RedDragon94
Love everyone, meditate often
Okay so 20% of "Christians" don't read the Bible. So what?
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Why is God alive?
- Thread starter Twilight Hue
- Start date
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
So even the 20% who say they don't read it regularly, are attending live readings regularly...!
RedDragon94
Love everyone, meditate often
That's also only those who claim to be Christians. What about non-Christians (Bahais, or Catholics, or Eastern Orthodox)?
Think. "Live readings regularly." How long do they go on? How much do they cover?
The question I am really asking is how many Christians actually read the Bible thoroughly enough to actually achieve anything like a real understanding of what it actually is? And I will answer that, too -- it ain't the church-goers, and it usually isn't even the guys in the fancy drag doing the service. The only people who actually read it fully, completely and with the idea of "comprehension" in mind, are scholars -- and a few atheists, like myself. A very few scholars take up religious orders, but for the most part, those who claim to be "reverends" and "pastors" have much less knowledge of the bible than I do.
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
Like any great book, the Bible was written for and successfully resonates with people, billions of them, all over the world, across continents and millennia, not a small bubble of cynical 'scholarly' critics
But perhaps with your vastly superior intellect, you could write a far more popular, beloved, inspiring, influential book.
Thief
Rogue Theologian
I believe God did say......I AM!
and the creation that followed is almost simultaneous
substance formed immediately
the really tricky question.....HOW is God alive?
we get to ask Him when we get there
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I love this forum but admittedly I am having a lot of problems figuring out how it works. The main problem I am having is finding posts that were posted to me. I seem to get all new posts that are posted on a thread I have posted on for a short while but then I do not get them anymore, so if someone posts to me after a while I do not know if they posted to me unless I go looking, which is quite an arduous process!
I should probably contact the staff to get information about how this all works but I have been too busy as yet.I came from Delphi Forums where I get an e-mail notification for all posts that are posted to me. If I have to have a paid membership for that here that is certainly worth it, since I really like this forum.
I look forward to reading and responding to your posts and all the other cool posters on this forum. I do not mind posting to Christians and others who believe in God, but sometimes it gets into a battle of wills and I get so tired of that. In The Baha'i Faith we say that if two people argue they are both wrong.
I enjoy talking to nonbelievers because I find their arguments interesting and I have always had an agnostic bent in that I question why things are the way they are...
The problem (if it can be considered a problem) is that I definitely believe that God exists and that God is omnipotent and omniscient so I know I am wrong when I question God, as He has revealed His Will through Baha'u'llah...
As far as a personal God is concerned, Baha'is vary on how they relate to God... I am somewhere in between a deist and a Christian in that I believe that God knows all our thoughts and feelings and God hears all our prayers, but I do not think we can ever know what God is thinking or doing, whether God answered a prayer or not... I also do not believe that God speaks to anyone except His Chosen Messengers, and even in that case God communicates to them through the Holy Spirit. Unlike Christians, I do not believe God speaks to anyone else through the Holy Spirit. Other Baha'is might question that so it is up for debate.
I am sometimes in kind of a pickle..
It is ironic how most of the nonbelievers I have conversed with on other forums think I am dogmatic simply because I consider what Baha'u'llah wrote to be inerrant... I am anything but dogmatic. I just think it is illogical to question God. 
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
God didn't say that at all.
It's people saying God said that.
If God was alive, he would have said that himself.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Thief
Rogue Theologian
and Moses did ask....with tablets in hand.....
the people will want to know Whose law this is
what shall I tell them?
and God replied......
Say to them......I AM!
and they with understanding will know Whose law this is
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Guess God still isn't alive. Even the narrative shows Moses saying, "I Am" instead of God himself. Probably because it's easier to convince people that way since God can't speak being he's not alive.
Of course, The laws of Moses for which additionally, people had said Moses had done that. At present, Moses himself is dead so it's actually an account made in the Bible.
I did not claim a "vastly superior intellect" at any time or in any place.Like any great book, the Bible was written for and successfully resonates with people, billions of them, all over the world, across continents and millennia, not a small bubble of cynical 'scholarly' critics
But perhaps with your vastly superior intellect, you could write a far more popular, beloved, inspiring, influential book.
But I do know this: what most people know about the Bible is what they have been told about it, not what they have read for themselves.
Another thing to consider is this: what does it mean, actually, when somebody says "I read the Bible every day?" Does it mean they go through the entire thing, bit by bit, and then start again? Or do they pick it up, read a few favourite verses that make them feel good, then put it down and go on about secular life?
Another question is this: how about the literally hundreds of millions who have read the Harry Potter Books, or Don Quixote, or Tolkien's Lord of the Rings? I've read them all, and I read those -- like pretty much everyone else does -- from beginning to end. And very often go back and start all over again. How many people do you think mean that kind of reading when they say they read the Bible regularly?
It is my own personal feeling, when I have read the Bible in just that way (as I have, more than once -- because I'm so frickin' old), that it is filled with horror stories that do NOT make me or anyone else feel good, but rather make me cringe, and should make anyone else cringe, too. If people read those parts of the Bible, and think, "boy, this really points up the wonderful lovingness and goodness of God," they are deliberately fooling themselves, or suppressing their intelligence and reason on purpose.
Let me give you just a couple of tiny instances:
I couldn't be Christian if I wanted to, because my mother wasn't married when I was born, and Deut 23:2 says "A ******* shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter..." See? Through no fault of mine (I couldn't prevent my own birth circumstances) I am so filthy it takes ten generations to clean up my horribleness. Thus saith the Lord.
Or how about Luke 16:18, "Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery." Bang! A substantial majority of Americans are adulterers, and unworthy. And are so in spite of what the Bible clearly says to them.
Catholics and Eastern Orthodox are Christians.
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
You claim to 'understand' the Bible better than the vast majority of the faithful, who you describe as mostly lacking their own powers of critical thought and accepting whatever they are told about it
It's always easier to critique other people's beliefs rather than your own.
I think most understand what you seem not to, that the Bible was written to resonate over millennia, cultures, continents- it had to communicate different things according to time/place/culture- and did so extremely successfully.
How many people read their encyclopedia in alphabetical order from beginning to end? Do you think this would be the best way of acquiring useful knowledge from it?
Or would you be better using it to seek answers to specific questions that have relevance to your life at that point in time?
Did you already have this feeling before you began? Or did you honestly have an open mind?
Obviously most people do not have that extreme negative reaction- is this really because billions of people are simply intellectually inferior to you? Or do you think you might just be missing something? Which do you think more likely?
If I quit reading Lord of the Rings after the 2nd book, I might give Frodo up for lost without salvation also
Did you not read on?
A couple of instances
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
and
There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
Katzpur
Not your average Mormon
I don't know that I'd go so far as to say that "Mormons claim that there are prophets running around all over the US," and I'm not sure where you got that idea. I will say, though, that to me, the idea of God sending one "last prophet" is enough reason to dismiss a religion as not having much validity. Assuming that God is the same forever and ever, and assuming that the conditions in the world are always changing, resulting in people being confronted by decisions that weren't even possible a few hundred years ago, I'd say that if God ever communicated to us through prophets, there is no reason why He would suddenly decide to speak to one last person and then simply step aside and leave us to our own devices after that one individual died.
And I sincerely think that is very often true -- that many believers cling to notions they were taught to believe as children, even though their critical faculties ought to tell them that it is ridiculous. I have had too many arguments with Christians who find every possible reason to believe that it was right to order the slaughter of all the Cananites, including the children, except the virgin girls who might be kept for some purpose (we'll never guess what, will we?). Let me try to be quite clear about this: NOTHING IN THE UNIVERSE -- NOT EVEN GOD -- IS JUSTIFICATION FOR THE WANTON SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENT CHILDREN (or of anyone else, for that matter). If you can make a "religion-centered argument based on the Bible" that such a thing can be right and good, then truly, you are not using your reason.
So, I would ask you to do some exegesis on that very point -- the slaughter of the Canaanites, and the keeping of the virgin girls for your own sexual use -- that shows it to be right. Do not forget to include those biblical verses that enjoin you to love your enemy and do good to them that despitefully use you, because that's going to have to be factored in, or your exegesis will be decidedly incomplete and deliberately slanted.
Do some further exegesis if you will, and discuss how, if God knows who sins and who does not, and in view of the fact that God proved in Egypt that he could be very precise with his ability to kill (only the first-born, in that case), he could not have found a way to kill only those who deserved it in the flood, rather than sparing only 8 humans (all adult -- 0 children) in the deluge. And even those 8 survivors didn't turn out to be all that perfect either, did they?
Back to exegesis again -- how much of the Bible do you actually have to ignore to make that claim?
Okay, so when you try to decide whether a woman can speak or teach in the church, do you consult 1 Timothy 2:12? If your unmarried daughter turned out not to be a virgin, would you consult Leviticus and have her stoned to death? Or having lived yourself, do you perhaps have some small understanding of the natural drives that are so powerfully built into us, and forgive?
You can find many places in the Bible that tell you that the correct answer is one of those, or the other -- and I cannot for the life of me think how you can reconcile those opposites -- except by choosing to ignore the Bible and go with your own instincts.
And I truly think -- on thousands of just such questions -- that's what most people do. (While still denying it and claiming that they are biblically-guided, oftentimes, when obviously that is not true).
I was a child, just like you, just like everybody else. I heard what I was fed in Sunday School, as you did. But my life was not like yours. I was a *******, orphan, tossed from home to orphanage and back again, beaten, nearly killed -- and I compared my experience of the world (and the Christians in it) with what I was taught. And it was an easy call that what I was taught was obvious rubbish.
I'd ask you to do some reading on human psychology, especially the more modern stuff. I'd ask you to consider crowd dynamics, and what people are capable of doing -- and later being monstrously ashamed of having done so -- just because "everybody else was doing it."
I have found that people who place a great deal of confidence in "bible teachings" have little or no knowledge of the science which h has been so carefully built up. Humans are a social species, programmed by nature and evolution to respond to their social environment in ways that get them raised to adulthood and parenting. That's what I think is "more likely."
This is something that you obviously believe, but have no way of demonstrating. And I will say this, too: many Americans make the same claim, and yet still support the death penalty, even for those who have confessed and who should -- by that very reasoning, be considered to be forgiven and cleansed. They justify that, of course, by supposing, "but we don't mean here on earth, we mean in the afterlife," to which they have precisely zero access, and therefore precisely zero means of establishing the truth of. So it's just something they say they believe.
A foolish saying, if you ask me -- meaningless and, once again, entirely unsupportable by anything that you can know.
Hyperbole. Certainly Mormons believe in "living prophets," and the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whoever he is at the time, is considered to be a prophet. Further, Mormons believe, or so I understand, that all believers can be inspired by God, but also that when it's about revelations that are meant for the church as a whole, God uses the senior officials of the Church for the purpose. Is that not correct?
Well, both Christians and Muslims (which account for the majority of religious believers in the world) believe you are wrong.
Katzpur
Not your average Mormon
I'll say!
Yes, it is, but with this qualification: Any new revelation with regards to doctrine or theology is always received first through the President of the Church, and not through any other "senior official." In other words, we don't believe that either of the President's two counselors or any member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles could legitimately receive a revelation pertaining to the Church as a whole.
There is one exception to this rule, and it's interesting that you should ask this question at this particular time. When the President of the Church dies, the "First Presidency" (i.e. the President and his two counselors) is automatically dissolved and the counselors return to the Quorum of the Twelve (which briefly becomes a quorum of thirteen). The keys of authority (including the authority to receive revelation on behalf of the Church as a whole) are passed to the Quorum of the Twelve, who then temporarily collectively hold the authority to receive revelation that would otherwise have been given to the President. In this sense, they are also considered to be prophets. The reason I said it's interesting that this question would come up now is that President Thomas S. Monson died last night shortly after 10:00 P.M. MST. So we no longer have "a prophet." We have a group of thirteen individuals who collectively (and that word is very significant) will receive revelation as to who will become the next President of the Church. While it is not cast in concrete, it has always been the case that the senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve (according to years of service as opposed to age) is chosen, ordained by the others and assumes the role of "President" (aka the "Prophet, Seer and Revelator.") Once a new "Prophet/President" has been ordained, he alone holds the keys of authority that were shared by the Quorum of the Twelve during the interim.) This, of course, creates a vacancy in the Quorum, which is later filled by a new individual.
I know. I'm such stating what seems reasonable to me. I don't know why God would speak to His children through a prophet at one period of time and then suddenly stop. Also, the idea of their being "one final prophet" has always struck me as a bit egotistical, particularly when it's that individual himself who makes the claim. That makes the religion more about him than it does about God.
Off topic question for you: Is your avatar a picture of some notable figure I should be embarrassed that I don't recognize? It's funny, because it looks just like my father (who has been dead for 24 years now; I'm your age).
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But there you have my entire point! If God is God, then He is 100% able to make known to me, to you, to George and Suzie and Ahmed and Gurpreet and Suzuki and Zhao Zhu, and everybody else, what He wants us to know! There is ZERO barrier to that supposition. So why the Hell does He need prophets to write fuzzy and difficult to interpret junk that we're all supposed to figure out -- AND (history proves this) ALWAYS GARBLE? Is God not capable of figuring out that that's what going to happen? How dumb is He?
No, that is a painting of me, done about one year ago. Oddly, my grade 9 roommate at boarding school in 1961 recognized it immediately. (Though I didn't have a moustache in 1961.)
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
That's one thing I hated about it all. There were many times where I wondered if the biblical authors and originators were alive today, would they say people who think they know all about the Bible are right or wrong as to what it means.
So many people from the pulpit and radio and television, they act like they knew what every thought and what every meaning was as if they were actually there speaking with those people one-on-one in that time and era, when in reality of course, for obvious reasons, they were not there or spoke to any of them to garner what the writers actually meant, or even the subject of the writings supposing they had existed.