First of all, the Passover was a Jewish tradition. During the time Moses spent trying to free his people, God's final plague was to destroy the firstborn in each household, unless they had the blood of a lamb over their door. The word 'Passover' originated from the fact that the death angel would 'pass over' the homes of those who had the blood of the lamb on their door. The reason for this myth of it being an Egyptian celebration for the passing of the sun, comes from the fact that the Israelites happened to be in Egypt at the time. For biblical reference, look at the storyline in the first few chapters of Exodus. The reason Christians recognize it, is because the bible is primarily a Jewish book. We celebrate our faith on the Old Testament as well as the New. Christ said that he did not come to take away the law or OT, but to fulfill it! Therefore freeing us from it's burdens.
About the celebration of birthdays, the reason for Jesus Christ's birthday being celebrated on the 25th, is to establish a date to celebrate, nothing more. It would be similar to a person being born on May 10th, celebrating their birthday on May 12th because the 10th is a weekday. Also, to give you more information on the subject of Christ's birth, many scholars believe he was born in the summer or late spring.
Concerning virgin births, the reason Christ came from a virgin, was in essence to support the fact that Christ would come miraculously, and innocently into the world. God has also provided children to barren women, such as Sarah and Abraham. Isaac, the father of Israel, was born. If God had not formed his son in a virgin, there would be a lot of prophesies that would not be fulfilled.
About the color of gods. God has described himself as an intense light, a burning flame, and other vivid descriptions of himself. The Son, was placed in a Jewish body, certainly not the dominant race at the time or now! Explain that to me please...
Overcoming death Hum? Christ's grave is still empty, Mohammed is still in the ground. God as the creator of all beings, certainly cannot be destroyed by his creation!
Blame, men or women? The Bible does not blame any sex or race for any of the problems we have as humans, rather it tells us that we are all at fault! That is why Christ came, to take the blame for us! How loving of him to suffer the ills of humanity, pain and humiliation, to take our place in a well-deserved judgment! You ask why does God send us to Hell? He gives us a choice of where we want to go! You choose either Heaven or Hell. God did not make it possible for us to be saved from Hell, it is actually quite simple, and the rewards can be overwhelming! God is a just God. He cannot go back on his word, so Christ came to be the sacrifice once and for all!
Sacrifices. Sacrifices in the Bible , were never intended to be the offering of forgiveness. No, God wanted to see the heart of the people. Sacrifice means to give up, or forfeit something precious. It was also a test of obedience. Christ came to take the place of sacrifices. Making the only requirement the recognition of him as the sacrifice in the place of our sins.
As to the origins of creation, I recommend you do some studying. Many ex-evolutionists, secular scholars and Christian scholars alike are finding fact in support of Creation by the methods of the Bible. Evolution is still entirely theoretical! The whole evolutionary chain was devised in the mind of a man, then he asked others to find pieces! Ask biology text writers, they will tell you that the drawings are not made from evidence, but it is twisted and altered to fit what the buyers want! I could kindly give you more information but I am short on time.
Crucifiction? None of these other 'saviors' went through the brutal and humiliating experience that Christ did. None were innocent of any wrongs, except Christ. Besides, Christ fulfilled prophesy by dying in Jerusalem on the Hill of the Skull, or Galgotha! If you look at whose bible is older you will find that the Holy Bible dates the farthest back, as a matter of fact it is th oldest book known to man. Also if you look, there are many things that other religions parallel the Bible over.
The flood did occur, research tells us this without looking in the Bible. Noah did continue humanity, thank God! If you notice the list you have, the Hebrew lineage is the oldest! Israel has been around longer than any other nation! Besides, like I said many religions parallel the bible.
Which is the truth? Jews for Jesus a little schitz? Please explain... I am proud that you were able to separate Mormons, Christ Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses, from the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is if you mean the Church based on the Bible. If you do, I would like you to explain how we are losing members. I think you should change your source of numbers! The Spirit of God is sweeping the globe! Millions of Christians have been found around the world, especially since the falling of Communism! Sol Korea supports a single church of over a million people alone. The movement isn't quite as evident in the U.S., but hold on, the REAL church will rise up here, and there will be no stopping it! Hallelujah! In actuality, the more immorality is spread around our country (Which was founded on the Bible), the more aggressive we are becoming. The end is coming soon! Any questions? Send feedback to: sadis01@kelly.af.mil:jfernltsrv.ltnet.kelly.af.mil Guten Tag!
I realize that there are many glaring inaccuracies in this rebuttal, but in order to promote continuing dialogue on this page, I will rely on other readers to contribute. The one problem, that I know I will receive a lot of feedback for allowing to stand, is the mention that the United States was founded on the Bible. As most of you know, the constitution was set up specifically to avoid all the problems that would result from different religions fighting over which was right, as has occurred in many other countries. The early presidents were well aware that religions do not promote peace. Paine and Jefferson were products of the Age of Reason. John Adams in his letters has said, " I am often tempted to think that this would be the best of all possible worlds if there was no religion in it."
Again, I encourage every thinking person to study why the founding fathers were adamant about separating the state from the power-hungry, money-grabbing churches. We cannot let the various religions stifle free speech, free thought and free inquiry that this nation's founders wanted for the people of the new world.
Just a quick note to set the record straight on Jesus's claim to Virgin birth. Although you may claim that Isaiah lost something in translation so that "young woman" became "virgin" in the Bible. The meaning is very clear in Luke 1:34: "How can this be," Mary asked, "since I am a virgin?" Although faith is still required to believe the authors' account, it would be ridiculous for her ask if she were not, in fact, a virgin. So, the Bible also claims that Jesus was born of a virgin.
Also, regarding comments about Noah and the flood. I cannot say if the ark was large enough to hold all the animals, but the flood itself could actually have happened. The Bible records that there was no rain before the flood - only dew. Scientists indicate that this could have been because of a "greenhouse" canopy of clouds covering the entire earth. We also know that there would enough water to cover the earth if the continents were not so tall at the time. Remember, we are not talking about a "normal" geologic event here. We are talking about a catastrophic geologic event.
I read (actually, tried to read) a scientific explanation of Creationism when I was a high school freshman. I didn't understand all of it, but the author proposed that a LARGE body - meteor, moon, comet - had passed the earth close enough to disturb the balance of the greenhouse environment. (In fact, this scientist claimed to have astronomical evidence of such a body.) This event would have caused massive amounts of rain as the canopy fell. It could also have caused major seismic activity resulting in underground aquifers bursting, the land above them caving in, and perhaps even mountains crumbling. The Bible does not mention mountains crumbling, but it does mention springs bursting and massive rainfall in Genesis 6:11: "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month - on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened." These events could easily have provided the amount of water needed to flood the earth within forty days.
Incidentally, the greenhouse effect, the flood, and the new climates created after the flood, could also explain the existence and then sudden extinction of dinosaurs. Also, the greenhouse effect which allowed dinosaurs to thrive, could have allowed men to grow to the outrageous ages (300-900 years) claimed in the Bible.
Final notes: If entropy (the tendency of things to move from a state of order to a state of disorder) really is the way of the natural world, evolution cannot be the answer. In fact, the very existence of physical laws and order within the world around us points to a God who created - and daily maintains - those laws and that order. I have also found that the Bible has great insight into human behavior and how caring for our fellow man is far better than competing against him. It's almost as if He actually created us! Therefore, I choose to put my faith in the God of the Bible, whether I can explain everything in it or not.
Kevin Anderson wrote this:
He was referring to the Second Law of Thermodynamics:
However, the Earth is not a closed system. Application of energy can decrease entropy in a system; the energy on Earth comes from the *SUN*. The easiest way to imagine entropy is a shoebox, the left half of which is filled with golf balls. The likelihood of the balls staying there is slim: Remove energy from the system, and the golf balls will scatter around in no recognizable pattern. If I exert energy, I can put the balls back and decrease the entropy of the system. The energy I exert is greater than the entropy I just got rid of, so the net entropy _still_ increases.
In the convent we were taught that you cannot "lose your faith like you lose a shoe"; that is, one has to deliberately "sin against the holy ghost in order to lose one's faith". "Entertaining doubts" was considered a sin against the holy ghost.
I think most people avoid thinking about issues that might upset their faith either a) because they believe it is a "sin', or b) because they are subconsiously afraid that it might upset their comfortable construct of the world (crutch), or c) simply because thye have not been trained to think deeply about much of anything, but have been trained to accept whatever mainstream society teaches them.
I believe most atheists have either a) been trained since childhood in critical thinking and in contemplating deep abstract issues such as the concepts of infinity, right and wrong etc., or b) are so intelligent (way above norm, let us say in the range of 12O to 17O IQ that they can't help but question , or c) have been confronted in life by some highly significant and relevant issue (such as the loss of family in the holocast which forces one to confront the problem of the incompatability of God with the existence of evil) which has such an impact on them as to superceed their natural desires to play ostrich and "enjoy" the comforts of religion.
I some cases (such as my own) I believe an atheist may have a little bit of all three of the above. In my case (c) above was not as stong as the example given, while my convent indoctrination was extremely strong ( although it was counter acted by a father who was a lawyer who encourage me to question from the age of 7) but even so it took me till fifty to break away. When something terrible happens to me I still miss the crutch of relilgion and a God to turn to for comfort although I feel the intellectual and moral freedom I have gained has more than compensated. I now feel "whole" rather than "holy", and it is a much more satisfying feeling.
I do however believe in Paul Kurtz's hypothesis of the " Transubstantial Temptation": that religion has survival value and in mankind's early history a tendency to be religious may have been favoured by evolution. After all, life is "nasty, briustish and short" for most people at most times in the history of the world and if once has a grasp of just how nasty it really is, many people might actually go mad or commit suicide or not take the risks necessary for survivial and subsequent procreation. I believe that religion serves a real social and perhaps biological survival need which a few of us these days through advanced culture are able to overcome or subdue. By "advanced" cluture I mean the economic leisure time for deep thought and advanced education and a degree of material comfort that allows us to be "brave" and look at life in all its starkness, much of which we are shielded from. That's partly why I dont think atheists should proseletize too much. We should not try to take away peoples' crutches before they are ready in case it makes them "crack up".
You have taken the John Adams quote used in your rebuttal out of context. Recheck the original source. Adams was very supportive of the place of religion in government, saying in fact in 1798: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." (From the Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1954).
Everybody's gullable, and sees and hears what they want- even you. All life requires faith in something. Why be so conceited in trying to pretend you've discover the ultimate faith. If your beliefs (whatever they are, even if they are only that there is no God), why do you feel such a strong need to attack and ridicule the beliefs of others.
Someone must have hurt you at some time in your life. What ever the cause of your cynicism, I think Shakespeare may have been thinking of you when he wrote "I fear the lady doth protest too much." Anon...
I will e-mail the information on John Adams' quote to anyone who wants it. It is too lengthy to include here.
Since I cannot find anyplace in particular to leave these...I would like to leave them here with you and let you do with them as you see fit...
First, a teenie weenie little thing for the god page... I love it but has anyone thought of this... this is what keeps me up at night... ;)
What is the bible.. a collection of stories.. we have well established that fact..
These stories, however, were passed by word of mouth...hundreds and hundreds of years ago...in a language that pretty much doesn't exist anymore, between hundreds and hundreds of people. THEN, it was translated into different languages by HUMANS (human error? hmmm?) and many of these languages (ENGLISH) DO NOT have direct translatable words, phrases etc. THEN, these translations were changed to fit the times and or leader and or styles of the time......Does anyone REALLY think what we are reading (which by the way is THE best novel EVER written...but, another time) is TRULY what happened? Does anyone remember the telephone game.. you know, 3rd grade, big circle...the kid at the beginning whispers "The Cat is in the yard." to the kid next to him and 12 kids later it became The lemonade is ripe in the heat of July? This is with 12 people in 15 minutes... let alone millions, billions etc of people over hundred of thousands of years.....I dunno, it all comes down to that faith thing.. which by the way.. faith (putting belief into something without tangible evidence) is nothing more than a gamble....I.E.-Counting on something to work in your favor without really knowing if it will or not... I.E. the whole burning in hell if you're bad theory......I be good, I no burn in hell.... maybe. Maybe not.. it's a gamble... faith.
One of your rebuttals says:
To repspond, I'll paraphrase something I once read:
Once one outgrows religion (in the Deweyian sense) , one looks at the The Great Sacrifice much the same way Alice regarded the Red Queen at the end of the book--once fearsome, now so petty and contemptible as to be almost funny.
All of the above deaths have been for my palatable benefit. Does the sacrifice of Jesus really reduce all of those to insignificance?
You made some many good points and displayed some cogent reasoning. Your point about a benevolent God being willing to forgive men who think logically is excellent. However, I must take exception to the New & Improved Commandment 8. I believe this is plainly wrong. I believe the empirical and scientific evidence overwhelmingly proves that most racial and sexual prejudices (I prefer the word "preferences") are rooted in evolution. Racism is a term that is thrown about recklessly these days. I prefer to precisely define it as "a feeling of racial consciousness." I believe it is a survival mechanism instilled by nature. (I'm not addressing that portion of the definition of the word that asserts that racism includes a belief that one race has the right to rule over another. This notion is attributed to racism in one of my two dictionaries.)
I believe that as mankind evolved and adapted to different climates, the traits that proved useful in that climate were passed on by survivors, and the ones that were not perished with those who did not survive. Over time, characteristics peculiar to these survivors became noticeable and observable as stereotypical of the race or ethnic tribe. For example, caucasians developed the trait for deferment of gratification, which was useful when planning for prolonged, severe winters. Negroes developed the capacity for high birth rates to counter the increased mortality rate caused by the infection and disease attendant with tropical climates.
Any anthropologist not in the employ of the PC propaganda machine will tell you that ethnic or racial groups have a strong preference for mates from within their own tribe or race. This is especially true in cultures that have not been exposed to popular media. I believe this is because they possess an intrinsic knowledge that those within their own tribe are best adapted for the climate in which they live. Mating with an outsider decreases the chances of success for the offspring.
I would not argue that many religions have absorbed this law of nature and have articulated it in their stated beliefs. Religions gain appeal by capitalizing on self-evident truths. I would also agree that in the present civilation that we have built in North America, the advantages of mating with members of one's own racial or ethnic group are not as obvious. The short term view might be that these natural inclinations have outlived their usefulness, because we've achieved greater control over the effects of our environment. The long term counterpoint might be something along the lines of "And what would happen if a catastrophic natural disaster occurred."
Let's say that within the next two hundred years, everyone on earth has become a mixture of all the races, like that "brown America" Bill Clinton was talking about. Then a giant meteor strikes the earth smack dab in the middle of the Sahara, and throws up so much dust that the whole sky is dark over the middle two thirds of the earth for five or ten years. (I'm using this example because many paleontologists believe that it was an event like this that wiped out the dinosaurs.) So all of us who survived the earthquakes and such have to high tail it to the northern and southern extremities of the planet. I believe the chances of survival for "mixed" men in an artic world without gas heat, electricity, and modern conveniences is much less than that of a subspecies of man peculiarly adapted for that environment. When the disaster has passed, the subspecies can gradually repopulate other areas and adapt to them.
Racism, or feelings of racial consciousness, exists because Nature does not put all of her eggs in one basket. We have observed this repeatedly in the animal kingdom, and yet somehow we continually hear so called scholars proclaim through our TV sets that it does not apply to us. But hey, we're better than those "animals," right?
However, if I were Buddha or Jesus, I'd much rather people make up tall tales about me as a child, than decorate their doors with images of me nailed on a cross looking like a dead chicken. I would want to be remembered as living and sharing, not dead and dying.
I don't know what you've heard and haven't heard about Buddhism. From what I understand, I'd say he was the first person to start a major "humanist" movement independent of belief in God or religion. Buddhism is sometimes mistaken for atheism because it does not necessarily endorse any God or Supreme Being. Buddha seemed to align with your views on being independent of religious doctrine.
It has been said that one doesn't have to give up one's current views for Buddhism, which adds to anybody's practice; one can be Jewish and Buddhist, Christian and Buddhist, Muslim and Buddhist. I find the Buddhist goals of developing "Wisdom" and "Compassion" are as secular as you can get and still be consistent with Christianity and any other laws, prophets, faiths, or religions.
Aside from being oxymoronic (no aggression or proselytization intended) in regard to creationism and a slew of other "isms", it is a thin and curiously repetitive rationale for the justification of belief in (and therefore the existence of) god; basically an anomaly of church dogma. If true... we are to accept that the flowers must "believe" to live? Wouldn't a momentary lapse of faith therefore be mortal? Even more intriguing: Then god must "believe" in something that it may live? And further, that he may live?? Perhaps the suspension of reason- not application of faith- might work better for the argument of a believer. (See fideism)
Fun to contemplate.... but to the heart of the real issue surrounding faith and the GGC I offer: The Faith Paradox: (which could make a fun bonus question!) Either- there is a god who has revealed himself to man, and therefore faith* (in him) is impossible. Or- there is faith*, and therefore a god has not revealed himself to man. *faith- belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence There may be something to this... maybe not! In either case, I wish Poet and all thinkers peace!
Where did the water come from?
It follows that the entire weight of the atmosphere over any given area is less than that of a column of mercury less than a metre tall. Or a column of water less than 15 metres. So there cannot be 15 metres worth of water to inundate the entire earth to be found in the entire atmosphere. Or, to put it another way, if there isn't enough oxygen to breathe comfortably at the summits of the Himalayas, how in the Great God's name can there be enough water vapour to condense and cover them?
Then where did it go?
If water enough to flood the highest mountains covered the Earth, then when it evaporated the pressure of the water vapour would be that which you find many kilometres down in the sea. Later discoveries show that the boiling point of water rises with the pressure over it. It would therefore have to be more than scalding hot to stay gaseous. I guess the dinosaurs are extinct because they were all cooked.
The two most telling realities are that:
As far as the debate as to when Jesus was really born, a large part of the historical confusion is related to when you want the to year begin. N. B. that Jesus covers all the bases by being born at Christmas and reborn at Easter. He must have had a Hell of a press agent! The reason we celebrate April Fool's day is because the beginning of the year used to be April first. When somebody decided to change that, the people who still celebrated New Year then were called "April Fools". The Winter Solstice won out because it is the time when the sun stands still. If you remember a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens the longest night is also the time when the spirits of the dead can return because the world is believed to be standing still. Hallowe'en was a harvest festival when the Celts (in the process of cleaning house for the coming winter) sent on the spirits of their relatives who passed away during the last year.
The most interesting (and for me the most moving assessment of religion) lies in the fact that the Jewish religion which is the historical antecedent of Catholicism is currently the Oldest Existing Religion AND (like them or not) the detestable Jews are the only currently existing People of Antiquity. That is to say that the Jews have been a nationality longer that any other presently on the planet and their religion has been practiced and documented for over 5000 years.
It disturbs me that your site was the first hit. A site where God is challenged to prove himself!! Don't you know that you must not test God?!
Tell me, Do you know everything? Or maybe half of everything? Let's assume you know half of everything, is it not possible that God DOES exist in that other half??? Please be carefull what doubt you cause with your website, for God is a rightious God.
May God show Himself to you. May Jesus become realitiy for you.
Blessings,
Rick
the Netherlands
Here are more verses in the bible about asking for a sign:
Ex 17,2
The people started complaining to Moses, “Give us some water!” Moses
replied, “Why are you complaining to me and trying to put the Lord to the
test?”
Ml 3,15
See how happy those arrogant people are. Everyone who does wrong is
successful, and when they put God to the test, they always get away with
it.”
