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@Vader
if that was all you are saying no-one could argue; it's like saying blinding your son is child abuse.All I am saying is chemically castrating your son when he doesn't want it is child abuse.
But you are also saying this is case of it happening, and then bringing in in liberalism, gay rights, atheism... and you are so wrong on so many points it's embarassing to watch.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Interesting perspective. Would you be willing to provide an example of a belief you hold and value that we could examine in order to explore this perspective?
OK, 'Paris is the capital of France'.
A belief is a scrap of infomation sqirrelled away inside a brain - presumably it is a pattern of neuronal connections and activity. If a suitable pattern of neurones is present in your brain then you will believe what it encodes, no matter how it got there. For example if the pattern encoding 'paris is the capital of France' gets corrupted to encode 'paris is the capital of germany' then you will believe it just as much as you believed it before it was corrupted.
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@Mopac
And we can all get along just fine without intermarrying.
I don't think we are getting on fine.
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But suppose next week you choose to become a Christian. God already knows if you will or not, but you don't know, i don't know and mopac doesn't know. It is entirely up to you what you do next week. Whatever you choose then is what god saw. God knows but does not dictate your future choices.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
I believe
i have 10 toes
paris is the capital of france.
2+2=4
creationism is nonsense.
plus a million more.
Why pick one?
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@Mopac
Well, she must not have taken her religion seriously because it isn't lawful for a Muslim woman to marry a non Muslim.
kenya is secular, not sharia. obviousy we didn't marry in a mosque but no-one ever made trouble over it.
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@Tradesecret
I must have misunderstood you when you said:but I have not said what I imagine it will be like - that is your speculation and thence your response.
Glory for the Christian is going to be a lot like heaven and earth are now - but minus the sin.
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@TwoMan
I believe that the universe exists.I define the universe as "all that exists".
-.> I believe all that exists exists.
Unlike DD, I wouldn't quibble with that belief!
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@ludofl3x
Tomorrow you wake up from a very, very vivid dream in which what you take to be god has commanded you to go outside, and suffocate every dog you see, no matter what. The instant you see the dog, if you don't strangle it, you are in violation of god's command. Is strangling the dog a moral act?
Can you clarify if the dream is an actual communition from an actual god? or was it due to eating cheese for supper?
Really you can't ask if X is a moral act without specifying what makes an act 'moral'. Command theory defines a moral act as an act in conformance with god's will, so if the dream was a genuine divine command then killing the dog was moral act simply by definition. It might not be moral according to some other definition of moral, but then you're not tlking about command theory any more.
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@Mopac
I'm not fan of anyting that puts up walls between people and classifies them into 'us' and 'them'. My late wife (Halima) was a Kenyan Muslim - it didn't cause any unsurmountable problems.
'nuff sed.
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@Mopac
You are correct about the destruction of the temple- my dating is all wrong and I withdraw it. Good fun doing research tho! So much to read...
I don't know about the orthodox view on covenant theology. My comments on that were more relevant to pga's 'Preterist' views.
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@Polytheist-Witch
To avoid further misunderstanding, mopac recommends marrying someone of the same religion. I think inter-faith (and mixed marriages in general)
might be better for the planet. My apologies to anyone misled by the wording of my post.
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@PGA2.0
@ludofl3x
The scale of destruction can be overstated. Josephus relates:And, after AD 70 the priesthood is gone, the animal sacrifices abolished, the temple is destroyed the people are scattered
Pompey, and those thatwere about him, went into the temple itself 1 whither it was not lawful for any to enter but the high priest, and sawwhat was reposited therein, the candlestick with its lamps, and the table,and the pouring vessels, and the censers, all made entirely of gold, asalso a great quantity of spices heaped together, with two thousand talentsof sacred money. Yet did not he touch that money, nor any thing else thatwas there reposited; but he commanded the ministers about the temple, thevery next day after he had taken it, to cleanse it, and to perform theiraccustomed sacrifices.
That is the temple was not desroyed and sacrifing was barely interrupted. The reason or overstating things is Cristian theology; God has to transform from the god of the hebrews to the god of the gentiles. The 'destruction' of the temple is symbolic of a break between god and israel; in ad 70 God abandons the jews and the 'new covenant' begins.
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@Polytheist-Witch
so you want to force people to stay in their group or force them out of their group Still force, bigot.
Nobody thinks that's what i want - not even you.
it's an old internetting trick - look for the wrong end of a stick and brandish it.
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@Mopac
I think the hope is you will realise your position is untenable.
I have never seen it work!
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@Polytheist-Witch
I didn't say "You should get force people to marry people they don't want to". Mopac recommended marrying within one's own group and i wanted to say the opposite might be true.
Most of the world's problems are because of 'us v them' in one form or another. Maybe after 100 years of mixed marriges there wouldn't be any 'us' or 'them' anymore!
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@Mopac
I can't blame God for anything.Sure, you could blame God for allowing you to be born into this miserable world.
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@Polytheist-Witch
No idea why you tagged me, bigot. I said nothing about marriage.
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@ludofl3x
i think mopac has answered that.
I'm sure you could blame God for everything if you root it back to God creating everything.
It seems you, ludo, re saying it is hard to fathom god's plan, and no doubt mopac would agree it is hard to fathom!
God has not told mopac the details of His plan.
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@Mopac
What I can say is that strife is likely to develop from a married couple with two different religions.
That's the point - people will have to learn tolerance and compassion. I would hope your mixed marriage stands as an example of the stupidity and futility of racism to others. i see no reason that shouldn't applly eqully well to religious as much as racial divides.
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@Polytheist-Witch
@Mopac
The idea of a stable and healthy marriage must be obnoxious to you.
My parents had a stable and happy marriage for 50 odd years, and so did I until my wife died! I have no experience of unhappy marriages.
I think people should marry whoever they want to, but maybe if for one generation blacks had to marry whites, Jews had to marry Arabs, Serbs had to marry Croats and so on there'd be less blood on the ground afterwards!
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@Mopac
Free will is philosophically 'interesting', to say the least!Freewill is a gift from God that is good. As we have freewill, we can choose to do evil with it.
But theologians just use it to fudge the logical problems raised by giving God omniscience, as you are doing. Invoking free will allows theologians to shift blame for bad things away from God without backtracing on their claims of God's infinite powers.
If god is omniscient, He knows what you will do ahead of time ergo freewill is at most an illusion, if it exists at all. If he does not know what you will chose, he is not omniscient.
I confess I find scholastic word games boring.
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@Mopac
Put less agressively, disgusted is pointing out that an omniscient God would have known beforehand that disgusted would end up in hell. Would an omnibenevolent god create a soul that would inevitably suffer for eternity?
In other words, it seems an entity that is both omniscient and omnibenevolent cannot exist.
It's a reduced version of an epigram attributed to Epicurus:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
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@Mopac
I'm more interested in the reasons why not to marry outside one's religion.
I think the world would be a better place if it was made compulsory.
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@Mopac
"But to the rest I, not the Lord, say: If any brother has a wife who does not believe, and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her.And a woman who has a husband who does not believe, if he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him.For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.But if the unbeliever departs, let him depart; a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases. But God has called us to peace.For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?
That needs unpacking! Paul is mostly concerned with marriages where one partner has converted to Christianity. In such cases the Christian should not divorce their their non-Christian spouse. In such mixed marriages the children are considered 'holy', ie Christian.
However the non-Christian spouse is 'sanctified', not 'saved' by the marriage and the Christian should try to convert their partner. If the non-Christian spouse wants a divorce then Christian is released from their bond not to divorce and the divorce should proceed.
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@Tradesecret
the Christian view is however that Christ reconciles heaven and earth. We look forward to a time when a new heaven and new earth together - hence the material is not evil. the physical is not bad. Glory for the Christian is going to be a lot like heaven and earth are now - but minus the sin. That is the Christian message and i respectfully submit what Jesus taught. Christians - at least those who read their bibles are not looking for an escape from this earth per se. They are looking forward to being with Jesus - who is king of heaven and king of earth.
AFAIK there isn't much in scripture to confirm or deny heaven is as you imagine it to be.
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@PGA2.0
If the time, space, matter continuum had a beginning then what is the reason for it since somehow it came to be. God provides sufficient and necessary reason
Possible reason, but not a 'sufficient and neccessary' one!
"[The entity that gave moses 10 commandments] provides a sufficient and neccessary reason for the universe" is just not true! YHWH creating the universe might be sufficient for the world to exist, but its not neccessary it was Him. It could have been zeus, or brahma - either would be sufficient, but it ain't necessarily any of them!
Prophecy provides a reasonable and logical example that is not easily refuted.
I am at a loss to know how to prove a piece of writing is not genuine prophecy. It's not hard to show a 'prophecy' isn't neccessarily miraculous, but completely proving it?- Not possible.
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@PGA2.0
I agree with both quotes.
Not my greatest post, I admit! I think I was called away.
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@Mopac
Things are more settled now, but over the centuries differences over the theological interpretation of scripture has caused countless splits and schisms. There are hundreds - if not thousands - of Christian denominations today.
I note that the on-going spat between Russian Orthodox and Ukraine Orthodox is not over scripture - but it looks like another split is on the cards!
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@ludofl3x
Christianity is very vague as to what life is like in heaven. Individual Christians can imagine heaven as they please with no obvious negation. It is clearly in the church's interest to not stress that heaven might not be all that great...
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Christianity is very vague as to what life is like in heaven. Individual Christians can imagine heaven as they please with no obvious negation. It is clearly in the church's interest to not stress that heaven might not be all that great...
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@3RU7AL
If they have to be justified they probably aren't axioms!Justifying your axioms is a whole other kettle of fish.
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@ludofl3x
It's B.
"For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven."
Matt 22:30.
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@ludofl3x
God can certainly change his mind,eg Ex32:14 "And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people."and there are several other examples. So whatever theory is developed has to accommodate that God's plans can change!
Theologians have an impossible task because scripture is full of contrdictions and pardoxes. Islam solves that problem using the principle of 'abrogation'; Christians prefer to split into factions!
God is imaginary, so his powers are limited only by our imagination. But my imagination balks at what it is like to be 'outside time'. Is what I plan you to do on day 543 still in the future or is it in the past already? Is it both past and future, or maybe it's neither?
But I do know how many angels can dance on a needle: 8.6766*10^49
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@ludofl3x
Bear with me here!
Let's suppose you decided to have tea rather than coffee with breakfast this morning. You have free will, yet I can know you chose tea because it is in the past.
However I cannot know what you will choose tomorrow because tomorrow is in the future, and for me the past and future are different.
But for a god, (outside time) past and future are the same. Hence a choice you will make tomorrow and a choice you made this morning are equally visible an eqully knowable to a god.
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@Mopac
It probably didn't feel like you lot were cute little baa-lambs to a roman catholic with a sword stuck in his guts.No, quite the contrary, we are as lambs to the slaughter.
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@ludofl3x
The OT god functions like a superpowered greek or Roman god, so it might make sense to pray to THAT god to intercede, but the god of the NT is the one with the plan. Christians say they're the same god somehow, hence the question.
I think it took a while for a class of Christian 'profesional theologians' to arise and begin nit-picking over the details. There were Christians beore there was a NT; presumbly the NT was developed to create some sort of standardisation.
Christian theologians struggled to bring the Hebrew YHWH, the Christian God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit into a coherent, monotheistic framework an diputes remain open to today!
AFAICT, theogians have not written much about the paradox of intercessionary prayer and God's ominscience and omnipotence.
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@Mopac
This was clearly an act of the emperor and not the church.
It wasn't 'an act' but several thousands acts of murder. In April 1182 several thousand Roman Catholics -including women and children - were murdered by mobs of orthodox christians in Constantinople. Hence my remark "You orthodox lot can turn nasty sometimes...!"
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@Mopac
they would be torturing those who do not submit to the bishop of Rome, just as they did even to many of our saints and martyrs.
You orthodox lot can turn nasty sometimes...!
"The Massacre of the Latins was a large-scale massacre of the Roman Catholic (called "Latin") inhabitants of Constantinople,"
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@DeusVult
Very, very few late term abortions are due to pregnant women changing their mind about having a baby at the last minute. Almost all late abortions are performed for medical reasons.HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!! Now that is funny.According to the Guttmacher Institute...
Here is the original GI document.
I'm always glad to be better informed! The paper shows the reasons some women have late abortions are complicted, but as I surmised few women are happily pregnant for 8 months and then decide on a whim to have an abortion.
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@IlDiavolo
It's not meant to be realistic - its about how the wording can effect the decision people make.
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@ludofl3x
If your version of god is all knowing, and has a plan, what would be the point of prayer?
That one can intercede for others and persude god to alter his plans is well shown in Gen 18:22-32 where Abraham pleads for Sodom.
"Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” 32 Then he said, “Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.”
Is God supposed to be literally omnipotent and omniscient, or 'only' very,very powerful and very,very wise?
Theologians gave God literally 'infinite' properties to solve some problems, but at the expense of creating other problems - such as 'can god create a stone he cannot lift?'.
If we don't adopt the pedantry of midieval scholastic theologians regarding God's alleged perfection then prayer makes sense.
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@Mopac
Please continue.Just because you can't be tempted doesn't mean you have a pure heart either.
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@ludofl3x
PGA would say if I believe the universe is meaningless, why do i live my life as if it had meaning?
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@ludofl3x
PGA argues that without a god the universe has no meaning or purpose. I think he is correct, but he infers 'therefore there is a god' but I infer that universe is indeed meaningless and purposeless.Almost every time I've seen this argued, the pro-god person basically goes to argue from ignorance or incredulity.
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@Mopac
That too... it's a bit 'chicken and egg' as I understand it.
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@Mopac
I would say that a way for a non-orthodox to understand the concept of 'purity of heart' in Orthodoxy is to consider Matthew 5:28:
"But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."
Thus the objective is not to avoid committing physical adultery; the goal is to not be tempted in the first place. That is to say 'purity of heart' is achieved when one one longer feels temptation.
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@PGA2.0
Once upon a time, many many billions of years ago, our universe exploded into existence from a singularity for no reason, no intention, no purpose...
It is not a matter of a feel-good religion but what is true
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