Zone1 Belief in God drops to 81 percent

[BreezeWood]

Of the two of us, I am not the one tossing about meaningless metaphysical nonsense to pretend to explain the "why".

You are. In fact, I only brought it up (just once) to save us both time, because it is where you are going. It is YOUR obsession.

I don't have to pretend to have all the answers. You do.

you simply abdicate any rational explanation for life's origin as though there is not one ... to bad for you.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

The only one atupid here is you. You fell for Satan's lies.

That's a weak minded, childish non-response to my comments.

If you can't discuss something so important to you without degenerating into a quivering little baby at the first sign someone isn't powedering your ass, you shouldn't even open the thread.

 

[surada]

Psalm 14:1 "The fool in his heart says 'there is no God'". This is the great "falling away" that Christ Himself predicted, just before the Rapture of the Church.

Oh no. Not that rapture nonsense.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

I will not debate Atheists.

Just one question. What would happen to you if you are wrong? Can you imagine experiencing millennia of constant suffering 60 times greater then worst suffering possible in this life?

What if you are wrong, and you picked the wrong God?

Oops! Enjoy hell...

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

you simply abdicate any rational explanation for life's origin as though there is not one ..

"Any rational explanation "

Of course, you only mean one: your metaphysical fetish. And rational is the last thing I would call it.

 

[BreezeWood]

Psalm 14:1 "The fool in his heart says 'there is no God'". This is the great "falling away" that Christ Himself predicted, just before the Rapture of the Church.

no it was written by the crucifiers so you would fearfully toe the line for their makebelive religion of servitude.

 

[JustAGuy1]

Perhaps. We're talking about the story. Jesus is not the Immaculate Conception.. Mary is. JustAGuy1 didn't know that.

Epic myths. Your words.

 

[surada]

Epic myths. Your words.

You're really dodging around. Do you understand that Mary is the immaculate conception?

 

[BreezeWood]

Your specious appeal to emotion will not help you.

"Any rational explanation "

Of course, you only mean one: your metaphysical fetish. And rational is the last thing I would call it.

as claimed earlier -

ff has fallen off the edge and is no different than the religious fanatics and their similar disability to value coherent explanations.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

as claimed earlier -

ff has fallen off the edge and is no different than the religious fanatics and their similar disability to value coherent explanations.

Then demonstrate the faith based explanation you imagine I have.

Go on. Step up to the plate.

Or sit there and whine meaninglessly.

 

[norwegen]

Church father Origen (184-253 CE), due to his familiarity with reading and interpreting Hellenistic literature, taught that some parts of the Bible ought to be interpreted non-literally. Concerning the Genesis account of creation, he wrote: "who is so silly as to believe that God ... planted a paradise eastward in Eden, and set in it a visible and palpable tree of life ... [and] anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life?" He also believed that such hermeneutics should be applied to the gospel accounts as well.[12]

Although many of the holy people were speaking Greek as their tribal/temple/Mosaic age approached its demise, they remained faithful to their Hebraic understanding of apocalyptic language and covenantal thought.

Many of them did, anyway. We can see from St. Paul’s epistles, for example, that many of the converted Jews began questioning their faith, as in Galatians 1:6. In the second letter to Timothy, Paul despaired of the faithful (especially the alarming number of gullible women) being fooled by an errant gospel, always learning but never fully comprehending the truth (3:1-7).

The Hellenization of the early church seems to be a chief reason for the loss in understanding of Hebrew eschatology in the first century. Origen may have understood the metaphorical and figurative intentions of the Old Testament, but I have not seen anything from him to indicate that his Greek background did not lead to his blurred view of Hebrew eschatology.

While the vocabulary of the NT could be found throughout the Hellenistic world, it did not have the same meaning when it was used in the religious sense within the Jewish community.*​

Even before the temple fell, the church began to separate from the Synagogue, and knowledge that most of the original readers of the New Covenant had began to disappear from the church. The departure from the original intent is probably most obvious after the 1830s when a Scottish teenager claimed to see a vision of an alleged “rapture” of the church. And now look at the mess the church is in. Theory upon theory; conjecture upon conjecture. And voila! Disillusionment and a decline in membership in the face of scientific and technological advances.

But I submit that Israel’s autobiography – the Bible – is absolutely comprehendible and reasonable, whose intent escapes those who let foreign influences guide their hermeneutics and exegeses, including Origen.


*Holland, Tom: Romans: The Divine Marriage (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2011), 252

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Although many of the holy people were speaking Greek as their tribal/temple/Mosaic age approached its demise, they remained faithful to their Hebraic understanding of apocalyptic language and covenantal thought.

Many of them did, anyway. We can see from St. Paul’s epistles, for example, that many of the converted Jews began questioning their faith, as in Galatians 1:6. In the second letter to Timothy, Paul despaired of the faithful (especially the alarming number of gullible women) being fooled by an errant gospel, always learning but never fully comprehending the truth (3:1-7).

The Hellenization of the early church seems to be a chief reason for the loss in understanding of Hebrew eschatology in the first century. Origen may have understood the metaphorical and figurative intentions of the Old Testament, but I have not seen anything from him to indicate that his Greek background did not lead to his blurred view of Hebrew eschatology.

While the vocabulary of the NT could be found throughout the Hellenistic world, it did not have the same meaning when it was used in the religious sense within the Jewish community.*​

Even before the temple fell, the church began to separate from the Synagogue, and knowledge that most of the original readers of the New Covenant had began to disappear from the church. The departure from the original intent is probably most obvious after the 1830s when a Scottish teenager claimed to see a vision of an alleged “rapture” of the church. And now look at the mess the church is in. Theory upon theory; conjecture upon conjecture. And voila! Disillusionment and a decline in membership in the face of scientific and technological advances.

But I submit that Israel’s autobiography – the Bible – is absolutely comprehendible and reasonable, whose intent escapes those who let foreign influences guide their hermeneutics and exegeses, including Origen.


*Holland, Tom: Romans: The Divine Marriage (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2011), 252

Which part do you find the most reasonable?

The parts about how to correctly beat your slaves?

Or the parts about magical people performing amazing magic tricks?

And the church is what crushed Hellenistic and Socratic thought. It was a measured, intentional campaign to replace reason and knowledge with mindless, stupid faith. And to replace reality-based morality and ethics focused on human well being with those based on a magical paradigm and a fantasy afterlife.

 

[norwegen]

Did John believe what he wrote, yes or no?

The Four Horseman will be loosed.
The Antichrist is coming.
A massive WW is coming.
A New World Order is coming.
It is bringing with it a new economic order.


I can go on and on and on. You are about to see it all unfold even though you won't believe it's happening.

Where does the Revelator mention an antichrist in the Apocalypse?

 

[surada]

Although many of the holy people were speaking Greek as their tribal/temple/Mosaic age approached its demise, they remained faithful to their Hebraic understanding of apocalyptic language and covenantal thought.

Many of them did, anyway. We can see from St. Paul’s epistles, for example, that many of the converted Jews began questioning their faith, as in Galatians 1:6. In the second letter to Timothy, Paul despaired of the faithful (especially the alarming number of gullible women) being fooled by an errant gospel, always learning but never fully comprehending the truth (3:1-7).

The Hellenization of the early church seems to be a chief reason for the loss in understanding of Hebrew eschatology in the first century. Origen may have understood the metaphorical and figurative intentions of the Old Testament, but I have not seen anything from him to indicate that his Greek background did not lead to his blurred view of Hebrew eschatology.

While the vocabulary of the NT could be found throughout the Hellenistic world, it did not have the same meaning when it was used in the religious sense within the Jewish community.*​

Even before the temple fell, the church began to separate from the Synagogue, and knowledge that most of the original readers of the New Covenant had began to disappear from the church. The departure from the original intent is probably most obvious after the 1830s when a Scottish teenager claimed to see a vision of an alleged “rapture” of the church. And now look at the mess the church is in. Theory upon theory; conjecture upon conjecture. And voila! Disillusionment and a decline in membership in the face of scientific and technological advances.

But I submit that Israel’s autobiography – the Bible – is absolutely comprehendible and reasonable, whose intent escapes those who let foreign influences guide their hermeneutics and exegeses, including Origen.


*Holland, Tom: Romans: The Divine Marriage (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2011), 252

The 1830s was the departure from original intent and the introduction of the rapture con.

 

[norwegen]

Which part do you find the most reasonable?

The parts about how to correctly beat your slaves?

Or the parts about magical people performing amazing magic tricks?

An ancient Jew beating his slave is as reasonable a story to understand as an American slave owner beating his slave is. It's all right there in black and white. Add a little context, and even a school kid can understand it. Why can't you?

You apparently just want to isolate passages. Are you as devoid of context as evangelical Christians are? The Bible is not about slavery. It's not about sorcery. It's not about she bears or miracles or falling stars.

It's about Israel. Not you or your dog or the sociopathic teenager your dog ran away from. Can you at least understand that first and foremost?

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

An ancient Jew beating his slave is as reasonable a story to understand as an American slave owner beating his slave is. It's all right there in black and white. Add a little context, and even a school kid can understand it. Why can't you?

Excuse you, that isn't what I said. I did not relate story of someone beating a slave.

I related the Biblical assertion it contains instructions form a god on how and when to beat slaves.

I will chalk up your misrepresentation of my comments and ensuing irrelevant comments to a reflexive reaction.

Could you please slow down and try again?

 

[norwegen]

The 1830s was the departure from original intent and the introduction of the rapture con.

Not the departure. A departure.

Temporal references from a futurist perspective are extraordinarily convoluted, but in brief, it is a doctrine that confounded even church fathers, who could not agree on it. Hippolytus and Julius Africanus, for example, interpreted a prophecy of Daniel to mean that Christ would return in AD 500 while Jerome contested that Eusebius held two different views on it entirely. During the Reformation, Protestants believed that the seventy weeks (490 “day-years”) of Daniel had already run their course, as the Catholics also believed.

 

[norwegen]

I can. Very easily:

The fake God character was invented to help people both understand the world and to justify their own ideas to themselves.

And you ignored the magical parts, I see. Let's try again.

Which do you find most reasonable?

A man parting a sea?

Or an 800 year old man putting two of every animal on a boat?

You're only confirming what I've post. You have not the mind of a Hebrew.

 

[BreezeWood]

Then demonstrate the faith based explanation you imagine I have.

Go on. Step up to the plate.

Or sit there and whine meaninglessly.

why would i think you have a faith based explanation - never crossed my mind ... nothing wrong w/ the atheist position.

nothing suggested is based on faith -

physiology is a metaphysical substance not native to planet earth and has a metaphysical spiritual content that guides it through its limited existence and can change its future composition.

is not faith based, is based on the metaphysical forces that brought life to earth and exist to be discovered and understood.

 

[surada]

Not the departure. A departure.

Temporal references from a futurist perspective are extraordinarily convoluted, but in brief, it is a doctrine that confounded even church fathers, who could not agree on it. Hippolytus and Julius Africanus, for example, interpreted a prophecy of Daniel to mean that Christ would return in AD 500 while Jerome contested that Eusebius held two different views on it entirely. During the Reformation, Protestants believed that the seventy weeks (490 “day-years”) of Daniel had already run their course, as the Catholics also believed.

A departure is more accurate, but it was a doozy. Does anyone read about Antiochus IV or the Maccabees anymore?