Hotseat! God

Well, you hit the nail on the head when you say its nature isn't important to the Christian faith.

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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

I can smell the paste on that. Where's it from?

It's an article from Afterlife Realtors' training pamphlet.

So basically the question of whether or not most Christians believe in TEH HELL or John McClane's idea is... who gives a crap?

Fine with me. I'd say it's the least interesting aspect of it all. I'm glad none of you take it seriously!

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

I did a google search on Hell and that fun thing came up. More readable in the original because the background was black.

http://www.apuritansmind.com/christi...HateChrist.htm

I think i'll watch Constantine before the PPV tonight. thanks for the tip.




This won't embed, but if one of the Scholarly folks can take a look and comment I'd apprecciate it. I'm thinking of ordering the DVD.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...2648668420724#

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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.

I remember the comic book.

You mean counting my own? Actually I've only been married three times although I've also had some long-lasting overlapping affairs at the same time. My first ex-wife died a few years back, so I only have one ex-wife at the time. But the hell they both gave me more than exceeded their small numbers. The only mother-in-law I didn't get along with was my first wife's mom, although her dad was a hell of a nice guy--unfortunately he and his youngest son--the other good person in that family--were killed in a car wreck. My second ex's mom was the best mother-in-law of the bunch--I always did like Betty. Saw her when she came down for the boys' graduations and weddings--first time I saw her after her daughter and I divorced, she came over and gave me a big hug and just burst out crying. My current mother-in-law is a keeper, although there have been long periods when she didn't care for me much. She and her now-deceased husband were workaholics so they didn't quite know what to make of my laid-back attitude and sense of humor. She's very funny, but usually doesn't know what she's said when my wife and I burst out laughing. She is one hell of a cook and I'm an adventurious eater, so she likes to try out recipies on me. Each Christmas she makes me a big container of chocolate rum balls--my favorite food groups, chocolate and booze.

Gal I'm married to now is the best of all the wives and lovers I've ever had. She's more than a pretty face and a good lay--she's got a hell of a sense of humor and is just fun to be around. I rather be with her than anyone I've ever known. Plus she's organized and I'm not so she keeps me in clean clothes and tells me where I'm supposed to be and when.

I'm just a piker when it comes to marriages, however. Used to go with an ol' gal who was cheating on her sixth husband. Got a younger brother who's been married six or seven times--it's hard to tell because I swear he had two consecutive wives who looked so much alike that I couldn't tell when one left and the other moved in. I never could tell those two apart, and he had a daughter by each and I can't tell them apart either (although I haven't seen one for years, so it's not so big a problem).

The main stumbling block to our discussion, Yoda, is that you believe in the Christian faith and I don't--don't mean that as a put-down or anything, but you obviously take all of this much more seriously than me and there's no way in hell you'll ever understand where I'm coming from or even that I'm really not trying to sell you anything or change you in any way.

I have much more admiration for Jesus as a man becoming a sacrifice for all men, but seems to me that should forego his subsequent transformation into God or son of God or any part of the Holy Trinity. It doesn't bother me to question that whole concept just as a point of discussion, but it bothers you that I question it because your faith is invested in it. And that's fine; I respect believers even in causes I myself don't believe. At least you stand for something. But that also prevents you from seeing the other side. To you, it's all nailed down, but to me, if it's nailed down then what's all of this around it?

I always thought the conspiracy theory in The Passover Plot--which proposes that Jesus purposely set out to meet the qualifications of the leader of Jews by appearing to die on the cross and being "resurrected" as a means of organizing the Jews to resist the Romans--in some ways makes more sense than the Bibical version. According to The Passover Plot, because of the Passover celebration, all bodies had to be buried at the end of the day on which Jesus was crucified, which meant he was counting on having to spend only a few hours on the cross instead of several days as was often the case. What he hadn't counted on was the soldier spearing him in the side.

Do I think this really happened? No. I don't believe in conspiracies--if two or more people share a secret, then sooner or later the whole world will learn it. There's no more historical fact to support that theory than there is behind any of the stories about Jesus. But I like the fact that someone has formulated an alternative to the Bible story, which I find even harder to accept.

I also like the concept behind the novel The Last Temptation of Christ. To me, if Jesus existed and if he was indeed the Son of God in the form of man, then his last temptation just to come down from the cross and live his life as an ordinary man, marry, have kids, pursue his profession--all that makes sense. And to resist that temptation and to die as a mortal man would certainly be a sacrifice. But if he's dying for all man's sins, taking all of our sins on himself, then shouldn't he go to hell instead of showing up again on earth 3 days later? Dying for all man's sins and going to hell for all men makes sense as sacrifice and redemption. Dying and 3 days later going to heaven as a son of God smacks of nepotism.

Now I hope you don't think I spend days sitting around brooding over all these propositions and theories. I seldom discuss or consider religion at all. I was raised Southern Baptist but I joke that I couldn't keep up the payments. But I think there's more comfort and beauty in the Baptist Hymnal than in the Bible as a whole--with the possible exception of the sexier passages of the Song of Solomon which I used to read to those little high school girls who used to sit with me and my buddies in the church balcony during services.

It doesn't bother me that you and others embrace and defend your faith, not nearly so much as it appears to bother some that I don't share that faith. My one belief is that most people create whatever God they need to get them through. From what I've seen of people and the world over a good many years, I think most people settle for a much smaller God than they should, making Him more like us rather than us trying to be more like Him. I think most people have a poor understanding of God in relation to the universe and natural science and laws of physics and such. I think they have little knowledge and less understanding of even the basic tenants of their various religions and just parrot what others have told them.

As for me, I don't want or need a God telling me what to do--I especially don't want one offering to forgive and save me at the last moment if I just accept him as God. That's a cop out, and not worthy of the greater concept of free will. I picked the way I lived my life, made good choices and bad, but they were my choices, and I don't want to spit on my life in its last moments and "confess" it was all a bunch of chit. I don't need that. I don't want that. I've had one a hell of a life so far, and if it turns out I was wrong, then what the hell, I'll pay the piper. But at least I've enjoyed the dance.

Well as Mark Twain said, "Heaven for climate, hell for company."

I don't agree at all. Take a look at every claim I've made and you'll find that none of them are contingent on you holding any belief that you don't hold.

Not really. I've been arguing with people about religion for over a decade, so I'm fairly thick-skinned about it. I guess it bothers me a purely technical sense, in that I don't like it, but I'm not what most people would call "bothered" by it. I am, however, bothered by your claims about Christ's sacrifice because I don't think they make any sense, are strangely flippant, and more or less contradict what you've already said. They sound like something you'd say if you were deliberately trying to rile a believer, too. But none of of my objections have consisted of "how dare you," or anything of the sort.

If you could stop telling me what it is I believe, I'd appreciate it. Not because I'm terribly offended by your guesses, but because none of them have yet been right.

It's not "nailed down" to me. But even if it was, nothing I'm saying is being said with the expectation that you share my beliefs. That'd be a pointless way to argue. Everything I'm saying is meant to apply to you, given what you believe.

For example, your suggestion that Christ's sacrifice was unimpressive given the fact that he was God. My response is that being God is precisely why it was such a sacrifice: a being of that power and wisdom willingly subjecting itself to pains it could easily avoid it it wanted to, and those pains coming at the hands of the ungrateful people He was doing it for, many of whom He must have known would never thank Him for it...that's a humiliation for anyone, and for the creator of the Universe, it's a humbling without measure.

I know you understand this, because you've been going on about how incredible and vast and amazing God must be if He exists. Now you're suggesting that it's no big deal if this same vast, amazing being comes down and humbles itself in such an extreme fashion. That simply doesn't add up.

According to the Nicene Creed, he did "descend into Hell." And sentences like that last one are hard to take seriously because they sound like a standup routine.

I've already said the following, but heck, why not once more?

It's logical that, if we were to construct a God, we'd make it kind of like us, but it's also logical that if God wanted to create independent minds other than His own, they would in some ways be a reflection of Him. You may believe this, and you may not, but I'm not sure why you'd simply repeat these kinds of assertions when it's quite clear that it doesn't favor either interpretation over the other.

I didn't always like my parents telling me what to do, but that hardly meant they didn't exist.

This all operates under the assumption that you can "trick" God with a deathbed confession, which is kind of silly. If God exists in the form you're describing, He'd know whether or not a confession was genuine.

I'm not sure what kind of notion of confession you have that involves "spit[ting]" on your life. Confession is not a blanket condemnation of your entire existence, it's a simple admission of fault and a recognition of both your own fallibility, and your inability to correct it by yourself. It's admitting your own limitations and giving yourself over to someone who doesn't share them.

I've run into this kind of thing more than once: where someone goes on about what they don't like about religion, and it involves bizarre interpretations and caricatures that had never even occurred to me, and certainly aren't part of any doctrine I know. My response now, as it is in those other instances, is "gee, if that's what you think Christianity is, no wonder you don't like it."

Maybe I am flippant because I don't take the subject, especially the son of God part, all that seriously. I can understand mankind's need for a God that conforms to man's own vision of himself and his world, but I don't understand the need to conjer up a repetitive "son of God," unless they are transferring the message to the messenger and mistakenly worshiping the messenger. But where they then dredge up the Holy Spirit and what that's supposed to signify completely mystifies me.

Sorry. You're quite right. I don't much like it when you say I'm implying or assuming things that are completely different from what I've tried to communicate. Guess it's natural we don't understand people coming from such opposite points of view.

This illustrates one of our main points of disagreement. You see and accept Jesus as God. I understand the theory, the assumption, if you will, that he's God who has come to earth in the form of man and to a certain extent as man. Putting aside the stuff about virgin birth, the idea is that he's man born of woman through almost the normal process, conceived in the womb, delivered as a baby after a period of pregnancy. Grows into a toddler, learns to walk and speak becomes a boy, grows into manhood and then as a man is put to death. OK, that I can see, that makes sense, he's a man with all the usual problems including oppression and death. I can go with that. What gets me is this flipping back and forth between man and god--curing the blind, casting out devils, raising the dead, healing the sick, feeding the hungry mass with seven loafs of bread and fishes, walking on water. If the idea is that he's supposed to be a God who became a man, then a man couldn't do those things. Which to me makes it look like he's God playing at being a man but switching back and forth at will. It would seem more meaningful to me had he functioned simply as a man all the way through--unblemished by the sins and pettiness to which man is heir, perhaps, maybe even an almost perfect man, but a man just the same. I can understand the concept of the man taking on the role of a sacrificial goat and dying for all men's sins. But I don't see the point of dying for all men's sins and then coming back. No other man comes back from the grave, no sacrificial animal becomes suddenly "unsacrificed." Otherwise, what would be the point of the sacrifice in the first place?

I'm familar with the theory that Jesus descends into hell for the three days prior to his resurrection--I think even the Baptists say something about that. Others go to hell for all eternity or until prayed out or forgiven, depending on various theories, but they go to hell for a long time. Except Jesus, although he's supposed to be the sacrifice for the whole world. As the sacrifice for the whole world past, present, and future, seems to me he should be in hell a heck of a lot longer than 3 days. The only reason he in't apparently is because he is the Son of God--the nepotism to which I flippantly referred. I guess it's just me and the way I look at things, but that sorta undercuts the whole symbolism of the dying and suffering for man's sins. And that's one reason I really don't include Jesus in the general discussion of God. Nor the Holy Ghost, which I've never understood.

It doesn't add up due to our failure of communication. It's not so much that I'm saying God is vast and amazing and this or that. My theory--and that's all it is since it can not be proved or disproved--is that if there is a God, then by the very nature of his existance beyond this planet, beyond man's concepts, beyond our very nature, he would have to be also beyond man's imagination, beyond man's ability to describe or to picture what God is really like. It seems to me, however, that man thinks he knows who and what God is. Man says I'm made in God's image, I speak to him and he hears me, he knows my every thought and move, God loves me, God will protect me. In other words, man has assembled his idea of God based more on man's wishes and suppositions than on any real knowlege of God.
I on the other hand claim I have absolutely no idea what God may be like if he does exist. I don't have enough information to make that judgement. Now I can use my imagination and what I've read of pagan gods and the Bible and philosophy and this and that and I can come up with something that I say this is what I think God is. But what's the odds of me being 100% accurate? I don't think I can imagine what God would really be like, and I don't think you or anyone else on earth can either. I'm saying people who do assign certain thoughts and powers and purposes to God should keep that in mind. But I doubt if any do. I think mankind is satisfied to make God in man's image and give to him the powers and opinions man wants him to have, without ever knowing in this lifetime if God is really like that, or like something different or exists at all in what we conceive as a Godlike form. Just my opinion and thoughts on the subject. You of course have your own, I suppose. Not assuming to say what you believe this time!

I agree it's logical for man to make a God based on man's understanding of himself and his relation to God. But I don't see the logic of God creating us as a reflection of him. Why should he? And if we're a reflection of God, then what does the horse, cow, dog, whale reflect? Did he make up all these other forms and then at last make us in his image? Then why are the digestive tracts and other organs of various animals so similar? Would God have need for a digestive track? What would he eat? Do we have reproductive organs because God has reproductive organs? Lungs because he has lungs? To what extent are we truly a reflection of God, especially other than Jesus, I don't think there is any reference in the Bible to God ever appearing to anyone in human form or as any other animal. Just as bright lights, clouds, smoke and thunder and flaming bushes. If he truly has human form why appear as inannimate objects?

It's just the sort of thing I wonder about in these discussions, and one of the reasons I think there may be more--or possibly less--to God than most people think.

i think i remember reading in the bible that Moses had a glowing face after he was in the presence of god one time - mind you, this is really murky, because i haven't read the bible since i was very little, but wasn't it when he went up the mountain to get the tablets of the testimony or something? i think that was the closest god ever came to ever showing himself, and i think in Moses's case, it was only the holy spirit he showed. i just remember reading that Moses had to wear a veil for the rest of his mortal life or something.

Sorry planet, but I'll add your quick review of this post at the beginning: Epic Fail!

OK, I realize rufnek that you don't believe any of the parts of the Bible, except those which you choose to believe which support your idea that the Bible is just a crock of BS, and those are parts you choose which somehow support your idea that it's idiotic to believe it. Then again, maybe you're just randy enough that you appreciate being able to have everything which seems good to a physical human being. Contrary to things you've said about me, I do not judge you. However, I do try to understand you. You have to remember that you don't need to believe or not believe the Bible to use it as evidence to support your point or even debate in a classical setting. However, to only use the parts you don't believe seems like cherry-picking to me.

Jesus is called Immanuel, or "God with us". It would seem ridiculous that if either Jesus thought (knew?, no) he was God or that he was somehow touched by God that he wouldn't try to leave behind some of these "signs" or "proofs" which you would not accept right now even if they were somehow reproduced by a "Second Coming". I don't believe that Jesus knew who he was when he was human; at least until perhaps the latter part of his life when he became personally indignant at certain things involving God and the Temple. Why would Jesus cry out that God had forsaken him on the "cross" if he knew he had a "get out of jail" free card?

I am not going to read something and believe it completely out of the blue. However, I believe in reading things which I'm going to use in argument so that I know what it is that they mean, not what the cliche is of what they mean. For example, this is also in Matthew: "Matt 5:18: "For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled." Some people take this to mean that the Bible which is available is the correct one, not all the books which you've mentioned elsewhere which were selectively removed by some great conspiracy. I thought that you didn't even believe in conspiracies because they are too difficult to keep secret? Well, I do believe in some conspiracies, and the way something is translated is one of those, but it's easy enough with a good Bible, to see what words are used repeatedly in the Bible and to try to figure out why some were perhaps incorrectly translated to protect or formulate an agenda.

I'm not getting into all the contradictions inherent in the Bible now, although I have discussed them elsewhere, but sheol, or hell, is not a place where people fry forever. Sheol is a place where people go ("descend") to await resurrection, as in the grave. I'm also not going to discuss "sheol" vs. "hades" and "sheol" vs. "gehenna" since they mean different things. If anybody cares, they can research it themselves.

I know this is a bad idea, but I'm now pushing "Post Quick Reply". Maybe I'll delete it soon enough.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Too late. I won't allow you to delete such a good post.

Chesterton's idea is that he, for that moment, became an atheist for all the atheists (like myself and rufnek) to come. In a sense, he didn't just suffer for our sins, he doubted for our doubts. The thing is, it was an infinite doubt; a doubt of himself. He is, as Chesterton put it, the only God in any religion ever who himself was at one point an atheist. This kind of infinite doubt, the doubt of one's own existence, is the mark of all human subjectivity. In other words, only in that moment on the cross did God himself become a Cartesian subject.

As for him not knowing who he was, I believe rufnek mentioned The Last Temptation of Christ earlier, which is a fiction that I also find great meaning in. It's possible that all revolutionaries take on the form of a Christ-figure; even in the way they view themselves. What is more Stalinist than having the ultimate power over the people while calling yourself a humble servant for the people?

Oh absolutely. But it doesn't have to be an intentional conspiracy. Translation will fail you for whatever you're doing. Your example with "sheol" and hell is a good one. However---with Greek especially---sometimes the very discourse that you wish to replicate does not exist in our language. For example, take the multiple Greek words for love---agape, philia, eros, and storge---and their single English translation. In Greek, substance and reality are one one in the same. There is no typical sense of causation without giving respect to responsibility. I already mentioned how logos is translated into word even though it has a much greater implied definition. Is it better or worse to have a thousand footnotes in the Bible describing the intricacies of the translation? I mean, it is the Bible after all. There're more translation footnotes in my copy of Aristotle's Physics than in my copy of the Bible.

I haven't read Exodus in a long time, either--never was one of my favorite parts of the Book. But doesn't it say something about God appearing to Moses in a cloud or mist on the mountain top when He was writing the commandments? Although I've read the Bible, I don't claim to be an expert, but I don't remember God ever appearing to any of the prophets in an animate form, much less as a human himself.

I've never said the Bible is a crock of BS. What I said is that men wrote the Bible and men have changed it from time to time. Some versions contained some of the books we know plus other books that we don't know. There have been times in the distant past that religious and political leaders have come together to decide which books to include in the Bible and which to remove. Its very wording has been translated and retranslated, usually with an eye toward the political and religious issues of a particular time. So I don't believe the various books of the Bible were actually written by the people who were supposed to have written them (were there really that many nomads and fishermen who were literate back in the Bronze Age?). And I do believe it was influenced far more by men and their religious and political outlook than by God. Like I said, it's my belief--you're entitled to yours.

I haven't any faith in the miracles, based on my standard that, if I read accounts of the sun standing still or people rising from the dead in today's newspaper, would I believe them? No, so why should I believe those things happened 2,000 years ago as told in a book that has been written and rewritten, edited and reedited? It's not logical. On the other hand, a lot of Shakespeare's writings are not logical but they're entertaining and illustrate truths about the world and human nature. So just as I don't reject the story elements of Shakespeare or the Brothers Grimm, I don't reject the value of the Bible as literature. Is it the word of God? I don't think so, but I've said all along I have no idea if God exists in some form or another or not, nor do I know of what he may be capable or why he might do such a thing. However, it just doesn't seem logical to me that God exists as mankind generally imagines him or that he would feel a need to persuade us of his existence or would have a human son (that smacks too much of the Pagan stories like the God--Jupiter?--who in the form of a swan made love to a mortal woman. Just too icky an image!)

But just because it seems illogical to me doesn't mean it should or would seem illogical to others. It likely would surprise you my three children are very religious and I've never tried to persuade them otherwise. I made up my own mind, and I wanted them to make up their minds too. Used to take them to a Catholic church on Sundays--it was the closest to our house and sponsored the Cub Scout and Boy Scout troops the boys belonged to, so I figured we should support the church, too. Services were very new wave in English with a lot of guitar playing and hoot-nanny like songs. Made me miss the good ol' Baptist Hymnal, but it was generally pleasant with a lot less of the fire and brimstone the Baptist brothers used to dish out. I spent a good many Sundays going to church when I was a kid and it never hurt me, so I figured my kids should have the same opportunity. They took it more seriously than I did at that age--they were very active in the Protestant churches they eventually joined. They're brighter than me, so it's possible--even likely--they know something I don't.

I think everyone should read the Bible and other books on religion and listen to all of the arguments before making a decision. But even if the Bible is the only religious book one reads, it can't hurt you and it may do you good, even if you don't believe every word of it. The parables are worthwhile and there is a lot of good poetry there.

Last thing I recall saying to you in a post, Mark, is that you're a hell of a bright guy, you argue your points well, and I usually like you except for your tendancy at times to kinda "talk down your nose" to me like I was the village idiot (not in this post so far). But you do that to others at times, so I don't feel picked on.

But when the subject is what I dislike about or don't agree with in the Bible, why would I need or want to discuss the whole thing, listing a point I like for each point I don't like? Hell, my posts run too long as it is. Besides, I said I was a fan of the Psalms of Solomon--don't that count? I don't think I "cherry-pick" any more than any other participant (unlike some, I don't consider myself an expert on the subject). Likely less, because I'm really not trying to convert anyone. Still, if I do it again, please call my attention to it at the time and I'll see if I can't expand the post with something fitting.

Well, a "Second Coming" would likeLY make headlines in most newspapers and so would get my attention.

Your proposal that Jesus didn't know who he was when he was human is interesting--I don't think I've ever heard that argued before. Still it seems to me that "virgin birth" thing would likely get mentioned by family or friends within his hearing and give him something of a clue.

That's based on the assumption that "law" means Bible, I guess. Funny, I never would have made that interpretation.

As for conspiracies, I never implied the changes in the Bible were secret conspiracies. In fact the gathering to produce the King James version of the Bible is well documented and well known, during which the group generally worked out the books and the interpretations that would be official, although there was some argument on some books and some interpretatons among the membership at large. Archeologists have since discovered other ancient Bibles predating King James that contained still other books, not to mention yet more books found among the Dead Sea Scrolls which they are still in the process of preserving and interpreting. I think from what I've read and heard that it's pretty well accepted by most serious investigators of the history of the Bible that in the first days of Christianity there was not a single monolithic Christian church but several varieties, especially as it spread among the non-Jews. And while Bibles probably were not called Bibles at that point, there was a wide variety of writings in circulation among the many Christians, some accepted by some but not by others, some of which eventually ended up in the King James version and some that fell by the wayside at different times down through the years.

But since I'm not collecting royalties on any of those books, it doesn't bother me if you prefer to ignore the whole thing.

And for that, on behalf of all of us in this thread, I sincerely thank you!

Came across this today looking for something else. I thought the contents might help you guys with the discussion somewhat.

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