[Enterprise Captain]

Originally Posted by janeway72

I think EC would back me up that I will argue vehemently for belief in God

This is true.

[janeway72]

Originally Posted by Enterprise Captain

This is true.

See! I knew we could find more common ground

[Saquist]

Originally Posted by janeway72

Jesus was a Jew in the 1st Century. Jews understood creation in relation to their own Scriptures. I don't think 1st Century Israel was the place to start explaining physics.

My reason's for believing it to be a myth are a) Where did the wives of Adam's and Eve's sons come from if they were the only humans. b) How could Methuselah live to be nearly 1000 years old? c) There is no such thing as a talking serpent. d) The oldest human remains found are 160,000 years old. Believe me, I am not alone in being a Christian who believes that Adam and Eve are mythological which explains a greater truth.

Aside from fossil dating, having questions I understand. Those are valid questions.
But why be Christian at all if Jesus word that they did exist is not good enough? Why the patch work style faith? Believe one thing but not the other even though they are connected through one commonality. How can incredulity alone justify any particular choice?

So God tells people different things at different times according to their circumstances. Seems like a sensible thing to do. I don't like to second guess God but I suspect a degree of flexibility is required to the creator of a universe.

More specifically:
God showed here in this instant that things that are unclean can be made clean. By releasing the Law Cod for Christians this automatically became a personal issue not a national issue.

I have no idea where you get that reasoning from. Jesus told us to stop inspecting the speck in someone else's eye when there is a log in our own. Again, he was talking about no judging others. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

You may not have understood but you reflected the reasoning in this response. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." This is an act of judging because of the intent to execute action based on the sin. That was a Jewish understanding, Jesus wasn't just using it as a metaphor.

Stoning someone in the Jewish system is handing down judgment.
The whole purpose of the Law Code was to show them that they were sinful, the difference between right and wrong.

You're talking about (unknowingly) the difference between execution and the discrimination of what is right and wrong, they are not one and the same.

Do you think Jesus is throwing all that away, that knowledge of right and wrong according to God? You think Jesus is in this statement to determine what is right and wrong in their own eyes? If so please show me where. I know what english speaking people think what judging is but the Jews didn't hold the same concept.

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." That includes Paul. A lot of Paul's teaching is valid and useful for life today. Some of it is not useful today, nor are some of the Levitical laws. I have never denounced God and never will. I think EC would back me up that I will argue vehemently for belief in God However, many laws are not in use today, only the one about homosexuality seems to cause such problems. Why? Because Paul mentions it?

I appreciate that affirmation.
Why does Levitical Laws and Pauls guidance create problems?

I spent a year reading and learning the different views in the Church about Homosexuality and came to the conclusions that I have come to.
This is probably the book that gave me the best insight into the topic.

Permanent, Faithful, Stable: Christian Same-Sex Partnerships (Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, January 1994); ISBN 0232520755

I'll consider it.

Because at the time he was fully human and fully God.

Any scriptural support or is this conjecture?

I do not understand what you are getting at here. I suspect you have no real understanding of the Roman Catholic Church. What doctrine are you talking about?

Well there is nothing like getting it straight from the horses mouth so I value the opportunity.

"The New Testament does not have a formal doctrine of the Trinity and nowhere discusses the Trinity as such."~wiki

"Christianity is a monotheistic religion. Never in the New Testament does the trinitarian concept become a "tritheism" (three Gods) nor even two.[7] God is one, and that the Godhead is a single being is strongly declared in the Bible:

• The Shema of the Hebrew Scriptures: "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one."[Deut. 6:4]
• The first of the Ten Commandments—"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"[5:7]. (A statement of Monolatrism, it is frequently cited as if it promotes Monotheism)
• and "Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel and his redeemer the LORD of hosts: I am the first and I am the last; and beside me there is no God."[Isa. 44:6]
• In the New Testament: "The Lord our God is one."[Mk. 12:29]" ~wiki

The Trinity is a doctrine or dogma that leads to a flurry of contradictions and confusions of the holly scriptures.

Are you saying you don't believe in the Trinity? Does this mean that you are a Jehovah's Witness or a Mormon?

Forgive me I don't consider it wise to make such declarations over the internet. For one I have no way of verifying that to you because their are many pretenders but I will say you are at least close.

Intimate relationships are about love and commitment and sharing your deepest thoughts and fears with someone and being able to be vulnerable in front of someone. I don't believe God would deny that fundamental part of being a human to 1 in 10 people (I think Horatio's estimate of 5% of the population is conservative)

I agree that good relationships are more than sex.
However Janeway looking at the fundamentals I find as little support for God approving homosexuality as there is for God approving of fornication. Know that fornication is far, far more common than homosexuality today. You could call marriage out dated but Christ didn't say marriage had an expiration date. And like I said before, God's displeasure over homosexuality is on record even before the Law Code.

Look I understand if this is your personal view but I always need scriptural support to jump to the kind of conclusions like this.

Originally Posted by janeway72

There are three kinds of love in Greek. Agape, which is a kind of brotherly love which you would have for fellow Christians and the rest of humanity. The early Church used to have Agape meals which were kind of like the langar meals that Sikhs have.



Philia is the type of love you have for close friends and relatives. A platonic but deep love.

Eros is romantic and sexual love. I think the Bible does not mention it. That does not mean that it was not in the mindset of the Greek speaking world. It just happens not to be mentioned.

Very Good. Eros was the word I was looking for.
The lack of the word ...I think tells us that...the focus of Jesus' ministry and the Greek Scriptures was not sexuality and thus to use Jesus ministry to justify a certain sexual love is out side the context of the scriptures.

What was in their mindset is only evident by what they wrote.
What wasn't or was additional to that mindset is really unknown.

[janeway72]

Originally Posted by Saquist

Very Good. Eros was the word I was looking for.
The lack of the word ...I think tells us that...the focus of Jesus' ministry and the Greek Scriptures was not sexuality and thus to use Jesus ministry to justify a certain sexual love is out side the context of the scriptures.

What was in their mindset is only evident by what they wrote.
What wasn't or was additional to that mindset is really unknown.

I think you just committed the fallacy of negative proof yourself there. Not every word uttered by Jesus was written down and it already went through a translation from Aramaic to Greek so you can't take what wasn't said as proof of anything.

We are talking at cross purposes. You are clearly hung up on the law and the rules laid down in the Bible. I, on the other hand believe in reason, prayer and general Christian Principles. We clearly have a different understanding of what it means to be a Christian. For me, Jesus is God or else his death is just another martyr's death. I don't need to back things up with ancient writings. I know what is right in my heart and I know that through having a relationship with God and through reason.. I may be wrong, and I may go to hell for my viewpoint, but in order not to make 10% of my fellow humans second class citizens, I'm willing to take that chance

[horatio]

About the trinity, I always thought that this is one of the key believes of all Christians. God is one and God is many, father, son and holy spirit. Jesus is also one, Jesus Christ, as well as many, Jesus the man and Christ the God.

I am not religious anymore but to me the idea behind words like "inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me" is that the search for the divine throws us back upon ourselves, that you can find God in yourself and your fellow humans.
Isn't one "message" of the Jesus story in which God became human yet only few recognized him and some even killed him that we should find God among ourselves and not in the heaven or in ancient writings?

[Saquist]

Originally Posted by janeway72

I think you just committed the fallacy of negative proof yourself there. Not every word uttered by Jesus was written down and it already went through a translation from Aramaic to Greek so you can't take what wasn't said as proof of anything.

Merely an opinion not a syllogism. It's all in how you word it.
In fact I was defeating the negative proof fallacy.

We are talking at cross purposes. You are clearly hung up on the law and the rules laid down in the Bible. I, on the other hand believe in reason, prayer and general Christian Principles. We clearly have a different understanding of what it means to be a Christian. For me, Jesus is God or else his death is just another martyr's death. I don't need to back things up with ancient writings. I know what is right in my heart and I know that through having a relationship with God and through reason.. I may be wrong, and I may go to hell for my viewpoint, but in order not to make 10% of my fellow humans second class citizens, I'm willing to take that chance

I do need to back things up with the ancient writings. The bible has earned my trust. "It is not for he that is walking to direct his own step"..."that man must not live on bread alone but upon every utterance out of God's mouth."

I won't presume to know better than the word of God.

Originally Posted by horatio

About the trinity, I always thought that this is one of the key believes of all Christians. God is one and God is many, father, son and holy spirit. Jesus is also one, Jesus Christ, as well as many, Jesus the man and Christ the God.

The trinity doctrine does dominate most of Christianity, but I've always found it tenuous. People always have some...non scriptural explanation for how God can be three persons, yet one is not ever mentioned as a person or one is described lesser than the other or one as Almighty and one only mighty, One dies the other can't die or even asks permission from the other

I threw it out after the Catholics own Encyclopedia admitted it wasn't scriptural. You just can't make stuff up and pass it on as God proved, that's how the Pharisees got started and I won't walk that path.

[Zardoz]

Hmmm....people have been killing each other for 2,000 years over questions just like these.

Is killing over ideas or visions of a God in God's Docterine? I would tend to think not.

[TheTrekkie]

There is one very important point you have to get:

God created men in his own image.

That means there is something divine (call it holy spirit) within all human beings.

Your own faith and love to God can make you find and experience your own holy spirit.
But only love towards others makes you able to find the holy spirit in others, too. And these others are everyone. Or to say it with Jesus words: "If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

[janeway72]

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God" John 1:1

Jesus replied "It is you that says that I AM" (I AM being the Hebrew name for God, nowadays translated as Yahweh) - Jesus says this during his trial with Pilate

It's too late to look up other references to the Trinity just now but there are plenty. It doesn't say explicitly that God is Trinitarian but it is certainly implied. And if you believe that the Bible books which were chosen as Canon in the 4th Century, then it was the same organisation (under the guidance of the Holy Spirit) who came up with the understanding of the Trinity. So if they are wrong about the Trinity, they may be wrong about the books of the Bible and that would leave Christianity in a right pickle.

[Saquist]

Originally Posted by janeway72

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God" John 1:1

Jesus replied "It is you that says that I AM" (I AM being the Hebrew name for God, nowadays translated as Yahweh) - Jesus says this during his trial with Pilate

It's too late to look up other references to the Trinity just now but there are plenty. It doesn't say explicitly that God is Trinitarian but it is certainly implied. And if you believe that the Bible books which were chosen as Canon in the 4th Century, then it was the same organisation (under the guidance of the Holy Spirit) who came up with the understanding of the Trinity. So if they are wrong about the Trinity, they may be wrong about the books of the Bible and that would leave Christianity in a right pickle.

I've looked up John one before in the Interlinear Bible with the side by side Greek and English. The god mention at the end is a lesser form of god. I got that from the fact that at many scriptures that refer to Satan as the god of this system and many other areas like where jesus is refered to a might god are different from the Al powerful God. The words are similar but one appears to end with a "C" and the other appears to end with "v".

I haven't looked up every Greek Scripture to that effect but I did take a good sample and I would guess that the same is true of your second scripture. I'll check though.

Originally Posted by Zardoz

Hmmm....people have been killing each other for 2,000 years over questions just like these.

Is killing over ideas or visions of a God in God's Docterine? I would tend to think not.

In history Religion has played a dominant role in a system of control.

[quote=TheTrekkie;302913]There is one very important point you have to get:

God created men in his own image.

That means there is something divine (call it holy spirit) within all human beings.[quote]

That's not a necessary truth.
I've always taken Jesus and man created in God's image to mean we were given feelings and the ability to reason with a mind to spiritual things but not that we're necessarily divine our selves for instance only one human other than Jesus was called a Son of God while Angels were consistently referred to Son's of God. That is probably because we were procreated and not directly created by God.