Christianity - The only religion that makes sense of the world?

[Felix Florimon]

You can outline what the Bible says about god. This still doesn't establish Christianity as making the most sense. You are outlining beliefs. And you are certainly free to have your own beliefs, but it has no relevance to the claim of making the most sense

Regarding the claim that Christianity makes most sense or not depends on what kind of thinking and beliefs are in the mind making an analysis of Christianity. If my mind had been trained to think like an ultra-orthodox Jew, a very devout Muslim or as an atheist looking at the world from an evolutionary perspective, I don’t think that Christianity would make any sense at all. However, my years of education before college were shaped in very conservative Adventist schools. Nonetheless, my undergraduate, graduate and post graduate education was under the guidance of people who did not believe in Christianity and my brightest and best teachers were all evolutionists for whom a six days creation by an all powerful creator was not better than a fairy tale and a nonsense. Nonetheless, what kept me going regarding my perception of Christianity was the habit I acquired of praying to God every day when I woke up and before going to bed to sleep. My prayers were not just with the purpose of repeating to myself ideas I learned in church. Many of my prayers were dedicated to talk to God about many of the things that I was expected to do from a biblical point of view but did not make any sense to me because they were against many of my short-term goals. I remember that every time after I prayed, a new kind of perception came to my mind through which I understood how wrong was I and how, by following simple biblical instructions, many of my problems could be greatly minimized.

Therefore, many times I felt like you feel that, that at least some Christian teachings do not make any sense at all if we wish to successfully reach a given objective. However, the only difference between you and me is prayer or how to pray. Every time I prayed, I had a sense that the God presented to us in the Bible is real. After presenting in prayer to God many of the dilemmas that a biblical way presented in my daily living, I was given a new perception that confirmed the validity and the real benefit of applying biblical teachings in my daily living. Therefore, when I say that Christianity makes most sense, I am not talking from the perspective of an ultra-orthodox Jew, a very devout Muslim or an ardent evolutionist. I am talking from my own personal experience that obviously carries a great deal of weight on everything I say or believe.

FF

[Felix Florimon]

No, I have said that I don't know in terms of a god in general. I am reasonably sure that this power, if it exists, is not the one described in the Bible.

I would not express myself in the way you said above. I would say that our perception of God’s existence is something that depends of our own experience and the experience of others that we accept to be truthful. It is not just an individual experience; it is also a collective experience of others we interact with. It is also like the perception of our own existence. It does not depend only of a single area of our brains. If our own existence is something real and not an illusion created by some neuro-chemical reactions in our brains then there should be some kind of power that initiated our beginning. Something with a beginning has to have a source with power in order to cause such origin. Now, the Bible establishes that such source or God is infinite and has infinite power. Therefore, that power is much, much more than what the Bible could describe. It could be that you may sense something about God that is much more than we could read from the Bible. However we, don’t have any solid ground on which we could feel safe to divorce the God that we meet through the pages in the Bible from the God, power or source of everything that makes possible you and me to be real people and not just an illusion created by the interaction of 20 to 50 billion of neurons in our brains. In order for you and me to feel like real people with the ability to think, plan and react those billions of neurons have to interact with a specific pattern of behavior in order for us to feel that we are real people. Now, when those neurons get “disconnected” due to accumulation of something different from what should be there and they deviate from a specific pattern of neuronal behavior then our ability of remembering or perception may disappear like in something people experience when having a very severe Alzheimer.

Now when we study the teachings of the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, we are going to find that those teachings are a real blueprint of how humans should behave in a collective way in order to create a healthy and viable society. I really find it very strange that many people like to attack Christianity by attacking Christians who deviate from the “blue print” of human behavior established by our Lord Jesus but like to ignore how those “blueprints” of human behavior and interaction would give us a better quality of life in which we would be less afraid of violent criminals because their behavior is just the opposite of what Jesus taught 2,000 years ago.

FF

[Felix Florimon]

I don't get what the difference is.

[Felix Florimon]

it's really a primitive view of justice and atonement.

It's like god saying, "I will sacrifice myself to myself because of laws I made up myself so that I can prevent myself from killing everyone on the planet."

No wonder you cannot accept Christianity. Through such kind of perspective, you should feel much better when you see others believing in the theory of evolution.

Christianity did not begin just because the Romans executed a man on the cross. Christianity began because someone claiming to be one with the Father, who was able to perform miracles, who was expected to establish a kingdom on earth by his closest friends and disciples was executed and three days later resurrected and appeared to hundreds of his followers after his physical resurrection. This episode wrote a new chapter in the history of God-man relationship. God paid the penalty of death. His children accepted this penalty and would love and pray for their own enemies in order to gain new converts to Jesus’ teachings. The glorious hope of Christianity is not just the death of Jesus Christ because we all die regardless whether we believe in Jesus or not. The glorious hope of Christianity began over two thousand years ago when intimate friends of our Lord Jesus saw Lazarus resurrected four days after his body was physically decomposed after death which was followed few days later by the execution and resurrection of Jesus three days later. The driving force in Christianity is not the death of humans including the death of our Lord Jesus. The driving force of Christianity is life and an eternal one. Those who were running for their own lives while Jesus was being executed were the first one to begin Christianity because Jesus resurrected from death and collectively witnessed His ascension to heaven.

Now I am not an ocular witness of what happened over two thousand years ago; however, my daily experience of how my life is guided when I pray and how those prayers are answered by God plus the experience with God by people interacting with me makes me accept the experience of those that over two thousand years ago had a more intimate experience with our Lord Jesus Christ

FF

[wayfinder]

I don't think Paul shared your insight.

1 Corinthians 2:2 NAS

For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

[cardw]

Question for Cardw:

What pain and suffering would exist on this earth if man had never disobeyed God?

This question presents so many unproved assumptions that it really moves off topic.

It's a theological debate not a rational one, so it's not really related to making sense. I think it needs separate thread.

[Felix Florimon]

I don't think Paul shared your insight.

1 Corinthians 2:2 NAS

For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

Wayfinder:

I don’t believe that it is biblically sound to judge the thinking of any biblical writer by only taking into consideration just few words at a given time.

This is the Apostle Paul writing: “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:1-2 NIV).

The Apostle Paul was referring to a specific people, time and location with a specific purpose: “So that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power” (1 Corinthian 2:5 NIV).

If you wish to know whether the Apostle Paul shared my insight or not you should also take in consideration what he said in 1 Corinthians 15: “But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Corinthians 15:12-19).

The Apostle Paul says that if Jesus was just killed on the cross and did not resurrect then we are just doing a useless preaching and having a useless faith. Moreover, he added: “If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’ Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’ Come back to your senses as you ought…” (1 Corinthians 15:32-34 NIV).

FF

[cardw]

Quote:

If we wish to be fair and honest, we should also consider many other killings such as the killings during the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the killings ordered by an atheist named Lenin that has nothing to do with God ordering people to kill.

Remember atheism has no doctrines or philosophies. The only thing all atheists have in common is no belief in god or gods.

The thing that Lenin, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church had in common is Totalitarianism. This is what drove the violence. Lenin may have gotten his ideas as a result of trying to counteract the rigid control of the Russian Orthodox church. He saw that he needed to destroy their power base so that he could implement his form of government. This is a basic ends justifies the means. It has nothing to do with atheism.

The irony is that Totalitarianism is one of the forms of government outlined in the Bible. So one could say that it's actually more Biblical than Democracy. Democracy is not outlined in the Bible, but is based on enlightenment and humanist philosophy.

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Moreover, many people, who have rejected the gospel and who don’t believe in living according to Jesus’ teachings, perpetrate drugs related killings in the United States, Mexico and in many other places of this earth.

Now just because I'm a non believer doesn't mean that I have to reject all of Jesus' teachings. A lot of Jesus' teachings make a lot of sense and I am happy to incorporate them into a civil society.

The thing is that Jesus is not the only source for many of these teachings, which doesn't really matter on a pragmatic level. It does matter when we are making claims of divinity because of a so called special insight.

[cardw]

Quote:

I would say that our perception of God’s existence is something that depends of our own experience and the experience of others that we accept to be truthful. It is not just an individual experience; it is also a collective experience of others we interact with. It is also like the perception of our own existence. It does not depend only of a single area of our brains.

I agree with you, but the topic is a claim that Christianity makes the most sense. This is not an appeal to what you describe above, but an appeal to reason. And reason doesn't have a way to take into account how we feel, unless we reduce feelings to something far less than what you are referring to.

Quote:

If our own existence is something real and not an illusion created by some neuro-chemical reactions in our brains then there should be some kind of power that initiated our beginning. Something with a beginning has to have a source with power in order to cause such origin. Now, the Bible establishes that such source or God is infinite and has infinite power.

The Bible doesn't establish this at all. It simply claims that the source is a particular view of god. And we are not sure that the Universe had a beginning, so it is entirely possible that the Universe has always been here contracting and expanding over and over infinitely back and infinitely ahead.

Quote:

Now when we study the teachings of the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, we are going to find that those teachings are a real blueprint of how humans should behave in a collective way in order to create a healthy and viable society. I really find it very strange that many people like to attack Christianity by attacking Christians who deviate from the “blue print” of human behavior established by our Lord Jesus but like to ignore how those “blueprints” of human behavior and interaction would give us a better quality of life in which we would be less afraid of violent criminals because their behavior is just the opposite of what Jesus taught 2,000 years ago.

The "blue print" you are talking about is a modern Christianity that has been adapted to a humanistic world view. It is my contention that the early Church was following the model that is outlined in the Bible. It was following the OT instructions to kill all those who did not conform to the particular theological ideal of the age. The early church saw itself as the New Israel.

It has only been since the church has been stripped of it's political power that it has been forced to modify its approach. I simply have to point to the thinly veiled threats present even on Club Adventist. I simply have to point to your belief that your god will kill everyone who is not in agreement including me.

[Felix Florimon]

The irony is that Totalitarianism is one of the forms of government outlined in the Bible. So one could say that it's actually more Biblical than Democracy. Democracy is not outlined in the Bible, but is based on enlightenment and humanist philosophy.

Totalitarianism is a kind of paganism in which a head of state was considered as a kind of god who had absolute power and authority in his nation. Now, why is totalitarianism mentioned in the Bible as a form of government? It is because of the experience suffered by God’s people when they were under the jurisdiction of such kind of government.

Democracy is not outlined in the Bible because Democracy can only exist in a nation where people could preach the teachings of Jesus, in the NT, without they being afraid of losing their freedom or their life. This was possible only after a significant number of people began to read the NT without being afraid of losing their freedom or their lives for accepting the Lord Jesus as their personal savior.

Democracy could become a real possibility in this world after Jesus said and enlightened people were willing to accept and follow up Jesus’ teachings according to the Bible; for instance, this is a key passage making Democracy a real possibility in any nation where the teachings of the NT are widely accepted: “Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve…’” Matthew 20:25-28. This is how public officials including heads of state could be called public servants and they are not seen as semi-gods like in a pagan or totalitarian state.

Since the years when Henry A. Kissinger (a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize) was secretary of state under the Nixon’s administration “enlightenment and humanist philosophy” and militarism has been used in order to generate peace and democracy in Vietnam, Cambodia and the Middle East; however, it has been a real failure because until Jesus, our Prince of Peace is not freely preached and accepted, according to what is written in the Bible, truthful peace and democracy will not be able to co-exist in any region of this world including the Middle East.

FF

[Felix Florimon]

The thing is that Jesus is not the only source for many of these teachings, which doesn't really matter on a pragmatic level. It does matter when we are making claims of divinity because of a so called special insight

[Felix Florimon]

I simply have to point to the thinly veiled threats present even on Club Adventist. I simply have to point to your belief that your god will kill everyone who is not in agreement including me.

Your opinion shows how a limited knowledge about God and the Bible could be a much greater curse than no knowledge at all.

Your statement is a false accusation or blasphemy against our best understanding of God in the OT and NT. God has not changed. He is the same.

First of all, it is a blasphemy to say that God will kill everyone who is not in agreement with Him. God is infinite and His wisdom is infinite. In a sinful world like ours we have been born with a very serious limitation to understand God’s will. Such serious limitation will put us in a position that we may think that we are doing God’s will but we would be doing just the opposite. Moreover, we could find ourselves in the very odd position of having someone having a better understanding of God’s will who will obviously tell us that we are wrong. God’s goal for the human race is not to have an absolute control on how we think. He has given us liberty and a mind with a brain so we could think freely; now, free thinking is followed by words of agreement or disagreement. God’s goal is to shape the behavior of the human race because He is the one that has created us. He is the one who has given shape to every organ, tissue, cell molecule, atom and electron in our own bodies. Moreover, He is the only one that is able to perceive the positive or negative influence of our actions many thousands of years later because His understanding of everything is infinite.

In the Bible you are going to find Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Jonas who at a given time expressed their disagreement with God. God’s concern is not whether we are in agreement with Him or not but what we are going to do with such disagreement. This is one of the reasons that, through the teachings of the Bible, we are encouraged to learn how to have a personal relationship with Him and why we are encouraged to have very long happy marriages with our own spouses so we could learn how to put to work our own disagreements in a constructive way. Even Jesus who was perfect without sin felt a need to make the following prayer: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Through this prayer we are able to understand that at a critical time in our lives, we may have a will that is not in agreement with God’s will.

Now, we believe that Jesus is the same God and Creator of the OT who took our own human nature in order to teach us how to best fulfill God’s will from the time that we are born up to the time we exhale our last breath on here on earth. In Matthew 7:3-5 He says: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.” In John 8:7 the Bible says: “When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.’” Now, this is another instance when Jesus declined the use of force for forcing others to be in agreement with God: “Jesus replied, ‘Friend, do what you came for.’ Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus' companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. ‘Put your sword back in its place,’ Jesus said to him, ‘for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.’”

Through the above mentioned teachings the Lord Jesus is sending a clear message to His followers that might be understood in the following way: Before you kill any sinner for his sinful ways, you first have to learn to live a sinless life, you need first to learn to love and pray for your enemies, you need to learn how to give food to the hungry (see Matthew 25:35), clothing to the naked, take care of those who are ill; you also need to learn how to kill and destroy first your very own crooked and corrupt way of understanding God’s will and have a very good personal and sinless relationship with Him. After such thing happen, such person will not have any time to think about the killing of any sinner because he will be spending time teaching his fellow believers to do the same (as Jesus commanded in Mathew 28:19-20) and if all believers in Jesus would do the same, Jesus will come to take them to heaven and all who died believing in Jesus will be resurrected in order to physically enjoy God’s presence forever.

God does not need His enemies to be killed through the power of guns or lethal weapons. Believe me that the people, who are getting killed today, they get killed by people who prefer to be protected by the power of guns or lethal weapon instead of being protected through the power of God, Jesus and His angels. So instead of coming to club Adventist to protest against the God of the OT you should use your knowledge and influence against very liberal guns laws that allow mentally insane people to buy lethal weapons because our ability to get killed without any fault is much greater by being at the wrong time in the wrong place in a shoot out by people who believe in settling scores through gun fights or other lethal weapons that by people who believe in always asking God forgiveness in the name of our Lord Jesus for their bad thinking and actions.

FF

[Twilight]

Good post.

[phkrause]

Good post.

I second that Felix. I think more than God Killing anyone we are destroying ourselves. Just a thought.

pk

[cardw]

Originally Posted By: cardw

The irony is that Totalitarianism is one of the forms of government outlined in the Bible. So one could say that it's actually more Biblical than Democracy. Democracy is not outlined in the Bible, but is based on enlightenment and humanist philosophy.

Totalitarianism is a kind of paganism in which a head of state was considered as a kind of god who had absolute power and authority in his nation. Now, why is totalitarianism mentioned in the Bible as a form of government? It is because of the experience suffered by God’s people when they were under the jurisdiction of such kind of government.

[cardw]

Quote:

Your lack of perception of Jesus as God, Creator and Redeemer makes you unable to see the difference of the early nominal Church and the real church of our Lord Jesus. For instance, regarding who is and who is not Jesus’ follower, Jesus said: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” Matthew 7:21-23. Therefore, you are right when you say “the early Church.” This is because “the early church” committed apostasy by abandoning the principles taught by the Lord Jesus and accepted by the primitive Christian church.

This would be nice if was true, but I find no evidence of this what-so-ever other than claims. That is all you are doing here.

There is so much evidence to the contrary.

You would think that if this early knowledge was so important we would have a book written by Jesus himself. Instead we have these non eyewitness compilations that are simply given the names of the apostles when we know now that they could not have possibly been written by the authors claimed.

We have a large collection of gospels from the same time period claiming all kinds of fantastic things. The books chosen to be included in the Bible were done by a group of very unethical men in the 4th century. This version of the Bible was established through violence, torture, state power, and bribery.

The whole enterprise smacks of man created.

Sure you can create a version that works and say that it's the true church, but everybody claims that and we have 40,000 different versions of the "true" church.

A claim is not evidence of something making sense.

[cardw]

Quote:

Your opinion shows how a limited knowledge about God and the Bible could be a much greater curse than no knowledge at all.

Your statement is a false accusation or blasphemy against our best understanding of God in the OT and NT. God has not changed. He is the same.

This is just a non argument.

Quote:

First of all, it is a blasphemy to say that God will kill everyone who is not in agreement with Him. God is infinite and His wisdom is infinite. In a sinful world like ours we have been born with a very serious limitation to understand God’s will.

This is combination of fear and the use of what I call the "mysterious ways" clause.

It's superstition.

It's doesn't work to try and make sense out of nonsense. And a lot of what god does in the OT is nonsense.

Quote:

In the Bible you are going to find Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Jonas who at a given time expressed their disagreement with God. God’s concern is not whether we are in agreement with Him or not but what we are going to do with such disagreement.

This makes no difference. There is no option to act on our disagreement. That is totalitarian. It amounts to God killing everyone who acts on their disagreement.

I see no cosmic failure happening if I gather sticks on the Sabbath. And the rationales for this either call on god's "mysterious ways" or some type of argument around the idea if god let this one through all hell would break loose.

The problem is there is no evidence that could negate the Bible in your mind. Even though there is a huge amount of evidence that this book is man made, most Christians completely ignore it.

I believe there is probably some higher source, but it certainly is not the god of the Bible. And I make no claims about what this higher source wants or says. That is why I am an agnostic.

I believe that all we have is our capacity to reason and empathize. And there are certainly moments of transcendence, but Christianity is not the only way to find these.

[Felix Florimon]

You are severely redefining totalitarianism.

[Felix Florimon]

This version of the Bible was established through violence, torture, state power, and bribery.

[cardw]

Originally Posted By: cardw

You are severely redefining totalitarianism.

Quote:

Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system where the state, usually under the control of a single political organization, faction, or class domination, recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible.[2] Totalitarianism is generally characterised by the coincidence of authoritarianism (i.e., where ordinary citizens have no significant share in state decision-making) and ideology (i.e., a pervasive scheme of values promulgated by institutional means to direct the most significant aspects of public and private life)[3].

Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of an official all-embracing ideology and propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that controls the state, personality cults, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of state terrorism.

Obviously you are just contradicting your previous statement that:

Originally Posted By: cardw

The irony is that Totalitarianism is one of the forms of government outlined in the Bible. So one could say that it's actually more Biblical than Democracy.

The definition you brought of Totalitarianism is just a modern derivation of paganism where the worship to pagan gods is replaced by a neo-pagan “personality cults.”

[cardw]

Originally Posted By: cardw

This version of the Bible was established through violence, torture, state power, and bribery.

Just wishful thinking of someone just searching to discredit instead of searching for the truth.

[Felix Florimon]

And Moses wasn't a personality cult?

[cardw]

Originally Posted By: cardw

And Moses wasn't a personality cult?

This doesn’t look a “personality cult” to me: Numbers 14

Quote:

2 All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, "If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this desert!

3 Why is the LORD bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn't it be better for us to go back to Egypt?"

4 And they said to each other, "We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt."

5 Then Moses and Aaron fell facedown in front of the whole Israelite assembly gathered there. 10 But the whole assembly talked about stoning them. Then the glory of the LORD appeared at the Tent of Meeting to all the Israelites.

[Felix Florimon]

This says nothing about the later view of Moses. Remember Jesus had no status in the minds of the Jews. Elijah, Moses, and Joshua were the personalities of the Jewish faith.

[John317]

Quote:

SivartM: Muslims hear Allah in the Qur'an. Hindus hear... whoever they happen to worship... in their sacred writings. They have spiritual experiences. I still don't see how Christianity is any more logical than them.

I don't have a problem with the idea of "hearing God", but not if you use that sort of thing as some sort of proof for Christianity. It could just be indigestion for all I know.

Faith.

Why are you a Christian and not a believer in any of the other religions?

Why do you believe the Bible and not the Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Taoist scriptures, etc.? (I'm assuming you don't believe in those scriptures, but maybe you do.)