Hotseat! God

Oh yea, that post was ladened with sarcasm. I mean like enough sarcasm to sink the Titanic 8 times.

The only one I can answer, as of right now, is number 3. It would have to be a no, God cannot alter things within WORLD.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

joking was outlawed back a few pages.

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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

Really? Interesting... so you don't believe in... oh whatever. Here's some music for this thread instead.

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

Oh yes, most definitely. Christians need to get away from the "theology of nature," and the sooner, the better.

I've got to get some sleep now, but the next thing we really ought to do is nail down the relation between GOD and the WORLD.

We've established that 1) GOD is transcendent and completely and utterly outside of the world.

Is it also the case that 2) we humans X is completely and utterly inside the world and thus 3) we are completely and utterly separated from GOD?

If this is the case then there is no connection between GOD and X. Here I see Jesus coming into play. Isn't Jesus, then, the one certain connection between GOD and X in which GOD is actually subsumed into X while at the same time remaining transcendent from the WORLD?

Try drawing a Venn diagram for that!

In a nutshell, you got it. Jesus was a man (that's why he like...died and all), but he was imbued with/by God. Primarily because God had to become something he wasn't, since it was outside his nature. This also served as the inspiration for this whole "God hides" idea I keep hammering on.

But yeah, Jesus was basically a patient mediator between GOD and WORLD.

Okay! But that means that GOD can alter the WORLD!

Also... Jesus was a man by nature of being in the WORLD, not by nature of "choice". It is not possible for something transcendental to exist as such in the WORLD, I would imagine. In other words, it is not as if Jesus could have been anything other than a man. Likewise, whenever a man makes the move of passing into the transcendental, does he becomes like GOD? Or is this a one-way crossing? Or is this precisely the move that dying or being born represents?

Um, no. It doesn't, unless we take alter to include creation. In which case, duh, but I do not think that will be helpful for us: so either God made Jesus or the Virgin Mary wasn't very virgin like. Instead, that was just the avenue in which God chose to "connect" with the WORLD (quite personally, I tend to ascribe to the belief of the latter...another radical claim of mine).

Yes, exactly! Jesus was a man because he was here (the WORLD) kicking it biblically, but there was that extra element of effects from God, if you will. In other words, God's influence through Jesus was not by way of altering any aspect of Jesus. He was, and always was, a man. And yes, it's a one-way crossing.

Au contraire - your "udders" are misconceptionalized (sr'y, not sure if it is a word or how to spell it if it is)

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

No, utterly is right.

I thought you were sleeping?

Whatever number you want to call God, if he's a Christian God, he has to be able to influence the world. Otherwise he would not serve his purpose. The Christian God is based on Old Testament prophecies, and for that matter, so is the Messiah (Jesus). That is why Jesus had to have a "virgin birth". I don't believe that most people understand how "subversive" the Bible is. Jesus was conceived before Joseph and Mary were married. He is supposed to have been conceived by the Holy Spirit without sex. It would be very interesting to have a sample of Jesus's DNA to see who his "parents" were.

The point of mentioning this is the entire concept of prayer to God through a Mediator in the form of Jesus. I realize that I may be jumping the gun here or going off on a tangent but much of this has already been introduced, It's the possibility of a personal relationship with God which makes faith so comforting to believers while at the same time making it anathema to non-believers. Why would the creator of the universe care about something as pathetically puny as you? Believers like it and non-believers use it as some form of evidence that the concept of a personal God is ridiculous.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
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If we had a sample of Jesus' DNA, what do you think people who are against cloning and stem cell research would do and say?

I imagine a lot of people would want him cloned -- "That's how Jesus is supposed to return to Earth! Through cloning!" I'd imagine they'd say -- not, "Who were his parents?!"

Of course, some people would not want him cloned, but I bet a lot of people would turn hypocritical and demand Jesus' return through cloning.

If they actually had Jesus' DNA, they should mix it up with Grace Jones' DNA and clone that. Nobody would dare nail that to a cross!

Sorry Yoda, couldn't resist...I'll be good

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Under-the-radar Movie Awesomeness.
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Whatever number you want to call God, if he's a Christian God, he has to be able to influence the world. Otherwise he would not serve his purpose. The Christian God is based on Old Testament prophecies, and for that matter, so is the Messiah (Jesus). That is why Jesus had to have a "virgin birth". I don't believe that most people understand how "subversive" the Bible is. Jesus was conceived before Joseph and Mary were married. He is supposed to have been conceived by the Holy Spirit without sex. It would be very interesting to have a sample of Jesus's DNA to see who his "parents" were.

Its at this point in the discussion that I will state what I "believe". I believe the bible, is just the latest attempt by ordinary people trying to tell the tale of extraordinary events in the history of mankind.

I believe its an allegory.

3000 years B.C. The Story of Horus is told among many others throughout the world.

2600 years B.C. the story of Giglamesh and the great flood.



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The point of mentioning this is the entire concept of prayer to God through a Mediator in the form of Jesus. I realize that I may be jumping the gun here or going off on a tangent but much of this has already been introduced, It's the possibility of a personal relationship with God which makes faith so comforting to believers while at the same time making it anathema to non-believers. Why would the creator of the universe care about something as pathetically puny as you? Believers like it and non-believers use it as some form of evidence that the concept of a personal God is ridiculous.


The Concept that a player that hits a homer to win a championship, believes his prayers were answered, while millions across the world suffer with droughts and disease. That is what some (including myself) find ridiculous.

I don't have time to expound on this, but Jesus does not have to have a "virgin birth/conception." And again, prayer does not equate to a personal relationship with God. More importantly, the very aspect of claiming a personal relationship with God is harmful to faith.

The trouble with defining and discussing God is that we can only do so through the eyes and thoughts and traditions of men. And unless you actually speak directly with God and He with you, it's all third-person hearsay and therefore not admissible evidence.

All we know of God is from what man has thought, man has written, man has taught, man has passed along to others. Although we may assign god-like powers and causes to elements of nature, there is no concrete existing proof that God has any connection with it at all, but is only supposition on our part. The very concept and acceptance of God implies something beyond the powers of man, so how is it at all possible to define and accurately discuss Him with our limited powers of conception and vocabulary?

Don't you really mean "otherwise he would not serve the Christians' purpose?" I suspect there could be a major difference between God's purpose, if he does indeed exist and does indeed have a purpose, and Christians' purpose, whatever that may be--I'm sure it varies from one self-described Christian to another.

There's no proof God ever designated himself as a Christian God or the exclusive concept or property of any other group (although the Jews may possibly have perhaps the oldest and perhaps the most logical claim). To describe him as a Christian God is to assume the Christian tradition is true, that Jesus is actually, factually the Son of God, which in turn requires the assumption that God is actually capable, willing, and needful to father a mortal son without an act of sex with a mortal woman who remains virgin after the conception and birth of the child (although it seems to me that at least the birth process would play hell with the hymen).

It seems to me that any concept or belief in God depends first and foremost on people's acceptance of various human assumptions that explains God's ability to do the unexplainable--the same way that ancient man used Thor and other legendary deities to explain the unexplainable lightning. So it would seem that, like Thor, God is a product of our attempts to explain the unexplainable, which would make God a product of man, not the other way around.

The whole virgin birth thing is ridiculous and, I'm sorry, I can't see the need to believe in it. To me, it is just another way man has lied and put woman in "her place". She remains a virgin because men really like women to be virgins and to not be sexual. It is no different than the women from those countries who cover their bodies from head to toe so nothing can be seen. It's no different than the men from those countries who believe a bunch of virgin women are waiting for them in some kind of paradise if they die for their country.

If there actually WAS a Jesus, a man and a woman had sex and made him. Who knows if it was good, who knows if it lasted more than two minutes and who knows if his mother even reached orgasm, but no doubt, sex occured to bring Jesus Christ to this world. His mother was not a virgin.

or..an advanced species visited Earth and using artificial insemination empregnated a virgin.

How would the ancients have explained test-tube babies?

What was Ezekiel talking about in describing the wheels of fire from the sky?

or the Nephilim the giant ancient warriors.

(Translations according to New International Version. Note that translations frequently differ. In the King James Version of the Bible, "Nephilim" is translated as "giants" in the following examples.)

The term "Nephilim" occurs just twice in the Hebrew Bible, both in the Torah. The first is Genesis 6:1-4, immediately before the Noah's ark story:
1. When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them,2. the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.3. Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."4. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. The second is Numbers 13:32-33, where the Hebrew spies report that they have seen fearsome giants in Canaan:
32. And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size.33. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."
Maybe this explains all the mytholigical creatures from the Minotaur to Centaurs, fawns and such, not to mention Dragons.

Maybe the reason they can't find the missing link, is because, we are it.

Maybe Goliath was one such Warrior.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/210298...ephilim_part1/