Christian "belief" is sometimes due to the Stockholm Syndrome

[Overaged]

I don't feel a need to reconcile everything I don't understand in the Bible. I don't have to have every iota of scripture explained. I have enough trouble with just one verse: "love one another." There are some people I don't want to love! They are nasty! I am just glad that when I felt this way about God; He did not give up on me. His footprints in my life and heart are all the proof I need.

[cardw]

Overaged,

I think you make a great point. And this is the type of honesty I'm talking about. When you admit that there are people you don't want to love is extremely honest. That is why you experience transformation.

My guess is that you want to come to a point where you can love everyone. That is a tremendous value to have. I want that value as well. And I too, don't always want to love everyone I come in contact with.

When I come in contact with an inability to love a particular person is because they generally are exhibiting something that I don't like in myself. It is a litmus test of sorts for me.

I have noticed that when I come to a place of peace with myself over that issue, other people that exhibit those characteristics aren't as difficult to love. The characteristic within myself tends to go away as a side effect of this process.

This process won't work in an atmosphere of fear and shame. Using fear and shame as a core motivator shuts down this type of honesty.

This is what I am interested in. If Christianity robs a person of this process then Christianity needs to go.

[Overaged]

Well; see my friend, we DO have something in common.

All these right impulses are from Christ - I believe that when He says to love one another, He particularly meant ones who exhibited things we don't like. If you only love those who love you; what good is that?

I think some of these impressions you have gotten about Christianity are from very poor examples, and clear misunderstandings that others have manifested.

[Twilight]

I do not know the answer as to why God did not deal with Hitler at that point.

But I do know that He has to allow evil to appear in its full vileness, in this instance, it was permitted.

But I know that I will get a chance to examine that decision in the thousand years, so do not have an issue with it as it will be dealt with.

As to the man deliberately ignoring Gods commandments willfully?

God bought the judgement on Him that He will bring on all those that know about the Sabbath and deliberately break it.

The issue here is sin and why God deals with some sins immediately and some later.

As I know He is a loving God, I can forgo the answer now.

I know that is not sufficient for you, but it suffices me.

[Twilight]

The argument that destruction has no place in society, ignores the fact that bad behaviour has to be dealt with.

Is there any society that has not dealt with bad behaviour and has been succesful as a society?

Evil is selfishness.

If Evil does not exist, then how can one claim God did anything wrong?

[Twilight]

What is this truth that is higher then the biblical model?

[Twilight]

Why is it obvious that God is crazy?

Maybe we can misunderstand God because we are only seeing the bend in the river.

The one just ahead.

Whereas God sees the whole river.

I know God.

Personally.

The individual that the description supplies, is one that satan should have.

Not God.

I love God, because He loves me.

His thoughts are the purest and most logical of all the thought processes I have ever encountered.

They are based solely on the needs of others.

Even Gods authority resides in the need to Father us.

God also will give me eternal life, I know this.

I also know satan and that is one crazy individual.

Sometimes we can get the two mixed up...

[cardw]

Overaged,

The implication of your reply is that because I may disagree with one point that I am stating that we can have nothing in common.

We probably have many things in common.

That's the problem with the fundamentalist mindset. It projects its all or none assumption to everyone.

If you have noticed I try to be very specific. Just because I disagree with one aspect of Christianity doesn't mean that Christianity doesn't have anything good to say.

The responses from many of you reveal that you believe that anyone who is critical of Christianity must hate all Christians and anything that Christianity has to say.

Disagreement is not hate.

This is one of the weaknesses of Christian culture. It tends to be unable to sustain an honest dialog without accusing people of being possessed by Satan or endorsing evil plots to take over the world.

My impression of Christianity has come mainly from direct reading of the Bible and Ellen White for the first half of my life and trying to implement those principles in my life. I have to come to realize if you modify a literal understanding of those two sources you can produce something very workable.

I have no interest in doing that because I have something very workable without having to get some kind of fit with the Bible and Ellen White. To me, that introduces a lot of bad reasons for doing good things.

[cardw]

Mark,

It's not hard to improve on the 10 commandments. Almost anyone can come up with something better in a few minutes.

The second commandment is basically don't do sculpture. You can do a lot of sculpture before anyone is harmed.

Don't hurt children or don't eat high fat foods would easily surpass what is thought of as the 2nd most important moral principle of the Bible.

[cardw]

I never said force had no place in society. I said unreasonable force has no place in society. I see genocide as unreasonable force.

Evil does not have to exist for suffering to exist. Evil implies motive. Suffering can exist simply out of ignorance.

If god is all knowing, then ONLY god can be held responsible.

[cardw]

Just because YOUR understandings of god are the most logical that you have ever encountered just means that YOU haven't encountered every possible thought.

So you have no basis for your claim that this understanding is the best possible understanding. The shortness of your life experience would easily argue against this claim of knowledge.

That's why I don't claim to have the best understanding. I think I have demonstrated that I have a better understanding than you do because you make a lot of simple mistakes of logic. So I don't trust your ability to evaluate whether something is logical or not.

[Overaged]

I just finished saying I thought we do have something in common! You really are out in left field tonight!

[cardw]

Overaged,

You said we have something in common like it was something I was denying. You used the words, "Well see" like it must be a surprise to me or something I was saying wasn't possible. I've never said anything about what we might have in common or not.

I don't like being misrepresented. It has nothing to do with being out in left field.

I'm not offended, but I will correct you when you don't accurately portray my attitude or position. That seems reasonable to me.

[Twilight]

That is quite a bold claim.

As an exercise, please you could you state an alternative 10 commandments that you feel would be better?

[Twilight]

How do you decide what is "unreasonable force"?

It seems you have decreed a standard of force that is acceptable.

What is your basis and measurements for that standard?

Please elucidate.

[Twilight]

The arguments you present as "logical", are they yours?

I have heard these arguments before, many times.

And I do not think they offer anything to really counter my understanding of God.

In fact, these arguments often just reflect a lack of understanding about an aspect of Gods character.

I think that is the case here.

God is being represented as a harsh legalistic tyrant.

Whilst I understand how someone can come to that conclusion, I do not agree with their summary.

Pointing to a God's judgements as a sign of weakness on God's behalf, when an alternative is not supplied, is not beneficial to the discussion.

How would your worldview have dealt with the "flood" scenario, if you were God Rich?

What would you have done differently?

[Overaged]

You go right ahead and "correct" away my boy.

[cardw]

OK, Chief

[cardw]

I find myself in the surreal position of having to convince Christians that genocide is a bad thing.

And suggesting that a lack of an alternate is basis for genocide being good seems an obvious logical fallacy. Excuse me, I should say the correct claim by Christians is that genocide is an expression of love.

I can't believe I have to prove to anyone that genocide is an unreasonable use of force.

I would think you would have to prove that evil actually exists as apposed to ignorance, mental disease, and immaturity, all of which we know exist.

I don't see how genocide helps any of these, particularly when humanity is required to carry out said genocide.

We know that both witnessing genocide and the carrying out of genocide create tremendous emotional trauma. It boggles the mind that anyone would even consider this to be the best solution an all knowing god could come up with.

[Twilight]

So how would you deal with selfishness if you were God Rich?

I understand you are arguing that the God of the bible has it all wrong.

So maybe you can explain what the "right" thing to do would be?

[cardw]

Ok Mark,

Let me explain why it is very difficult to dialog with you.

You aren't able to understand what I'm saying. The evidence for this is your responses.

You state that I'm arguing that the god of the Bible has it ALL wrong. I can't answer your question because I didn't say that.

I am very specific. I have been talking about genocide. That is clearly wrong. You keep avoiding this because you have no rational answer.

Now you ask me how I would deal with selfishness. That's like asking me to solve poverty. Evidently even god can't solve that one because Jesus says that the poor will always be with us.

Just because we have no complete solution for a particular problem doesn't mean that another solution is the right one. This is simply another example of your inability to understand simple rules of logic.

The god of the Bible's "solution" is to tortuously kill everyone in a lake of fire who is selfish in front of the saved (who are selfish too, but have accepted Jesus as their savior) forever burning that image into their psyche.

I don't think it's that hard to improve on that. LOL That's pretty much the low bar, knee jerk reaction of the fearful. To me that's evidence that this solution isn't something an all powerful all knowing god would come up with. It seems pretty clear to me that men are making this stuff up.

Now I do know some solutions for individual selfishness because selfishness is ultimately counter productive for human happiness. I think it's actually healthy to have some self interest because one needs at least enough self interest to pursue happiness. Even in the Christian myth one needs to have enough self interest to want to go to heaven.

A world view that believes in evil and sin is really counter productive to the removal of selfishness because it simply redirects a person to themselves. Instead of thinking how great one is the Christian value of humbleness is directing people to how sinful they are. They are both self centered.

People who are self centered are the most miserable people on the planet. Nobody needs to punish them, they are suffering already. Usually when the suffering of self centeredness exceeds the pain of changing, a person becomes willing to change.

I have seen people hit this point many times and often this is an opportunity for transformation. A process of truth telling and love are the pathway out. Most Christian communities are not honest enough to do this process. It's too scary because the shame level tends to be pretty high. So the risk tends to be too high.

I see this as a direct result of over simplifying the human problem from literal interpretations of the Bible.

[Twilight]

I repeat.

I know you think the God of the bible is acting "wrong".

My simple question to you is.

How would you deal with it all differently?

Allowing for the fact that the Biblical account reflects the reality of Gods dealings with the World.

It is easy to stand back and say "this is wrong" and "that is wrong", but why not share what you think is the "right thing to do".

:-)

[cardw]

You can repeat it all you want. You know the white elephant in the room is genocide. You can't answer the problem of genocide with a rational answer.

And here you go again with exaggeration. It is not an simple question. If someone, including Christianity, could have solved the problems of human suffering and selfishness, we would have had a solution a long time ago.

And I did give you an individual solution that has been demonstrated to work.

All the Bible has to offer is this knee jerk kill everyone who doesn't line up solution which it obviously a man made solution.

And I'm not allowing for the fact that the Bible is a reality. There is no evidence for that. The fact is there is a lot of evidence that it's made up. And the presentation that genocide is a viable solution is one of those pieces of evidence.

It is a lot easier to point out the problems of the Biblical solutions of genocide because it's nuts. That's why it's easy.

All these deflections are demonstrating that you don't have a grasp of the rules of logic. They are fallacies. And it takes so much time to point these out that it's difficult to have a conversation.

[Twilight]

So you don't have a better solution of how to deal with selfishness then Cardw?

Claiming I do not have a grasp of "logic" does not validate your point. :-)

God has to destroy the wicked at some point.

All of them.

That is simple logic.

What is illogical about that?

And if it is illogical, please supply an alternative.

[Twilight]

What question exactly would you like me to try to answer?

Your statement is very general.