Christmas

[Croesy Blue]

Re: Christmas

Is that a Frank Bruno quote?

Is the talking donkey from the bible the same one as in Shrek do you think?

As for not intervening in the Holocaust, maybe your man Jesus really holds a grudge

[Gofer Blue]

Re: Christmas

I think I'll give up on these religious 'debates'. A great many people who are indoctrinated as children will believe the most ridiculous tosh for which there is absolutely zero evidence. The following are just a miniscule proportion of the ludicrous stories that people swallow whole. The list could go on and on and rational debate is impossible with people who believe it all.

A talking snake
Virgin birth
Noah being 500 years old when he built the Ark
David presenting the foreskins of 200 victims in order to marry the king's daughter
God making a donkey have the power of speech
Creatures with wings and four faces
Moses banishing people with damaged testicles offering food at the temple
Lot offering his daughters to be raped to save two angels being raped
Lot's daughter getting their father drunk to have sex with him
Human-God hybrids
God punishing Nebuchadnezzar by making him live in the fields as a cow for 7 seasons
Jonah being rescued by living in a fish for 3 days
God sparing Moses from death after the latter's wife cuts their child's foreskin and applies the blood to Moses' feet

Oh yeah, God created a miracle by raising the ground under the feet of St David so that the crowd could see him but chose not to intervene during the holocaust. It's an insult to one's intelligence, it really is.

Regarding indoctrinated children. Children tend to grow into adults don't they and make their own minds up? I rejected Christianity in my teens because of the hypocrisy I witnessed among some “Christians” plus I thought science had all the answers.

You are right, the early Jews certainly had some strange notions/customs/events it seems and I cannot explain them all. Thankfully Jesus speaks about the new covenant and it is he that I choose to follow. Without Jesus I would find it difficult to believe in God as the one sometimes portrayed in the Old Testament. I would say that Jesus is far more concerned with matters of the human condition, how a person thinks and lives, and having a personal relationship with him, not whether they believe in every detail in the Old Testament. I am content with the knowledge that the books therein point to the coming of a Messiah and the prophesies about Jesus, all of which have been fulfilled so far, bar the second coming.

Let's suppose you and others are right, I am completely deluded, and the whole thing is indeed a load of baloney. All I can say is I was glad I chose to follow the Jesus way, tried to be a good witness for him, and hopefully played some (minuscule) part in leaving the world in a slightly better shape for having been here. It's a shame that more people do not accept Jesus, even if just for his teachings alone, the world would be a much better place IMO.

This may now be a good time for me to bow out gracefully from this thread. You and others on here know where I stand, there is no more to be said. Feel free to ridicule me in my absence!

Let this verse have the last say: "Most importantly, I want to remind you that in the last days scoffers will come, mocking the truth and following their own desires". 2 Peter 3:3.

[Baloo]

Re: Christmas

Fair enough, it’s clearly helpful for you Gofer.

And for those aspire to live a good life without the supernatural there is always something like this: https://understandinghumanism.org.uk/what-is-humanism/

Although I’d say it’s not really necessary to sign-up and commit to any particular religion or ‘ism’. There are wide-ranging of sources of inspiration and guidance easily accessible to us today if helpful from time to time.

[truthpaste]

Re: Christmas

I think I'll give up on these religious 'debates'. A great many people who are indoctrinated as children will believe the most ridiculous tosh for which there is absolutely zero evidence. The following are just a miniscule proportion of the ludicrous stories that people swallow whole. The list could go on and on and rational debate is impossible with people who believe it all.

A talking snake
Virgin birth
Noah being 500 years old when he built the Ark
David presenting the foreskins of 200 victims in order to marry the king's daughter
God making a donkey have the power of speech
Creatures with wings and four faces
Moses banishing people with damaged testicles offering food at the temple
Lot offering his daughters to be raped to save two angels being raped
Lot's daughter getting their father drunk to have sex with him
Human-God hybrids
God punishing Nebuchadnezzar by making him live in the fields as a cow for 7 seasons
Jonah being rescued by living in a fish for 3 days
God sparing Moses from death after the latter's wife cuts their child's foreskin and applies the blood to Moses' feet

Oh yeah, God created a miracle by raising the ground under the feet of St David so that the crowd could see him but chose not to intervene during the holocaust. It's an insult to one's intelligence, it really is.

Yes, you'd need to be almighty to do ALL of those things!

[Croesy Blue]

Re: Christmas

Yes, you'd need to be almighty to do ALL of those things!

But not stop the Holocaust and let babies be born with aids

[lardy]

Re: Christmas

But not stop the Holocaust and let babies be born with aids

Give the guy a break, he's 6,000 years old!

[truthpaste]

Re: Christmas

But not stop the Holocaust and let babies be born with aids

If this was it, then I would fully understand your problem with inherited diseases or the attempted extermination of a nation.
However if this life is just a brief period (even if we live to 100 years+) of preparation in allowing your eternal soul to reside in the domain you yourself have chosen, then the entire picture changes.

[Croesy Blue]

Re: Christmas

If this was it, then I would fully understand your problem with inherited diseases or the attempted extermination of a nation.
However if this life is just a brief period (even if we live to 100 years+) of preparation in allowing your eternal soul to reside in the domain you yourself have chosen, then the entire picture changes.

I'm not sure it justifies it tbh. Do you believe god is all powerful and omnipotent?

[truthpaste]

Re: Christmas

I'm not sure it justifies it tbh. Do you believe god is all powerful and omnipotent?

Yes I do. Yet why do you think He should always act using the limited wisdom of humanity?

If He had stuck to such limitations could He have produced amazing DNA or all the features of the Universe?

If you need to see His "Signature" (the image by which he's known across the planet) then it can be seen at the centre of this NASA image of the Whirlpool Galaxy:-
>> whirlpool galaxy nasa

[Croesy Blue]

Re: Christmas

Sounds a bit of a dick move to let that happen to kids when he could stop it.

[Bluebirdman Of Alcathays]

Re: Christmas

Yes I do. Yet why do you think He should always act using the limited wisdom of humanity?

If He had stuck to such limitations could He have produced amazing DNA or all the features of the Universe?

If you need to see His "Signature" (the image by which he's known across the planet) then it can be seen at the centre of this NASA image of the Whirlpool Galaxy:-
>> whirlpool galaxy nasa

That's a scarecrow. God is a scarecrow? Interesting development.

[truthpaste]

Re: Christmas

That's a scarecrow. God is a scarecrow? Interesting development.

Thankfully you can get a free eye test at most local opticians:-

SKY IMAGE LAB report the following....

Hubble Cross
"Sometimes known as the Hubble Cross or Cross of Hubble.
This image of the core of the nearby spiral galaxy M51, taken with the Wide Field Planetary camera (in PC mode) on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows a striking, dark "X" silhouetted across the galaxy's nucleus. The "X" is due to absorption by dust and marks the exact position of a black hole which may have a mass equivalent to one-million stars like the sun. The darkest bar may be an edge-on dust ring which is 100 light-years in diameter. The edge-on torus not only hides the black hole and accretion disk from being viewed directly from earth, but also determines the axis of a jet of high-speed plasma and confines radiation from the accretion disk to a pair of oppositely directed cones of light, which ionize gas caught in their beam. The second bar of the "X" could be a second disk seen edge on, or possibly rotating gas and dust in MS1 intersecting with the jets and ionization cones.

The size of the cross in universe is 1100 light-years."

How much bigger does God have to make it before you can see it clearly?

[Bluebirdman Of Alcathays]

Re: Christmas

How much bigger does God have to make it before you can see it clearly?

If God wanted us to see this clearly why did his creations wait thousands of years before they invented something that could see it, and 2000 years after the story? Why didn't he just put it nearer?

[Croesy Blue]

Re: Christmas

If God wanted us to see this clearly why did his creations wait thousands of years before they invented something that could see it, and 2000 years after the story? Why didn't he just put it nearer?

Didn’t have much time with giving all those babies aids