Bad Theology and Salvation

[liamconnor]

this thread was provoked by Elijah JOhn's stimulating question on why the Trinity was not a focus of Jesus' (and I add, any of the N.T. authors) if it is so important.

I commented there that the N.T. authors did not think salvation came through belief in the Trinity.

But this raises a question which deserves its own thread.


Suppose a person believes that Jesus' death atones for sins; that Jesus is God's chosen King/Messiah/Christ of the world. But...

This person does NOT believe that he is God (i.e. denies Trinity) though Jesus actually IS God (reality has it that God is Triune)

(or)

The person DOES believe God is Triune; but God in fact is NOT triune (Jesus is not God).


Can either person be "saved"?

[Divine Insight]

You can choose whether you wish to believe me or not, but, I am a lot like you when it comes to having to have things make sense. I have even approached the subject in my personal studies using as a base many of the same ideas you express. I like to formulate many different paradigms in my mind when I study and then do what is known as paradigm shifting so as to search out which view makes the most sense against the text and it's context. In considering context I first survey the immediate context, then I compare it to a chapter wide context, then to a book wide context, then a Bible wide context. I also take in some consideration for extra-Biblical and even non-Biblical commentaries.

This isn't really about me believing you. I have studied the Abrahamic scriptures and found those scriptures to be self-contradictory in many serious ways. So this really has nothing to do with any specific interpretation of this religion. It's my conclusion that the scriptures themselves are faulty in serious ways.

Also, going back to the idea of evangelism: Why should a mere mortal evangelist be able to teach or clear up anything any better than this God himself could do? Yahweh did not convince me of anything through the entire Old Testament, and neither did Jesus convince me of anything throughout the New Testament.

In fact, when it comes to Jesus all I can say is that Jesus appears to be the first character in the Bible that I can actually agree with in terms of moral principles. But that can only be me giving my seal of approval to Jesus. It certainly wouldn't be me learning any moral values from the teachings of Jesus. And that's backwards from how it's supposed to be.

But the bottom line is that if neither Yahweh, nor Jesus himself could convince me via these scriptures, then surely no evangelist could clear things up, because if an evangelist could even do this that would only result in the evangelist being a better teacher than either Jesus or God. And that itself would then be an oxymoron.

So there's no way that any human could clear this up. If it could have been cleared up, Jesus and Yahweh should have been able to do that on their own.

If I am anything, I am aware of the dangers of a closed mind boxing me in and careful to be thorough. I have not by-passed many of the same ideas you express, but I have worked through those ideas and found what I now believe makes even better sense.

As far as I'm concerned you cannot possibly have resolved the contradictions I've come to recognize. Moreover, if you could, then you could share those resolutions with me. However, the fact remains that no theist has yet been able to do this, so you would be the first to be sure. And it's highly unlikely that this will be the case. Far more likely you will just repeat the standard apologies that are already out there. Apologies I've already examined many times over and do not see where they resolve anything.

I know you cannot see what I am about to say but I believe it needs saying. You are fixated in a premise rather than paradigm shifting so as to compare various premises. The contradictory teachings from one religion to another makes that easy to have happen because all of those contradictory teachings gathered together are like a billion sparrows gathered together so that your mind's eye cannot find the singular finch to see it.

For me it's not about the different teachings of different religions. I haven't found a single version of any of the Abrahamic religions that have a consistent and non-contradictory story to tell.

It might be informative for you to know the following:

I was born and raised into Free Methodist Protestantism. I actually didn't even have a problem with our particular church and how they believed. I actually accepted the religion, mainly because I was young and my parents, pastors and other adults were assuring me that it's the truth. However, I have come to discover later than even these adults will confess that they can't know if this religion is true if you actually press them for an honest answer.

My study into the Bible began with the belief that I would find answers to all my questions. Because this is what I was taught. Not only this, but the questions I had were not for me, but rather I felt that I needed to know the answers and understand them if I am going to teach the word of God to others. After all, other people will have questions and I should have rational meaningful answers to those questions.

What I quickly discovered is that there are no rational answers to these important questions. The biblical scriptures do not answer all questions. To the contrary the more I studied them the more questions arose.

I didn't even need to retain the "Free Methodist Protestant" views on this religion. I was more than open to consider any views that actually made sense. So I looked into other Christian sects, including Catholicism. But none of those had any resolutions for the contradictions I had found. So I even considered that maybe Christianity is wrong and Judaism is true. But that was very quick to fail because most of the contradictions were actually in the OT as well.

I even considered Islam, but quickly found that it contains the same contradictions as well.

I finally realized that none of the Abrahamic religion can possibly be true.

Even at that point I didn't become an "atheist". I still believed in a "God". In fact, I decided to look around to see of there were any other religions that actually made some sort of sense., and I found this in Buddhism. As far as I can see Buddhism "could" be true. To this day I can't find a reason to reject Buddhism based on a logical contradiction.

However, I also matured over that time and I have also come to realize that there simply may not be any "God" at all. Just because a religion like Buddhism might not contain any direct contradictions doesn't mean that it's true. All it means is that it's a very well-thought-out philosophy. Unlike the Biblical paradigm of God.

But I've come to realize that the secular naturalists may actually be right. I can't say they aren't right. Therefore the only honest position I can take is to be agnostic. I simply don't know whether there exists a "God" or not. However, I do feel that I can say with great certainty, that if there exists a God it's definitely not as described in the Bible. Why? Well, because the Bible contains far too many self-contradictory claims.

Therefore if there exists a God, it's far more likely to be something along the lines of the God of Buddhism, or Taoism, etc.

I saved your comments in that post to my desktop where I can think more about them before giving a more specific reply to them. After all, you did have a lot to say. LOL.

You would need to resolve the great contradictions contained in the Biblical stories if you wanted to convince me that the Bible could make sense. And all I can say is good luck with that because there are contradictions in the Bible that I see no possible way to resolve.

Secondly, even if you did succeed in this quest, what would that say about Jesus and Yahweh? Why wouldn't they have been able to resolve these contradictions in their teachings right within the "Holy Scriptures"?

So I just don't see where this quest could ever be possible for a theist to achieve.

[Claire Evans]

Of course that person can be saved. As long as they accept Jesus as their saviour and repent of sin, then salvation is theirs. We cannot understand everything and God is not so petty as to reject someone because they didn't believe in the trinity. All will be revealed one day.

Hello....
But so many Christians do not believe the above.....
They quote Matthew .......7:14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to ... salvation......... For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
....... which does not seem to allow much leeway for partial beliefs.

But how does this relate to different beliefs in the Bible? It just means those who suffer with Christ take the narrow road and those who have an easy life and think they don't need God won't have salvation.

There are many many hundreds of Christian Creeds, Denominations and Churches, and many of these believe that many of the others are bound to fail.

Christians choose their doctrine, rules, laws and codes from a huge selection of bible passages. The war-monger Christians cherry-pick any the passages that show Jesus to have been a fighter (sell your scrips and buy swords etc) and wish for public executions of gays etc etc... and still believe that slavery is ok (oh yes), whilst more loving Christians focus more on a more understanding Jesus.

Jesus was not saying the disciples needed to have swords to kill. The two swords were symbolic of danger. He often used symbolism.

http://www.answering-islam.org/Authors/ ... _22_36.htm

As for execution of gays, did Jesus want the adulteress to be executed which was done under Jewish law? Do, so why should Christians wish for public executions of gays?

Why would Christians think slavery is okay?

People must just think of the context to avoid confusion.

But nearly all Christians base the major part of their faith on the 'mid-term dispensation' of Paul as the new Jesus, pushing rules, boundaries and laws far far beyond anything which Jesus stood for.

Which, if any, are true?

Can you give me an example of Paul being like this? Paul never meant to be the "new Jesus". Jesus also pushed rues and boundaries.

[Left Site]

[Replying to Divine Insight]

In fact, when it comes to Jesus all I can say is that Jesus appears to be the first character in the Bible that I can actually agree with in terms of moral principles. But that can only be me giving my seal of approval to Jesus. It certainly wouldn't be me learning any moral values from the teachings of Jesus. And that's backwards from how it's supposed to be.

In my opinion, you are absolutely right about that being backward from how it is supposed to be. The scriptures teach that it would be wrong to believe in God and his Son in such an empty way. Yet, many do just that,. Romans chapter 2 is but one place of many places in scripture which address the impropriety of such an empty faith.

But the bottom line is that if neither Yahweh, nor Jesus himself could convince me via these scriptures, then surely no evangelist could clear things up, because if an evangelist could even do this that would only result in the evangelist being a better teacher than either Jesus or God. And that itself would then be an oxymoron. So there's no way that any human could clear this up. If it could have been cleared up, Jesus and Yahweh should have been able to do that on their own.

If Jehovah would give a man a fish, that man would be fed for a day. But if Jehovah teaches a man to fish he has fed him for a lifetime. Jehovah is teaching mankind to fish by letting man learn to share knowledge with others. But he starts the process rolling by searching out those who have hearts that are ready and willing to learn from him. After all, it is unreasonable to think that everyone is ready in themselves to understand. So Jehovah searches out those who are ready and our personal insistence that we are ready does not make it so.

Fom what I read of your words I feel I see that you have been what is called jaded, and that most likely by all the many who claim to be those to whom Jehovah gave understanding but are not really such ones. And there are many like that who then turn the whole thing into a way to make money or to gain prestige or both. 2 Corinthians 11:13 “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, fashioning themselves into apostles of Christ.� And the sad part is that the majority of those who do that are self-deceived. They really believe they have learned the truth from God. It is their own fault that they haven't, for they were warned of the treacherousness of thinking too much of one's self but rationalize that not to be what they are doing. They actually think that they are doing just the opposite and sacrificing their time and resources for others while they live in expensive houses and drive only the most luxurious cars. That is rationalized, too. They say, “God rewards those who love him and blesses them with abundance�, all the while it is really their working the emotions of their congregations so that there is enough money for them to have those things. How unlike Jesus ,who said, “You received free, give free.� There attitude is contrary to the humility showed by David who though being an imperfect man and making his fair share of mistakes, said that he would content himself even if he were permitted to be a door keeper to the house of his God. In other words he was not even asking that he be let live in God's house, only that he not be cast off entirely from being able to render service to God and God's people. Psalms 84:10  “For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.�

In a large family parents know the job of teaching their children is made far more efficient by teaching the older children to help their younger siblings learn. That is what Jehovah is doing with the human family. It is the right thing to do, otherwise he would have to continue cleaning up our messes after us forever. I mean, we can't just throw all responsibility on God for how we are. We made the choices which got us there. We should take at least a measure of responsibility for our choices. It is unfair to blame that on God.

[Monta]

[Replying to post 33 by BusB]

"In a large family parents know the job of teaching their children is made far more efficient by teaching the older children to help their younger siblings learn. That is what Jehovah is doing with the human family. "

You are continously using the name 'Jehovah' and wonder whether you

are propagating OT teaching.

[Left Site]

[Replying to Monta]

I find nothing in the OT which conflicts with the NT, once it is understood that the Mosaic Law Covenant was but a temporary add-on, just as Paul said at Galatians 3:19, this due to the rather extreme neglect for godliness which the sons of Jacob showed, and which carried over to the nation born of them in bondage to Egypt.

Edit: Had it not been for God's oath to Abraham which was based upon Abraham's show of faith in being humbly obedient to God, Jehovah would not have bothered with that nation at all. But as it was, Jehovah used them to salvage some and while at it to paint a prophetic picture of that which would come to be after them. And once we learn to see that prophetic picture, we are able to use it to confirm the accuracy of what we believe the NT to be telling us.

[Divine Insight]

In my opinion, you are absolutely right about that being backward from how it is supposed to be. The scriptures teach that it would be wrong to believe in God and his Son in such an empty way. Yet, many do just that,. Romans chapter 2 is but one place of many places in scripture which address the impropriety of such an empty faith.

Romans was written by Paul who was himself a "Christian Evangelist". Self-appointed no less. Unless, of course, you actually believe his claim to have actually encountered Jesus in a vision or whatever.

So all you are doing above if supporting unprovable Christian propaganda. It's not like you are providing any verifiable truths here. Quoting from a questionable propaganda document doesn't make something true. But I will agree and acknowledge that Paul had indeed said these sorts of things. I just personally don't find them to be impressive or convincing.

Paul also taught that we are "without excuse" for not believing in his God because he claims that God can be seen in the creation around us. That's verifiable false. And even if it were true that we could tell by looking at the world around us that it had to have been created by purposeful design, that still wouldn't point to Paul's God. After all, it could be pointing to the God of Buddhism, or any other religion for that matter.

So Paul's arguments aren't compelling, IMHO.

Not only that, but why should we need to look to Paul? What's wrong with looking to what Jesus had preached? Isn't Jesus supposed to be the "Word made flesh"?

If we need to look to Paul for arguments that can only be because Jesus himself was unconvincing. Although, to be clear, we can't even really do that since everything that has been attributed to Jesus in the Gospels is nothing more than hearsay rumors by Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Note that Paul never claims to be actually "quoting Jesus".

If Jehovah would give a man a fish, that man would be fed for a day. But if Jehovah teaches a man to fish he has fed him for a lifetime. Jehovah is teaching mankind to fish by letting man learn to share knowledge with others. But he starts the process rolling by searching out those who have hearts that are ready and willing to learn from him. After all, it is unreasonable to think that everyone is ready in themselves to understand. So Jehovah searches out those who are ready and our personal insistence that we are ready does not make it so.

I thank you for sharing your opinion on these scriptures but I think you would be hard-pressed to make a case that the Bible actually teaches this sort of thing.

Fom what I read of your words I feel I see that you have been what is called jaded, and that most likely by all the many who claim to be those to whom Jehovah gave understanding but are not really such ones. ...

I have not been jaded by any human pastors, evangelists, or proselytizing theists. I listen to their opinions and evaluate them reasonably.

If I have been "jaded" at all it has been by the biblical scriptures themselves. It's the scriptures that contain the problems that concern me. And I have yet met any theist who can justify the extreme self-contradictions contained within the Bible. And there are quite many of them. But I haven't seen where any of them can be resolved.

In a large family parents know the job of teaching their children is made far more efficient by teaching the older children to help their younger siblings learn. That is what Jehovah is doing with the human family. It is the right thing to do, otherwise he would have to continue cleaning up our messes after us forever. I mean, we can't just throw all responsibility on God for how we are. We made the choices which got us there. We should take at least a measure of responsibility for our choices. It is unfair to blame that on God.

But that doesn't reflect reality. In fact, I have often said that if there really was an all-knowing, all-wise creator that's exactly what he should have done, IMHO. But that's clearly not what we see.

In fact, what we see are disagreeing theists who can't even agree with each other. We don't see any examples of obviously wise people teaching a consistent message. So this argument simply doesn't match up with our reality.

Not only that, but the very story of Adam and Eve proves Your theory to be wrong. Adam and Eve where disobedient "Children of God" (if you want to call them that)

Adam and Eve where then kicked out of the Garden of Eden to fend for themselves in the hostile world. They then became the parents, elders, and teachers of their children. And apparently their children didn't behave much better.

So when exactly did God intervene to insure that all human children will have knowledgeable, wise and righteous teachers?

Clearly this theory of yours does not fit the Biblical paradigm.

But I do agree with you that had God set up such a system in the first place that would have been impressive. The world would have then been dramatically different from how it currently is as well since everyone would have had highly qualified mentors at their disposal.

But that's just not representative of our actual reality. So while it sounds like a nice apologetic argument it simply doesn't hold water.

By the way, thus far you have just been giving me the standard "broken record evangelism". I've heard all of these apologies many times over. They simply don't stand up to closer inspection.

If you want to address some of the more serious problems consider the following two problems:

The Problem of the Great Flood

In Christianity it is held that Jesus gave his life to pay a "ransom" for the sins of man, and that this absolutely needed to be done because there is no other way for humans to be granted salvation.

Well, if paying a ransom is the only way to free men of their sin, then why didn't this God offer Adam and Eve this ransom in the Garden of Eden?

And what was the Great Flood all about?

If paying a ransom is the only way to offer men salvation, then why didn't this God pay the ransom for all the sinners back in the days of the Great Flood?

You see, this religious paradigm is inconsistent and self-contradictory. If a paying a ransom for the sins of man is the only way to save men from damnation, then drowning out sinners in a Great Flood would have been a totally unnecessary and useless act.

So Jesus as the "ransom" payment for sins makes no sense in this overall religious paradigm.

Also, to whom was this "ransom" paid? Who is so powerful that he or she could demand a ransom from God? Or was this God paying a ransom to himself? This latter idea is even more troublesome.

Here's another one for you:

The Canaanites sacrificing their own babies to God:

Supposedly the Canaanites reject God and refused to obey him or do his will.

Fine. If that's true then the Canaanites should have gone off and not worshiped any Gods at all. But that's not the Biblical story. In the Biblical story we have the Canaanites going off and sacrificing their babies to appease a "God". How is that possible when they has just made it clear that they aren't interested in appeasing or obeying any God?

Clearly there is a major problem here. Also, never mind what the Canaanites might have been supposedly thinking. If there is only ONE TRUE GOD. Or ONE TRUE CREATOR, then this God, seeing that the Canaanites where sacrificing their babies to a totally false "God" that doesn't even exist would then know that the Canaanites aren't truly understanding their actual situation. Therefore it would be up to this God to correct this misunderstanding because the Canaanites are not equipped with sufficient knowledge to ever correct the problem.

This would be a God who was himself guilty of not giving the Canaanites sufficient intellectual capacity to understand their situation. The Canaanites could hardly be blamed for being stupid.

Seriously. There is no excuse for a monotheistic creator to just sit back and watch as his creation sacrifice their babies to a "God" that doesn't even exist. It would be the responsibility of this creator to step in and say, "Ok, clearly you people aren't intelligent enough to understand what's going on here so I'll need to make you more intelligent before we can continue.

I'm dead serious here. As far as I'm concerned there is absolutely no excuse for a creator to just sit back and watch people doing stupid things when this creator himself is totally responsible for having designed their brains and their level of intelligent.

In short, you can't have the Canaanites rejecting God and then going off to sacrifice their babies to God in an effort to appease God. So this is a major contradiction in the Biblical paradigm. Thus proving that it can be nothing more than a very poorly made up man-made tale. No doubt made up by one culture who was attempting to discredit the God of another culture.

But it's an extreme contradiction. So it fails.

You just can't have a monotheistic God sitting back and watching the Canaanites worship a "God" that doesn't exist and not step in to correct the misunderstanding.

That's how I see it, and as far as I can see the only possible "resolution" to this problem would be for a Christian Theist to defend why it makes sense for a monotheistic God to just sit back and allow people to worship a "God" that doesn't even exist and not do anything at all to try to correct this misunderstanding.

Good luck with that.

~~~~~

So these are the kinds of problems you'll need to address. And there's plenty more where they came from.

~~~~~~

Also, please keep in mind that your original proposal that God provides us with intelligent wise mentors has already been shown to be provably false because of the story of Adam and Eve who were not given such mentors, and who themselves (being sinners who aren't wise) became the mentors of their own children and ultimately the entire human race.

So I have already shown why one of your apologies is "provably false" using the scriptures themselves. There is no indication that this Biblical God has ever provided any humans with righteous intelligent mentors.

[Left Site]

In my opinion, you are absolutely right about that being backward from how it is supposed to be. The scriptures teach that it would be wrong to believe in God and his Son in such an empty way. Yet, many do just that,. Romans chapter 2 is but one place of many places in scripture which address the impropriety of such an empty faith.

Romans was written by Paul who was himself a "Christian Evangelist". Self-appointed no less. Unless, of course, you actually believe his claim to have actually encountered Jesus in a vision or whatever.

So all you are doing above if supporting unprovable Christian propaganda. It's not like you are providing any verifiable truths here. Quoting from a questionable propaganda document doesn't make something true. But I will agree and acknowledge that Paul had indeed said these sorts of things. I just personally don't find them to be impressive or convincing.

Paul also taught that we are "without excuse" for not believing in his God because he claims that God can be seen in the creation around us. That's verifiable false. And even if it were true that we could tell by looking at the world around us that it had to have been created by purposeful design, that still wouldn't point to Paul's God. After all, it could be pointing to the God of Buddhism, or any other religion for that matter.

So Paul's arguments aren't compelling, IMHO.

Not only that, but why should we need to look to Paul? What's wrong with looking to what Jesus had preached? Isn't Jesus supposed to be the "Word made flesh"?

If we need to look to Paul for arguments that can only be because Jesus himself was unconvincing. Although, to be clear, we can't even really do that since everything that has been attributed to Jesus in the Gospels is nothing more than hearsay rumors by Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Note that Paul never claims to be actually "quoting Jesus".

If Jehovah would give a man a fish, that man would be fed for a day. But if Jehovah teaches a man to fish he has fed him for a lifetime. Jehovah is teaching mankind to fish by letting man learn to share knowledge with others. But he starts the process rolling by searching out those who have hearts that are ready and willing to learn from him. After all, it is unreasonable to think that everyone is ready in themselves to understand. So Jehovah searches out those who are ready and our personal insistence that we are ready does not make it so.

I thank you for sharing your opinion on these scriptures but I think you would be hard-pressed to make a case that the Bible actually teaches this sort of thing.

Fom what I read of your words I feel I see that you have been what is called jaded, and that most likely by all the many who claim to be those to whom Jehovah gave understanding but are not really such ones. ...

I have not been jaded by any human pastors, evangelists, or proselytizing theists. I listen to their opinions and evaluate them reasonably.

If I have been "jaded" at all it has been by the biblical scriptures themselves. It's the scriptures that contain the problems that concern me. And I have yet met any theist who can justify the extreme self-contradictions contained within the Bible. And there are quite many of them. But I haven't seen where any of them can be resolved.

In a large family parents know the job of teaching their children is made far more efficient by teaching the older children to help their younger siblings learn. That is what Jehovah is doing with the human family. It is the right thing to do, otherwise he would have to continue cleaning up our messes after us forever. I mean, we can't just throw all responsibility on God for how we are. We made the choices which got us there. We should take at least a measure of responsibility for our choices. It is unfair to blame that on God.

But that doesn't reflect reality. In fact, I have often said that if there really was an all-knowing, all-wise creator that's exactly what he should have done, IMHO. But that's clearly not what we see.

In fact, what we see are disagreeing theists who can't even agree with each other. We don't see any examples of obviously wise people teaching a consistent message. So this argument simply doesn't match up with our reality.

Not only that, but the very story of Adam and Eve proves Your theory to be wrong. Adam and Eve where disobedient "Children of God" (if you want to call them that)

Adam and Eve where then kicked out of the Garden of Eden to fend for themselves in the hostile world. They then became the parents, elders, and teachers of their children. And apparently their children didn't behave much better.

So when exactly did God intervene to insure that all human children will have knowledgeable, wise and righteous teachers?

Clearly this theory of yours does not fit the Biblical paradigm.

But I do agree with you that had God set up such a system in the first place that would have been impressive. The world would have then been dramatically different from how it currently is as well since everyone would have had highly qualified mentors at their disposal.

But that's just not representative of our actual reality. So while it sounds like a nice apologetic argument it simply doesn't hold water.

By the way, thus far you have just been giving me the standard "broken record evangelism". I've heard all of these apologies many times over. They simply don't stand up to closer inspection.

If you want to address some of the more serious problems consider the following two problems:

The Problem of the Great Flood

In Christianity it is held that Jesus gave his life to pay a "ransom" for the sins of man, and that this absolutely needed to be done because there is no other way for humans to be granted salvation.

Well, if paying a ransom is the only way to free men of their sin, then why didn't this God offer Adam and Eve this ransom in the Garden of Eden?

And what was the Great Flood all about?

If paying a ransom is the only way to offer men salvation, then why didn't this God pay the ransom for all the sinners back in the days of the Great Flood?

You see, this religious paradigm is inconsistent and self-contradictory. If a paying a ransom for the sins of man is the only way to save men from damnation, then drowning out sinners in a Great Flood would have been a totally unnecessary and useless act.

So Jesus as the "ransom" payment for sins makes no sense in this overall religious paradigm.

Also, to whom was this "ransom" paid? Who is so powerful that he or she could demand a ransom from God? Or was this God paying a ransom to himself? This latter idea is even more troublesome.

Here's another one for you:

The Canaanites sacrificing their own babies to God:

Supposedly the Canaanites reject God and refused to obey him or do his will.

Fine. If that's true then the Canaanites should have gone off and not worshiped any Gods at all. But that's not the Biblical story. In the Biblical story we have the Canaanites going off and sacrificing their babies to appease a "God". How is that possible when they has just made it clear that they aren't interested in appeasing or obeying any God?

Clearly there is a major problem here. Also, never mind what the Canaanites might have been supposedly thinking. If there is only ONE TRUE GOD. Or ONE TRUE CREATOR, then this God, seeing that the Canaanites where sacrificing their babies to a totally false "God" that doesn't even exist would then know that the Canaanites aren't truly understanding their actual situation. Therefore it would be up to this God to correct this misunderstanding because the Canaanites are not equipped with sufficient knowledge to ever correct the problem.

This would be a God who was himself guilty of not giving the Canaanites sufficient intellectual capacity to understand their situation. The Canaanites could hardly be blamed for being stupid.

Seriously. There is no excuse for a monotheistic creator to just sit back and watch as his creation sacrifice their babies to a "God" that doesn't even exist. It would be the responsibility of this creator to step in and say, "Ok, clearly you people aren't intelligent enough to understand what's going on here so I'll need to make you more intelligent before we can continue.

I'm dead serious here. As far as I'm concerned there is absolutely no excuse for a creator to just sit back and watch people doing stupid things when this creator himself is totally responsible for having designed their brains and their level of intelligent.

In short, you can't have the Canaanites rejecting God and then going off to sacrifice their babies to God in an effort to appease God. So this is a major contradiction in the Biblical paradigm. Thus proving that it can be nothing more than a very poorly made up man-made tale. No doubt made up by one culture who was attempting to discredit the God of another culture.

But it's an extreme contradiction. So it fails.

You just can't have a monotheistic God sitting back and watching the Canaanites worship a "God" that doesn't exist and not step in to correct the misunderstanding.

That's how I see it, and as far as I can see the only possible "resolution" to this problem would be for a Christian Theist to defend why it makes sense for a monotheistic God to just sit back and allow people to worship a "God" that doesn't even exist and not do anything at all to try to correct this misunderstanding.

Good luck with that.

~~~~~

So these are the kinds of problems you'll need to address. And there's plenty more where they came from.

~~~~~~

Also, please keep in mind that your original proposal that God provides us with intelligent wise mentors has already been shown to be provably false because of the story of Adam and Eve who were not given such mentors, and who themselves (being sinners who aren't wise) became the mentors of their own children and ultimately the entire human race.

So I have already shown why one of your apologies is "provably false" using the scriptures themselves. There is no indication that this Biblical God has ever provided any humans with righteous intelligent mentors.

OK. I take you at your word because you are obviously filled up with what you believe as though it is reasonable.

Far be it from me to try to deter anyone from what they find "reasonable." And you have obviously found answers which satisfy you.

So I reckon you will just have to consider me as being content to be unreasonable.

After all, I, too, am content with the paradigm I have chosen and believe it to be the most reasonable.

I haven't even really come close enough to revealing my paradigm to you for you to honestly be able to say that you know what my paradigm is. And I see no reason to more fully reveal it to you. You are not the master of paradigms just as neither am I. But we each believe in and are content with our individual paradigm. There is therefore no purpose in our sharing or comparing our paradigms.

Still, I bid you a good day and hope the best for you. And that ends it.

[Divine Insight]

I haven't even really come close enough to revealing my paradigm to you for you to honestly be able to say that you know what my paradigm is. And I see no reason to more fully reveal it to you.

It would seem to me that if any theist has a paradigm that they feel is sound and rational they would do well to publish it in a book for all to read.

I agree it would be a total waste of time to try to argue it to someone on the Internet, especially someone who is hostile toward it. I certainly wouldn't blame you for not wasting your time doing that.

However, to simply claim to have a rational paradigm is meaningless if it can't be produced.

I'm 68 years old. I've been looking into Christianity and the entire Abrahamic paradigm (as described in the Biblical scriptures) since I was in my teens. What I have come to realize is that the Biblical scriptures cannot be true as they are written.

It also seems to me that most Christian theists tend to agree with this assessment. They are quick to "literally reject the Bible". In other words, they reject the idea of taking these scriptures literally. And so they go down the path of "alternative interpretations".

What I have discovered is that this path of "alternative interpretations" is actually impossible to support. So much needs to be twisted so far from what the original scriptures actually say that as far as I'm concerned at that point they have already agreed with me that the Biblical scriptures cannot be true as they are written.

I mean, consider the following:

I too toyed with alternative paradigms based on the Biblical scriptures. One that I personally liked early on was the idea that life is a "test" and that our creator simply created us specifically to be put through this test of life before we could ultimately become spiritual creatures.

At first glance this sounds great. But it doesn't take very long at all to realize that this is not the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were not told that life would be a test. Instead they were basically kicked out of a Garden of Eden for having disobeyed God.

So we need to be very careful when we try to make up our own ideas.

And in a similar manner, you had suggested that humans need good mentors, and that this was God's plan. But once again, by carefully examining the Biblical story we see that this doesn't work because Adam and Eve did not have good mentors, and neither would they have suddenly become good mentors after having been kicked out of the Garden of Eden for having disobeyed God.

So trying to twist the Biblical paradigm into something it's not is not as easy as one might first think.

But if you think you can create a biblical paradigm that doesn't contradict the Biblical scriptures, then by all means you should write it up and publish it. Worst case scenario is that people will point out why they don't think it works. Best case scenario would be that everyone will find it to be perfectly rational, without contradiction AND in harmony with what the Bible actually says.

I personally don't believe the latter is possible. But clearly you do. So go for it. What have you got to lose? I would certainly encourage you to go for it. But at the same time I'm willing to bet that if you sent me a copy I would find a lot of problems with.

What can I say? I'm just being honest.

[Monta]

[Replying to post 38 by Divine Insight]

"However, to simply claim to have a rational paradigm is meaningless if it can't be produced.

I'm 68 years old. I've been looking into Christianity and the entire Abrahamic paradigm (as described in the Biblical scriptures) since I was in my teens. What I have come to realize is that the Biblical scriptures cannot be true as they are written. "

We have a record that Jesus spoke in parables as in the sower and the seed.
Here the Psalmist speaking in parable practically gives us history of Isrealites including their slavery in Egypt yet we know that it never actually happened.
So what is it all about?

If you insist on literal interpretation you'll have plenty to further conform yourself in falsities and spread it against Christianity; but if you are seeking to find the true meaning of the scripture you'll find it, I should say Truth will find you.

Psalm 78:2-20King James Version (KJV)

2 I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old:

3 Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.

4 We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and his ................

12 Marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.

13 He divided the sea, and caused them to pass through; and he made the waters to stand as an heap.

14 In the daytime also he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire.

15 He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths.

16 He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.

[Divine Insight]

If you insist on literal interpretation you'll have plenty to further conform yourself in falsities and spread it against Christianity; but if you are seeking to find the true meaning of the scripture you'll find it, I should say Truth will find you.

I have to say that this kind of argument is nothing short of absurd.

To demand that because I claim that the Bible cannot be true as written this means that I do not allow that it contains some parables. And especially if you are going to use Jesus as an example.

My main concerns with the Biblical paradigm come long before Jesus is ever introduced into the story. So the Christian New Testament is virtually irrelevant. There is nothing in the New Testament that can save or repair the self-contradictions that already exist in the Old Testament.

1. God creates and designs animals that eat each other and sees that this is "good".

2. God curses Satan to eat dirt and crawl on his belly for the rest of his days, yet this demonic Satan continues to corrupt men throughout the rest of the Biblical paradigm.

3. God curses Eve with greatly multiplied pain and sorrow in childbirth and procreation, and condones male chauvinism by proclaiming that Adam should rule over her when Adam is just as guilty as she is.

4. God commands men, "Thou shalt not kill", and then turns around and commands men to stone each other to death for every little petty thing.

Why should this God be asking inept sinful mortals to do his judging and killing for him? And keep in mind that in this religion all men are necessarily sinful. Yet in the New Testament we have the following contradiction.

5. Jesus comes along and says that only those who are without sin are to cast the first stone when stoning sinners to death. Clearly this is a contradiction as well, and cannot be passed off as a mere parable that doesn't mean what he says.

6. The Old Testament commands that we are to seek an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and that we are to do this without pity because we need to put evil away from among us.

6a. Jesus rebukes this directly, stating that although we have "heard" this commandment we are instead to turn the other cheek and not resist evil. A direct repeal and replace of the Old Testament Law. Something that Jesus himself proclaimed he did not come to do.

7. Let's not forget the Great Flood contradiction because Christians claim that the only way sin can be dealt with is via a payment of a ransom by Jesus. If that's true, then drowning out sinners in a Great Flood would have been totally futile.

8. Let's not forget that the Canaanites were sacrificing their babies to "God" after supposedly rejecting "God" and refusing to do as he says.

So now you are proclaiming that since the Bible contains "some" parables for the purpose of making various points, that suddenly we can treat the entire thing as one huge parable that never needs to actually mean what it says or say what it means at any point throughout the entire canon.

Sorry, but that argument is nothing short of nonsense. All this does is try to make excuses for the fact that the Bible does indeed literally contradict itself on many key issues.

So you can't save the Biblical paradigm by trying to proclaim that it is nothing but parables from beginning to end. Did God command men to stone sinners to death or not? If that was just a parable then what in the world was that parable supposed to mean? And wouldn't that have been an extremely dangerous parable for God to have created if he didn't literally want men to stone sinners to death?

There comes a point when the parable argument for the Bible just no longer holds any water.