The first commandment says:
"...You shall have no other gods before Me."

Now, ask yourself. Why doesn't it simply say You shall have no other gods?

My interpretation is, you can believe in any of those religions...even in other gods. But notice how all of those religions also have a supreme God that rules them all.

I don't...I can't believe that Christianity is the only true religion. That would be both ignorance and arrogance.

All I can suggest is for you to pick one and try it out. If your not comfortable with that one, then move on to another. What do you have to lose? If nothing else you become more educated on the subject.

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Try not, do; or do not.

[This message has been edited by Friend14 (edited May 03, 2004).]

teeheehee! sorry, that just made me giggle.

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/end boob rant

Well, my interpritation of that is the manner of how it was translated. It doesn't make any sense if it was intended to be interpreted as "You must believe in me of course, but feel free to believe in other gods after you've acknowledged my awesomeness."



Are you saying that the God, Jehovah, is in fact the one true God, however only with a different name, history, explanation, and hell, even PERSONALITY, among the different cultures? For a supereme being that can create a planet from nothing in only 6 days, he sure doesn't have much going for him in the way of explaining himself. If in fact there was one true God, then surely there'd be some consistency among all religions to support this.



You don't need to join a religion to learn about it. And just picking a religion to beleive in because it's the one that suits you best seems to kind of defeat the whole purpose of it all.. Does it not say in the Bible that if you do not worship Him, you will go to hell? Right, well, if I become Hindu, I'm not worshiping Jehovah, am I?

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«»The Scratchware Manifesto
-¬thoughts from beyond observance

[This message has been edited by Jin (edited May 03, 2004).]

Mechwarrior,

I know its a joke obviously, but its a goddamn stupid one!!! Every single contraversial thread about five people feel the overwhelming urge to post something like ... "/me hands out fire extinguishers for the coming flames" and if you think those kinds of comments are actually funny then I hope you die a very slow, painful death and go straight to the firey lakes of hell. No kidding.

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"If there's one thing I've learned it's this - you just can't shake hands with a fist" - David Allen Coe

Keep in mind that even certain events in history have inconsistent accounts, too. It doesn't mean that the event didn't happen at all. So just because religions are inconsistent is no reason to think that none of them are true. I'm going to nit-pick something. Jehovah is God's covenant name. His true, Hebrew name is Elohim or Elohim Yahweh. Not many people know that, including most Christians.

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Genesis 22:2-5 - And God said unto Abraham "You must kill your son, Isaac." And Abraham said "What? I can't hear you! You'll have to speak into the microphone." And God said "Check, check, check, check. Jerry, can you pull the high end out. I'm getting some hiss up here."
Valuable Life Lesson: Frog + Potato Gun = Blindness

Catalog of Electronic Components - Complete IC data sheets
National Electrical Code® (NEC®) Online - Legal requirements for wiring projects.

Actually, Em Playa made a good point. If God used the flood to kill off humans and tested Job, why the big switch to the super cool, loving God that Christians always push? What made the change that God wiped the earth out, but then sent Jesus to save us?

The whole Caesar/God argument was absolute crap, btw.

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free mp3 ~Jump - Young America

new album Between the Dim and the Dark available now

kak.

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Saberopus: omfq musical genuis j00 >mozart
Thrawn42689: Mozart = n00b

Suprisingly DogSRool, I knew that. E-mail me sometime with what you believe. Compare notes, let's say. I'm pretty much set in my ways, but I like to learn about what other people believe just to understand a bit more. Friend14, I am a Christian. I believe the way I do is right. I'm not perfect, but who is? The best anyone can do is to strive to be perfect. If you want to believe that Christianity isn't the only true religion, that's fine. But I don't see how I'm ignorant or arrogant. (arrogance is a bit of a problem then me, but that's with sports and gaming. Still working on that one)

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Prowling out of the tundra, swinging a jeweled meat hammer, cometh Outlaw Torn! And he gives a gutteral bellow:

"I'm seriously going to hump you until you scream like a banshee!"

-No, you need to experience it to truly understand it. If it tells you to face the Holy Land every and pray, then that's what you should do. Simply reading about it isn't enough.

-It does (loosely) say that. But keep in mind what I said earlier. God has many names and many faces. It is my beleive that God made religions (influenced other to make religious texts, ect) to be culture tailored. Which is what makes them more believeable (on a culture by culture basis). You have to keep in mind when many of these relgions started. Think about the kinds of governments that existed. Think about the education of the Nobles (compared to a kid in middle school today).

-The bottom line is, it's not the religion itself that matters. What matters is that you believe there is a supreme being that created the universe and that you should use religiouos texts to gain knowledge of the moral teachings it has to offer. If you are a rational person in good sound mind and body in your judgements and you believe you have a very high sense of morality, great! Then don't worry about the texts. But never forget that there is a supreme being....a God above all other gods, that is watching and waiting...

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Try not, do; or do not.

[This message has been edited by Friend14 (edited May 03, 2004).]

Neither is your fault. It's a cultural thing. Sociology has revealed quiet a bit about this. I'll discuss it in e-mail if you wish.

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Try not, do; or do not.

Jin, what religon are you?

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http://www.sporkaudio.com

Agnostic.

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«»The Scratchware Manifesto
-¬thoughts from beyond observance

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Outlaw Torn:

Suprisingly DogSRool, I knew that. E-mail me sometime with what you believe. Compare notes, let's say. I'm pretty much set in my ways, but I like to learn about what other people believe just to understand a bit more.</font>[/quote]Well, you could learn a lot about what I believe at this forum. I have a much easier time talking with people there, and for some reason I keep my cool constantly - as compared to this forum, where I tend to get upset easier for some reason. You can also learn a lot about other religions. Evidently, God loved us even then, or he would have wiped out humanity completely, right? That is actually a Pagan belief that I don't recommend toying with. It's based in part on the presupposition that truth is relative instead of absolute.

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Genesis 22:2-5 - And God said unto Abraham "You must kill your son, Isaac." And Abraham said "What? I can't hear you! You'll have to speak into the microphone." And God said "Check, check, check, check. Jerry, can you pull the high end out. I'm getting some hiss up here."
Valuable Life Lesson: Frog + Potato Gun = Blindness

Catalog of Electronic Components - Complete IC data sheets
National Electrical Code® (NEC®) Online - Legal requirements for wiring projects.

[This message has been edited by DogSRoOL (edited May 04, 2004).]

Unfortunately, there is no know absolute truth on this world. If there were, we wouldn't be having this debate now would we? There's simply different POV. It goes back to what you said earlier about different cultures (people) interpreting historical events differently. Hell, even in the later books of the Bible where many of the stories are repeated, they're slightly different because they were observed by different people.

At the same time, however, God has to work with a very close minded planet. This, of course, is compounded by the fact it takes days to get messages to naighboring towns. Just imagine how long it would take to spread word of event world wide? Does it not make more sense that God reveal himself in a way that is acceptible for the different cultures of the time? Was not Jesus a Jew?

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Try not, do; or do not.

So... with no absolute truth that would negate the existance of God. I think you just shot yourself in the foot. The rest of your argument was pretty decent.

I'm in no way trying to debate you guys. I'm a believer, I'm not a Christian. I dont believe the Bible is infallible, I dont believe that going to Church is something you have to do, and I dont believe smoking, drinking, and sex is going to send me to hell. I'm really trying to sharpen your arguments so that if you guys ever do try to preach or convert people hardcore you'll already have some answers to their oppositions.



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free mp3 ~Jump - Young America

new album Between the Dim and the Dark available now

To be a Christian or a Jew makes no sense.

If you believe in God, one God, you should be a Muslim.

In about 700 AD, the arch-angel Gabriel came to Mohammed (saws) and spoke to him the word of God. Mohammed (saws) in turn spoke the words of God and, together with his scholars, wrote them down in scriptures. One of the key passages in the Qur'an is concerning His grievances at the Jews and Christians.
All of Christianity is based upon Jesus Christ.
Christmas, Easter, all Christian celebrations are based around the life and death of Jesus Christ.
Ask yourself, why is this?
Jesus Christ was sent to bring the word of God, and set the sinning humankind on the right track again. The life (and death) of Jesus Christ is not important. Interesting, perhaps, but not important. The word and the message of Jesus Christ is important, because that is the word of God; is it not God that is important?
But the Christians seem to have very much overlooked this, and tend to worship Jesus Christ himself.
This is the key grievance of God, as told to Muhammed (saws), that the Christians worshipped Jesus Christ as a false god.

Muslims, on the other hand, worship God only.

Although Muhammed (saws) personally did nothing particularly significant, the Qur'an does display many miracles (and proper miracles, not some Jesus Christ parlour tricks)...

For example, the Qur'an goes into great detail about how a human embryo works: 1,000 years before anyone began to speculate about how it works. Also, the Qur'an tells of how mountains continue under ground.

How could Muhammed (saws) have known any of this, unless it was spoken to him by God? Many of the teachings of Islam are only recently starting to make sense. The word of God must've confused the heck out of him, heh.

Now, whether to believe in a God or not is a big and complicated problem, and both parties seem fixated in either area... but if you do choose to believe in a single God, why are you a Christian?

(Bear in mind that this only applies to the three religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Hinduism and Sihkism are a totally different kettle of fish, and Buddhism is entirely separate from anything else. It's not a religion at all.)

[This message has been edited by Mort-Hog (edited May 04, 2004).]

[somewhat off-topic]I think it was C.S. Lewis who said something like: if the bible had been a completely secular document, its contents would have been widely accepted as fact without any doubt.

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BV's rendition of Titanic: Let's have sex. I won't let go. I don't need this stone.
The End.
~ Wolfy

How would you know that that is true, then?

Oh look! Our favourite subject is on top. Saves me from having to make a new thread. (Note: I have read none of the above, So I have no idea what, if anything I am derailing.)

I found this rather funny. Creationists amassed a list of 40 scientists who believe in the theory of creation.
http://www.icr.org/creationscientists/biologicalscientists.html

The National Centre for Science Education decided, it'd have a go as well and managed to get a list of 434 names. The catch was, to make it fair, they only took people with the name Steve.
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3697_the_list_2_16_2003.asp

God demands justice, yet is merciful. The penalty for sin is death. Jesus paid the penalty for us, so justice has been served in full. God found a way to be merciful, yet still upholding His righteousness.

God did not harm Jobpersonally. God allowed satan to test Job's faith by harming him to prove to satan that Job was as good a man as God said he was.

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Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

I can see that you do not understand the nature of God. You are thinking that Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit are separate entities. This is understandable along human lines of thinking, but the notion is false.

This WILL confuse you, but Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit are all "God". They are all the same, yet they are distinct but not separate. The Trinity is not like the 3 states of water, or the 3 layers in an egg.

The closest analogy would be for the same water to be solid, liquid, and gaseous all at the same time, but even that is not a decent explanation.

The concept of the Trinity is something that humans can't really understand because it defies our logic yet is true nonetheless. Yet, it proves the soverignity of God because God is not bound by the laws of our universe-- He created them. He can do whatever He wants outside of those laws, so human logic does not apply when you are talking about God.

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Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

[This message has been edited by Pagewizard_YKS (edited May 04, 2004).]

The 'this is true but humans won't ever understand it' argument is more than a little confusing, and more than a little convenient.
Perhaps this is what God was referring to when he spoke to Muhammed (saws) about the false gods worshipped by the Christians.


Why do you believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God, and not just a prophet of God?

To the various comments about paradoxes:

You drop a ball from 10 metres above the ground. First of all the ball drops 5 metres, half of its original value. Next, it drops 2.5 metres, half of whats left, next it drops 1.25 metres, half of what was left there... and so on to infinity...

Paradoxes are interesting but totally wrong in real life

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Sweet irony...

So is the concept of God.

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My Life.

Actually, you took what I said out of context. Note that I said "...on this world." Meaning that no one knows the absolute truth, only God (whatever name you give him).

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Try not, do; or do not.

You've ovbiously have never had a Calculus class...

The ball drops a distance infinitly smaller as it approaches zero. Zero is the Limit and is included as the distance it drops.

What complicates this understanding is our conditioning for numbers. Take out numbers (which are conceptual...just like time, by the way) and your left with reality. Which is simply a ball falling, hitting the gound and then bouncing back.

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Try not, do; or do not.

I am a devout member of Apathism. As Jin said, it's all a bunch of crap, and we all have our own 'proof' to our beliefs. Therefore, I seriously don't care whether there is a God/Goddess/Gods or not.

If one could understand the trinity, the God it describes would be false, as one can't understand infinity. It isn't convenient; some might go as far as to say the inability to understand is just the way one would expect the mind to react to something greater than it's ability to comprehend.

God is limitless. In Judeo-Christian scripture, his revealed name, "YWH," is like a refusal of a name(I am, Who am; or I am Who I am). A name places limits, something that can't be placed on God.

The human mind can only understand parts of God, while not being able to put them all together. "Three persons" and "One God;" the mind can only look at them as two sides of a coin, where both sides can ony be viewed separately.

One way of looking at it: There is God, and then there is his self-image, the Son. It is, unlike our own self-images, perfectly reflecting the original: the same. The Love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. Just as the Father existed eternally, so too must have the others.

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Steal my dreams and sell them back to me.....

[This message has been edited by Bounty Hunter 4 hire (edited May 04, 2004).]

That really isn't a very good 'paradox'.

No, a favourite of mine is one that concerns grouping. I believe it's called 'the barber of Seville'.

There is a barber that lives in a town, and he is the only barber. He shaves all and only the men in the town who do not shave themselves; no man goes unshaven, he either shaves himself or is shaven by the barber, though not both. The question is, does the barber shave himself?

In reply to Friend14:
All that needs addressing is the follow statement...



There is nothing but absolute truth. Point of view has absolutely nothing to do with this subject. If that were the case, everyone would be perfectly happy with letting this all wash away with "I don't believe in God, but that's just my point of view." However, that statement is in relation to your point of view on the actual truth in question - which is the existence of a God. That is the absolute truth being argued here - does a God exist?

If a God did truely exist, then there would be basis to prove this absolute truth. However, though the masses of discrepancies that lie throughout all religions - within the individual relgion, and also the relation between religions - this basis cannot be assessed. And where is the starting point for analysing solely the existence of a God, without relating to any religion?

[edit]


He said paradoxes are fun, but don't work in reality. In essence, you just repeated what he already said in a few words.
(Oh, and how can you make the assumption that time is conceptual? There's not exactly any proof either way on the topic.)

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«»The Scratchware Manifesto
-¬thoughts from beyond observance

[This message has been edited by Jin (edited May 04, 2004).]

You don't say that, Gentile.



If you goyim are going to put down the unpronouncable, at least blaspheme it correctly!

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Superstition brings bad luck.
-Raymond Smullyan, 5000B.C.

How convenient. If God created us, then why is our logic different to His? We're bound by laws of logic, but he isn't? Why? Does "true" knowledge only exist without logic? Hold on a moment - I thought the apple that Eve ate held the knowledge of God? If man then holds the knowledge of God, would that not mean that our logic is His logic, thus making us perfectly capable of comprehending the Holy Trinity?

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«»The Scratchware Manifesto
-¬thoughts from beyond observance

The tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's a misquote. The idea being that until man chose to be away from God, he didn't see that which separates the truth from the lie. Man didn't know of evil -that opposed to the truth- until he himself denied the truth (in this case the truth that God loved him, which he doubted, thinking God was holding him back from eating the fruit and being "like a god").

Secondly the idea that God can't be comprehended is not because he defies logic, He is just beyond it. There is a limit to what the human mind can understand; a supposedly infinite being is past the limit of a finite mind.

Higher law can not contradict lower law. Divine Law is only beyond the limit of Natural Law. Natural Law is known by all, simply by reason. Divine Law had to be revealed because reason could never have reached it alone.

[edit] I'm not sure how I blasphemed his name, or did so incorrectly.

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Steal my dreams and sell them back to me.....

[This message has been edited by Bounty Hunter 4 hire (edited May 04, 2004).]

You don't say it, type it, write it, shout it, scream it, whisper it, sketch it in the sand, hammer it into stone, whatever. Hell, don't even think it.

At any rate, you spelled it wrong. There's a heh (h) after the yodh (y).

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Superstition brings bad luck.
-Raymond Smullyan, 5000B.C.

Again, your missing the point. There IS an absolute truth, but only God understands it fully (as I've already said). We, however, canNOT see the absolute truth because of our Points of View. We all see things differently, thus the many (seemingly) inconsitancies that exist.

And, by the way, you can find God without Religion. But as I've already said, you have to look for him, not the other way around.

[edit]



My point was that wasn't actually a paradox (as he thought).



How can you make the assumption that time is real? Can you point it out and show me? Can you tell me it's chemical composition? Do you think an inanimate object cares what time it is? Hell, do you think any species cares what time it is other then humans? The concept of Time started with man early on. Very primitively by looking into the sky and estimating how much daylight they have left. Little did they know, but what they were doing is creating a missing varible for later mathematics. Unfortunately, this is not easy to explain, at least, not conventially. If you'd like a more detailed explaination of why, feel free to e-mail me because it would take this thread WAY off topic. Though, I do find if funny that people have a harder time believing that [a] God exists then Time, when there's less physical evidence of Time then there is of [a] God.

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Try not, do; or do not.

Okay, sorry. And point taken on the spelling, forgot while trying to leave out the vowels.

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Steal my dreams and sell them back to me.....

Thankyou.
How can you make the assumption that God is real? Can you point him out and show me? I can't understand how time could possibly have a chemical composition, when light doesn't even have a chemical composition, other than consisting of energy. Do you think an inatimate object cares what God is? If an inatimate object can't comprehend time, then it can't comprehend God, so which is real? Time, God, both or neither? The concept of time isn't merely to know how long before you finish work, or when lunch is. Without a concept of time, how would our memories be organized? How would you know the difference between now and your childhood, other than a visual difference in your material state? What reason is there for a change in your material state? If this concept of time did not exist, would we cease to age? Would the universe stop all together? I'm quite sure that other animals do have their own concept of time. It was the measurement of time that begun when man started looking at the sky to see how much daylight they had left - not the concept. You want evidence of time? Here's your evidence - you have not read this message at the instant it was created. There was a duration of [something] between the moment this was created, and the moment you read it. What was that duration? Nothing? How could it be nothing? If it were nothing, then how is there a space of duration in between? Are you to suggest that this concept in the time between you reading this and my posting it, merely lies within the mind of man? But would that not mean that this concept of time would exist in all conscious creates? If I witness a ball dropping, I see its starting point, X, I see it falling, moving between X to its stopping point, Y, where it hits the ground.

Physical evidence of time = everything around you.
Physical evidence of God = ziltch. Unless you class word of man as "physical evidence".

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«»The Scratchware Manifesto
-¬thoughts from beyond observance

You are meandering off the topic somewhat (much to my annoyance as I'm interested in what people think of Christianity vs. Islam. I'm still not convinced that Christianity is the one true religion) but I'll follow you anyway...

Time is not a separate entity. Time is not absolute. Time and space are the same thing; if space is distorted, as by a large mass, time is also distorted. Time is distorted around you, too, but only a tiny amount (unless you are of a very large mass).

I'll just rehash the arguments I can remember from the past thread and go on with my thread browsing. *NOTE* I have not read all of the posts up until this point, just the first 2/3 of the first page.

I'm sure most of you remember the ':10 argument'. Basically, it's in reference to those people that say that whenever they look up at the clock it's __:10. Most people on the forums debunked this with an idea I hadn't though of until that point. You only seem to remembert he times you look up and it's at :10, because it has some sort of significance in your mind. You just kind of miss all the other times you check during the day. This same idea can be applied to the miracle thing. If something you want to happen occurs many quickly attribute this to God. But religious people also tend to neglect the millions of times where it DOESN'T occur. 'miracles' are just coincidence. People and things being in the right place and the right time, for no other reason than that's where they were. If I go and place a quarter near a payphone long enough, somebody's going to eventually need to use the payphone and see the quarter and use it. NOT a miracle. Whose act was it that helped this man/woman? Mine.

Then, of course, there's my personal favorite. Not all of the world religions can be true. There are too many differences between them. So, if you can claim that the religion of people in another region of the world if false, why can't Christianity be? Is it such an abstract idea that people make up Gods? How far back does christianity go back? A little less than 2000 years. Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism which goes back much farther. Chances are Judaism was derived from soemthing else before that. People knew little abut the world around them back then. The idea of a God, an all-perfect all-powerful being is a great way to explain the answer without actually thinking about it or doing anything to figure out why (not that they had the means to way back anyhow...). Ancient Jews would have called a computer a miracle had tehy the chance to see one. Think about it. There is nothing in this world that can make me believe that there is a God. I can't think of anything around me that can't be created by anything but a God. As soon as some object appears in front of me that can obey EVERY SINGLE LAW OF PHYSICS AND NATURE, I'll attribute it to a higher deity. THAT I will consider a miracle. Everything else around me can be explained well enough.

Ah, creationism. So, God decided on a whim to create the Earth. In 7 days, too. That's a lot of work for seven days. Oh, but not just that. In that time, he also made THE WHOLE UNIVERSE. Also creating day and night, spinningthe sun around the earth (if we're to take the bible completely literally, the whole sun-stand-still thing). Yeh, that's much more plausible than saying that the big bang occured, and then over billions of years life forms slowly developed. The fosilized remains of many creatures that existed long before humans (dinosaur remains are usually found much deeper than human remains, except where erosion has occured. Plus of course carbon dating. Much older, no disclaiming that, it's not a small enough time gap that the margin of error could account for that.) But if the Earth was created in 7 days, and the prehistoric animals of the earth were created millions of years before us, how the **** does that work? Were they floating in space before the earth or something?

I've got to go to school now, so I'm done arguing.

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Clarinetists, unite!

-writer of Bloodwing: Fallen Soldier
(no site up yet...)

Good debate... I'll add my views when I get back from school as well.

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My Life.