"the Bible states the following two simple facts...

(No1) In order to go to heaven you must believe and accept Jesus Christ as your savior, that he is the son of God, and that he died on the cross for your sins.

(No2) Hell is a real place and that it is a place of infinite torture and suffering."


fact?

""I understand about the Catholic Church, bible being canonical, all of that and that there were a lot of time, politics, opposing religions bouncing around and all that. This is also sub-points to why I doubt the 100% accuracy of the Bible but I was originally trying to limit it to my '16% vs 84%' argument "

This is not an easy question, and thus gets asked all the time. But why? Because we who are taught about the God of love cannot reconcile this inside our heads. So we can't ever put this question to rest, even after 2,000+ years.

My personal take when things (be they church-produced, human written bible phrases or any of the myriad of church traditions) seem in direct contrast to the Two Greatest Commandments -- I ask which one is more plausible? That God erred, or that humans erred in their understanding, writing, reading, interpreting? Try this is for size:

1. We know God is love.
2. We know Jesus did not condemn other religions as a dead end's.
3. A human author writes that salvation comes only from Jesus Christ. There is no other way but eternal condemnation.

The Holy Spirit that allowed a pope to declare papal inerrancy as sacred church teaching/tradition is the same Holy Spirit that allowed human authors to introduce imperfections (inaccuracies, emotions, biases and outright contradictions) in writing / compiling the bible -- just another of many different church traditions.

Why should it be implausible that a human author honestly believed salvation can ONLY come from Jesus Christ -- when that was not Jesus' intention -- as shown by his obvious forbearance in condemning any other religion? That human author too had 100% free will to write as he thought best -- just like you and I.

Message: Do not cling to the bible as perfect. It isn't. It is inspired. But it is also a human product. Don't be like the pope who condemned Galileo for calling out facts that pointed to imperfect theological understanding.

Edited by ben2world on 03/19/2012 15:13:02 MDT.

"Why is it never a Buddhist or a Jew?"

This question relates back to my post. It's pretty simple really...

If you accept the bible as 100% direct word of God truth with no ifs, ands or buts, then all non-Christians as heading to hell. If you are a loving, caring person your top priority should be to drop everything you are doing and work to save their souls so that they can avert eternal hell and live in eternal bliss in heaven. This would be an Evangelical Christian. Mormons hold similar beliefs as far as if you don't believe X then you are going to hell, hence why they too will knock on your door.

Both groups believe what they believe so strongly that they have concern not only for where they are headed in the afterlife but where you are headed. It's really a pretty nice thing if you think about it, that they are concerned for you. That is the good part of religion. If we all cared about each other that much a lot of problems wouldn't exist. It's when you try to deliver religion through violence that things get sucky real fast.

"the Bible states the following two simple facts...

(No1) In order to go to heaven you must believe and accept Jesus Christ as your savior, that he is the son of God, and that he died on the cross for your sins.

(No2) Hell is a real place and that it is a place of infinite torture and suffering."


fact?"

Ken...you are right I should have said 'the Bible makes the following two statements...'

"Anything outside of time and space, by definition, does not exist."

The big bang would like to have a word with you about this.

I am Christian, and I will tell you that most Christians struggle with this. I am no exception. I also believe the Bible to be the inerrant word of God. The word tells me that the road to heaven is a narrow one, that many that believe they are saved will be turned away at the time of judgment. I believe that the only way to get into the afterlife is through the belief in the sacrifice of Jesus and the repentance of our sins.

As for those that never are exposed to the word, or to the good news of Jesus, I do not know. If they are judged by the Law, then they are doomed. There is a cryptic passage in Peter that seems to say that Jesus taught to the dead during the 3 days he was dead. What I have to believe is that God is perfectly just. He knows everything, and it is my belief that everyone who would have accepted Christ will have the opportunity to do so.

I am no Bible scholar either, and I am sure that most people can pick apart what I said. I claim no special knowledge, only my own poor interpretation.

BTW I always told myself to avoid posting in Chaff....

"If you accept the bible as 100% direct word of God truth with no ifs, ands or buts"

Should you? If your mother taught you right from wrong using childhood fables (e.g. talking foxes and pigs) do you cling to that as the indisputable fact that animals can talk? IMHO, those Protestant Christians who ignore evolution because the bible clearly said 6 days -- are doing our faith no favors at all.

As are those who use the Bible to condemn all non believers -- knowing full well that flies in the face of a God that is love, and that Jesus himself condemned no "pagan" at all. (NOT referring to you, Ty.)

Edited by ben2world on 03/19/2012 15:22:37 MDT.

It's a simple method to control believers in religion. With fear, the church was in effective control of Europe during many centuries, the popes and the bishops weren't exactly pious believers, and they stated some rules to control population: "If you sin, you'll suffer during eternity. If you do as you're told, heaven awaits" (unless you were rich an could afford a papal bull) that's why all the fear is constantly reinforced after the collapse of Rome in all clerical decisions: pure political control. I'm 100% sure that in the original texts your percentages were really different, being written by real believers.

I just ask when i have a question.

I get an immediate response most of the time. Thats all the proof of a God I need.

I find Jesus to be busy most of the time, but the Holy Ghost is often available to help.

Sometimes the generic God will get a response, but it helps to address your question to a specific part of the Trinity.

Khader:

What you wrote above is indicative of human behavior. Not so different from how some Muslim clerics exploit religion to control their own. Let's not be naive. All of us are humans -- good, bad and ugly. However, just because a teaching (e.g. hell) has been exploited by the some unscrupulous clerics to scare people into submission -- doesn't mean that the teaching itself is therefore invalid.

The actions of men cannot validate or invalidate the intentions or the very being of God.

John Marco Allegro was one of the original team of translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the only non-priest (i.e. "unbiased"). His conclusion from reading these documents was that the early Christians (Essenes) were a psychedelic mushroom cult and that "jesus" was not a person but a mushroom. He published his findings in a book titled "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross."
Seems like "Christianity" is mostly a political creation of Council of Nicaea in 325.

'Why should it be implausible that a human author honestly believed salvation can ONLY come from Jesus Christ -- when that was not Jesus' intention -- as shown by his obvious forbearance in condemning any other religion? That human author too had 100% free will to write as he thought best -- just like you and I.'

This is where you and I disagree. From my reading of the bible I think it very specifically states that the one and only path, excluding all other paths, is through Jesus Christ, all other paths are false and lead to eternal hell. I don't believe God/Jesus had to list all other religions and point out their inherent flaws for those very specific statements (as written in the bible) to be taken literally.

Decided to delete this post and post it on a separate thread.

Edited by butuki on 03/19/2012 16:06:06 MDT.

"The actions of men cannot validate or invalidate the intentions or the very being of God."

That is a good statement and one that I would agree with on all accounts and pertaining to all religions.

@ Ty: "This is where you and I disagree. From my reading of the bible I think it very specifically states that the one and only path, excluding all other paths, is through Jesus Christ, all other paths are false and lead to eternal hell."

And thus, we will agree to disagree. And of course, 2000 years from now, the questions will likely still be the same. And somebody else will still barge in exclaiming, hey, you guys can't talk about condemnation until you first prove to me that god even exists! And life goes on...

Edited by ben2world on 03/19/2012 16:10:39 MDT.

It is intellectually very annoying, the use of faith, it is the intellectual equivalent of jumping out of a tank, punching someone in the face and then jumping back in to your tank. Basically unfair. That is why any religious debate doesn't move anyone's point of view, because there those who have decided to believe something and then selectively use any "facts" they perceive they have to prove it and then use faith to hide behind any actual facts which don't align. There are then those trying to debate with an open-mind and they don't get proper answers just "faith".

To compound the intellectual cowardice of faith, you then have the fact that many Christians are jolly nice people, and if you detect they are being upset by a genuinely open debate, your humanity kicks-in and one goes quiet so as to not upset them. There has been examples of that in this thread. The silent majority of agnostics or atheists.

Finally, there are many Christians who their worst aspects of self-abuse and damage to others has a kind of check, a limiter on these bad tendencies by their belief. e.g. "If I do a bad thing to me I'll be punished by God, not go to heaven" and "God knows I've sinned, I can't hide it like I can from the police or the judge". Many of the definitions of sin is some fairly agnostic basics like thou shalt not kill which everyone generally agrees is a good thing. So a genuinely open debate on Christianity which does actually puncture a not-so-good person's belief structure and they start becoming a less good person, its actually done society some harm. So trying to be "right" (intellectually) can end up being "wrong" (socially).

So whilst it is quite possible in an Internet forum to have a debate, it rarely does any good and can do some harm.

As to the maths of Christianity, the two are incompatible. Maths is derived from logic and rigorous proof. Christianity is... something entirely different.

Wow, Nigel, that is one of most lucid and fair summing up of how many of these debates go that I've ever read. Fantastic!

The basic math to me is below. No, I never discuss this on backpacking trips ; ).

1. All things were made by God.
2. Man was made in the image of God.
3. God loved this world so much that he sacrificed his only earthly-born Son (Jesus Christ), who was killed by a mob, so that all the sins of the world could be forgiven.
4. Whoever believes in Jesus Christ will live forever (will not die a spiritual death but only a physical death).

(may expand this later)

Edited by jshann on 03/19/2012 17:08:36 MDT.

Thanks Miguel. The post after by John is a good example, its just a statement of faith, and as such it cannot be debated. If someone wants a genuine debate then it has to move from faith to fact-based sharing of information.

You know its slightly ironic a typical, but not all, BPL member, and tallying that with Luke 3:11.

@ Nigel: "To compound the intellectual cowardice of faith..."

Can you please define what you mean by "intellectual cowardice of faith"?

Ben - Sure. Faith is when you can't prove something intellectually. It is basically giving in, not thinking any more and just deciding something is true. To an intellectual that is running away from the debate. When someone begins talking about faith it a series of statements which don't track back to any set of facts.

So long as that is accepted by those who claim faith, then we can actually all agree to disagree, those with faith having decided the rules of the debate which is effectively no debate.