when more often than not, what they say is actually done in the name of Mammon and a form of humanism they call christianity. The false representations have carried the result of grouping friendship with God in with all the claptrap of all the religious muckety muck muck.

FOOLS!


Dusty only gives one factual no-detailed example in 5 minutes: a "Ted Haggard," apparently one of many spin-doctors whom there is no use for here and cannot be bothered to examine, though some other sheeple, like Dusty and his opposers might just do.

G_d did everything for his own plan and purpose to glorify Himself: Q.E.D.
(Go with the flow of His plan or perish. How much simpler can it be put?)

Can it be told you how many countless "hell no--heaven yes" sermons have been heard here through the y-eraz, yet reading the Bible (from originating manuscripts), there is not whatsoever any promise of going to heaven at all.

Currently, there is followed here a 26 day plan just reading Genesis to Revelation. Reading it repeatedly may not make it more true and not so clearly understood, but it does give a greater comprehensive overview every time you travel through it.

Marcionian philosophy appear to be root of alot of misunderstandings about what many falsely assume G_d to be...and then these have the audacity to promote Him as Mr. Nice Guy or some old benevolent grandfather like entity.
(Someone needs to get a grip on reality, as if G_d needs pleaders and promoters selling His(?) wares? Is He a beggar or an exhibit at a trade show convention?)

Now is thought about what Samuel Clement once wrote concerning what (xian) religions have become. Though the quote is not on hand, the import is this: what you are being taught by this religions advocates is something that was told to one person handed off to another and then to another and so on and on, changing a bit with each generational transition, until what most believe of G_d and the Bible turns out not to be worth even a brass farthing.
(This is true on both sides of the fence and not just the fault of those pious church goers.)


Dusty is thouroughly agreed with that more often than not a very huge majority of front-men calling themselves preachers and prophets and evangelists and so on are not really G_d's representatives and are actually serving themselves and/or Almighty Dollar...wait and see what happens shortly when this economy--like a snowball having rolled downhill headed for, well...is now melting in hell--vaporizes...and it definitely will do so as prevalent trends of world economies are following exacly the course of past relative historic errors.



i have not given my life up to Yeshua Ha'Maschiach because the cons may be bald-faced hypocritical liars or not.
i remain in Him and He remains in me.
i hear His voice and follow Him, not others.

Talking about what is seen today is not truly relative to what God commands in the Bible, but rather a sorrowful commentary on the fall and decline of humanity as a whole, culture following the trends of the societal religions of and from art onto philosophy onto government onto demise onto repeat.

Twenty first century perspective has made itself irrelevant to scripture and not the other way around. Which came first, the Bible or todays cultures and societies?
Which has stood virtually untainted since inception: the Tanakh (aka: O.T.) or humanity?
Which has stood the test of time: Tanakh or man's manner of re-organizing civilizations over and over again and again only to end in ruin?

Get the picture?


Dusty misconstrues alot.
(Though there are more things, here are two immediately noted issues)

1.) Reading the Bible is not what makes one understand it.
No wonder it is boring to him.

2.) God does not advocate child sacrafice, sex slavery, slavery, genocide, etc.
(These things are only stated in scripture regarding the irreversible human condition, and how God allows these things because of what occured when all humanity transgressed in Adamah. Yeshua came to change our hearts. He did not abolish any systems of government and religion. With "re-gene-ing" (regeneration), comes the change of heart and with it the change in the way people do the things we do.)

Post-modern mentality skirts the bottom line:
Believer or not, will you obey God's Law?


i see right through to the core of Dusty.:sFun_dangling:
HE IS THE ONE WHO FEARS DEATH!
...and claiming to be first a christian, then turned atheist, it is clear that he himself hardly understands much of anything at all about atheism or christianity. He is a parrot of someone else.

i do not believe in the notion of G-d and i do not believe in the Bible. Here there exists a walking talking relationship with El Elyon and there is no question as whether one thing is true or not...much less He Himself. It is having an eternal daddy who leads and guides and shows what is best and what will not be done. There is no question or stupid idiot agonizations over mental affirmations many consider to be belief.
(Sure the Bible helps considerably, but reasoning about it without the instruction of his Spirit is like being sure that Lucky Charms breakfast cereal is actually the picture on the outside of the box, and what is inside the box does not even exist.)

The indolent keep on looking to the spin doctors and cons and any other notions about living life and death. In the end, we all experience the result G_d has vowed of all flesh.




As for me, concerning death, my true love and only hope in G_d's faithfulness hangs on this alone:
". . . see Jesus — made lower than the angels for a short time so that by G_d’s grace He might taste death for everyone — crowned with glory and honor because of His suffering in death. For in bringing many sons to glory, it was entirely appropriate that G_d — all things exist for Him and through Him — should make the source of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the One who seperates onto Himself and those who are seperated onto Him all have one Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying:
"I will proclaim Your name to My brothers;
I will sing hymns to You in the congregation."
Again, "I will trust in Him."
And again, "Here I am with the children G_d gave Me."

Now since the children have flesh and blood in common, Jesus also shared in these, so that through His death He might destroy the one holding the power of death — that is, the devil — and free those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death. For it is clear that He does not reach out to help angels, but to help Abraham’s offspring. Therefore, He had to be like His brothers in every way, so that He could become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to G_d, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tested and has suffered, He is able to help those who are tested." (Heb. 2.9-18)





Sealed onto Him alone
and
persistently digging for more gold,

Timmy

p.s. This vid so amuses, more will be checked out, and remember, atheists have no songs, much less a hymnal.

[CWH]

[QUOTE=RAM;40210]Who said that "all" preachers were con-men?
Who said that there were no non-Christian con-men?
Who said that there were no people who gave up high paying jobs to be preachers?
I just want to make sure that Rose did not mean all Christian preachers are con men and that there are also con men who are non-Christians.


Your response would be more interesting if it dealt with what the video actually says.
I see the video as a fool talking nonsense. Why should I waste my time responding?

Psalms 53:1 The fool says in his heart,
'There is no God.'
They are corrupt, and their ways are vile;
there is no one who does good.


God Bless our days.:pray:

[Richard Amiel McGough]

I just want to make sure that Rose did not mean all Christian preachers are con men and that there are also con men who are non-Christians.

Oh - well no worries there! Everyone (including Rose) knows that there are plenty of con-men in all sorts of fields. But it's important to point out Christian con-men because Christianity is based on the idea of "faith" in things that can't be proven, so Christians are more susceptible to being fooled than folks who have been taught to be skeptical.




I see the video as a fool talking nonsense. Why should I waste my time responding?

Psalms 53:1 The fool says in his heart,
'There is no God.'
They are corrupt, and their ways are vile;
there is no one who does good.


God Bless our days.:pray:
Really? I see him as being quite "outrageous" in his use of language and "plain talk" but I didn't notice anything "foolish." Could you be more specific? What exactly did he say that was not supported by fact?

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Hi all!:yo:
i'm bak.
.......................:winking0071:

Hello Richard and Rose!
You remain in these prayers, and when i think of your initials together: R&R, well you get it...Washington BTW is my favorite state.

Hey there Timmy! Welcome back. It's good to have you here.


Dusty's attitude is kix, and this BWF premere video makes me want to watch them all. At least the guys got smultz; however, his defensiveness betrays his own confidence and that claim to atheism.

How many people who truly believe something does not exist say anything about it at all, or go so far as to make a video about it?
(Who does he think he can save anyway?)

Yeah, he's got some hutzpah, eh? :lol:

I think his outrageous attitude probably alienates a lot of folks and makes it so they can't here what he's saying ... especially his vulgar language. But then again, it's rather like a thunderclap that breaks the spell that institutional religion holds over people. Sometimes, ya gotta call it like it is.



Still, this is the stuff that makes for G_d being able to change hearts...his and/or others.:congrats:

There is good reason Yeshua said through His revelation to Apostle/Prophet John, " I desire that you were hot or cold, but because you are lukewarm, i will vomit you out of my mouth." (see chapt. 3)

Though his opinions are more than likely based on face-value experiences, he shows whatszup' with the aDIMance of a whole lot of manimals. It is the guilt of both defamers and faith claimers, no matter what seid of the fence these sheeple roam.

Yeah, I really like that "hot or cold" attitude. It makes things clear. But I don't know why you think his opinions are "based on face-value experiences" - he claims to have been a Christian for 30 years. I think his sharp "attitude" comes from finding out he'd been a fool for 30 years. That would rile up anyone, wouldn't it?



The Bible is a goldmine and it takes a whole lotta' deep digging to hit the main vein. Then again, what is of any lasting import that comes easy?
The Bible?
Boring?
Maybe because all he has found is a smidgeon or two of gold dust on the surface.
Has Dusty's own indolence pushed him to mock and scoff off scripture...oir is it just fear?
(He will--if not now, at death--see who laughs last, even as He now laughs (Ps. 37.13))

Yes, the Bible can be a "gold mine" - I certainly found it to be such. But then I noticed that it contained a lot of crap that I can't abide, such as the mass murder of thousands of people for the crime of being "Midianites" (aka the in-laws of Moses) and the taking of 32,000 sexy virgins to be distributed amongst the soldiers who slaughtered their moms and dads and brothers and (used) sisters. That's the hardest thing about the Bible. The Light can blind you to the darkness it contains. Now it's a mystery to me ... and that's probably a good thing. I am moving back to my first love, which is the mystical understanding of the Bible. My faith got destroyed by Christian Fundamentalism.



A Yiddish quote could be stated here, like "money has no eyes, and that is why it ends up in the wrong pockets" yet detailing this in relation to his comments on such would only serve to detract from the issues addressed and exhibited through his attitude: personal biase based on feelings of fear with minimal fact to support these ideations from those feelings.

Minimal fact? I heard him base many claims on fact. Do you have an example to support your accusation?



People love dirty laundry especially when it comes to those who claim Thee Name yet are found out...which is greatly appreciated here more than any person reading this can even imagine. It clears the playing field. So, i'm cheering him on for bringing this con issue to the forefront. :sCo_hmmthink:

Sounds good to me! Truth never fears the light. He obviously is expressing some heart-felt convictions.



Actually, on this train of thought, countless atheists have been met who are more civil than those who claim to be xians; but, in their critique of others, it's asked, "Just because one lays a claim to 'know' Yah, does Yah really 'know' them?"

Yah, that's well stated!



What really tickles though?.. are all these "so-called-atheists", who can be so civil about so many things, yet when it comes to that three lettered word
--(and this has always (so far) been proven to be in revolt against only the One True G_d of the Bible: who creates and destroys both good and evil (as we concieve of it here on earth)--
whom "they claim" not to believe that He even exists, yet my how red faced and all bent out of shape they become when experessing the very issue of G_d's influence in personal affairs.

I think their "red face" is triggered by the believers, not the God they claim to believe in.

And just to be clear, there are two definitions of "atheist" -

ATHEIST:


A person who does not have a belief in a god.
A person who denies that there is any god.


Definition #1 is a person who admits that they don't have all knowledge and so does not make the foolish claim that "There is no god" but rather merely states the truth that "I don't believe in any particular god, and don't know if there is a god." This is an "agnostic atheist." Definition #2 is the more strident (and unfounded) assertion that there is no god. Those kinds of atheists are foolish, I do believe.



Why does someone who believes that SOMETHING does not exist get so adamant, rialed up, and defiant, if not downright nasty about something "they say" is fiat nox?
Whose lying anyway?
Their very actions betraying their own so-called beliefs,
the question is always asked, "Which one is it? Do you believe in G_d or not?"...and why out of all the multiple millions of books in the world would you read the Bible (more than once) since you do not believe it?

Like I said, I think they are reacting to the religious humans who often make absurd claims about their god. But if they are "Athiests #2" then they are being foolish, and going beyond what they can really know.



It is not believed here that this distain is truly for God so much as current Western exoteric post-modern existential misunderstandings promoted about G_d and what advocates call G_d's ways. These false notions are then promoted as being godly and xian, when more often than not, what they say is actually done in the name of Mammon and a form of humanism they call christianity. The false representations have carried the result of grouping friendship with God in with all the claptrap of all the religious muckety muck muck.

FOOLS!

:thumb:

Very well stated!

:congrats:



Dusty only gives one factual no-detailed example in 5 minutes: a "Ted Haggard," apparently one of many spin-doctors whom there is no use for here and cannot be bothered to examine, though some other sheeple, like Dusty and his opposers might just do.

G_d did everything for his own plan and purpose to glorify Himself: Q.E.D.
(Go with the flow of His plan or perish. How much simpler can it be put?)

Huh? That's not very clear to me at all ...



Can it be told you how many countless "hell no--heaven yes" sermons have been heard here through the y-eraz, yet reading the Bible (from originating manuscripts), there is not whatsoever any promise of going to heaven at all.

Another excellent point! Most folks don't know that the Bible teaches nothing about "going to heaven" per se. And neither did Paul teach anything about going to hell! Christians have made up a mountain of doctrines not found anywhere in the Bible. Especially when it comes to eschatology. The magical stretchy 2000+ year "gap" between Dan 9:26 & 27. The re-built temple that will be re-desolated by the re-vived Roman empire. The wanna-be world leader called "Antichrist." Etc., etc., etc.



Currently, there is followed here a 26 day plan just reading Genesis to Revelation. Reading it repeatedly may not make it more true and not so clearly understood, but it does give a greater comprehensive overview every time you travel through it.

That was the great benefit I had in writing the Bible Wheel book. I got a very good overview of the whole Bible. And indeed, that's what's so cool about the Bible Wheel - you can see how all the pieces relate in a very simple and compact diagram. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, eh?



Marcionian philosophy appear to be root of alot of misunderstandings about what many falsely assume G_d to be...and then these have the audacity to promote Him as Mr. Nice Guy or some old benevolent grandfather like entity.
(Someone needs to get a grip on reality, as if G_d needs pleaders and promoters selling His(?) wares? Is He a beggar or an exhibit at a trade show convention?)

Well, where did Marcion get his ideas about the OT God? From the OT, no? Can we blame him for being horrified by what he saw?

God certainly doesn't need any pleaders. But who says anyone is pleading for the True God? All I see is people pleading for their interpretation of the Bible.



Now is thought about what Samuel Clement once wrote concerning what (xian) religions have become. Though the quote is not on hand, the import is this: what you are being taught by this religions advocates is something that was told to one person handed off to another and then to another and so on and on, changing a bit with each generational transition, until what most believe of G_d and the Bible turns out not to be worth even a brass farthing.
(This is true on both sides of the fence and not just the fault of those pious church goers.)

I can't help but think that Mark Twain got a thing or two right!



Dusty is thouroughly agreed with that more often than not a very huge majority of front-men calling themselves preachers and prophets and evangelists and so on are not really G_d's representatives and are actually serving themselves and/or Almighty Dollar...wait and see what happens shortly when this economy--like a snowball having rolled downhill headed for, well...is now melting in hell--vaporizes...and it definitely will do so as prevalent trends of world economies are following exacly the course of past relative historic errors.

I think you got that backwards. A bad economy is great for hucksters and con-men. They always target the down and out with promises of miraculous healings. Just look at Benny Hinn. He promises to heal all those sick people and rakes in millions.



i have not given my life up to Yeshua Ha'Maschiach because the cons may be bald-faced hypocritical liars or not.
i remain in Him and He remains in me.
i hear His voice and follow Him, not others.

That's all good. But how do you know it is his voice? How do you distinguish your own imagination from the voice of God?



Talking about what is seen today is not truly relative to what God commands in the Bible, but rather a sorrowful commentary on the fall and decline of humanity as a whole, culture following the trends of the societal religions of and from art onto philosophy onto government onto demise onto repeat.

I think you got that backwards. Humanity is rising and improving greatly! Where did you ever get the idea that humanity was better one or two hundred years ago? Have you forgotten the slaves we abused? Women couldn't even vote! In every way, people have vastly improved over any time in history.



Twenty first century perspective has made itself irrelevant to scripture and not the other way around. Which came first, the Bible or todays cultures and societies?
Which has stood virtually untainted since inception: the Tanakh (aka: O.T.) or humanity?
Which has stood the test of time: Tanakh or man's manner of re-organizing civilizations over and over again and again only to end in ruin?

Get the picture?

I think you got the picture backwards. Scripture has made itself irrelevant to 21st century humanity because it contains a lot of falsehood like the creation story, demon possession, superstitious magic, etc., etc., etc.



Dusty misconstrues alot.
(Though there are more things, here are two immediately noted issues)

1.) Reading the Bible is not what makes one understand it.
No wonder it is boring to him.

2.) God does not advocate child sacrafice, sex slavery, slavery, genocide, etc.
(These things are only stated in scripture regarding the irreversible human condition, and how God allows these things because of what occured when all humanity transgressed in Adamah. Yeshua came to change our hearts. He did not abolish any systems of government and religion. With "re-gene-ing" (regeneration), comes the change of heart and with it the change in the way people do the things we do.)

I think you misconstrued Dusty.

1) He said that the Bible was boring when he was a Christian, but that it is a lot more interesting now as an atheist.

2) Your statement is false. God COMMANDED genocide and the taking of virgins and he regulated (didn't prohibit) slavery, etc.



Post-modern mentality skirts the bottom line:
Believer or not, will you obey God's Law?

So you advocate LAW over GOSPEL?



i see right through to the core of Dusty.:sFun_dangling:
HE IS THE ONE WHO FEARS DEATH!
...and claiming to be first a christian, then turned atheist, it is clear that he himself hardly understands much of anything at all about atheism or christianity. He is a parrot of someone else.

Hummm ... it would be interesting if you could give the evidence that supports your opinion on this one.



i do not believe in the notion of G-d and i do not believe in the Bible. Here there exists a walking talking relationship with El Elyon and there is no question as whether one thing is true or not...much less He Himself. It is having an eternal daddy who leads and guides and shows what is best and what will not be done. There is no question or stupid idiot agonizations over mental affirmations many consider to be belief.
(Sure the Bible helps considerably, but reasoning about it without the instruction of his Spirit is like being sure that Lucky Charms breakfast cereal is actually the picture on the outside of the box, and what is inside the box does not even exist.)

Again, how do you distinguish between your own thoughts, or "higher self" or "subconscious" and what you call El Elyon?

And if you grew up in a Muslim or Hindu country, what do you think your beliefs would be?



As for me, concerning death, my true love and only hope in G_d's faithfulness hangs on this alone:
". . . see Jesus — made lower than the angels for a short time so that by G_d’s grace He might taste death for everyone — crowned with glory and honor because of His suffering in death. For in bringing many sons to glory, it was entirely appropriate that G_d — all things exist for Him and through Him — should make the source of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the One who seperates onto Himself and those who are seperated onto Him all have one Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying:
"I will proclaim Your name to My brothers;
I will sing hymns to You in the congregation."
Again, "I will trust in Him."
And again, "Here I am with the children G_d gave Me."

That's all good. I have no problem with personal devotion. But you seem to be going beyond "personal devotion" to a worldview defined by the Bible so that your religion is a form of "Christianity" and you are shown to be a Bible believer, contrary to your assertion that you do not believe in the Bible but only "G-d."




Sealed onto Him alone
and
persistently digging for more gold,

Timmy

That's great Timmy! I'm glad you came by to share some of the gold you have found.



p.s. This vid so amuses, more will be checked out, and remember, atheists have no songs, much less a hymnal.
Ha! That's so true. I watched that linked video. It was pretty funny.

[Ps 27:1]

I forced myself to watch the whole video, but it only saddened me. I would guess that he never consumated his marriage to Jesus and thus the boredom, bitterness, and mocking. A couch potato will never know or understand what its like to run 50 - 100 miles per week and crave it, unless they have experienced it. And I know it's real because I have been at both ends of the spectrum. Even recreational runners may never experience the intense joys (for lack of better word at the moment) running has to offer because they never push through the wall(s).

[Timmy]

Hi Richard,

Sorry for the inconsistencies. Dustbin's thunder was a bit unsettling...in concern for him, not so much for the way he expressed it. He works with the capacity he posesses to make a form of informed decisions.
(We have to believe in freewill. We have no choice. He probably just wants to be different just like everyone else.)


You have raised more Q's than answers, and being pressed for time, i want to just cut this to the quick if at all possible.

From your quote of yours truly and comments, it seems the main questions tie into these issues. So, it will be asked so that a more appropriate response from these quarters can be given somewhere in the near future. Hopefully a complete response can then be forthcoming.


Here's that portions of which is mostly questioned:





Originally Posted by Timmy

Dusty misconstrues alot.
(Though there are more things, here are two immediately noted issues)

1.) Reading the Bible is not what makes one understand it.
No wonder it is boring to him.

2.) God does not advocate child sacrafice, sex slavery, slavery, genocide, etc.
(These things are only stated in scripture regarding the irreversible human condition, and how God allows these things because of what occured when all humanity transgressed in Adamah. Yeshua came to change our hearts. He did not abolish any systems of government and religion. With "re-gene-ing" (regeneration), comes the change of heart and with it the change in the way people do the things we do.)

...and then here is what you said Rich:
I think you misconstrued Dusty.

1) He said that the Bible was boring when he was a Christian, but that it is a lot more interesting now as an atheist.

2) Your statement is false. God COMMANDED genocide and the taking of virgins and he regulated (didn't prohibit) slavery, etc.


Timmy sez:
i think you might think i misconstrue dusty alot more than i really do. i think i am more guilty of misconstruing G_d's will and ways.

on 1) What does he mean that he "was" a xian? He may have followed a certain regimen that he thought made him a xian, but it doesn't sound at all--based on watching all of the cult ov dustbin's videos--like he ever was a christian. Yeshua probably never had a deep abiding relationship with him.

on 2) TOUCHE'!!!:fencing:

Yes the word advocate is false, however the thought and intent explained behind it, can you really say that all that is false, and if so, how so?...doesn't the "thunder" word grab your attention to read further? (It certainly did me upon rereading the blasted rant after writing it.)... but if that word "advocate" is corrected by admitance of error, and saying something like: "what i meant to say was "take-pleasure-in", does that statement or what follows it still remain false?
(You are oh so right: i deserved that and that sentence deserves an edit, if for nothing else, to make things quite a bit more palatable than dustbin's 40+% foul mouthed vocabulary.)

Here is the issue: God is overly abundant in loving kindness and extremely gracious. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, yet the person who is too proud to thank God or glorify Him is given up to their own demise.
Why would God do anything for a person who choses to defy Him and rebel?
What obligation does God, who gives all things existence, owe at all to anything at all?

(When do we do this: give pure mercy? Maybe possibly at times for a family member or two, but how far does our mercy stretch?)
Yeshua says, "Blessd are the merciful for they shall recieve mercy...for if you do not forgive, God will not forgive you."

The world was created to operate a certain way, and no matter how one attempts to skirt the issue of their own attitude about God, whether by blaming Him for the problems men themselves have created for themselves or going on some fact finding mission to somehow think they have proven God wrong, our own inconsistencies and failing stare us in the face as proof positive that maybe there is not something wrong with God at all, but we ourselves are extremely flawed...and perhaps this very nature of taintedness affects us to look at things from a twisted stance where our own perspective(s) is/are screwed up?

If you will, please re-read the first sentence with "take-pleasure-in" replacing "advocate", and then review the short paragraph following it.




AND THEN THERE IS THIS:

Originally Posted by Timmy

Post-modern mentality skirts the bottom line:
Believer or not, will you obey God's Law?



Kind sir, you responded on this wise to the above:
So you advocate LAW over GOSPEL?

What in the world do you think the gospel is? (THAT IS THE BIGGEST QUESTION OUT OF EVERYTHING)

Without the LAW what need is there for the GOSPEL?



Hardly infallible,
Timmy


...and just an extrapolated tidbit of thought if you will consider this through the wait time until reconvening to respond appropriately:

"Interpretation is the revenge of intellect upon art. even more, it is the revenge of the intellect upon the wolrd. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world--in order to set up a shadow world of meaning."
~Susan Sontag

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Hi Richard,

Sorry for the inconsistencies. Dustbin's thunder was a bit unsettling...in concern for him, not so much for the way he expressed it. He works with the capacity he posesses to make a form of informed decisions.
(We have to believe in freewill. We have no choice. He probably just wants to be different just like everyone else.)

No problem Timmy, you didn't seem too "inconsistent" to me.

And yes, Dusty's thunder was a bit "loud' and that can be distracting. And I don't agree with his atheism - I think that is as foolish as what he is opposing. There are two kinds of atheism, one is perfectly logical (a person who does not have a belief in any particular god) while the other goes beyond reason (the assertion that there is no god).

I like your funny "we have no choice but to believe in freewill." :lol:

I think we both do and don't have "freewill" - we do in the sense that we have choice, and we don't in the sense that the choice itself is determined by many things other than our own selves. But whatever the truth, the concept of freewill is just another philosophical rat's nest of tangled words. The problem is probably generated by the intrinsic limitations of our language.



You have raised more Q's than answers, and being pressed for time, i want to just cut this to the quick if at all possible.

From your quote of yours truly and comments, it seems the main questions tie into these issues. So, it will be asked so that a more appropriate response from these quarters can be given somewhere in the near future. Hopefully a complete response can then be forthcoming.

You're doing fine, my friend.



Here's that portions of which is mostly questioned:

Originally Posted by Timmy

Dusty misconstrues alot.
(Though there are more things, here are two immediately noted issues)

1.) Reading the Bible is not what makes one understand it.
No wonder it is boring to him.

2.) God does not advocate child sacrafice, sex slavery, slavery, genocide, etc.
(These things are only stated in scripture regarding the irreversible human condition, and how God allows these things because of what occured when all humanity transgressed in Adamah. Yeshua came to change our hearts. He did not abolish any systems of government and religion. With "re-gene-ing" (regeneration), comes the change of heart and with it the change in the way people do the things we do.)

...and then here is what you said Rich:
I think you misconstrued Dusty.

1) He said that the Bible was boring when he was a Christian, but that it is a lot more interesting now as an atheist.

2) Your statement is false. God COMMANDED genocide and the taking of virgins and he regulated (didn't prohibit) slavery, etc.


Timmy sez:
i think you might think i misconstrue dusty alot more than i really do. i think i am more guilty of misconstruing G_d's will and ways.

on 1) What does he mean that he "was" a xian? He may have followed a certain regimen that he thought made him a xian, but it doesn't sound at all--based on watching all of the cult ov dustbin's videos--like he ever was a christian. Yeshua probably never had a deep abiding relationship with him.

Well Timmy, that is what Christians usually say when a Christian leaves the faith. It seems like the "No True Scotsman" fallacy (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_Scotsman) to me. There is absolutely no objective test to tell who does or does not have a "deep abiding relationship" with Christ so it's a meaningless criterion.



on 2) TOUCHE'!!!:fencing:

Yes the word advocate is false, however the thought and intent explained behind it, can you really say that all that is false, and if so, how so?...doesn't the "thunder" word grab your attention to read further? (It certainly did me upon rereading the blasted rant after writing it.)... but if that word "advocate" is corrected by admitance of error, and saying something like: "what i meant to say was "take-pleasure-in", does that statement or what follows it still remain false?
(You are oh so right: i deserved that and that sentence deserves an edit, if for nothing else, to make things quite a bit more palatable than dustbin's 40+% foul mouthed vocabulary.)

Here is the issue: God is overly abundant in loving kindness and extremely gracious. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, yet the person who is too proud to thank God or glorify Him is given up to their own demise.
Why would God do anything for a person who choses to defy Him and rebel?
What obligation does God, who gives all things existence, owe at all to anything at all?

I was not really hanging up on the word "advocate." Your assertion that "God is overly abundant in loving kindness and extremely gracious" does not cohere with the other things the Bible teaches about God. There is no "loving kindness" in ordering genocide or the taking of 32,000 virgins to be distributed amongst the soldiers. And neither is there any mercy in the concept of eternal damnation. This is the problem of the Bible - it does not present a coherent picture of God. Yes, it says many wonderful things (God is love, God is light, his mercy endures forever) but then it directly contradicts that with things that are horrible.

You ask " Why would God do anything for a person who choses to defy Him and rebel?" ~ Your question is based on a faulty view of God as "overlord" who dominates everyone and demands "obedience." That is a Dominator Model which is the source of all the pain and bloodshed in the history of the world. It is a patriarchal view of reality that is totally erroneous in my estimation. Why would you think that God is like a human dictator giving commands and ordering eternal death for those who refuse to submit? I know that the Bible presents that view, but why do you believe it? It is the view of God in the form of a Bronze-age tribal warrior god of ignorant people.

You ask "What obligation does God, who gives all things existence, owe at all to anything at all?" ~ First, love obligates God. Second, God is responsible for everything he created. Third, why would you entertain such a question? It's like asking "Why would a Father owe anything at all to his child?"



(When do we do this: give pure mercy? Maybe possibly at times for a family member or two, but how far does our mercy stretch?)
Yeshua says, "Blessd are the merciful for they shall recieve mercy...for if you do not forgive, God will not forgive you."

I give pure mercy all the time to people I meet on the street, to friends and family members, and even to my pets. Why don't you? And more importantly, why doesn't God? Think about it! He is omnipotent and yet he doesn't even bother, as a general rule, to answer prayers. We are all on our own down here when it comes to the issues of life. God was perfectly happy to let people beg and pray and cry and plead to be healed from simple bacterial infections, but God let them suffer and die no matter how much the cried to him. Then dirty rotten atheist scientists discovered penicillin and so sinful humans saved millions of lives that God was perfectly willing to let die. Obviously, if God is real, he does not want us to believe in him or trust him to take care of us in this life. He has done everything - meaning nothing - to ensure that no one with any intelligence would believe in him or the promises in the Bible that say we should trust him to take care of us. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that God never answers prayers. I don't have that kind of knowledge. But I do know that God does not, as a general rule, answer prayers, and that means, by definition, that God is unreliable, i.e. UNTRUSTWORTHY. Nobody can trust God for anything real that can be measured or "counted upon."



The world was created to operate a certain way, and no matter how one attempts to skirt the issue of their own attitude about God, whether by blaming Him for the problems men themselves have created for themselves or going on some fact finding mission to somehow think they have proven God wrong, our own inconsistencies and failing stare us in the face as proof positive that maybe there is not something wrong with God at all, but we ourselves are extremely flawed...and perhaps this very nature of taintedness affects us to look at things from a twisted stance where our own perspective(s) is/are screwed up?

Your suggestion that the problem lies in our "tainted nature" is self-defeating because then we can't know anything.

If you go that way, why not see that Christianity is a product of our tainted nature and should not be believed? That actually seems much closer to the mark, because the genocide and kidnapping of virgins sounds a lot more like "tainted humanity" that the true God.



If you will, please re-read the first sentence with "take-pleasure-in" replacing "advocate", and then review the short paragraph following it.

That doesn't really help because now we have God doing many things over and over again that he "doesn't take pleasure in." This exacerbates the problem because it emphasizes the fact that God was absolutely free to set up any kind of creation he wanted to, yet he chose to create a world dominated by murder, pain, suffering and sin. Why is God so enamored by VIOLENCE? It seems to be his solution to everything. Bad Moabites? KILL THEM ALL! Bad people in Sodom? KILL THEM ALL. Saul mistreated some Gibeonites? MAKE ISRAEL SUFFER A THREE YEAR FAMINE UNDER KING DAVID, and then COMMAND THE INNOCENT SONS OF SAUL BE MURDERED! KILL! KILL! KILL!



AND THEN THERE IS THIS:

Originally Posted by Timmy

Post-modern mentality skirts the bottom line:
Believer or not, will you obey God's Law?



Kind sir, you responded on this wise to the above:
So you advocate LAW over GOSPEL?

What in the world do you think the gospel is? (THAT IS THE BIGGEST QUESTION OUT OF EVERYTHING)

Without the LAW what need is there for the GOSPEL?

The fact that there would be no Gospel without Law does not mean that the Gospel IS Law!





Hardly infallible,
Timmy


...and just an extrapolated tidbit of thought if you will consider this through the wait time until reconvening to respond appropriately:

"Interpretation is the revenge of intellect upon art. even more, it is the revenge of the intellect upon the wolrd. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world--in order to set up a shadow world of meaning."
~Susan Sontag
Great quote from Sontag. Thanks! :thumb:

Your fellow uninfallible friend,

Richard

[Richard Amiel McGough]

I forced myself to watch the whole video, but it only saddened me. I would guess that he never consumated his marriage to Jesus and thus the boredom, bitterness, and mocking. A couch potato will never know or understand what its like to run 50 - 100 miles per week and crave it, unless they have experienced it. And I know it's real because I have been at both ends of the spectrum. Even recreational runners may never experience the intense joys (for lack of better word at the moment) running has to offer because they never push through the wall(s).
Hey there Steve,

As I mentioned to Timmy, that sounds like the "No True Scotsman" fallacy (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_Scotsman) to me. Is there any way to know if anyone has ever "consummated his marriage to Jesus?" No? Then it is a meaningless criterion.

Many folks, even professional apologists like Hank Hanegraaff (the Bible Answer Man) - assert that anyone who quits the faith was never a "true" Christian because by definition, true Christians can't lose their faith. I don't find that line of reasoning very convincing.

All the best,

Richard

[Ps 27:1]

Hey there Steve,

As I mentioned to Timmy, that sounds like the "No True Scotsman" fallacy to me. Is there any way to know if anyone has ever "consummated his marriage to Jesus?" No? Then it is a meaningless criterion.

Hence my usage of "guess". Back to my analogy of runners. If a person told me that they run 30, 40, 50 or more miles a week but have never experienced a runner's high and even worse, that they hate the whole experience, I would seriously doubt their honesty and/ or sanity.


Many folks, even professional apologists like Hank Hanegraaff (the Bible Answer Man) - assert that anyone who quits the faith was never a "true" Christian because by definition, true Christians can't lose their faith. I don't find that line of reasoning very convincing.

I quit that debate years ago. It's a no win situation. Let each person be convinced in their own mind.

Steve

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Hey there Steve,

As I mentioned to Timmy, that sounds like the "No True Scotsman" fallacy to me. Is there any way to know if anyone has ever "consummated his marriage to Jesus?" No? Then it is a meaningless criterion.

Hence my usage of "guess". Back to my analogy of runners. If a person told me that they run 30, 40, 50 or more miles a week but have never experienced a runner's high and even worse, that they hate the whole experience, I would seriously doubt their honesty and/ or sanity.

Many folks, even professional apologists like Hank Hanegraaff (the Bible Answer Man) - assert that anyone who quits the faith was never a "true" Christian because by definition, true Christians can't lose their faith. I don't find that line of reasoning very convincing.

I quit that debate years ago. It's a no win situation. Let each person be convinced in their own mind.
Hey there Steve,

I hope you don't think I'm trying to debate these points. I was just sharing my point of view. I agree that anybody lacking any "Christian highs" after years of "being a Christian" probably missed the boat, but then again, we all know we can't make such judgments so your response, that he had not "consummated his marriage to Jesus," is probably neither here nor there.

Myself, I had continuous years of "Christian highs" in the 90s. I thought it would never end. I plan on writing up the reasons I became a Christian. Many of the reasons still move me a lot, others not so much. One relates to Psalm 27 (your forum name). I was 19 and pretty messed up. An evangelist named John began hounding me and took me to a "Praise the Lord" festival in Vancouver Wa. It's an interesting side-note that arch-charlatan fake-ex-satanist Mike Warnke entertained me at that event. In any case, after a solid day of hanging out with thousands of charismatic Christians singing and praying and laughing and trying to convince me of Christ, I finally went and sat by myself with an NASB Bible that John had given me. I was upset because I felt that God was ignoring me while he was "talking" to everyone else (or so they said, anyway). I wasn't thinking I was "praying" because I was actually complaining "Why don't you talk to me, God?". I suddenly felt as if I was told "READ PSALM 27." I don't recall hearing a voice - it was more like the command was just inserted in my head. So I opened the Bible and found Psalm 27. I liked the words but they didn't mean much to me until I came to verse 10: "For my father and my mother have forsaken me, But the LORD will take me up." The thing is, my mom and dad divorced when I was a baby, and I went to live with my dad, my two sisters, and his mother. That lasted till I was about 3 and dad remarried. They divorced when I was ten. Then dad killed himself when I was 14. So sitting there complaining to God and I get Psalm 27. It pierced my heart. I believed that God had spoken to me. That was the first time I really "believed" in Jesus.

I think that experience was "valid" in the sense that I was given knowledge from a "higher source" but I don't feel it means Christianity is true because of all the problems with that religion.

Richard

[Ps 27:1]

Hi Richard.

Hey there Steve,

I hope you don't think I'm trying to debate these points.

No, I wasn't. I appreciate you sharing what you did about your past. It must have been hard. I had a blessed chidlhood with 2 very loving parents. My mother is still alive at 86. I knew Ps 27:1 was important to you from the "about you" page of the BW site. The number 271 is central to what happened to me last year, but the words are important, too. I don't want to hijack this thread, so I'll continue in the one I started.

be blessed,
Steve

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Hi Richard.


No, I wasn't. I appreciate you sharing what you did about your past. It must have been hard. I had a blessed chidlhood with 2 very loving parents. My mother is still alive at 86. I knew Ps 27:1 was important to you from the "about you" page of the BW site. The number 271 is central to what happened to me last year, but the words are important, too. I don't want to hijack this thread, so I'll continue in the one I started.

be blessed,
Steve
Ah, hijack all you want! Or start another. We're pretty laid back around here.

Yes, it was hard. But that made the Psalm 27 thing all the more meaningful. It really knocked my socks off.

[Ps 27:1]

Ah, hijack all you want! Or start another. We're pretty laid back around here.

Yes, it was hard. But that made the Psalm 27 thing all the more meaningful. It really knocked my socks off.

Thanks, I'm all for laid back.:lol: One of the things I like about your forum.

Steve

[Timmy]

It's me again:
Tim Tmmy Tim Tim:sCh_supersmilie:

How ya' doing RAM?:sBo_reflection2:

This text was written over the course of the past few days as time afforded.
It comes w/o edit, and it's hoped that at least there be no gaps.
It is sent incomplete.





Hi Richard,

Sorry for the inconsistencies. Dustbin's thunder was a bit unsettling...in concern for him, not so much for the way he expressed it. He works with the capacity he posesses to make a form of informed decisions.
(We have to believe in freewill. We have no choice. He probably just wants to be different just like everyone else.)

No problem Timmy, you didn't seem too "inconsistent" to me.

And yes, Dusty's thunder was a bit "loud' and that can be distracting. And I don't agree with his atheism - I think that is as foolish as what he is opposing. There are two kinds of atheism, one is perfectly logical (a person who does not have a belief in any particular god) while the other goes beyond reason (the assertion that there is no god).

I like your funny "we have no choice but to believe in freewill."

I think we both do and don't have "freewill" - we do in the sense that we have choice, and we don't in the sense that the choice itself is determined by many things other than our own selves. But whatever the truth, the concept of freewill is just another philosophical rat's nest of tangled words. The problem is probably generated by the intrinsic limitations of our language.


Mayhaps i note far more inconsistencies when in critical consistent reflection i attempt to tear apart everything stated. In deconstructionalisation, ractice makes perfect and perfect practice makes everything of little merit. (i do this often because textual criticism is hard to come by...for me at least. You are one of few exceptional folks to somewhat negate this rule of thumb and it is greatly appreciated.:thumb:

i often come off as autoritarian to many, though extremely friendly. Many just don't know what to think of Timmy. When on all fours rubbing my side against others leg,some people just don't take too kindly to that feline characteristic, so in pack animal fashion, i attempt to lick their face...when instead of brushing my side on said limb, it may have been better to pull it out from under them while grounded.

Some think me a head in the clouds man, and to this is said, "YES! EXACTLY! However my feet, and sometimes even my hands, are on the ground.
(Some would rather just take me to the veteranarian and put this manimal to sleep; or if they're adversely excited, put a bullet in this brain.)

The funny ditty about 'absolute free-wil'l is not mine, but one of those quotes from Singer, and was previously used as a sig. line.
i like it, too.

My own CURRENT notion of free-will is that it is a predestinated free-will, kinda' just like you explain it but not exactly. i think of it more in terms of our own self-deception thinking we are free to do as we choose, however, the parameters defining life and movement for every individual far exceed what we are even capable of comprehending, much less doing in the short span of human living.


BTAIM (BeThatAsItMay(be)), there are more inconsistencies here than most will ever percieve to realize.
i heard a voice telling me, "What business do you have defending G-d? i guess you think He can't stand without His own two feet?"
Then again, i have to live with my selfs and though they run away from time two times, it's not really like i have to ever find myself, because in the immortal words of Buckaroo Bonzai, "Wherever you go, there you are."

Dusty, on the other hand suffer from a sado-masochistic syndrome uncommonly known as PSD [Parochial School Derilectionization].

My own youngest daughter almost suffered at the hands of a (former-now-married-)nun who expected here to participate with the rest of the class in going through the rosary. Timmy was so anticipatorily moved upon finding this out, he dressed in his finest three piece, and made his way to that Catholic High School in anticipation of bitch-slapping that narrowminded prig. (Isn't it funny how nice teacher's get when you babaliciously wallow in the quagmires of intellectual mediocrity and then they say something like, "oh, now i understand your perspective and will account for that from now on" all the while looking at you like a cow at a new gate or a dog at a new pan?

Timmy himself was confined to a parocial Christian Reformed school for a season, when the public administrators 3 months later realized who was responsible for the repetetive power outages at the H.S. causing school to end abruptly on several mornings, just because of wanting another and another day of no classes being oh so bored with it all.
At that parochial school, the teacher of his xian religion class got more than what was bargained for. Through question after question from Timmy, it was repeatedly bourne out in many ways, through both historic data and scripture that John Calvin was a humanist in the guise of xianity and his T.U.L.I.P. points of Calvinism did not stand up to the scritiny of the whole council of God, the El-biB.

Please don't get this wrong.
It's just like you, and also a certain A.C., of whom Marylyn Monson repeated those immortal words, singing, "It's not God I hate; but the god of the people I hated."



Encouragement is sensed through reassurance in "your doing fine, my friend," my friend.
How can your encouraging encouragement be anything but more encouraging?
Satisfaction is recieved throughout your correspondences and those little blips about feeling free to blabber and blather, even if perchance slober might find it's way to the page...:signthankspin:

ONVORTEN!










Here's that portions of which is mostly questioned:

Dusty misconstrues alot.
(Though there are more things, here are two immediately noted issues)

1.) Reading the Bible is not what makes one understand it.
No wonder it is boring to him.

2.) God does not advocate child sacrafice, sex slavery, slavery, genocide, etc.
(These things are only stated in scripture regarding the irreversible human condition, and how God allows these things because of what occured when all humanity transgressed in Adamah. Yeshua came to change our hearts. He did not abolish any systems of government and religion. With "re-gene-ing" (regeneration), comes the change of heart and with it the change in the way people do the things we do.)

...and then here is what you said Rich:
I think you misconstrued Dusty.

1) He said that the Bible was boring when he was a Christian, but that it is a lot more interesting now as an atheist.

2) Your statement is false. God COMMANDED genocide and the taking of virgins and he regulated (didn't prohibit) slavery, etc.


Timmy sez:
i think you might think i misconstrue dusty alot more than i really do. i think i am more guilty of misconstruing G_d's will and ways.

on 1) What does he mean that he "was" a xian? He may have followed a certain regimen that he thought made him a xian, but it doesn't sound at all--based on watching all of the cult ov dustbin's videos--like he ever was a christian. Yeshua probably never had a deep abiding relationship with him.
Well Timmy, that is what Christians usually say when a Christian leaves the faith. It seems like the "No True Scotsman" fallacy to me. There is absolutely no objective test to tell who does or does not have a "deep abiding relationship" with Christ so it's a meaningless criterion.

Ok, so you say it's post hoc ergo :p.

How's this then:
"Do not love the world or the things that belong to the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For everything that belongs to the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s lifestyle — is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world with its lust is passing away, aa but the one who does God’s will ab remains forever. Children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard, 'Antichrist ae is coming,' even now many antichrists have come. We know from this that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. However, they went out so that it might be made clear that none of them belongs to us. (I John 2.15-19)

You might just be dis-servicing yourself considering Tiummy one of those xians who usually says innanities without viable proof. I John is foundational as to understanding where both Timmy individually and others actually stand with G-d. If Dusty's YouTube video on "American's Love Incest" doesn't speak for itself, consider the above quite from I Jn. imperative to my own understanding in relation to determinations stated.

( Groundless critique, hardly ever, though possible inconsistencies exist, NTL.








on 2) TOUCHE'!!!:fencing:

Yes the word advocate is false, however the thought and intent explained behind it, can you really say that all that is false, and if so, how so?...doesn't the "thunder" word grab your attention to read further? (It certainly did me upon rereading the blasted rant after writing it.)... but if that word "advocate" is corrected by admitance of error, and saying something like: "what i meant to say was "take-pleasure-in", does that statement or what follows it still remain false?
(You are oh so right: i deserved that and that sentence deserves an edit, if for nothing else, to make things quite a bit more palatable than dustbin's 40+% foul mouthed vocabulary.)

Here is the issue: God is overly abundant in loving kindness and extremely gracious. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, yet the person who is too proud to thank God or glorify Him is given up to their own demise.
Why would God do anything for a person who choses to defy Him and rebel?
What obligation does God, who gives all things existence, owe at all to anything at all?

I was not really hanging up on the word "advocate." Your assertion that "God is overly abundant in loving kindness and extremely gracious" does not cohere with the other things the Bible teaches about God. There is no "loving kindness" in ordering genocide or the taking of 32,000 virgins to be distributed amongst the soldiers. And neither is there any mercy in the concept of eternal damnation. This is the problem of the Bible - it does not present a coherent picture of God. Yes, it says many wonderful things (God is love, God is light, his mercy endures forever) but then it directly contradicts that with things that are horrible.

You ask " Why would God do anything for a person who choses to defy Him and rebel?" ~ Your question is based on a faulty view of God as "overlord" who dominates everyone and demands "obedience." That is a Dominator Model which is the source of all the pain and bloodshed in the history of the world. It is a patriarchal view of reality that is totally erroneous in my estimation. Why would you think that God is like a human dictator giving commands and ordering eternal death for those who refuse to submit? I know that the Bible presents that view, but why do you believe it? It is the view of God in the form of a Bronze-age tribal warrior god of ignorant people.

You ask "What obligation does God, who gives all things existence, owe at all to anything at all?" ~ First, love obligates God. Second, God is responsible for everything he created. Third, why would you entertain such a question? It's like asking "Why would a Father owe anything at all to his child?"


Now the following is not argument per se, but rather trying to understand the basis for current ideas held by you:

Dominator model?
How about, being all in all, nothing exists without Him?

Your post in the "Demons" discussion quoted the Greek philosophy used by Paul on Mars hill: "In him we live and move and have our being." This is said to acknowledge your own understanding of God beyond all dualisms. (Can it be asked, what is good and what is evil relative to this...and if scripture is rejected as the standard towards good and evil, is there any absolute standard of good and evil?)

[Have you studied any Tanya? It is not expected as you are not Chassidic...then again, there are things there also thouroughly disagreed with here, having their basis through false assumptions superceeding Torah by accepting the comments of the Rebbe in Kabbalah over Torah.

The basic concept (and this should probably be in the Judaism category)
--...and BTW, nice thread on the BWBlog spot to the out of place Messianic(?i don't think so?) Cindy with your response on 9-12-11. Reading those all through one evening, coming to her text, i'm wonderin', is this the same one under guise, who was priveledged to rise as that oh so special grand inquisitor of yours?--
is that there really is no other reality but G-d.

Creation occurs through G-d speech. God spoke 10 words and the world comes to be, but not only in the past tense but even so in the present tense G-d speaks and all things continue to exist...or how's this?

By faith we understand
that the universe was created by God’s Word,
so that what is seen
has been made
from things that are not visible.
He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn above all creation.
For everything was created by Him,
in heaven and on earth,
the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions
or rulers or authorities —
all things have been created through Him and for Him.
He is before all things,
and by Him all things hold together.
(Heb. 11.3/Col. 1.15-17)

Hypothetically, if the Word of G-d ceased, the worlds would cease to exist; because the world on it's own is not an entity.

When a stone sculptor forms a figure from stone, the figure already existed in the stone. The artist only shaped and defined it, but when done working to bring this our, the artist can walk away because the figure has an existence seperate from the artist.

The artist merely changed the form, but G-d created the world out of nothing so it has no existence of it's own, no right of being, nothing. It cannot stand on it's own two feet. This constant creation of what exists and transformation of energy to matter is constant. (Ask any physicist.)

All things that are being constantly upheld by the word of His power are merely forms of energy, some seemingly more solid than others. All this is nothing short of a miracle, so that all that exists is an outward expression of the miraculous power of the Word of G-d. This powerful force ceasing to create would revert all seperations of energy from matter into light ultimately into nothingness.

Nothing of anything really exists on it's own right...and the notion of that Dominator model doesn't fit the comprehensive scheme knowing the whole universe is the outward expression of God's considerations.


Should i go into the cultural family norms of let's say, the general rules of home life up until "The Enlightenment," such as Greek or Arabic or Indian culture?

Here, it's thought that Bill Cosby has a clearer perspective on this than most. While relating his relationship to his father while growing up, when being confronted for somehow--is not exactly recalled--stepping over the line, his dad says,"SON! I brought you into this world. I'll take you out."

It is not really like asking "Why would a Father owe anything at all to his child?"

Here it is seen more of an obligation of man to function in the world according to rules of conduct for the best of all concerned, and far to many only look at the end-result immediate picture to the neglect of what let up to it. In all of human history, this seems to never have been the case...even under the most stringent conditions.

Anyone can babble on about logic and reason, but when the heart of the matter is left out of the picture, our ignorance to our true condition (no matter what happens to us or others by whomever's determination it occured, the problem still remains and we blindside ourselves negating the fact that there is far more to the human genome than rationality and morphic fields.
(Susan Sontag's notion of creating a shadow world of meaning comes to mind.)


What do you think concerning Yeshua's words in Luke 13.1-9:
"At that time, a some people came and reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.

And He [Yeshua] responded to them, 'Do you think that these Galileans were more sinful than all Galileans because they suffered these things? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well! Or those 18 that the tower in Siloam fell on and killed — do you think they were more sinful than all the people who live in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well! '

And He told this parable: 'A man had a fig tree that was planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none. He told the vineyard worker, ‘Listen, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it even waste the soil? ’

'But he replied to him, ‘Sir, leave it this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. Perhaps it will bear fruit next year, but if not, you can cut it down.’ '


Consider Noah Zark and 120 years of preaching and warning (about something that was unheard of--Rain? What's that?The earth flooded by water?) by Noah, Enoch and other family members prior the deluge...or do you consider Gilgamesh and other secular records more valid than the detailed accounts found in several Hebraic pieces of literature?
(BTW, that video you posted is hilarious...and for the 9+ years of Timmy's incessant violin practice and orchestration, the Black Violins gotZ it going on.)

Isn't it more like G-d is saying, " I make the rules 'cause made all of this and you to function here. I know what's best for you--I made you and know your very frame, and even more, what you will do before you were ever born?"

Please do not speculate about things where all the facts are not in. There is too much left unknown before just conclusions can be drawn concerning many things in the scriptures. (Remember, even with best guestimations, It's as if you are saying those people did not deserve to die, yet you just might not understand the reason why.

Recall G-d's rejection of the first earthly king of Israel, and instructions to His prophet to find another:
"Samuel did what the LORD directed and went to Bethlehem.

When the elders of the town met him, they trembled and asked, 'Do you come in peace? '

'In peace,' he replied. 'I’ve come to sacrifice to the LORD. Consecrate yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.'

Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and said, 'Certainly the LORD’s anointed one is here before Him.'

But the LORD said to Samuel, 'Do not look at his appearance or his stature, because I have rejected him. Man does not see what the LORD sees, for man sees what is visible, but the LORD sees the heart.'

This seems to be the issue in question, hunh?

Do you really think G-d changes to adjust to the times as if He really needs to keep up with what we have planned?
...so why can we look for the same principles in effect in the past occuring as repeated through history, and the only difference is the scenery?

Because i fear, trust, and love G-d, i do not doubt what is written of Him:
-being a prejudiced heretical racist
-loving only a chosen few
-creating good
-creating evil
and so much more...

If you will, it's asked that you look back to beginnings in Genesis and consider how God dealt with Adam after transgressing, and as well the account of Cain murdering Abel. Please look at what G-d did and ask yourself why. Could you be so loving and kind and then ask yourself what is the end result of anyone choosing to judge G-d?..but wait, there's more...

What do you think God should do? Are you saying that because he does not meet our standards we can absolve our self from Him?

Isn't it funny how rejecting whatever (is revealed to us) of God, we end up focusing in thought and deed on these very things?

Isaiah 45.6-12:
"...I am Yahweh, and there is no other.
I form light and create darkness,
I make success and create disaster;
I, Yahweh, do all these things.
Heavens, sprinkle from above,
and let the skies shower righteousness.
Let the earth open up
so that salvation will sprout
and righteousness will spring up with it.
I, Yahweh, have created it.
Woe to the one who argues with his Maker —
one clay pot among many.
Does clay say to the one forming it,
‘What are you making?’
Or does your work say,
‘He has no hands’?
How absurd is the one who says to his father,
‘What are you fathering?’
or to his mother,
‘What are you giving birth to? ’
This is what the LORD,
the Holy One of Israel and its Maker, says:
'Ask Me what is to happen to My sons,
and instruct Me about the work of My hands.
I made the earth,
and created man on it.
It was My hands that stretched out the heavens,
and I commanded all their host.


It is not just the other nations that suffer God's jugdement.
Let's get this straight.
The children of Israel suffer more by God's judgement than any other nation,
so if there remains complaint against Him, one would do better starting there.

Look at what Amos 3.1-2 says:
Listen to this message that the LORD has spoken against you, Israelites,
against the entire clan that I brought from the land of Egypt:
I have known only you
out of all the clans of the earth;
therefore,
I will all the more punish you for all your iniquities.

Tell me what other nation has suffered like ours, both now even onto bygone times?

In Jeremiah, God says to Israel's children:
"I will scatter you over the whole face of the earth, after bringing the Babylonians into S. Judah to rape, murder, kill the unborn in their mother's bellies, pilliage and plunder...isn't that sin?
(...but by whose standards?)
Millenia have passed and Israel for most intents and purposes still has not re-gathered...and all the continued suffering even today that has been the result.

Can we say G_D is not fair?
i don't think so.

God puts us in these corrupt carcasses where you can never do right, and giving you rules that "Thou shalt not" and you will anyway...
or Adamah and Isha created with the ability to sin, then set off in Eden with a tree placed right smack in the middle they are told not to eat from it or die.

Ya know, maybe, just maybe, there is more to human history than the reasons and logic used to determine our relation to what we can percieve of the world?
(Man looks on the outward appearances, and we see God has ordained some to destruction.)







(When do we do this: give pure mercy? Maybe possibly at times for a family member or two, but how far does our mercy stretch?)
Yeshua says, "Blessd are the merciful for they shall recieve mercy...for if you do not forgive, God will not forgive you."

I give pure mercy all the time to people I meet on the street, to friends and family members, and even to my pets. Why don't you? And more importantly, why doesn't God? Think about it! He is omnipotent and yet he doesn't even bother, as a general rule, to answer prayers. We are all on our own down here when it comes to the issues of life. God was perfectly happy to let people beg and pray and cry and plead to be healed from simple bacterial infections, but God let them suffer and die no matter how much the cried to him. Then dirty rotten atheist scientists discovered penicillin and so sinful humans saved millions of lives that God was perfectly willing to let die. Obviously, if God is real, he does not want us to believe in him or trust him to take care of us in this life. He has done everything - meaning nothing - to ensure that no one with any intelligence would believe in him or the promises in the Bible that say we should trust him to take care of us. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that God never answers prayers. I don't have that kind of knowledge. But I do know that God does not, as a general rule, answer prayers, and that means, by definition, that God is unreliable, i.e. UNTRUSTWORTHY. Nobody can trust God for anything real that can be measured or "counted upon."


It's thought this difference of G-d's mercy comarative to human mercy was hardly explained and is as a result being misunderstood.
The attempt here is to keep it brief, though this is hardly possible, as everything G-d does, whether we consider it good, bad, or just plain ugly is all part and parcel in His mercy. (It was MY INCONSISTENCY to focus on just the things we believe to be nice.)
God has and does give loving kindness daily to billions who have chosen to make war against Him as enemies in--the Biblical sense of the word--hatred.
It's meant, do we ever continue to do this: love our enemies and bless those who oppose us? (This is the kind of mercy intended as meant being of G-d.

i do not believe people will burn in hell eternally because all the Bible tells us is that it is the fires of it are eternal, in the sense of permanent results. One fellow recently became extremely rialed up after proving the K(ommon) Greek, from the passage in Jude that says those in Sodom were burned with eternal fire is the same word used in other places regarding punishment.

When Yeshua says to not fear those who can destroy the body, but Him who can cast both body and soul(life) in hell fire, then also speaking of perishing therein, was He lying: "Woe to you Tyre and Sidon, for if the miracles done here were done in Sodom and Gomorrah..?"

Why is being cast into the lake of fire called the second death if every entity lives in hell forever? How does anything continue to exist eternally seperated from G-d? If all the various entities are really burning forever , and not permanently burned up, as should now be understood, how can there ever come a new heaven and a new earth where "the former things are remembered no more?"

On this note, how can some recieve greater or lesser punishment if hell is merely fire...and please do not go into an exegesis on hades, abbaddon,Gey.Hinnom, Tophet and so on.

Why can't we see G-d as merciful in causing the death of some by preventing more severe judgment?



The discovery of penecillin or any other development towards human well-being is not in opposition to God, is it? Does God take glee in the death of the wicked?
[On another note, one Q, and just one comment concerning your thesis re:the Evolution of the Bible wheel:
Question:
In your text, there was seen no specific NT designation of order concerning the Byzantine text, though this is the basis of the N.T. order used today. Is this elsewhere in reference materials cited or is the Syriatic somehow an encompassment of that?????

Comment:
Natural selection should not be pitted against developmental and philogenic constraints as though these things can be compartmentalized to form a duality. Selection -vs- constraint is a farcical dichotomy. Selection can only select from growing alternatives, and without entropy and continual development through this opposition, nothing happens. To ask why the Bible in the Western world is ordered in such and such a way is meaningless unless there is something to compare it to (Such as the Hebrew Masoretic Tanakh & Byzantine (or whatever other ordering) -vs- the Latin Vulgate, etc.
(Along these lines, it is also false to assume that the Bible Wheel did not develop by natural selection simply because the functions of the various books were altered over the course of time. (For example, consider that the book of Ruth was once part of Judges.))


Anyway, bak to the so-called wicked atheist: G-d speaks to a wayward prophet through a jackass, He obviously does and can do more through those who think they will deny Him than those who do nothing. (Hot or cold?)

You have brought up issues that are seldom discussed with others.

Thank you sir, may i have another might be in order if the remainder of your statements to me were answered back. It is hoped this will be possible later tomorrow, beginning with the issue prayer.

Bless you sir,

Little Timmy

[Ps 27:1]

i do not believe people will burn in hell eternally because all the Bible tells us is that it is the fires of it are eternal, in the sense of permanent results. One fellow recently became extremely rialed up after proving the K(ommon) Greek, from the passage in Jude that says those in Sodom were burned with eternal fire is the same word used in other places regarding punishment.

When Yeshua says to not fear those who can destroy the body, but Him who can cast both body and soul(life) in hell fire, then also speaking of perishing therein, was He lying: "Woe to you Tyre and Sidon, for if the miracles done here were done in Sodom and Gomorrah..?"

Why is being cast into the lake of fire called the second death if every entity lives in hell forever? How does anything continue to exist eternally seperated from G-d? If all the various entities are really burning forever , and not permanently burned up, as should now be understood, how can there ever come a new heaven and a new earth where "the former things are remembered no more?"

On this note, how can some recieve greater or lesser punishment if hell is merely fire...and please do not go into an exegesis on hades, abbaddon,Gey.Hinnom, Tophet and so on.

Why can't we see G-d as merciful in causing the death of some by preventing more severe judgment?




Well said, Timmy. When I came into this truth in the early 80's it was like scales falling off my eyes. God has had to remind me of my own blindness when I get impatient with relatives and friends that still believe in the immortality of the soul in hell. If hell is separation from God, who is sustaining them and for what purpose? It's one of the doctrines of Babylon. It makes a mockery of God's love and justice.

Be Blessed,

Steve

[Richard Amiel McGough]

It's me again:
Tim Tmmy Tim Tim:sCh_supersmilie:

How ya' doing RAM?:sBo_reflection2:

This text was written over the course of the past few days as time afforded.
It comes w/o edit, and it's hoped that at least there be no gaps.
It is sent incomplete.

Hey there Timmy Tim Tim Tim!

I love your new avatar:

260

:hysterical:



Mayhaps i note far more inconsistencies when in critical consistent reflection i attempt to tear apart everything stated. In deconstructionalisation, ractice makes perfect and perfect practice makes everything of little merit. (i do this often because textual criticism is hard to come by...for me at least. You are one of few exceptional folks to somewhat negate this rule of thumb and it is greatly appreciated.:thumb:

i often come off as autoritarian to many, though extremely friendly. Many just don't know what to think of Timmy. When on all fours rubbing my side against others leg,some people just don't take too kindly to that feline characteristic, so in pack animal fashion, i attempt to lick their face...when instead of brushing my side on said limb, it may have been better to pull it out from under them while grounded.

Maybe they realized not your friendly feline intention and felt perhaps as if you were a lonely canine a looking for love! Can't be too careful with the unintended implications when communicating with such a limited bandwidth as these combinations of 26 characters strung in a line!

261




Some think me a head in the clouds man, and to this is said, "YES! EXACTLY! However my feet, and sometimes even my hands, are on the ground.
(Some would rather just take me to the veteranarian and put this manimal to sleep; or if they're adversely excited, put a bullet in this brain.)

The funny ditty about 'absolute free-wil'l is not mine, but one of those quotes from Singer, and was previously used as a sig. line.
i like it, too.

My own CURRENT notion of free-will is that it is a predestinated free-will, kinda' just like you explain it but not exactly. i think of it more in terms of our own self-deception thinking we are free to do as we choose, however, the parameters defining life and movement for every individual far exceed what we are even capable of comprehending, much less doing in the short span of human living.

262

That's pretty much the problem. I didn't choose where I was born, who my parents were, or the language consisting of frozen metaphors encrusted with thousands of years of assumptions that is my only means of thinking or communicating. How could anyone think of themselves as "free" when trapped in such a prision?



BTAIM (BeThatAsItMay(be)), there are more inconsistencies here than most will ever percieve to realize.
i heard a voice telling me, "What business do you have defending G-d? i guess you think He can't stand without His own two feet?"
Then again, i have to live with my selfs and though they run away from time two times, it's not really like i have to ever find myself, because in the immortal words of Buckaroo Bonzai, "Wherever you go, there you are."

I would tend to agree. Folks are not really defending God anyway - they are defending their own ideas about God! I trust the magnitude of that difference is plain to see.



Dusty, on the other hand suffer from a sado-masochistic syndrome uncommonly known as PSD [Parochial School Derilectionization].

Ah ... I think he's just venting after discovering that he'd been fooled for 30 years. Gotta cut him some slack, eh?



My own youngest daughter almost suffered at the hands of a (former-now-married-)nun who expected here to participate with the rest of the class in going through the rosary. Timmy was so anticipatorily moved upon finding this out, he dressed in his finest three piece, and made his way to that Catholic High School in anticipation of bitch-slapping that narrowminded prig. (Isn't it funny how nice teacher's get when you babaliciously wallow in the quagmires of intellectual mediocrity and then they say something like, "oh, now i understand your perspective and will account for that from now on" all the while looking at you like a cow at a new gate or a dog at a new pan?

Timmy himself was confined to a parocial Christian Reformed school for a season, when the public administrators 3 months later realized who was responsible for the repetetive power outages at the H.S. causing school to end abruptly on several mornings, just because of wanting another and another day of no classes being oh so bored with it all.
At that parochial school, the teacher of his xian religion class got more than what was bargained for. Through question after question from Timmy, it was repeatedly bourne out in many ways, through both historic data and scripture that John Calvin was a humanist in the guise of xianity and his T.U.L.I.P. points of Calvinism did not stand up to the scritiny of the whole council of God, the El-biB.

Please don't get this wrong.
It's just like you, and also a certain A.C., of whom Marylyn Monson repeated those immortal words, singing, "It's not God I hate; but the god of the people I hated."

Ah yes, the picture is becoming clearer. I'm surprised a Calvinist would let you ask questions. I'd be even more surprized if you made any progress showing him his theology was not consistent with the "full counsel of God" since the Bible has plenty of Calvinist verses. Predestination? Plainly stated. None can believe unless elected by God? Plainly stated. Some are predistinated for hell? Plainly stated. I think Calvinism wrong, but I also think it has lots of Biblical support.



Encouragement is sensed through reassurance in "your doing fine, my friend," my friend.
How can your encouraging encouragement be anything but more encouraging?
Satisfaction is recieved throughout your correspondences and those little blips about feeling free to blabber and blather, even if perchance slober might find it's way to the page...:signthankspin:

ONVORTEN!

I'm glad you feel encouraged! It can be an discouraging world at times - especially on internet forums ... and especially on internet forums where we talk of religion!




Well Timmy, that is what Christians usually say when a Christian leaves the faith. It seems like the "No True Scotsman" fallacy to me. There is absolutely no objective test to tell who does or does not have a "deep abiding relationship" with Christ so it's a meaningless criterion.
Ok, so you say it's post hoc ergo :p.

How's this then:
"Do not love the world or the things that belong to the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For everything that belongs to the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s lifestyle — is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world with its lust is passing away, aa but the one who does God’s will ab remains forever. Children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard, 'Antichrist ae is coming,' even now many antichrists have come. We know from this that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. However, they went out so that it might be made clear that none of them belongs to us. (I John 2.15-19)

You might just be dis-servicing yourself considering Tiummy one of those xians who usually says innanities without viable proof. I John is foundational as to understanding where both Timmy individually and others actually stand with G-d. If Dusty's YouTube video on "American's Love Incest" doesn't speak for itself, consider the above quite from I Jn. imperative to my own understanding in relation to determinations stated.

( Groundless critique, hardly ever, though possible inconsistencies exist, NTL.

I don't understand that verse. It seems very strange in light of other verses, specifically:

"For God so loved the world" + "If anyone loves the world, the love for the father is not in him" = direct contradiction.

It's like everything else in the Bible. It really doesn't make much sense when you think about it. We are commanded to love everyone when God himself hates most people sufficiently to send them to an eternal Aushwitz that makes Hitler look like Mother Theresa?

It's all confusion based on contradictory assumptions.

I'm not familiar with Dusty's "American's Love Incest" is that another video he made?



Now the following is not argument per se, but rather trying to understand the basis for current ideas held by you:

Dominator model?
How about, being all in all, nothing exists without Him?

The Dominator Model is God as OTHER who is also DICTATOR.

Holistic Model everyone derives their being from God, but we are all free in the most fundamental sense. A good analogy would be the Top-down dictatorship like the old Soviet Union Communism vs. the Capitalist Free Enterprise system where everyone is free to do their own thing. The one is very "clunky" and "herky-jerky" and unable to do anything with any grace because one person (or committee) at the top is trying to control everything, whereas the other is like nature and everyone works together (or not) but we have the great strength that comes from many free creatures making thier own decisions.

The idea of God as the Ground of Being does not imply a top-down dictatorship.



Your post in the "Demons" discussion quoted the Greek philosophy used by Paul on Mars hill: "In him we live and move and have our being." This is said to acknowledge your own understanding of God beyond all dualisms. (Can it be asked, what is good and what is evil relative to this...and if scripture is rejected as the standard towards good and evil, is there any absolute standard of good and evil?)

The fact that Ultimate Reality (God) is non-dual does not mean that dualities like light and dark, up and down, good and evil, do not "exist" at our level of consciousness. It only means that they are not the "ultimate reality."

As for looking to the Bible for moral instructions ... say what? :eek: I'd do that if I wanted 32,000 sex slaves (Numbers 31), or 300 wives and 700 concubines (Solomon), or to be free to steal a man's wife and kill her husband with the only consequence being that the child dies (David) ... in other words, do you really think that the Bible teachs true morality?



[Have you studied any Tanya? It is not expected as you are not Chassidic...then again, there are things there also thouroughly disagreed with here, having their basis through false assumptions superceeding Torah by accepting the comments of the Rebbe in Kabbalah over Torah.

I own a beautiful bi-lingual copy of the Likutei Amarim - Tanya. It's got some interesting stuff in it. It's from my "old days" when I was studying Kabbalah before falling into fundamentalist Christianity. I'm glad I never felt a need to burn it along with all my Crowley books.

And yes, the Kabbalistic rabbis make up endless mountains of ridiculous crap. Did you know that the Zohar teaches that David did not sin in the matter of Bathsheba? How's that for insane? It says that Uriah gave her a bill of divorce before going to battle, and a bunch of other insane crap. Religion really ruins people's minds.



The basic concept (and this should probably be in the Judaism category)
--...and BTW, nice thread on the BWBlog spot to the out of place Messianic(?i don't think so?) Cindy with your response on 9-12-11. Reading those all through one evening, coming to her text, i'm wonderin', is this the same one under guise, who was priveledged to rise as that oh so special grand inquisitor of yours?--
is that there really is no other reality but G-d.

Do you recall which post the comment was under?



Creation occurs through G-d speech. God spoke 10 words and the world comes to be, but not only in the past tense but even so in the present tense G-d speaks and all things continue to exist...or how's this?

By faith we understand
that the universe was created by God’s Word,
so that what is seen
has been made
from things that are not visible.
He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn above all creation.
For everything was created by Him,
in heaven and on earth,
the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions
or rulers or authorities —
all things have been created through Him and for Him.
He is before all things,
and by Him all things hold together.
(Heb. 11.3/Col. 1.15-17)

Hypothetically, if the Word of G-d ceased, the worlds would cease to exist; because the world on it's own is not an entity.

When a stone sculptor forms a figure from stone, the figure already existed in the stone. The artist only shaped and defined it, but when done working to bring this our, the artist can walk away because the figure has an existence seperate from the artist.

The artist merely changed the form, but G-d created the world out of nothing so it has no existence of it's own, no right of being, nothing. It cannot stand on it's own two feet. This constant creation of what exists and transformation of energy to matter is constant. (Ask any physicist.)

All things that are being constantly upheld by the word of His power are merely forms of energy, some seemingly more solid than others. All this is nothing short of a miracle, so that all that exists is an outward expression of the miraculous power of the Word of G-d. This powerful force ceasing to create would revert all seperations of energy from matter into light ultimately into nothingness.

Nothing of anything really exists on it's own right...and the notion of that Dominator model doesn't fit the comprehensive scheme knowing the whole universe is the outward expression of God's considerations.

That's all good, except the languge that suggests "God created" as if "he" were seperate from his creation. I think it is more accurate to think of creation like leaves (us) emerging from a tree (God).

The language of a "seperate God" is just a primitive way of thinking, like God as "king" who "rules over his creation." All those metaphors are seriously erroneous.



Should i go into the cultural family norms of let's say, the general rules of home life up until "The Enlightenment," such as Greek or Arabic or Indian culture?

Here, it's thought that Bill Cosby has a clearer perspective on this than most. While relating his relationship to his father while growing up, when being confronted for somehow--is not exactly recalled--stepping over the line, his dad says,"SON! I brought you into this world. I'll take you out."

It is not really like asking "Why would a Father owe anything at all to his child?"

Here it is seen more of an obligation of man to function in the world according to rules of conduct for the best of all concerned, and far to many only look at the end-result immediate picture to the neglect of what let up to it. In all of human history, this seems to never have been the case...even under the most stringent conditions.

Again, that is picturing God as a human. I think that leads to errors.

If God were really like that, and he really did "write the Bible" then he could have done a much better job. That's why I just can't believe that he is anything like the confused image presented in the Bible. I say "confused" because we get a wide variety of "gods" presented as the One God in the Bible. He's mean, and petty and does really stupid things like impose a three year famine on Israel until David finally askes "What's up?" and god says "I'm still mad about Saul killing some Gibeonites" :blah: - and then we get the high and exalted view of Isaiah where God is "creator" and then we get the Garden story where God walks around asking "Yo, Adam? Where'd you go man?" etc., etc., etc. There's not even a coherent picture of a god in the Bible - what am I supposed to believe?



Anyone can babble on about logic and reason, but when the heart of the matter is left out of the picture, our ignorance to our true condition (no matter what happens to us or others by whomever's determination it occured, the problem still remains and we blindside ourselves negating the fact that there is far more to the human genome than rationality and morphic fields.
(Susan Sontag's notion of creating a shadow world of meaning comes to mind.)

Yes, there are many mysteries in the universe. But do those mysteries imply we should believe in ancient superstitions? I don't think so.

I don't know anything about Susan Sontog's notion.



What do you think concerning Yeshua's words in Luke 13.1-9:
"At that time, a some people came and reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.

And He [Yeshua] responded to them, 'Do you think that these Galileans were more sinful than all Galileans because they suffered these things? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well! Or those 18 that the tower in Siloam fell on and killed — do you think they were more sinful than all the people who live in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well! '

And He told this parable: 'A man had a fig tree that was planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none. He told the vineyard worker, ‘Listen, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it even waste the soil? ’

'But he replied to him, ‘Sir, leave it this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. Perhaps it will bear fruit next year, but if not, you can cut it down.’ '

I don't know. Why do you ask?



Consider Noah Zark and 120 years of preaching and warning (about something that was unheard of--Rain? What's that?The earth flooded by water?) by Noah, Enoch and other family members prior the deluge...or do you consider Gilgamesh and other secular records more valid than the detailed accounts found in several Hebraic pieces of literature?
(BTW, that video you posted is hilarious...and for the 9+ years of Timmy's incessant violin practice and orchestration, the Black Violins gotZ it going on.)

Years ago I met a man named Noah with a dog named Zark. He was a nice guy.

But do you really think there was a time when there was never any rain? The physics doesn't work. It's pure mythology.

I don't think Gilgamesh is "more valid" but I do think it is the source of the Biblical myth.

Which video was funny?


Isn't it more like G-d is saying, " I make the rules 'cause made all of this and you to function here. I know what's best for you--I made you and know your very frame, and even more, what you will do before you were ever born?"

I can't imagine the true God talking like that, at least not in the context of assuming the Bible is "his word."



Please do not speculate about things where all the facts are not in. There is too much left unknown before just conclusions can be drawn concerning many things in the scriptures. (Remember, even with best guestimations, It's as if you are saying those people did not deserve to die, yet you just might not understand the reason why.

Sure ... some alternate interpretation of the Bible could be true in every particular. No problem. But the traditional interpretation is not true.



Because i fear, trust, and love G-d, i do not doubt what is written of Him:
-being a prejudiced heretical racist
-loving only a chosen few
-creating good
-creating evil
and so much more...

What does it mean not to "doubt what is written of Him" if you don't know the proper interpretation?

And why do you believe the Bible in the first place? How do you know which parts are "from God" (if any) and which are not?



If you will, it's asked that you look back to beginnings in Genesis and consider how God dealt with Adam after transgressing, and as well the account of Cain murdering Abel. Please look at what G-d did and ask yourself why. Could you be so loving and kind and then ask yourself what is the end result of anyone choosing to judge G-d?..but wait, there's more...

What do you think God should do? Are you saying that because he does not meet our standards we can absolve our self from Him?

Isn't it funny how rejecting whatever (is revealed to us) of God, we end up focusing in thought and deed on these very things?

Isaiah 45.6-12:
"...I am Yahweh, and there is no other.
I form light and create darkness,
I make success and create disaster;
I, Yahweh, do all these things.
Heavens, sprinkle from above,
and let the skies shower righteousness.
Let the earth open up
so that salvation will sprout
and righteousness will spring up with it.
I, Yahweh, have created it.
Woe to the one who argues with his Maker —
one clay pot among many.
Does clay say to the one forming it,
‘What are you making?’
Or does your work say,
‘He has no hands’?
How absurd is the one who says to his father,
‘What are you fathering?’
or to his mother,
‘What are you giving birth to? ’
This is what the LORD,
the Holy One of Israel and its Maker, says:
'Ask Me what is to happen to My sons,
and instruct Me about the work of My hands.
I made the earth,
and created man on it.
It was My hands that stretched out the heavens,
and I commanded all their host.

It is not "God" that I am judging. It is the words that men have written concerning God. Again, you must explain why anyone should believe the Bible. And when you read those words, you are compelled to "judge" because interpretation is an act of judgment.

If the Bible speaks of a square circle you can claim to believe it but you really can't because the concept is logically incoherent.

Well, I gotta go. That's one long post you wrote! I'll see if I can finish it up later.

Great chatting!

Richard

[CWH]

I don't understand that verse. It seems very strange in light of other verses, specifically:

"For God so loved the world" + "If anyone loves the world, the love for the father is not in him" = direct contradiction.

It is easy to understand these verses, there is no contradiction:

If God loves us so much, would we do the same to Him? For God so loved the world that He gave His only son....do we on the other hand love God so much that we gave our only life to Him?.... The main reason why we do not give our only life for God is because we love this life on earth so much that we refuse to give up those pleasures when our final goal of living is towards eternal life in the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, anyone who loves the pleasures of life on earth does not have the love of God in his heart for what is in his heart is pleasure like in the parable of the rich fool. Which is better, a temporal life on earth or an eternal life in utopia? That is what it means, For God so loved the world that He gave His only son that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life (in Utopia).

The parable of the rich fool:

Luke 12:16 And he told them this parable: 'The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

18 'Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, 'You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.'’

20 'But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

21 'This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.'

May God forgives our souls.:pray:

[Timmy]

Hello Richard, Steve and CWH!

Thanks for the varied feedback. It's wished more would at least chime in...whether for or against don't make me no nevermind. It all adds to the mix and livens up this acropolis. You probably couldn't hear me yelling "hellooo" only to hear those echoes of "helloo...helloooo, or maybe you did.

Not plane, nor bird, nor even frog, it's just little ole' me:
Timmy Tim Timmy Tim Tim.

NOW IT'S
up:sBo_reflection2:
up:sBo_reflection2:
and away:fred:


Hey there Timmy Tim Tim Tim!

I love your new avatar:

260

:hysterical:


Maybe they realized not your friendly feline intention and felt perhaps as if you were a lonely canine a looking for love! Can't be too careful with the unintended implications when communicating with such a limited bandwidth as these combinations of 26 characters strung in a line!

261



262

The avitar came via a talmid who sent a link to a Calvinist website. Thanks! The pic was immediately noted and copied to be another one of Timmy's avatars. It was a gut buster here as well, yet the quest continues for a more outrageous preternatural antiparadigmatic surreal avitar expressing sowhat of what Timmy is all about.

A doggy looking for love?:hysterical: That's good!:clap2:
Rudyard Kipling's Just so Story concerning the cat is probably more discriptive of Timmy's way, where the woman in the story performs the first magic and more, yet "i am the cat that walks alone."
though mayhaps there is fear for life considering felines at times, when human physical awareness systems is moreso in abeyance for a bit, have been known to stick their tails down the throat and suffocate the unaware?


RE: predestination/free will

That's pretty much the problem. I didn't choose where I was born, who my parents were, or the language consisting of frozen metaphors encrusted with thousands of years of assumptions that is my only means of thinking or communicating. How could anyone think of themselves as "free" when trapped in such a prision?
One need not even consider oneself free. All men are slaves to one thing or an Other. We do have the choice of what we will do about that situation though.

It's the oxymoronic cage of freedom. One distances oneself away from one paradigm set only to be bound by another. To do nothing is to live an impoverished life and only be bound by another set of paradigms. The individual capable of becoming or doing more than one...and moreso more than a half dozen different things is far more liberated than the person confined to one activity.

My selfs ever strive to operate in what only open more doors of possibility.

Interestingly, and found to be more than what the word meaning permits, the Hebrew word for salvation is to be released into a wide open place, a boundless expanse. It manifests through the paradox of limiting our thoughts words and acts to God's expectation with (and perspective of) us. It's thought many confuse scripture simply by failure to understand that only by acting in opposition to this kosmos in a way that is time out of mind freedom manifests. (Bind yourself to God and you become free: to live, you must die; mourn and rejoice for the poor are rich; maturity comes through greater dependence on God; et al...)

Many just cannot handle that...and still, every moment every day just ticks away and for what?
After everything is said and done by any person, what have they to show for it all except laying in a box buried six feet under the stars.

i once read, "YOU ARE YOUR OWN STAR" and said, "Yeah, right, now this i gotta' see." Maybe one day as fodder in a funeral pyre perhaps, but life on earth for me was seen as a soap bubble, seemingly thermodynamically inert, but ready to burst none the less, at any unexpected moment.





I would tend to agree. Folks are not really defending God anyway - they are defending their own ideas about God! I trust the magnitude of that difference is plain to see.
DEFINITELY!

It just that so many seem out to prove their point as absolute when they themselves are no better off--and more often than not less--than many others. It's the old foolhardy notion that by comparing ourselves with ourselves it's erroneously thought we can somehow come off better than we were before this useless pursuit is initiated.

i give perspective and i know that my perspective is not me...and changes through time. Stagnators tend to close off themselves in little boxes and somehow find a sense of security or comfort standing on the floor within it surrounded by four square walls spending their whole life building a ceiling to save themselves from what's out there, outside of the box...and then in their demise or death, find that the box is gone.


Ah ... I think he's just venting after discovering that he'd been fooled for 30 years. Gotta cut him some slack, eh?
Dusty is more than venting friend. He ended up locked in one box through circumstances beyond his control. Now he is building another based on that first model, though he considers it a correct revision. He's still fooled and doesn't even realize it.

Sometimes ya' just gotta' let it all go and move in another directioon altogether if you ever will move beyond and outside of what constrains us in the first place.



Ah yes, the picture is becoming clearer. I'm surprised a Calvinist would let you ask questions. I'd be even more surprized if you made any progress showing him his theology was not consistent with the "full counsel of God" since the Bible has plenty of Calvinist verses. Predestination? Plainly stated. None can believe unless elected by God? Plainly stated. Some are predistinated for hell? Plainly stated. I think Calvinism wrong, but I also think it has lots of Biblical support.

It really wasn't a matter of asking questions per se, so much as admitting i did not believe what was claimed to be truth ...until it could be proven. It was in the questioning of their proof and providing alternate possibilities that this teacher/theologian dug his own hole.



I'm glad you feel encouraged! It can be an discouraging world at times - especially on internet forums ... and especially on internet forums where we talk of religion!
If it were not for Charis' mostly, even as your interaction with this one, i most likely would not be typing into the cyberspheres at all. i've been graciously given more than a heaping full plate without this extra-cirricular activity. Oh yeah, it's fun; but i'm a face to face kinda' guy who even avoids telephones like the plague. (Quit the feat you all have achieved in getting this one to even both typing anything but another essay or book...and it even seems more personal than telechatter. Now that is something.



I don't understand that verse. It seems very strange in light of other verses, specifically:

"For God so loved the world" + "If anyone loves the world, the love for the father is not in him" = direct contradiction.

Thanks for chiming in CWH. It's great and there is agreement here.

Richard, the disparity you see of these two verses is that English only has one word for love and K.(ommon) Greek has 5 different words all written as the one word "LOVE" in english.

John 3.16s word for love means 'a civic responsibility of moral obligation' and holds no aspect of treasuring, appreciation, or feelings towards the object(ive) in it's meaning.:Investigate:

The word for love in I Jn is better quoted like this:
If anyone "lives-and-breaths-for" the world, the "giving-without-expecting-reward" [possessed] of the Father is not in him. (Please note two aspects of the same word love in this verse are given towards our better understanding of what kind of love this word actually means.)

See, CHW is right on! There is no contradiction at all.


It's like everything else in the Bible. It really doesn't make much sense when you think about it. We are commanded to love everyone when God himself hates most people sufficiently to send them to an eternal Aushwitz that makes Hitler look like Mother Theresa?

It's all confusion based on contradictory assumptions.

Though we all must draw conclusions about anything we deal with, when we label something, whether in distain or approval, human tendency is to think the issue is settled. It is our own failure to look further, dig deeper, and critically assess all the various nuances of any given thing by just thinking since i have pinned a label on that already so that is what it is.
(Man looks at the outward appearance, and more often then not, hypothetically at that.)




I'm not familiar with Dusty's "American's Love Incest" is that another video he made?
Yes, or check out:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PQSHa9JAxM

The Dominator Model is God as OTHER who is also DICTATOR.

Holistic Model everyone derives their being from God, but we are all free in the most fundamental sense. A good analogy would be the Top-down dictatorship like the old Soviet Union Communism vs. the Capitalist Free Enterprise system where everyone is free to do their own thing. The one is very "clunky" and "herky-jerky" and unable to do anything with any grace because one person (or committee) at the top is trying to control everything, whereas the other is like nature and everyone works together (or not) but we have the great strength that comes from many free creatures making thier own decisions.

The idea of God as the Ground of Being does not imply a top-down dictatorship.


The fact that Ultimate Reality (God) is non-dual does not mean that dualities like light and dark, up and down, good and evil, do not "exist" at our level of consciousness. It only means that they are not the "ultimate reality."

How does what was explained of the Yeshua Ha'Melki, the Living Word of God, seperate Him from His creation?

Perhaps our individual ideas about ground of being begin in different places so that the conclusions are not on the same page?

How is God a dictator?
(You might find yourself chasing infinite circles of snakes eating their own tails by rejecting some portions of scripture and only accepting certain others. i mean, how logical is it to play chess without the checkered board to place the pieces on?)


As for looking to the Bible for moral instructions ... say what? :eek: I'd do that if I wanted 32,000 sex slaves (Numbers 31), or 300 wives and 700 concubines (Solomon), or to be free to steal a man's wife and kill her husband with the only consequence being that the child dies (David) ... in other words, do you really think that the Bible teachs true morality?

As stated previously, i do not believe IN(to) the Bible. i believe the Bible because it just is the way it says things are. The Bible does not come to be understood through reasoning things out. FAITH(fulness) onto God results in just one of many rewards in KNOWING without the felt need to understand the Bible.

Second, if the scripture is not tested (through obedience to what you already know of what God says to do), the only answers one will come up with are vain imaginings, speculative at best. i will not try to prove to anyone that the Bible should be believed, but rather attempt to show through this life how without following Yeshua the best we can expect are chasing after the wind in this life, and worms eating away our rotting carcasses afterwards.



I own a beautiful bi-lingual copy of the Likutei Amarim - Tanya. It's got some interesting stuff in it. It's from my "old days" when I was studying Kabbalah before falling into fundamentalist Christianity. I'm glad I never felt a need to burn it along with all my Crowley books.

And yes, the Kabbalistic rabbis make up endless mountains of ridiculous crap. Did you know that the Zohar teaches that David did not sin in the matter of Bathsheba? How's that for insane? It says that Uriah gave her a bill of divorce before going to battle, and a bunch of other insane crap. Religion really ruins people's minds.

Among many other things, yes, David did not sin because we all know a piece of parchment with black sqiggly lines makes everything alright, doeasn't it! (Actually, it is the reason behind him not being tried or punished through Levitical jurisprudence.)

Since you still hold these books, the old days, in one sense, are still with you.

Myself, i came to a point realizing Crowley was no more real than any fluff bunny wiccan or New Ager, and at best, find solace in self-enchanted imagining of things they do not have a clear picture of at all: decieving and being decieved.



Do you recall which post the comment was under?
http://www.biblewheel.com/blog/index.php/2011/08/08/why-i-quit-christianity#comment-5632
(Scroll down to September 12)



That's all good, except the languge that suggests "God created" as if "he" were seperate from his creation. I think it is more accurate to think of creation like leaves (us) emerging from a tree (God).

The language of a "seperate God" is just a primitive way of thinking, like God as "king" who "rules over his creation." All those metaphors are seriously erroneous.


Again, that is picturing God as a human. I think that leads to errors.

That was not the picture intended at all. Though yes, Yeshua Ha'Maschiach, now flesh and bone is human, great God and Savior for all serve Him.


If God were really like that, and he really did "write the Bible" then he could have done a much better job. That's why I just can't believe that he is anything like the confused image presented in the Bible. I say "confused" because we get a wide variety of "gods" presented as the One God in the Bible. He's mean, and petty and does really stupid things like impose a three year famine on Israel until David finally askes "What's up?" and god says "I'm still mad about Saul killing some Gibeonites" :blah: - and then we get the high and exalted view of Isaiah where God is "creator" and then we get the Garden story where God walks around asking "Yo, Adam? Where'd you go man?" etc., etc., etc. There's not even a coherent picture of a god in the Bible - what am I supposed to believe?
God did not write the Bible. Men wrote what God intends, has done, is doing, and will do.
You need a chessboard.



Yes, there are many mysteries in the universe. But do those mysteries imply we should believe in ancient superstitions? I don't think so.
Neither do i.
Here is the issue of anthropomorphing in ordeer to comprehend waves and strings and resulting field.
(Should the world continue, perhaps terms replacing objectifications will be replaced by some other mode of identifier?


I don't know anything about Susan Sontog's notion.

Here's the repeat from a former post:

Hardly infallible,
Timmy


...and just an extrapolated tidbit of thought if you will consider this through the wait time until reconvening to respond appropriately:

"Interpretation is the revenge of intellect upon art. even more, it is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world--in order to set up a shadow world of meaning."
~Susan Sontag?




Years ago I met a man named Noah with a dog named Zark. He was a nice guy.

But do you really think there was a time when there was never any rain? The physics doesn't work. It's pure mythology.

I don't think Gilgamesh is "more valid" but I do think it is the source of the Biblical myth.

Yes, there was a time the world was enveloped in a misty canopy when water 'rained' from the ground,
then everything was, in a sense, just flipped upside down.


Which video was funny?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kdOOxwO7aE&feature=player_embedded


I can't imagine the true God talking like that, at least not in the context of assuming the Bible is "his word."

Seriously????
Maybe that's the problem with God dictating words to men for secretaries when that might better be done by a woman?

Then again, the legwork would probably be too taxing. What if David were an Amazon?

Or could you imagine an Amazonian Samuel chopping Agag to pieces?





Sure ... some alternate interpretation of the Bible could be true in every particular. No problem. But the traditional interpretation is not true.
Please refer to the above re-quoted Susan Sontag qoute.
Any time one interprets anything, each time it is done, it is one more step removed from the source.
Our biggest failure in doing this is assuming our own cultural biase is the end all in all answer in properly interpreting anything. A failure to assume the world view of the writer only leads to disasterous misconantifabrications.



What does it mean not to "doubt what is written of Him" if you don't know the proper interpretation?
It means you come to know the Source of the discourse first. After learning how He thinks, you end up through association beginning to think like Him ...and through the course of time, things become more and more understandable. It's an interactive process, objectivity found through relating with the Author.


And why do you believe the Bible in the first place? How do you know which parts are "from God" (if any) and which are not?
See above.

What is not understood is not of concern if it is not relative to here and now.
This does not happen by acting as if you are an outsider looking in.
Get a chessboard first.



It is not "God" that I am judging. It is the words that men have written concerning God. Again, you must explain why anyone should believe the Bible. And when you read those words, you are compelled to "judge" because interpretation is an act of judgment.

If the Bible speaks of a square circle you can claim to believe it but you really can't because the concept is logically incoherent. There can be no judgement of anything until it is proven.
It is not the Bible one should believe.
Interpretation is an act TOWARDS judgement.
Interpretation is not judgement at all.
Acting on what we interpret is when judgement occurs: by us, for us, and against us (all at once these things go into motion.)

i could tell you how to sqaure the cirlce but then i'de have to kill you.
Honesty, how hypothetical do you want to make this?
Inappropriate analogies only stray from the issues discussed, and here you are the one who first brought up "No true Scottsman."

...infinite circles of snakes eating their own tails and how do you think our worm Ourboros would have it?
(Thoughts are wandering to a time when a chaotheriomorphic paradigm upheld manifested retrograde enchantments to the point where is seemed like was living out the story of the "The Sorcerer's Apprentice.")





Well, I gotta go. That's one long post you wrote! I'll see if I can finish it up later.

I have too much of a workload right now so don't even sweat responding if it seems unwarranted.


Great chatting!

Richard

Thanks for your time and attention bro!

i do have one question though.
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll tootsie pop?

Have a good one man!


Timmy Tim Tim Tim

[wyocowboy]

giving a good paying job has nothing to do with being a con-artisit...aparently you don't know what a con-artist is. Also jesus never exist, the Agnostic admitted to making him up to help people get more spiritual. Christianity is nothing but a made up religion like all religions. and I am delusional.


Not all preachers are con men. Many non-preachers and non-Christians are also con-men. I have friends who gave up their high paying jobs such as engineers, managers, doctors, nurses to become preachers earning a meagre salary compare to what they were getting in their previous jobs. It's a calling, it's a sacrifice. They are doing an honest job and getting an honest salary. Please be fair and consider their sacrifices when you gave that statement that preachers are con-men. Many Jesus apostles were also earning good salary.... tax collectors, fishermen and yet they gave up everything they had to follow Jesus. They could have also become billionaires by raising the dead, casting out demons and curing the sick yet they were not interested in earthly riches but heavenly rewards. In the end many were martyred. Their examples and sacrifices are admirable. Would we do the same for Jesus?

Matthew 19:27Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?

28And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

29And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

30But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.


May God Bless our lives. :pray: