I was not.
Looking at it now.
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it is just that I approach it different. When I was a child I prayed to God to spare my hamster and let him live, and then my Grandma. By the time my mum died I had grown up and prayed for guidance to help me to give her peace to help her on her way home.
Oddly, suffering tends to bring you closer to God once you accept the command to take your cross and walk
the disappointment to find out that God is not Santa’s big brother that fulfils wishes upon prayers is too hard to handle for some so they sulk for the rest of their lives
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one more responsive to change
That’s what he said and it’s what I think he implies as I stated above. So who is lying? Get over yourself you pittifull Christian.
Quit playing the scientist here. Your intelligence has the same capabilities as ones of a 10 year old. My guy I doubt you are even a scientist in real life.
You were the guy that was claiming in my thread before that we all pray for self destructive things and that’s why God doesn help us. I won’t say no more. . Enough said
Ohhh no Mark here wont forgive me what im gonna do.Do you hear yourself?Youre a grown man acting like a child/Abnoxious behaviour
Ahha yeah .So you are basically born into this world to suffer and then hope to get to heaven. Guess what .There are people who live happilly yet have never sufffered.
I suppose you’re right. Not very gracious of me, was it? I didn’t need to make it personal or call you out like that. I’m sure you have your reasons for saying the things you do in the manner you do, things that seem rude as they stand. But I have to admit I haven’t had your experience and don’t really have the whole picture. I apologize for that. Maybe you’re here trying to process the experience you’ve had as a Christian which has led you to be so dissatisfied that you now self identify not only as an atheist but even as an anti theist? Good luck finding peace of mind. It’s good there is a place you can do that. I won’t say anymore about it.
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If you told the truth the first time you wouldn’t have to correct it. And you still haven’t fixed your lie about what I said.
That would be you. One lie after another.
Made no such claim. Another lie. Are you going to fix this one? It is kind of hard to keep up when you tell so many lies so fast.
I am not surprised you don’t like scientists any more than you like Christians. Frankly you don’t like anyone speaking truth of any kind do you?
Anyway I do not have to put with this garbage.
There are people who live happily on drugs of many kinds. there are people living happily on selfish self-destructive behaviours for the satisfaction it gives them. If you have not suffered yet - your time is still to come. Your death is an infinitely long time at your end, independent of the time for those around you. Funny thing when you run out of it or perhaps better outrun it. If you do not reconcile in death you burn out o reentry in the non material world.
the fall is exactly about this act of puberty, the rejection of the authority of the father and the claim to independent morality as to judge him for knowing better, e.g. eating from the tree of the realisation of good and evil 
This logic is mystifying. E.g. by what logic does a father provide a benefit to others by encouraging/allowing the unbearable suffering of His Son? God is omnipotent. He could have allowed forgiveness of our sins without sacrificing His Son. The long history of blood-sacrifices of animals culminated in this human sacrifice. He could have simply declared it by caveat. Why execute your own son?
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Isn’t it odd that the distinction of the Abrahamic religion was that it did reject human sacrifice to God. So what happened at the atonement, the act of bringing humans and God closer together? Did it bring God closer to humans by forgiving them or did it bring humans closer to God by showing them that there is another life after death, by the way not a physical one but by realising that Jesus lives on in us, thus that we find life in him?
By the way, do you have a bible that says “if you eat from that tree I am going to kill you”? If not, why would one think that death is God’s revenge on humans?
Only the omnipotence of a dreamer in his dream means he can do whatever you say by whatever means you care to dictate. Logical coherence doesn’t matter because the dream isn’t real. And that sort of omnipotence is a completely empty one which any kid on the block has.
But this is a good observation and question.
He not only could but He did quite frequently. Anyway, it is absurd to think God needs some sort of special song and dance in order to forgive.
Yes. This is turning Christianity back into the same sort of magical appeasement religion we find in the pagan religions, when the fact is that Jesus simply said, “your sins are forgiven, so go and sin no more.”
correction, why ALLOY the execution of His own son? Remember, it was said of Judas, “it would be better if that man had never been born.”
It is almost as if Christianity has turned the pagan sort of religion upside down and it is God who seeks to appease US! After all we are the ones with this notion of appeasement while God forgave so easily. Could it not be we who require this sacrifice of His son in order to forgive ourselves and be willing to change. Actually, it often seems to be the case that only when our sin brings the ultimate tragedy of the death of an innocent that we muster the will to change. And this is the common Christian experience, that we look at the cross and repent because we know that WE did that!
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Good thoughts…All of your thoughts and your narratives make good sense to me. My statement that God could have allowed forgiveness without the sacrifice was meant to counter the frequently held dogma that Christ’s crucifixion was both necessary and sufficient for our salvation. Apparently you agree with me that it was neither. So if it was unnecessary, why do we think He allowed such a thing? Furthermore, if it was necessary, what about the (estimated) 200,000,000 folks who died before Christ’s arrival? Sad for them?
Regarding your “correction” of me when I said God executed His own Son, you must not agree with the many who express belief that God was in total control of the events of that period, for if He was, then he in fact is guilty as charged. And that raises an even larger question of whether He exercises control over current events. Or even has any desire to do so (bad things happening to good people troubles us all). Of course, without bad things happening there would be no room left for any of us slight_smile:
Your noted irony of our faith/religion being turned on its head is good. Grace and salvation comes quite easily to us if it comes simply through our faith, but more difficultly if it requires total surrender of all thoughts, actions and feelings. Either way, it is almost as if many now think that it is God seeking to appease us, rather than vice-versa!
This logic is not mystifying. I.e. by what logic does a father provide a benefit to others suffering unbearable suffering by encouraging/allowing the unbearable suffering of His Son?
God is omnipotent. He could have allowed the narrative of forgiveness of our sins without sacrificing His Son but it wouldn’t have the same therapeutic, transformative, uniting, levelling, egalitarian impact. There is nothing to actually forgive on His part of course. It’s more the other way around.
Furthermore He didn’t sacrifice His son, let alone execute him. His son went out of his way to sacrifice himself, freely chose to be ignominiously executed. This is the mystery of Christ.
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sounds to me like a pubertarian judging his parents claiming superior moral authority. “guilty as charged :-)” Eaten some apple lately?
That father can allow for the physical death of his son as he allows the physical death of every person because in him we overcome this world to enter eternal life. In him you can overcome this world and like Jesus on the cross even in your darkest moment sing a song that comforts you in the knowledge of the outcome as it is summarised in the king James Bible:
" They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this ."
In the mind of the intellectually confused Jesus died to satisfy God’s need to see humans die in revenge for sin. They can’t fathom that death is the logical consequence of separating your “self” from the eternal God, not a punishment, because they use their own flawed morality and impotence.
by the logic that allowed him to make that suffering bearable by being in God’s presence. His omnipotence is shown in his ability to turn the symbols of hate and oppression into beacons of love and hope, in the conception as well as in the death of Jesus. That is what faith in God is all about. What we perceive as evil and suffering is that bit of reality that does not conform with our wishful thinking. In your eyes the death of Jesus was an act of evil for which you want to “judge God” which just demonstrates a distorted view of reality. Christians look at it as an act of love that gives us hope. To some who look at it in the hope of becoming eternal selfs, that hell will be theirs when they get there. To those who want to be like Jesus, their wish for eternal life will be granted in loosing their self to live in the hearts of others for eternity. So we better learn in time not to be a cling-on
@NickolaosPappas & friends
It is strange to me that you keep talking about suffering turning people against God, when we ourselves can see an atrocious example of undeserved mass suffering in the war against Ukraine, which has not turned people against God. What is going on here?
I understand that point well. My point had nothing to do with whether He COULD allow for it. My point was why WOULD he allow for it. What purpose was served? He could have simply declared it to be.
Similarly, I think you are telling me what you believe is God’s power to do it, rather than delve into my question of why would He, when it could have been done in so many less violent ways.
Your statement later is a sound one, when you say “Christians look at it as an act of love”. I absolutely agree with that, since every single Bible Study continually and consistently states this to be the truth. And also it has become dogma such that it is even now considered to be a required component of our faith in order to receive the Grace of God. My question relates only to whether (or not) it was necessary and/or sufficient. If it is either, then how do we reconcile that with our beliefs that the 200M people (more or less) born and died before Christ’s birth were candidates for salvation?
Good thought, but don’t you think that makes my question even more relevant? In other words, you are agreeing with me that He could have offered us salvation without His Son dying a violent death. But the crucifixion got more attention. Word spread faster because of the act. It certainly presaged our Christian beliefs, and on that we clearly agree.
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What I said doesn’t really address that question either.
The easy solution is that the crucial effect doesn’t take place in physical time and space anyway. But then does that mean what we do in life doesn’t matter? Not at all. But I would challenge and reject the Gnostic Pascal wager notion that we are saved by the work of believing dogma or having the name of “Jesus” in our brain when we die like a password for the heavenly gates. God is still asking us to have faith, and I don’t think that is what faith is about, quite the contrary I think that this saved by mental works notion is entitlement, which is the opposite of faith.
I wrote a lot more but decided I should leave it here for now. This is one of those topics where I could say… don’t get me started. LOL