In order for humans to forgive we go through an emotional state and move past the slight.
In order for God to forgive he has to have a ritualistic blood sacrifice involving torture of a pure being to forgive even the slightest of offenses.
How can God be all powerful if he is restricted in his ability to forgive?
How can God be all merciful if there is a sacrifice restriction on his mercy?
Why does God have a lower capacity of forgiveness than humans?
God is not more merciful than most humans.
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DanieltheDragon
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God is not more merciful than most humans.
Post #1Post 1: Wed Apr 01, 2015 10:48 am Otseng has been banned
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Mike Boone
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Re: God is not more merciful than most humans.
Post #81Come on JW, your "And so is the case" statement is obvious baloney, because you used it in response to me saying that if Christianity is true it would be a bright beacon that would cause all other religions to shrink in importance, and your statement claims that Christianity is now achieving just that sort of success, but as I pointed out Islam is now gaining more new believers than Christianity is.JehovahsWitness wrote:And so is the case. True Christianity is a shining light attracting millions and shining with its message and example in a dark world. Obviously not numerically of course, Jesus already said that there would be "few" a minority that would find the road to life, but its testimony indeed does stand out as an beautiful example of what true faith can be.Mike Boone wrote: Let me respectfully say, JehovahsWitness, that if the Christian religion, and Christ as our savior, were true, then Christianity would be such a powerfully bright beacon of truth, naturally attracting so many people to its light, that all other religions would shrink in its wake.
JW
Like so many true believers, JW, you often suffer from the tendency to make statements that you wish were true, even though unquestionable evidence proves otherwise. And here you tried to have things both ways, first by indicating that Christianity is attracting millions of people with its light, but then you immediately follow that statement with the next sentence beginning with "Obviously not numerically of course", followed by you stating that Jesus said that there would "few", a minority that would find the road to life".
So JW, you started your response to me by saying that Christianity is such a bright beacon that attracts millions, although more people are now being won over to the beacon being shined by Islam, but then you dismiss the importance of how many people accept Christ, by saying that Jesus stated that only a "few", who make up a minority, are going to be saved anyway.
JW, I can't be the only one here who notices how your thinking often involves quickly veering from one statement to the next, with your latest statement not always agreeing with the one that directly preceded it.
Re: God is not more merciful than most humans.
Post #82JehovahsWitness wrote:Oh but he has, he has done wonderful things regarding the shedding of light on his word, fabulous, earth moving things, notably from the end of the 19th century and progressively through the 20th century to today. For His people.Mike Boone wrote:But now being 65 years old, I must say that a God has certainly not been intervening enough during the last half century plus...
that was people, not god
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Mike Boone
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Re: God is not more merciful than most humans.
Post #83[Replying to post 80 by JehovahsWitness]
JW, after a quick glance at post #80, I just had to counter the pile of pure, steaming, cow manure, that you dumped there. Here is some of the nonsense you presented:
"Jesus already said that there would be "few" a minority that would find the road to life, not because it wasn't bright enough but because the majority would, like Satan "love darkness".
True Christianity rises above other religions not because its bigger but because it's better."
No JW, if your Christian beliefs were true the majority of people who would be damned to Hell would suffer that fate simply because they belong to one of the world's non-Christian faiths, NOT because they have any more "love of darkness" than you do.
In fact JW, I'll explain why you love darkness more than my Jewish friends do. You see, since Jews don't believe in Hell, unlike you, they don't believe that everyone who has a religion different than their own is doomed to everlasting suffering.
Anyone with compassion should realize what a dark belief it is to think that everyone who does not share his own particular belief about God is going to suffer forever.
And Hell is a totally fictional place, anyway. Anthropologists who spend their lives researching early man will tell you that the concept of Hell was invented long before the bible was written by tribal chieftains who needed an extremely frightening idea to keep their people in line. So they made up stories to tell their people which involved things like people, after death, being thrown into a giant campfire, that is kept eternally burning by the Sun God, so that the people who had been disobedient in life, would suffer, scream, and cry forever. And who among us, as a parent, would want a child of ours to suffer intense pain, for even 1 week, just because that child disbelieved something we said or even converted to a religion different from our own after marrying someone of a different faith.
No loving God would allow his own children to suffer forever simply for making the human mistake of believing in the wrong thing. After all, making mistakes is what makes us human.
Hindu beliefs have been in the world longer than any other religion, including that of Abraham and Moses. And Hindus tend to be a gentle people who, on average, are certainly less violent than American Christians. Hindus suffering a famine in India won't even kill a cow, so that they can eat.
Anyway, the Christian belief that gentle people like the Hindus, are all doomed to spend an eternity of suffering, just for believing in a different religion, is so sick, sadistic, and cruel, that it could only be part of God's plan, if God is a true beast. And people who believe this cruel nonsense have sure allowed fear and ignorance to blacken their thinking.
So your statement, JW, "True Christianity rises above other religions not because its bigger but because it's better." is a truly ridiculous statement because rather than being better than such faiths as Hinduism and Judaism, Christianity, because of its savagely crude doctrine of Hell, is just a more cruel and sadistic form of belief than many other faiths, such as the 2 just given as examples.
The only kind of people who should think that there is anything beautiful about a faith that was built around a human blood sacrifice, should be people of the sort who danced around campfires, thousands of years ago, while shaking their spears at the moon. And Christianity just boils down to being that crude, cruel, and stupid, except that Christians usually dress better than the primitive folks around those fires did.
My Jewish friends are just amazed that the thinking of bible believing Christians is at least 200 years behind the times.
Now JW, I'd be truly disappointed if you didn't come back at me with something like "But Jesus believed in Hell!"
Yes, in the bible, Jesus talks about Hell. But if Jesus Christ actually existed, he had a philosophy that was great, in many ways, but he was also a deluded preacher who the bible shows presenting a false prophecy to people he was giving sermons to, which predicted that Jesus would return to establish his kingdom on earth: "before many of you standing here have tasted death"
Even C.S. Lewis, the man who bible believing ministers have told me was the 20th Century's greatest defender of the Christian faith, described the biblical passages where Jesus promised that his 2nd Coming would occur while many he had preached to were still alive, as, in Lewis's words: "the most embarrassing part of the bible"
And C.S. Lewis, as a result of those biblical passages said: "Apparently, Jesus did not know any better, than anyone else, when the world would end."
Of course, that comment from C.S. Lewis begs the question, if Jesus didn't know when he would return, ending the world as we know it, then why did he go ahead and make an erroneous prediction as if he really possessed that knowledge?
Dr. Albert Schweitzer, known as one of the 20th Century's greatest men for the way he worked to cure the sick in Africa, was already a Lutheran minister in Germany when at age 30, in 1905, Dr Schweitzer decided to study medicine so he could employ the philosophy of Jesus Christ in his medical work to aid the sick in primitive areas of Africa where the suffering of the people was particularly great. But even while studying medicine, in 1906, Dr Schweitzer who was also a great scholar, published "The Quest of the Historical Jesus", a book which was highly regarded, and eventually translated from the original German into many other languages.
But I bring up Dr Schweitzer, because late in life, due to Christ's false predictions in the bible that he would return and establish his earthy kingdom in the 1st Century, the very religious Schweitzer concluded that Jesus could be neither divine, nor the Son of God, because Christ engaged in presenting that false prophecy in a few sermons.
Dr Schweitzer continued to greatly admire many facets of Christ's teaching, but like Jewish people, the doctor came to regard Jesus as someone who was a great teacher, but no more than that, and who was likely to have suffered delusions that had Jesus imagining that his own importance was much greater than it actually was. Well, at least Dr Schweitzer didn't seem to think that Jesus deliberately lied when presenting his false prophecy.
JW, after a quick glance at post #80, I just had to counter the pile of pure, steaming, cow manure, that you dumped there. Here is some of the nonsense you presented:
"Jesus already said that there would be "few" a minority that would find the road to life, not because it wasn't bright enough but because the majority would, like Satan "love darkness".
True Christianity rises above other religions not because its bigger but because it's better."
No JW, if your Christian beliefs were true the majority of people who would be damned to Hell would suffer that fate simply because they belong to one of the world's non-Christian faiths, NOT because they have any more "love of darkness" than you do.
In fact JW, I'll explain why you love darkness more than my Jewish friends do. You see, since Jews don't believe in Hell, unlike you, they don't believe that everyone who has a religion different than their own is doomed to everlasting suffering.
Anyone with compassion should realize what a dark belief it is to think that everyone who does not share his own particular belief about God is going to suffer forever.
And Hell is a totally fictional place, anyway. Anthropologists who spend their lives researching early man will tell you that the concept of Hell was invented long before the bible was written by tribal chieftains who needed an extremely frightening idea to keep their people in line. So they made up stories to tell their people which involved things like people, after death, being thrown into a giant campfire, that is kept eternally burning by the Sun God, so that the people who had been disobedient in life, would suffer, scream, and cry forever. And who among us, as a parent, would want a child of ours to suffer intense pain, for even 1 week, just because that child disbelieved something we said or even converted to a religion different from our own after marrying someone of a different faith.
No loving God would allow his own children to suffer forever simply for making the human mistake of believing in the wrong thing. After all, making mistakes is what makes us human.
Hindu beliefs have been in the world longer than any other religion, including that of Abraham and Moses. And Hindus tend to be a gentle people who, on average, are certainly less violent than American Christians. Hindus suffering a famine in India won't even kill a cow, so that they can eat.
Anyway, the Christian belief that gentle people like the Hindus, are all doomed to spend an eternity of suffering, just for believing in a different religion, is so sick, sadistic, and cruel, that it could only be part of God's plan, if God is a true beast. And people who believe this cruel nonsense have sure allowed fear and ignorance to blacken their thinking.
So your statement, JW, "True Christianity rises above other religions not because its bigger but because it's better." is a truly ridiculous statement because rather than being better than such faiths as Hinduism and Judaism, Christianity, because of its savagely crude doctrine of Hell, is just a more cruel and sadistic form of belief than many other faiths, such as the 2 just given as examples.
The only kind of people who should think that there is anything beautiful about a faith that was built around a human blood sacrifice, should be people of the sort who danced around campfires, thousands of years ago, while shaking their spears at the moon. And Christianity just boils down to being that crude, cruel, and stupid, except that Christians usually dress better than the primitive folks around those fires did.
My Jewish friends are just amazed that the thinking of bible believing Christians is at least 200 years behind the times.
Now JW, I'd be truly disappointed if you didn't come back at me with something like "But Jesus believed in Hell!"
Yes, in the bible, Jesus talks about Hell. But if Jesus Christ actually existed, he had a philosophy that was great, in many ways, but he was also a deluded preacher who the bible shows presenting a false prophecy to people he was giving sermons to, which predicted that Jesus would return to establish his kingdom on earth: "before many of you standing here have tasted death"
Even C.S. Lewis, the man who bible believing ministers have told me was the 20th Century's greatest defender of the Christian faith, described the biblical passages where Jesus promised that his 2nd Coming would occur while many he had preached to were still alive, as, in Lewis's words: "the most embarrassing part of the bible"
And C.S. Lewis, as a result of those biblical passages said: "Apparently, Jesus did not know any better, than anyone else, when the world would end."
Of course, that comment from C.S. Lewis begs the question, if Jesus didn't know when he would return, ending the world as we know it, then why did he go ahead and make an erroneous prediction as if he really possessed that knowledge?
Dr. Albert Schweitzer, known as one of the 20th Century's greatest men for the way he worked to cure the sick in Africa, was already a Lutheran minister in Germany when at age 30, in 1905, Dr Schweitzer decided to study medicine so he could employ the philosophy of Jesus Christ in his medical work to aid the sick in primitive areas of Africa where the suffering of the people was particularly great. But even while studying medicine, in 1906, Dr Schweitzer who was also a great scholar, published "The Quest of the Historical Jesus", a book which was highly regarded, and eventually translated from the original German into many other languages.
But I bring up Dr Schweitzer, because late in life, due to Christ's false predictions in the bible that he would return and establish his earthy kingdom in the 1st Century, the very religious Schweitzer concluded that Jesus could be neither divine, nor the Son of God, because Christ engaged in presenting that false prophecy in a few sermons.
Dr Schweitzer continued to greatly admire many facets of Christ's teaching, but like Jewish people, the doctor came to regard Jesus as someone who was a great teacher, but no more than that, and who was likely to have suffered delusions that had Jesus imagining that his own importance was much greater than it actually was. Well, at least Dr Schweitzer didn't seem to think that Jesus deliberately lied when presenting his false prophecy.
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Bust Nak
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Post #84
Moderator CommentMike Boone wrote: I just had to counter the pile of pure, steaming, cow manure, that you dumped there. Here is some of the nonsense you presented...
Mind your tone please, do not make overly inflammatory comments.
Please review the Rules.
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Moderator comments do not count as a strike against any posters. They only serve as an acknowledgment that a post report has been received, but has not been judged to warrant a moderator warning against a particular poster. Any challenges or replies to moderator postings should be made via Private Message to avoid derailing topics.
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JehovahsWitness
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Re: God is not more merciful than most humans.
Post #85I have already present my reasons for believing that True Christianity would be a minority religion. This is based on the words attributed to Jesus himself in scripture. You don't have to believe it (or you can interpret "few" to mean "majority") but that doesn't mean that I have no basis for my conclusions.Mike Boone wrote: No JW, if your Christian beliefs were true the majority of people who would be damned to Hell would suffer that fate simply because they belong to one of the world's non-Christian faiths
Jesus also said he (not Buddah, Allah or Krishna) is the way to life and that nobody gets to the Father (meaning God) except though him. Again, one can take or leave it, but according to biblical theology, saying that cannot be true because that would exclude the majority of people is like someone in the middle ages insisting the earth MUST be flat because if it was anything other than flat that would make the majority wrong (In the bible only 8 people were saved when God flooded the earth, that arguably tells us something about how God views numbers).
Something doesn't become false because the alternative is considered unacceptable and something doesn't become true because its been believed a long time (ie its an old or even the oldest belief system/religion). Something doesn't become true because the person telling you is gentle and wouldn't hurt a cow... something is true if it's true.
Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in "hell".
JW
INDEX: More bible based ANSWERS
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 81#p826681
"For if we live, we live to Jehovah, and if we die, we die to Jehovah. So both if we live and if we die, we belong to Jehovah" - Romans 14:8
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 81#p826681
"For if we live, we live to Jehovah, and if we die, we die to Jehovah. So both if we live and if we die, we belong to Jehovah" - Romans 14:8
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Mike Boone
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Post #86
I sincerely apologize for that sentence, which I was afraid was right on the borderline of being acceptable.Bust Nak wrote:Moderator CommentMike Boone wrote: I just had to counter the pile of pure, steaming, cow manure, that you dumped there. Here is some of the nonsense you presented...
Mind your tone please, do not make overly inflammatory comments.
Please review the Rules.
______________
Moderator comments do not count as a strike against any posters. They only serve as an acknowledgment that a post report has been received, but has not been judged to warrant a moderator warning against a particular poster. Any challenges or replies to moderator postings should be made via Private Message to avoid derailing topics.
But please know that what moved me toward committing that offense is my outrage at the thought that anyone would be so insensitive to think that a loving God would be so cruel and lacking in mercy as to allow a person to suffer eternal torment just for making the very human mistake of believing in the wrong religion, or in none at all. We are all human beings, which by definition, means we are constantly prone to making mistakes and wrong choices.
So the idea that any decent God would allow any of his children to suffer forever due to making the well intentioned mistake of devoting himself to the wrong set of beliefs, is not only insane, but would be proof that such a God certainly does not love any child who he would allow to suffer for having committed such a so called offense.
I'm a father myself, so I know how a loving father behaves, and the behavior of a God that I just described, is certainly not loving.
That is why, if we are discussing the God believed in by Christians, my fellow forum member who started this thread "God is not more merciful than most humans", is correct beyond any doubt. Because as I indicated, countless human fathers, like me, show a lot more mercy to our children than the Christian God supposedly does. So it's pretty obvious to anyone who allows himself to think, that the Christian God, if he existed, would actually be LESS merciful than most humans.
2 last points. According to the Christian religion, a saintly man like Mahatma Gandhi, who helped little children, is now suffering in Hell, but a Nazi war criminal who enjoyed torturing little children at Auschwitz, but later came to accept Christ at Spandau Prison, before being executed, is now in Heaven. Well, anyone who is so fearful of God allowing him to go to Hell, that he thinks that it is his duty to believe sadistic insanity like that, really needs to go seek out some professional help to deprogram the sick brainwashing that obviously poisoned his mind enough to make him accept such cruelty.
Also, we should remember that since only a true God would possess the perfection of character that would give him the ability to avoid making any mistakes, or committing any sins, when a Christian addresses a request for forgiveness to the God he believes in, he is actually asking to be forgiven for not having been created as a God, himself.
Hope this will turn out to be a good, safe day for every one of my fellow members of this forum. Take care folks.
Last edited by Mike Boone on Wed Jan 04, 2017 9:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: God is not more merciful than most humans.
Post #87[Replying to post 85 by JehovahsWitness]
What is your criteria for saying that something ( let's say X ) is true?
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JehovahsWitness
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Re: God is not more merciful than most humans.
Post #88I would say something is true if I believed it to be true. I would believe something to be true, if I was convinced throughBlastcat wrote: What is your criteria for saying that something ( let's say X ) is true?
i) personal experience
ii) my knowledge of verifiable facts
iii) the convincing the testimony of others
JW
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Last edited by JehovahsWitness on Tue Apr 05, 2022 5:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.
INDEX: More bible based ANSWERS
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 81#p826681
"For if we live, we live to Jehovah, and if we die, we die to Jehovah. So both if we live and if we die, we belong to Jehovah" - Romans 14:8
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 81#p826681
"For if we live, we live to Jehovah, and if we die, we die to Jehovah. So both if we live and if we die, we belong to Jehovah" - Romans 14:8
Re: God is not more merciful than most humans.
Post #89[Replying to post 88 by JehovahsWitness]
[center]How should we test for the truth of X?[/center]
As a firm believer in the skeptical method, it's my opinion that your criteria ( ii ) is extremely reliable. If I say that I have a FACT, I'm claiming that something is true independent of my cognitive biases, and independent on what other people testify and their cognitive biases. In other words, when I say I have a fact, I am saying that I have "a test for that hypothesis that yields positive results independent of any bias, for or against".
So, if you say, for example that X is a true proposition, or "is a fact", then I would imagine the same. In other words, you are saying that "you have a test for that". That test, if I were to run it, would be INDEPENDENT of my bias ( positive or negative ), and INDEPENDENT of any ( again, positive or negative ) biases of others.
____________
Question:
[center]How should we test for the truth of X?[/center]
Blastcat wrote: What is your criteria for saying that something ( let's say X ) is true?
Thank you for the very clear answer.JehovahsWitness wrote: I would say something is true if I believed it to be true. I would believe something to be true, if I was convinced through
i) personal experience
ii) my knowledge of verifiable facts
iii) the convincing the testimony of others
As a firm believer in the skeptical method, it's my opinion that your criteria ( ii ) is extremely reliable. If I say that I have a FACT, I'm claiming that something is true independent of my cognitive biases, and independent on what other people testify and their cognitive biases. In other words, when I say I have a fact, I am saying that I have "a test for that hypothesis that yields positive results independent of any bias, for or against".
So, if you say, for example that X is a true proposition, or "is a fact", then I would imagine the same. In other words, you are saying that "you have a test for that". That test, if I were to run it, would be INDEPENDENT of my bias ( positive or negative ), and INDEPENDENT of any ( again, positive or negative ) biases of others.
____________
Question:
When it comes to any proposition ( proposition X, in our example ) what kind of tests do you propose?
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Mike Boone
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Re: God is not more merciful than most humans.
Post #90[Replying to post 89 by Blastcat]
Blastcat you stated that JW's 2nd criteria for indicating that something is true: "i) my knowledge of verifiable facts" is very reliable. But the problem with claims like Christ's supposedly virgin birth and resurrection is that there are no verifiable facts that support such beliefs.
Of course, 300 years before the time of Christ, many of the followers of Alexander the Great believed that Alexander's mother gave birth to him after being impregnated by the God, Zeus, and there were many other claimed "miracle pregnancies" throughout the ancient world, as well as a supposed resurrection in Egypt that was accepted by the people of that nation as being true, centuries before the time of Jesus.
People everywhere, throughout history, have never seemed to tire of making up tall tales, which are more commonly known as miracles.
Blastcat you stated that JW's 2nd criteria for indicating that something is true: "i) my knowledge of verifiable facts" is very reliable. But the problem with claims like Christ's supposedly virgin birth and resurrection is that there are no verifiable facts that support such beliefs.
Of course, 300 years before the time of Christ, many of the followers of Alexander the Great believed that Alexander's mother gave birth to him after being impregnated by the God, Zeus, and there were many other claimed "miracle pregnancies" throughout the ancient world, as well as a supposed resurrection in Egypt that was accepted by the people of that nation as being true, centuries before the time of Jesus.
People everywhere, throughout history, have never seemed to tire of making up tall tales, which are more commonly known as miracles.
