God does not follow the first principle of morality. Why not?

I would agree with Jesus if he actually indicated this.

Gnostic Jesus hinted at that but not the Christian version of Jesus from what I can see.

What do you make of ---- why have you forsaken me ----- or the notion of punishing the innocent instead of the guilty?

Regards
DL

 

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Jesus was an example of how devotees of God should act throughout their life, and in order to execute that task he became a human being.
As he was suffering (as a human) on the cross, he exemplified the state of mind of humans in that particular condition. Despite that, he was still liberated, showing himself to those who were at that particular conscious level, showing that despite those expressed doubts, one could still be with God.

Religious institutes such as the one Jesus dismantled, teach that if you don't obey their institute God will punish you with eternal damnation, and as
the people could not meet that demand they became disillusioned and lost, not knowing which way to turn. So Jesus showed them the way to God by living the life.

The conditioned mind will at some point question God especially when it is at it's most lowest point. Jesus merely gave us an example of this.

jan.

 

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But that would mean that he was questioning himself.
Strange, yes?

What of punishing the innocent instead of the guilty?
Was that also a lesson on how man should act?

Regards
DL

 

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this is exactly the problem you have trying to attack the "the son-murdering" God. At no point do christians disclaim christ's divinity, although some try to explain this rather un-understandable idea (god is christ is God isn't God the father, etc.), by saying he was cut off from divinity in death for 3 days, or whatever. Either way, one of the parts of the triune God died apparently. When you can explain the triune nature of God, and what exactly happened on the cross in a rational way, at that point perhaps you can talk about a "son-murdering" bad god, or perhaps a God which sacrifices a piece of itself, i certainly can't tell you, but i don't agree that you can tell anyone here about a "son-murdering" god, unless you can make sense of that statement.

 

Where in the Bible does it say that God hates babies in the womb? The Jacob/Esau reference is the only one that I am aware of, and I have given an explanation of that.

If our characters cannot help but do evil, why does God continually urge us to reject evil and do what is right? Cain, for instance (Genesis 4:6-7).

What we believe must be based on either empirical evidence or authoritative testimony. If you reject authoritative testimony then you are left with empirical evidence, which leads you to the end-point of determinism. However, your reason for rejecting the authoritative testimony must be based on an accurate understanding of what that testimony is. What is gained by misrepresenting the Bible in order to reject it? A wise friend of mine once said, "be known for what you're for, not what you're against". I'm getting a sense of what you're against, though I don't know why you're against it. I would like to know what you're for.

 

Greatest I am,

I imagine that you mean, because Jesus is God, he was questioning himself. But Jesus isn't God so he
wasn't questioning himself.

You automatically assume that innocents were being punished by God. Has it occurred to you
that they weren't innocents?

Regards
Jan.

 

I have no problem explaining the Trinity concept.

This man says my thoughts quite well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VsN3IG1HtQ

Let me add a bit more just so you will not think my flippancy is well earned.

Originally Posted by animefan48
Well, the reality is most Christians do buy into the trinity doctrine because of persecution of the early Gnostics and non-Trinitarians, and the religious councils were dissenters were forced to agree to a Trinitarian theology. Many Unitarian and Universalist theologies argue that when Jesus said he was the way, he meant that he was an example of how to live to be united/reunited with God. As for the name, God does give other names for himself including the Alpha and Omega, as well as some believe a name that should not be written (or even spoken I believe). Honestly, I think using the name I Am That I Am would just be confusing and convoluted, seriously. I seriously do not believe that it is a continuation of Gnostic/mystical/Unitarian suppression. Even the Gnostic and mystical traditions within Islam and Christianity do not tend to use that name, and among the 99 Names of Allah, I did not find that one. Also, many Rastafarians believe that the Holy Spirit lives in humans and will sometimes say I and I instead of we, yet they don't seem to use the name I Am for God/Jah either, so I really don't think it can be related to suppressing mystical and Gnostic interpretations. I think that originally oppressing those ideas and decreeing them heretical are quite enough, the early Church did such a good job that after the split many Protestant groups continued to condemn mystical and later Gnostic sects and theologies.



Yup, the bishops voted and it was settled for all time!!1 (Some say the preliminary votes were 150 something to 140 something in favor of the trinity)

But then Constantine stepped in: After a prolonged and inconclusive debate, the impatient Constantine intervened to force an end to the conflict by demanding the adoption of the creed. The vote was taken under threat of exile for any who did not support the decision favored by Constantine. (And later, they fully endorsed the trinity idea when it all happened again at the council of Constantinople in AD 381, where only Trinitarians were invited to attend. Surprise! They also managed to carry a vote in favor of the Trinity.)

http://home.pacific.net.au/~amaxwell/bdigest/bd12bbs.tx


Even a Trinitarian scholar admits the Earliest & Original beliefs were NOT Trinitarian!

The trinity formulation is a later corruption away from the earliest & original beliefs!

"It must be admitted by everyone who has the rudiments of an historical sense that the doctrine of the Trinity, as a doctrine, formed no part of the original message. St Paul knew it not, and would have been unable to understand the meaning of the terms used in the theological formula on which the Church ultimately agreed".
Dr. W R Matthews, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, "God in Christian Thought and Experience", p.180

"In order to understand the doctrine of the Trinity it is necessary to understand that the doctrine is a development, and why it developed. ... It is a waste of time to attempt to read Trinitarian doctrine directly off the pages of the New Testament".
R Hanson: "Reasonable Belief, A survey of the Christian Faith, p.171-173, 1980

The doctrine of the Trinity is not taught in the Old Testament.
New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967, Vol. XIV, p. 306.

"The formulation ‘One God in three Persons' was not solidly established, certainly not fully assimilated into Christian life and its profession of faith, prior to the end of the 4th century.... Among the Apostolic Fathers, there had been nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective"
New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967, Vol. 14, p. 299.

"The formulation ‘One God in three Persons' was not solidly established, certainly not fully assimilated into Christian life and its profession of faith, prior to the end of the 4th century.... Among the Apostolic Fathers, there had been nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective" (New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967, Vol. 14, p. 299).

"Fourth-century Trinitarianism did not reflect accurately early Christian teaching regarding the nature of God; it was, on the contrary a deviation from this teaching" (The Encyclopedia Americana, p. 1956, p. 2941).

Was Jesus God to Paul and other early Christians? No. . . . .
(Source: How the Bible became the Bible by Donald L. O'Dell - ISBN 0-7414-2993-4 Published by INFINITY Publishing.com)

Why would Constantine push this Trinity concept down Christianity's throat you ask?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD0eSqFJ7J4

If a believer wants to believe Jesus is divine then he must live with the fact that Jesus/God cannot die.
If the believer wants to believe that Jesus was not divine then ----------

Ezekiel 18:20
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

Psalm 49:7

None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:

Regards
DL

 

I am for a God who can cure as well as kill, to cure instead of kill.
A God who will take the moral high ground and not sit with Satan in the low.

This clip of God on trial bolsters my logic and reason with the words, what could they, children and babies, have done to earn annihilation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx7irFN2gdI


This preacher uses scriptures to show what they had done to deserve it but I am not convinced by it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAO98N9pqK8&feature=related


This following shows the supposedly best Christian apologist doing the same.

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


I think the clip is well title as The Obscenity of Christianity.

The logical position that Christians should take if they believe that it is a blessing to have children and babies die as that would insure that they go to heaven, should lead all these believing parents to kill their children and thus insure that they end in heaven. Otherwise, as scriptures indicate, they, as part of the majority of adults will end in hell.

Regards
DL

 

Just as an aside.
Have you ever wondered how an infinite God who would have lived alone and by himself for untold millennia before creating man would have developed a need for any kind of sacrifice, especially for blood sacrifice?

To me, that is line with why God could not developed or learned morals when alone as they are only useful when dealing with others within your group. To me, both of these I label as impossible.

Regards
DL

 

Sure but that goes against Christian dogma.
Look above where I linked to two Christian representatives who say they are guilty.

Regards
DL

 

#1 - the logical position of any religion could not be to kill the children to get them into heaven because the human race would die out, or at best the religion would die out. A religion of murder at the adult baptism or any other variation of this idea also wouldn't last long.

#2 - you can't attack a position based on YOUR beliefs, it can only be attacked based on that position's beliefs. So if christians believe in the trinity, and you say christians are worshipping a son-murdering God, or whatever, you have to allow that they believe in the trinity, which definitely muddies the water. The fact that YOU reject the trinity has no pertinence to any discussion of that fundamentalist crowd's ideas. UNLESS of course you want to somehow, RATHER than attacking the morality of their God, attack their idea of the trinity as being unsound, based on the idea that God cannot die, or some other logical step. But then you aren't attacking the morality of their idea, but the logic of it.

I can't say "joe believes x and y, and y is immoral because i don't believe x", if believing in x somehow makes y morally acceptable or just confusing.

 

Or perhaps no part of God died (die as in: fully cease to exist), but merely went from one state to another, and from that one, to another.

The theme of sacrifice is appealing to some people, but not to everyone.
Some people believe that a person loves them only if said person is willing to endure significant loss and even death for them. So to such people, it may seem perfectly acceptable that God Himself would endure a significant loss to Himself in order to save the people.

Whereas someone who is not into scapegoating mentality will find the whole story with the death on the cross rather odd, to say the least.


God purportedly noted:

Exodus 33:3 Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way."

Apparently then, God Himself didn't think too highly of His people.

As an outsider, I often wonder why those religious elitists don't just elitize themselves out of existence.

?
Arguably, it is only based on one's own beliefs that one can attack another at all.

Or do you simply mean that a position is to be addressed (or even attacked) only for what it actually is, not what one (mis)interprets it to be?

 

Been there and done that and Christians just hide behind their faith card.

Mysterious ways and all that .

They can fathom the unfathomable and no one else can.
Logic and reason only work when it is accepted.

Most literalist and fundamentals have different priorities than truth.


“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”

“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”
Martin Luther

They deserve the last line of this clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjxZ6MrBl9E&feature=related

Regards
DL

 

You seem to be saying that the things you accuse God of are actually OK for humans to do, because that's how evolution works. So I'm a bit confused about why you're so hard on God. I'm also confused about how you can call yourself a Christian gnostic, or a Christian anything, when you obviously don't believe a word that Jesus said.

Anyway, I'm going to say one last thing in God's defence, which you will dismiss as you've dismissed everything else I've said. After that, I will add nothing more to this thread.

To God, death is not the end, and allowing someone to die, or even putting someone to death, is not necessarily either a punishment or an act of hate on His part. Here are two clear examples of that.

1 Kings 14:1-18. The child of king Jeroboam is ill and dying. Jeroboam's wife consults the prophet Ahijah to see if there is any hope of recovery. Listen to Ahijah's words in verses 12-13: "Go back home. When you enter your city, the boy will die. All Israel will mourn for him and bury him. He is the only one belonging to Jeroboam who will be buried, because he is the only one in the house of Jeroboam in whom the Lord has found anything good."

Isaiah 57:1-2. "The righteous perish, and no-one ponders it in his heart; devout men are taken away, and no-one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death."

Finally, you like to quote from Ezekiel 18. Have you also ready Ezekiel 16?
Ezekiel 16:20-21. "And you took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me and sacrificed them as food to the idols. Was your prostitution not enough? You slaughtered my children and sacrificed them to the idols."

The God of the Bible, the Christian God, my God, is not a baby-hater or a child-murderer. He is a lover of children. See Matthew 18:1-6; Matthew 19: 13-14. In whose interest is it for you to believe otherwise?

A bientot.

 

I will give what prompted the O P.

Romans 9:11-13
King James Version (KJV)
11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth
12 It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.
13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

This clip of God on trial bolsters my logic and reason with the words, what could they, children and babies, have done to deserve annihilation?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx7irFN2gdI

This preacher uses scriptures to show what they had done to deserve it but I am not convinced by it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAO98N9pqK8&feature=related

This following shows the supposedly best Christian apologist doing the same.

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

I think the clip is well title as The Obscenity of Christianity.

The logical position that Christians should take if they believe that it is a blessing to have children and babies die as that would insure that they go to heaven, should lead all these believing parents to kill their children and thus insure that they end in heaven. Otherwise, as scriptures indicate, they, as part of the majority of adults will end in hell.

"To God, death is not the end, and allowing someone to die, or even putting someone to death, is not necessarily either a punishment or an act of hate on His part"

This is pure faith based B S as you have no way of showing this to be true.
To say that to kill someone is not punishment or an act of hate when God can cure as well as kill is ludicrous.

Thanks for ending our talk on morals this way as it will show all the lurkers what Christian morals look like.
It will also show them why I complain when Christians run from moral discussions.
Christians even slightly to the right of progressive Christians do not have any.

Regards
DL

 

I wrote a whole response to all of your post but it got lost somehow.
Anyway, I am saying a person can't say, "a person who believes a+b+c is immoral, because b is inaccurate, and they really believe a+c". If the person thinks they believe a+b+c and that belief is essential moral, then they are essentially moral in their belief, whether or not b is incorrect. UNless we somehow say it is immoral not to know exactly what is meant by jesus' unity with the father, which is certainly ridiculous. GIA can't say belief in a son-murdering God is immoral if the belief also includes the idea that the son is a part of the triune being of God. It is simply too confusing to attach a moral judgement to.

 

Well, some people who feel confused by something have no problem calling it morally bad.

Bottomline, the issue at hand seems to be the nature of moral judgment as such - whether it is subjective or not, how a person makes a moral judgment, what the relevance of a moral judgment is (esp. in relation to who makes it) etc.

As for the topic at hand, it's not clear how human notions of morality can be considered obligatory or relevant for God.

 

As above so below.

The myth of A & E shows that our moral sense and God's are the same. They have become as Gods knowing good and evil.

If not obligatory for God and we are supposed to emulate him, then following the moral path is not obligatory for man either.

Unless you think do as I say and not as I do is a good policy.

Kind of hard then for the believer to deal with this contradicction where God says do as I do but don't.

Regards
DL

 

citizens don't order military assaults
children don't drink or drive vehicles
people aren't allowed to serve out the death penalty

there are plenty of cases where some people have greater power or responsibility, and that is not a logical complaint.

We do have to think about an interpretation of a God who doesn't seem to care about most people, and wonder why people want to love that particular being, but asking that we be made equal to a God and be put under exactly the same rules does not seem very effective to me.

 

ha ha ha. quite so.

yes. the issue is what we know, what we think, how we agree to merge those understandings into a social system, whether there are ideas for which our systems are not explanatory. Perhaps, in the oft used description of the light wave or particle problem, in which the experiment determines the outcome of what is seen. Although the instruments of our perception are obviously very limited, they are what we have. This instrument must be trusted to some degree to allow for our perceptions to be to turned into symbols that can be transmitted to each other. As you point out, my symbology and your symbology may be totally different and cause a lot of confusion in our communication.

i believe, contrary to christian fundamentalist opinion, that we do in fact have a duty to think about what kind of God a person should worship. I don't imagine it is of any value for us to be given any revelation that is purposefully misleading, unless at some point it can be figured out. Calling evil "good" and good "evil" is just going to lead to followers of the bible that are evil, according to human values, as GIA proposes. I guess there is always the possibility that the revelation was time specific, but the bible is understood as the "word of God" which endures forever. I personally believe that we have a responsibility to interpret the bible in a way that keeps up with modern human ideas. If we don't christianity will just be a cult filled with the people who are best at ignoring and probably demonizing (to use Wynn's sometimes accurate interpretation) the vast sea of humanity that doesn't understand any of their symbology enough to have a conversation with them.