Religion II

[PaceAdvantage]

Originally Posted by Lemon Drop Husker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7vs21ZKrKM

Losing My Erection is a catchier lyric IMO...

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by hcap

You are dumb as a sack full of hammers. You wanted me to frame my objection to your god being just by proving or disproving it using your hyped-up law of non-contra, blah, blah.

My objection is logically sound. It stands on it's own without having to prove anything. Your so-called "just" god stacked the deck knowing outcomes for all eternity. Disregarding his own responsibility causing horrific suffering and genocide.

BUT, if now you want me to "prove" things nevertheless. You are the one with the impossible burden of proof.

Attempting "proof" of any kind for your delusional imaginings of what GOD IS

Hey, Humpty, I didn't invent the LNC. It's not "my" law. Nor do I abuse it. The only way I could do that is by changing the requirements, which I never do. So quit whining like a little girl and PROVE that God's moral test is inconsistent with his attributes.

God didn't stack any decks because he didn't influence the outcome. Knowing an outcome and changing are two different things.

Here's an analogy. Suppose I'm a teacher and I told my class a few days ago to seriously prepare for a pop (surprise) quiz that I'll be giving soon, because that test would account for 20% of their grade.

In talking with a colleague of mine, I come to find out from him that he had it from a good sources that a bunch of kids in my class partied hearty over this last weekend and were spending a lot of time at the beach, etc. But I had already decided to give them the pop quiz tomorrow, fully realizing that many of them would inevitably fail if my colleague's sources were right.

Sure enough, tomorrow rolls around, I give the test and take home the papers to score them, and 50% of the class failed.

How am I at fault for such a dismal success rate, even though I knew that it would very likely be high if my colleague was right? How do the failing scores fall on me? How did I "stack the deck"?

[hcap]

Originally Posted by boxcar

I didn't invent the LNC. It's not "my" law. Nor do I abuse it. The only way I could do that is by changing the requirements, which I never do. So quit whining like a little girl and PROVE that God's moral test is inconsistent with his attributes.

God didn't stack any decks because he didn't influence the outcome. Knowing an outcome and changing are two different things.

I said you hype it and misuse it. By changing the "same sense" clause. You just did that ascribing incontrovertible attributes that are not necessary to all deities. You move the goalposts of what god is. Now, god doesn't know what is right hand is doing. We might say now you re-define god as not knowing his ass from his elbow.

Of course your god stacked the decks for all eternity. He created how his creation worked fort all eternity, therefore he absolutely knew all the details of how humanity would pass or fail all his rigged "tests".

Otherwise he could not be omniscient.
No law of blah, blah, blah needed. Hype away all you want

[hcap]

Originally Posted by Really-bollixed-up-car

Here's an analogy. Suppose I'm a teacher and I told my class a few days ago to seriously prepare for a pop (surprise) quiz that I'll be giving soon, because that test would account for 20% of their grade.

In talking with a colleague of mine, I come to find out from him that he had it from a good sources that a bunch of kids in my class partied hearty over this last weekend and were spending a lot of time at the beach, etc. But I had already decided to give them the pop quiz tomorrow, fully realizing that many of them would inevitably fail if my colleague's sources were right.

Sure enough, tomorrow rolls around, I give the test and take home the papers to score them, and 50% of the class failed.

How am I at fault for such a dismal success rate, even though I knew that it would very likely be high if my colleague was right? How do the failing scores fall on me? How did I "stack the deck"?

But you don't stop there and explain what they did wrong. Instead you murder them. And when the next generation of kids are tested you don't bother to adequately explauin what their ancestors did wrong and once again murder the new kids.

And along with all the mindless killing, you include tons oh horrific suffering.

All-loving god? Paganism or absolute materialism sounds pretty good about now.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

By getting me to question if all humans are rational beings.

Good! "Question everything and start thinking" -- atheist saying.

Originally Posted by boxcar

My "free will" is to steer clear of your enlightenment which I masquerade as ignorance.

FTFY!

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by hcap

But you don't stop there and explain what they did wrong. Instead you murder them. And when the next generation of kids are tested you don't bother to adequately explauin what their ancestors did wrong and once again murder the new kids.

And along with all the mindless killing, you include tons oh horrific suffering.

All-loving god? Paganism or absolute materialism sounds pretty good about now.

No, no, no. You can't take the analogy to the extreme because I'm not the creator of my students! I don't have the authority to administer capital punishment on them. That's way above my pay grade. God does't share his divine prerogatives with me. The only intent to the analogy is that I had "foreknowledge" that a lot of kids were likely to fail; but I still administered the test. My foreknowledge of many of the students' not trusting my earlier warning to them did not make my test or the timing of it unfair or unjust, any more than it made God's foreknowledge of the outcome of his moral test to our first parents unfair or unjust.

Secondly, God did forewarn Adam and Eve what the severe penalty would be if they failed to trust him. He told them everything they had to know in order for them to be rewarded with eternal life for obedience, or punished with death for disobedience.

And one more thing: Ultimately, the participants in any test reap the biggest benefits. The ones being tested stand to learn much about themselves -- whether they pass or fail.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

Good! "Question everything and start thinking" -- atheist saying.

FTFY!

Dream on, dreamer.

[boxcar]

Thus Says The Lord

The story of Israel's monarchy is about more than David's battle with Goliath, his guerrilla war with Saul, the impulsive affair with Bathsheba and his son Solomon's accumulation of wisdom and wives. We tend to be fixated on Saul, David and Solomon because that's normally the exposure we get to the books from Samuel through Malachi. But there's much more to these Old Testament books -- almost half the Bible -- than stories about kings.

As intriguing as Israel's kings were, the men who wrote the monarchy's history weren't aiming at producing biographies. Their messaging was primarily theological. They had a story to tell -- about the spiritual cause and effect of Israel's failure, the wrath of God and Yahweh's plan to prevent his original Edenic goal from being a legacy of ashes.

The historical books and writings of the prophets operate within the scope of the supernatural worldview of the biblical writers. The nations were still under the domain of hostile foreign gods. Israel was in constant conflict with enemy nations. In the time of the judges, spiritual and moral apostasy prevailed. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes. The failure of the conquest produced, instead of the Edenic rule of God reborn, something akin to the lawless American West.

The anarchy culminated in the demand for a king. The choice came too early and with misguided motive. But Yahweh had begun planning for David's rise even before he was born, via the ministry of Samuel -- the last judge, as well as priest, prophet and anointer of kings. David eventually rose to prominence, but the fraternal conflict between Saul (chosen by rebellious Israelites for his height) and David (chosen by Yahweh for his heart) was emblematic of the unseen spiritual war for the land and the people. The vestiges of the Rephaim (1) persisted , and the ark and the covenant and the tabernacle were at separate locations, dividing the priesthood.

The crisis points were eventually resolved. David's men eliminated Goliath's brothers. Solomon reunited the ark and the tabernacle after the construction of the temple (2Chr 5:1-14). The land promised to Abraham came under Solomon's rule and jurisdiction (1Ki 4:21; cf. Gen 15:18). Then everything fell apart after Solomon's death.

Two things happened during the dual death spirals of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Yahweh called prophets, assured them of his presence and power through divine encounter, and decreed a new covenant, a new solution to the reestablishment of Edenic rule. In the bitterest of ironies, Babylon would swallow up Yahweh's inheritance. The tables seemed completely turned. But appearances can be deceiving.

The real irony, as prophets like Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Habakkuk informed anyone who would listen, was that Babylon was Yahweh's tool. Even as Judah was taking its last gasp, Yahweh was engineering the circumstances of an everlasting kingdom that could not be contained by geography. It would be ruled by a man who was also God, whose identity must be concealed long enough for him to die and rise again, so that the curse of sin would be overturned, the lord of the dead would lose his authority and the eternal life of Eden would encircle the earth.

All that would play out in New Testament theology. Scholars have long thought of that narrative in two phases: the kingdom already and the kingdom not yet.

(1) quasi supernatural beings

[boxcar]

The Kingdom Already

The kingdom of God is already a present reality, but isn't yet realized. John the Baptist announced it. He introduced its king, Jesus preached its arrival and demonstrated what life in the Edenic world could and would be like; no disease, no infirmity, no demonic opposition.

Many people think of the New Testament as the recounting of the life of Jesus and the apostles sprinkled with a collection of letters sent by Paul to churches with odd names. While we follow these men and their lives and read the correspondence, the New Testament is so much more.

The New Testament marks the rebirth of a struggle thousands of years in the making. The people of God have been isolated and under foreign rule. The divine presence of the days of Moses, David, Solomon and the prophets is nothing but memory. When angels visit Mary and Zechariah to announce the impending births of Jesus and John, centuries of divine silence is broken. Thirty years later, Judea will explode. The unseen spiritual conflict is even more volatile.

Every chapter of the New Testament provides a glimpse into this conflict. The cosmic geography of the Old Testament is evident in the New. Where Jesus goes and what he says and does when he gets there is framed by confrontation with unseen powers. The conflict pursues him unto death -- as God has planned, and as Jesus provoked. The kingdom of God establishes a permanent beachhead at the foot of the Cross and the door of the empty tomb.

The rest of the New Testament draws heavily on Old Testament motifs. Jesus is gone but present, just as Yahweh was in heaven invisible yet in human form. The seed of Abraham, scattered to the winds in exile, turn out to function like spiritual cell groups secretly planted in every nation under the dominion of hostile gods. The kingdom spreads slowly but relentlessly, one new believer at a time. Every church is a new pocket of resistance, every baptism another pledge of allegiance to the Most High, every celebration of the Lord's Supper a denial of fellowship with lesser masters and a proclamation of the success of Yahweh's mysterious plan.

The lines are drawn. The stakes are high. The enemy desperate. The fullness of the Gentiles will come, Israel will be saved and the Deliverer will come from the heavenly Zion.

It's just a matter of time.

The final installment will come after I review the final section in Heisler's book and compose that summary myself.

[VigorsTheGrey]

Yes, it is just a matter of time...before the pure beings in white robes arrive to whisk us away to shiney (and safe) Eden...where we all truly belong....https://i.pinimg.com/736x/2a/17/68/2...-victorian.jpg

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by boxcar

The Kingdom Already

The kingdom of God is already a present reality, but isn't yet realized. John the Baptist announced it. He introduced its king, Jesus preached its arrival and demonstrated what life in the Edenic world could and would be like; no disease, no infirmity, no demonic opposition.

Many people think of the New Testament as the recounting of the life of Jesus and the apostles sprinkled with a collection of letters sent by Paul to churches with odd names. While we follow these men and their lives and read the correspondence, the New Testament is so much more.

The New Testament marks the rebirth of a struggle thousands of years in the making. The people of God have been isolated and under foreign rule. The divine presence of the days of Moses, David, Solomon and the prophets is nothing but memory. When angels visit Mary and Zechariah to announce the impending births of Jesus and John, centuries of divine silence is broken. Thirty years later, Judea will explode. The unseen spiritual conflict is even more volatile.

Every chapter of the New Testament provides a glimpse into this conflict. The cosmic geography of the Old Testament is evident in the New. Where Jesus goes and what he says and does when he gets there is framed by confrontation with unseen powers. The conflict pursues him unto death -- as God has planned, and as Jesus provoked. The kingdom of God establishes a permanent beachhead at the foot of the Cross and the door of the empty tomb.

The rest of the New Testament draws heavily on Old Testament motifs. Jesus is gone but present, just as Yahweh was in heaven invisible yet in human form. The seed of Abraham, scattered to the winds in exile, turn out to function like spiritual cell groups secretly planted in every nation under the dominion of hostile gods. The kingdom spreads slowly but relentlessly, one new believer at a time. Every church is a new pocket of resistance, every baptism another pledge of allegiance to the Most High, every celebration of the Lord's Supper a denial of fellowship with lesser masters and a proclamation of the success of Yahweh's mysterious plan.

The lines are drawn. The stakes are high. The enemy desperate. The fullness of the Gentiles will come, Israel will be saved and the Deliverer will come from the heavenly Zion.

It's just a matter of time.

The final installment will come after I review the final section in Heisler's book and compose that summary myself.

Who is the "desperate enemy"? The Democrats?

[Actor]

YouTube

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Dream on, dreamer.

I'm not the one who believes a 3000 year old fairy tale.

[VigorsTheGrey]

Eden never was,
Nor can ever be...

So long, as it is...
Someone else’s Eden

Fashioned by Something else’s will,
Above us, beside us, through us...

It is all one...

As though...
We steer not our own ships,
But that some...ghostly heavenly captain
Overlays our certain course...

To destine to Himself,
Our very own port of destiny...?

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by hcap

I said you hype it and misuse it. By changing the "same sense" clause. You just did that ascribing incontrovertible attributes that are not necessary to all deities. You move the goalposts of what god is. Now, god doesn't know what is right hand is doing. We might say now you re-define god as not knowing his ass from his elbow.

Of course your god stacked the decks for all eternity. He created how his creation worked fort all eternity, therefore he absolutely knew all the details of how humanity would pass or fail all his rigged "tests".

Otherwise he could not be omniscient.
No law of blah, blah, blah needed. Hype away all you want

I didn't change anything. So, you don't like the "same sense" clause? Why not? It's an integral and fundamental part of that rule of logic. If you don't like "same sense", feel free to change it to "in the same respect" or any other equivalent clause.

He could have only stacked the deck if he interfered in the test. He did not. Therefore, your complaint is a straw man. His omniscience did not exert any influence on our first parents' free choices. No more than in my teacher-student-test analogy did my foreknowledge exert any influence over any of the students' scores -- neither those who passed or failed.

You keep telling us that your "logic" is so obviously on the mark, yet you won't apply your logic to a law of logic to test its validity? You're a fraud, Hcap. You're a fake whiner. A phony complainer. An emperor with no clothes.