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re ancient books of course i d still recommend that michael read true and reasonable by douglas jacoby joe fisher oh and michael i wait to see any dents in any armor and my faith hasn t wavered since the day i became a disciple you may want to try it sometime it s life changing
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re sin sorry for taking this off of sharon s resp but i d also like to add some more verses to that and perhaps answer the second q verses corinthians colossians as for knowing when that s a bit tricky people normally have consciences which warn them about it however as in my case a conscience can be hardened by sin s deceitfulness hebrews so that the person has no idea or doesn t care about it that they are sinning of course there are those sins which we do when we don t know that they re sinful to begin with those take searching and examining of scripture to find out that they are sinful and then repent and change the best question to ask in every circumstance to judge sinful possibilities is would jesus wholeheartedly do this at this point in time i know it sounds like a cop out but it truly is a stifling question joe fisher oh i missed one john
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re unity in article apr athos rutgers edu maarten van loon cwi nl maarten van loon writes hello fellow netters and fellow christians about the subject of unity between christians and christian churches to a bible study group alltough i do have a personal opinion on this issue i thought it would be nice to hear opinions of fellow christian brothers and sisters from different countries and in different situations my background member of a orthodox reformed church let us say a little the only unity i ve found which is true is when all parties involved are disciples i came out of a church in which even the different congregations were always competing and arguing about which one was better and who had the better messages while none of them put anything into practice from those messages since becoming a disciple i ve found that when i travel to another church in the same movement they are just as accepting there as any other we had a retreat back in january when some of the congregation from louisville ky came up this retreat was for college students and it was as though i had known even the people from louisville for years and i had only become a disciple the previous april and had never been to the church in kentucky one of the keys to unity is unselfish love and self sacrifice that is only one area in which disciples stand out from christians also another part of unity is a common depth of conviction i ve also been a part of some christian campus fellowships who were focused on unity between churches and saw that those churches had one thing involved a lack of conviction about everything they believed that was why they could be unified they didn t care about the truth but delighted in getting along together the problem here in the netherlands is that there are two other churches denominations with the same characteristics both have the same confessions there are only some differences with respect to for example the matter of appropriation of salvation and how to use our creeds in essence a lot of people of these three churches have to same faith and feel that they should become one church but how that is the question creeds what need is there of creeds when the bible stands firmly better so here is a first question can the congregation of christ be separated by walls of different denominations or is this definitely an untolerable situation according to the scriptures according to the scriptures splits and differences of opinion are going to be there as per a previous note i mentioned that there are those who teach falsely by many means there are also differences of opinion and belief however scripture states in the following directives i have no praise for you for your meetings do more harm than good in the first place i hear that when you come together as a church there re divisions among you and to some extent i believe it no doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have god s approval corinthians how will god show his approval by fruitfulness see acts but before that there are these qualities devotion to the apostles teaching fellowship communion filling with awe for god all having everything in common glad and sincere hearts praising god enjoying the favor of the people all these are mentioned in acts god also shows that those who have these qualities are persecuted look at stephen a man full of faith and of the holy spirit acts who was later stoned acts can one say that only one of these three churches is the true church of jesus christ one can say that a church is the true church only if that church is perfect not only in the congregation but worldwide as a movement i have yet to find that but the closest one i ve found is the boston church of christ movement which constantly strives to have errors pointed out and corrected it is also the only one i ve seen which is totally sold out to god a problem closely related to these question is can we cooperate with other christians from these two churches before there is a unity this question is especially important for those who think that only one church can be the true one as for cooperation that can always occur unity on the other hand may never occur as for those who think about only one church being the true one i remind them that mark states that there are disciples who are not a part of the main group to begin with but they will not lose their reward as with the boston movement i ve heard numerous times this exact same thing that there are disciples out there that are not a part of the boston movement but that does not make them any less disciples of course few people admit that they ve ever run into someone who has the qualities of a disciple outside the movement i know i haven t maybe this last problem sounds a little strange to most of you for your information we have a lot of organizations here which are founded by people of one specific church and whose members are all members of that church this has been considered as correct for years only a few years ago people started to discuss about this and now we are in the middle of this process some organizations are opening their doors for people from other churches etc i must warn that this sounds cliquey to me a clique is a group which runs around together to some extent exclusively this causes problems in fellowship and causes divisions i would not say at all that this is something correct for a church group to do for any reason in one of the churches i attended for example there was an internal clique of people who were on the different groups committees organizational heads of the congregation they rarely talked to anyone else outside of the committees and seldom were voted out of office without another office being opened up so that they would have to step right back in their degree of exclusion was such that when the new pastor came he nearly had to wipe out everything and start from scratch i wish he would ve since they still have no clue about what it means to be a disciple anyway this rigidity in the clique is beginning to be broken down but is still there so i must warn against such division within there s enough division without thanks for your opinions in advance maarten joe fisher
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re weirdness of early christians were the early christians weird yes so were their non christian contemporaries the more familiar you are with late republican rome or the pricipate the weirder those people will seem forget the creative filtering done by renaissance and eighteenth century hero worship so are modern non christians and christians you are pretty weird yourself with your rather acid dismissal of luther and of protestantism and in apparently buying into a simplistic propaganda model about catholicism not being faddish sure it s so large that global fads take longer cycles than they do in smaller denominations and local ones are not usually visible unless you do a lot of traveling to exotic lands may i recom mend as a salutary antidote to this nonsense philippe aries book the hour of our death a longitudinal study of death customs in western specifically catholic christendom and it won t help to escape into the obscurity of the first christian century paul was pretty weird too as were peter and the others in the apparently quite weird circle around jesus what i think you might find helpful is a bit more charity try to understand these weirdos and nutcases with the same respect and love you would expect others to show your notions we are commanded to love one another after all and brown s book is in fact a heroic attempt to see the groupings he talks about as motivated in love and the gospel and their social contexts if anything brown is too heroic here he manages to overstrain himself at times i don t suggest that we follow any of these old cult paths and it raises hard questions from the skeptic inside me that so much of early christianity was like the weird christian and non christian cults we see today to that extent i think you raise a serious problem and perhaps your phrasing is implicitly self deprecatory and ironic but the first principle for answering these questions is respect and love for those we do not understand and it helps to work at under standing as long as we do not get overwhelmed by revulsion and begin to withdraw our respect for them as people i would advise in other words more historical reading brown s other books are also good most especially his bio of augustine also try robin lane fox s christians and pagans maybe the paul veyne ed history of private life some of foucault s books on sexuality in the ancient world humanity is weird we have known one sane person and we killed him fortunately for us this has proved a comedy rather than a tragedy easter yes this is a tad early our vigil service here has been moved forward because so many churches in the area have taken to doing their own vigils and the seminarians must therefore worship and run if they are to do it here and there as well think of this as an anglican fad michael l siemon we must know the truth and we must mls ulysses att com love the truth we know and we must or act according to the measure of our love mls panix com thomas merton
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confession communion apr david cruz uribe writes to all dc also what is orthodox practice regarding communion i read dc a throw away remark someplace that the orthodox receive less dc frequently than catholics do but was is their current practice dc have their been any variations historically i think orthodox practice varies from place to place from parish to parish and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction in some parishes here in south africa the only ones who receive communion are infants i e children under in our parish it is expected that one will have been to vespers and confessional prayers the evening before and that one will have been fasting as we have to travel km to the church we don t receive communion every sunday but about every third sunday steve golded
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sin apr jill anne daley writes to all jad what exactly is a definition of sin and what are some examples how does jad a person know when they are committing sin to answer briefly sin is falling short of the glory of god romans steve golded
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pantheism environmentalism apr susan harwood kaczmarczik writes to all we suspect that s because one party to the environmental dispute thinks the earth is sanctified it s clear that much of the environmentalist energy is derived from what has been called the religious left a secular or even pagan fanaticism that now worships such gods as nature and gender with a reverence formerly accorded real religions emphasis mine shk first of all secular and pagan are not synonyms pagan which is shk derived from the latin paganus means of the country it is in shk fact a cognate with the italian paisano which means peasant shk paganism among other things includes a reverence for the planet and shk all life on the planet stemming from the belief that all life is shk interconnected so rather than be something secular it is something shk very sacred i would go further and say that much of the damage to the environment has been caused by the secular worldview or by the humanist worldview and especially by the secular humanist worldview this is not to say that all secular humanists are necessarily avid destroyers of the environment and i am sure that there are many who are concerned about the environment but at the time of the renaissance and ref ormation in western europe man became the centre or the focus of culture hence humanism this consciousness was also secular in the sense that it was concerned primarily with the present age r ather than the age to come capitalism arose at the same time and the power of economics became central in philosophy this doesn t mean that economics did not exist before simply that it began to dominate the conscious cultural values of western european society and its offshoots this cultural shift was in its later stages accompanied by industrial revolutions and the values that justified them there was a fundamental cultural shift in the meaning of economics from the christian view of man as the economos the steward of creation to the secular idea of man as the slave of economic forces and powers there were denominational differences among the new worshippers of mammon for some the name of the deity was the free rein of the market mechanism while for others it was the dialectical forces of history but in both the capitalist west and the socialist east the environment was sacrificed on the altar of mammon the situation was mitigated in the west because thos e who were concerned about the damage to the environment had more freedom to oppose what was happening and state their case steve golded
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re ancient books cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes if i talk with an atheist and tell him the new testament is an historically reliable document what reasons would i give him i have found that this isn t a very effective argument most atheists are perfectly willing to acknowledge the existence and ministry of jesus but are quite capable of rationalizing the miracles and the resurrection into misunderstandings hoaxes or simple fabrications they can always make an analogy with the iliad a book that tells the story of the historical trojan war but also talks about gods and goddesses and their conversations i don t think it s possible to convince atheists of the validity of christianity through argument we have to help foster faith and an understanding of god i could be wrong are there any former atheists here who were led to christianity by argument alan terlep incestuous vituperousness oakland university rochester mi atterlep vela acs oakland edu melissa eggertsen rushing in where angels fear to tread
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re revelations hudson athena cs uga edu paul hudson jr writes biblical prophecy tends to be somewhat cyclical for example the virgin prophecy of isaiah also prophecied of christ how does this apply to the book of revelation in regard to the perterist view much of the ot prophecies have a double application to the jewish captivity and to the end of time but if rev is dated at ad its prophecies could not apply to the ad destructioin of jerusalem darius
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re prayer in jesus name in article apr athos rutgers edu munns cae wisc edu scott munns writes i am doing a dormitory bible discussion with my christian roommate and in jesus name what about the people before jesus they prayed to god and he listened then in spite of their sins why can t it be the same way now insert huge deletion of all following material since it had little relevance to what i ve found ok the people before jesus didn t have jesus right so far i ve announced that space is a vacuum the people who lived during the time jesus lived especially disciples were taught this i tell you the truth anyone who has faith in me will do what i have been doing he will do even greater things than these because i am going to the father and i will do whatever you ask in my name so that the son may bring glory to the father you may ask me for anything in my name and i will do it john so jesus asked them to pray for things in his name since that time the request has been the same not to ask for intercession from other beings but from jesus remember that there is one god and one mediator between god and men the man christ jesus who gave himself as a ransom for all men the testimony given in its proper time timothy also there have been many of those priests talking about priests among the hebrews since death prevented them from continuing in office but because jesus lives forever he has a permanent priesthood therefore he is able to save completely those who come to god through him because he always lives to intercede for them hebrews hebrews is also full of areas talking about jesus being our mediator rather than any other man joe fisher the people before jesus didn t have jesus right may not be as obvious as you think in what sense to you mean didn t have christian thought has generally said that they had jesus in the sense that they were saved by his death god is not bound by our chronology so in some real spiritual sense they did have jesus even in terms of knowledge while they surely didn t have the explicit knowledge that we have christians have normally seen messianic prophecy as knowledge of jesus even if knowledge from afar clh
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the empty tomb the empty tomb can we trust it by the late wilbur m smith d d when jesus was on earth he made an amazing prediction about himself and frequently repeated it let me quote it for you behold we go up to jerusalem and the son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes and they shall condemn him to death and shall deliver him to the gentiles to mock and to scourge and to crucify him and the third day he shall rise again matthew wholly different from the normal experience of men jesus who had never done anything worthy of death even deserving reproval knew he would die before he was years of age he knew the very city where he would die he knew that the religious leaders of his own race would condemn him to death he knew that one of his own would betray him he knew that before his actual death took place he would be mocked and scourged he knew exactly how he would die by crucifixion all this is in itself remarkable but more amazing than the minute particulars of his foreknowledge was what he predicted would follow shortly after he was buried that he would rise again he even designated the time on the third day but since it is on this central fact the death and resurrec tion of jesus christ that the whole truth or untruth of chris tianity turns let us examine it more closely the body of jesus was embalmed in long sheets of cloth between the layers of which a great abundance of spices and ointments was distributed the body was placed in a tomb which had never before been used and a great stone was rolled against the entrance the jewish authorities fully aware that jesus had predicted he would rise again had the stone officially sealed and on saturday placed a guard before the tomb to prevent the disciples from carrying away the body early sunday morning some of the women who were faithful followers of christ went out to the tomb to further anoint the body to their utter astonishment they found the stone rolled away the body gone they rushed back to tell the disciples shortly two of jesus friends peter and john utterly skeptical about the whole affair came and found the tomb empty just as the women had said even the guards came hurrying into the city to tell the sanhedrin that had hired them to guard the tomb that the body was gone matthew how did this tomb become empty one of the most famous new testament scholars in america professor of new testament literature in a large theological seminary wrote to the author in answer to my question of how the tomb became empty and wrote it in a letter not marked by bitterness or sarcasm that he could no more explain how the tomb became empty than he could explain how santa claus comes down the chimney at christmas time but he didn t realize that santa clause never did come down any chimney at christmas time because there never was a santa claus and there is a jesus he died he was buried in the tomb of joseph of arimathea and on sunday the body was gone those are facts of history no one can escape the responsi bility of coming to some conclusion about what really happened by mentioning a myth we all abandoned before we were eight years old another professor dr kirsopp lake of harvard university tried to explain the empty tomb by saying what no other scholar in the field of new testament criticism has ventured to adopt that the women went to the wrong tomb the facts are these first so far as we know there was no other tomb nearby to which by mistake they could have gone second it is contrary to all similar experience for three or more people to forget the place where they have buried their dearest loved one within less than three days even if the women did miss the tomb when peter and john came did they too go to the wrong tomb third were the soldiers guarding the wrong tomb there is of course a record of an attempt to escape the evidence of the empty tomb in the new testament itself now when they were going behold some of the watch came into the city and showed unto the chief priests all the things that were done and when they were assembled with the leaders and had taken counsel they gave large money unto the soldiers saying say ye his disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept and if this come to the governor s ears we will persuade him and secure you so they took the money and did as they were taught and this saying is com monly reported among the jews until this day matthew this is a good illustration of many later attempts to escape the fact that the tomb was empty you will notice at once that the chief priests and the elders never questioned but that the tomb was empty they never even went out to see if what the guards had reported was true they knew it was true another fact about this story makes it ridiculous to maintain that the tomb was empty the soldiers were told to say that jesus disciples came and stole the body away while they the soldiers were asleep how could they know what was going on while they were asleep obviously such testimony would be valueless in any court even aside from the shallowness and sordidness that make us reject the explanation the very character and the later history of the disciples compel us to believe they did not steal and secretly carry away the body of jesus first as professor heffern points out the leaders of judaism in jerusalem who had put the lord jesus to death had nothing to offer to contradict these disciples as they continued to preach jesus and his resurrection because all jerusalem knew the tomb was empty if there had been trickery here sooner or later it would have been suspected then proved second surely one of the disciples even most of them would have confessed the fraud under the terrific persecution they underwent it may be possible to live a lie but men seldom die for a lie and most of these men did the result ultimately would have been that the message that christ had risen would have suffered the fate of all such unfounded stories it would have lost it power instead this truth swept the world closed pagan temples won millions of disciples brought hope to a despairing humanity was the very foundation truth of the early church and is today as believable and as freshly glorious as ever but not only did jesus come alive again he did not disappear to leave the disciples speculating through all the subsequent days as to what had happened to him instead he appeared to them literally visibly frequently he appeared to the women at the tomb on resurrection morning matthew later that day to mary magdalene alone john and to simon peter also alone luke in the afternoon he walked with two of his followers toward emmaus luke and that night he appeared to ten of the apostles gathered together in an upper room at jerusalem mark luke etc a week later he appeared to all eleven of the apostles probably at the same place john once he was seen by above brethren on a mountain in galilee i corinthians and finally to the apostles just before his ascension mark luke acts as with the fact of the empty tomb so in regard to these histor ically recorded appearances all kinds of theories have been proposed attempting to deny their literalness but these theories are unreasonable without supporting evidence none has ever won the unanimous approval of those who refuse to believe in the reality of the appearances moreover while it is true we are living in an age when may of our leading scientists and agnostics and many of our philosophers are antisuperanaturalistic let us not forget that some of the greatest thinkers of the ages have firmly believed in this great miracle increase mather president of harvard timothy dwight president of yale nathan lord president of dartmouth edward hitchcock president of amherst mark hopkins president of williams john witherspoon president of princeton these men and countless others have believed it but suppose christ did rise from the dead what of it what has it to do with my life what has it to do with your life just this it seals with certitude the teachings of christ jesus taught many great truths especially many about himself he claimed to have come down from god he said he was the way to god he said he was the son of god who alone knew god perfectly he said that whoever believed on him had eternal life and no one else had it he said that whatever we ask god in his name he would grant it to us thus when he did rise from the grave on the third day he revealed that in these amazing unparalleled predictions he spoke the truth do you know any reason any good reason why we should not believe that his words are all true the point is does not the truth of the resurrection convince us that he is none other than the one he claimed to be the son of god and then of course the fact that christ rose from the dead testifies that he has broken the power of death and that he will some day raise us also up from the grave as he promised in other words if this person jesus christ the son of god in all this he should be the cornerstone of the foundation of your life for he said a life built on him would know forgiveness of sins his compan ionship and help a joy that no circumstances can ever take away and a hope that shineth more and more unto a perfect day those who have tried it down through the ages and there have been many have given their testimony and we today who believe also know
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re old vs new testament rexlex fnal fnal gov writes we can jillustrate this by pointing to the way god administers his judgment in the ot sins were not forgiven but rather covered up in the age of the church not only are sins forgiven taken away but the power of sin is put to death my this distinction seems quite arbitrary blessed is the man whose iniquities are forgiven whose sin is covered ps and quoted by the apostle paul even as david also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom god imputeth righteousness without works saying blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered blessed is the man to whom the lord will not impute sin rom the biblical perspective seems to be that foregiveness and covering are parallel equivalent concepts in both testaments the dispensational distinction is unwarranted during the millenium we read that sins are dealt with immediately under the present ie that christ is present on earth rulership of christ i m sure rex has scripture to back this up you re suggesting jesus is going to travel around dealing with individual violations of his law for millions perhaps billions of people such activity for moses the lawgiver was considered unwise cf ex ff it makes for interesting speculation though i ll leave comments on the so called bema seat vs throne judgments to someone else this also seems like more unnecessary divisions ala dispensationalism tom albrecht
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re christ references in ot adam i just finished a study on this not only looking at the prophecies themselves but where they were fulfilled while going only through the ot i found references after starting to show their fulfillment i found out that i had missed some so needless to say i cannot post them here however the study i did i intend to publish i am in the process of organizing and showing the fulfillments then i will be ready to write and send it to a publisher with any luck and or free time i should have it finally done sometime around september i hope joe fisher
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re a question that has bee bothering me wquinnan sdcc ucsd edu malcusco writes especially as we approach a time when scientists are trying to match god s ability to create life we should use the utmost caution i question the implications of this statement namely that there are certain physical acts which are limited to god and that attempting to replicate these acts is blasphemy against god god caused a bush to burn without being consumed if i do the same thing am i usurping god s role religious people are threatened by science because it has been systematically removing the physical proofs of god s existence as time goes on we have to rely more and more on faith and the spiritual world to relate to god becuase science is removing our props i don t think this is a bad thing alan terlep incestuous vituperousness oakland university rochester mi atterlep vela acs oakland edu melissa eggertsen rushing in where angels fear to tread
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re pantheism environmentalism by cleveland freenet edu gary v cavano writes does anybody out there see the current emphasis on the environment being turned unintentionally of course into pantheism i ve debated this quite a bit and while i think a legitimate concern for the planet is a great thing i can easily see it being perverted into something dangerous many pagans are involved in environmentalism this is only natural since respect for the earth is a fundamental tenet of all pagan denominations this doesn t mean that environmentalism is wrong any more than supporting peace in the middle east is wrong because jews and muslims also work for it nonetheless paganism is certainly on the rise and we as christians should address this and look at what draws people from paganism to christianity like it or not pagan religions are addressing needs that christianity should be and isn t i believe that paganism has hit upon some major truths that christianity has forgotten this doesn t mean that paganism is right but it does mean that we have something to learn from the pagan movement first paganism respects the feminine christianity has a long history of oppressing women and many if not most male christians are still unable to live in a non sexist manner the idea that god is sexless or that christ could have been a women and still accomplished his mission is met with a great deal of resistance this insistance on a male dominated theology and the male dominated society that goes with it drives away many young women who have had to put up with sexist attitudes in their churches second paganism respects the physical world this is an idea with great ramifications one of these is environmentalism respect for our surroundings and our world another is integration of sexuality christianity has a long tradition of calling all sexual feeelings sinful and urging people to suppress and deny their sexuality this is too much sex is clearly a part of human experience and attempting to remove it is simply not a feasible option christianity has only begun to develop a workable sexual ethic and paganism is an attractive option i m not advocating that christian doctrines no sex before marriage etc should be changed just that christians work toward a more moderate ethic of sexuality denial of sexuality places as much emphasis on sex as unmoderated sexuality and neither one does much to bring us closer to god alan terlep incestuous vituperousness oakland university rochester mi atterlep vela acs oakland edu melissa eggertsen rushing in where angels fear to tread
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re opinions asked about rejection here s how i talk to non christians who are complaining about hell me do you believe you re going to heaven him i don t believe in heaven me so are you going there him if there was a heaven i would me but since there isn t a heaven you re not going there are you him no the point is that heaven is based on faith if you don t believe in heaven there s no way you re going to be in it of course the next step is i don t believe in hell either so why will i be there it seems to me that hell is eternal death and seperation from god most atheists do believe that when they die they will die forever and never see god so they do in fact believe that they re going to hell hell doesn t have to be worse than earth to be hell because it s eternal and it s a lot worse than heaven that s the only comparison that matters alan terlep incestuous vituperousness oakland university rochester mi atterlep vela acs oakland edu melissa eggertsen rushing in where angels fear to tread
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re the arrogance of christians i d like to share my thoughts on this topic of arrogance of christians and look forward to any responses in my encounters with christians i find myself dismayed by their belief that their faith is total truth according to them their beliefs come from the bible and the bible is the word of god and god is truth thus they know the truth this stance makes it difficult to discuss other faiths with them and my own hesitations about christianity because they see no other way their way is the truth but i see their faith arising from a willful choice to believe a particular way that choice is part faith and part reason but it seems to me a choice my discussions with some christians remind me of schoolyard discussions when i was in grade school a kid would say all policemen are jerks i d ask how do you know because my daddy told me so how do you know you re daddy is right he says he s always right well the argument usually stops right there in the end aren t we all just kids groping for the truth if so do we have the authority to declare all other beliefs besides our own as false this is only my third time browsing through this newsgroup i apologize if i m covering tired old ground some of the discussions on this topic have piqued my interest and i welcome any comments louis j kim o ph southwest research institute fax post office drawer lkim swri edu san antonio tx compuserve com i m sort of mystified about how a christian might respond to this i can understand criticisms of christianity that say there s not enough evidence to believe it or that there s just as good evidence for other religions i don t agree but clearly there are plenty of intelligent people who don t find the evidence convincing but that doesn t seem to be your point rather you seem upset that people who believe christianity is true also believe that things which contradict it are false this suggests a model of spiritual things that s rather different than the christian one it sounds more like an existentialist view where people choose what value to follow but there s no actual independent spiritual reality and so no way to say that a specific choice is in some unique sense right this sort of model with modifications of one sort or another may be appropriate for some religions but christianity is in its essense a historical religion that is it s based on the concept that there are actual spiritual entities out there that one of them has intervened in history in specific ways and that we see evidence of that in history in the mundane world we are not free to choose how things work when we drop something it falls aside from well defined situations where it doesn t the christian concept is that spiritual matters there is also an actual external reality i hope we re all honest enough not to claim that we have perfect understanding but while we may not think we know everything we are confident that we know some things and that implies that we think things that contradict them are false i don t see how else we could proceed this needn t result in arrogance i m certainly interested in talking with people of other religions they may have things to teach me and even if they don t i respect them as fellow human beings but it s got to be possible to respect people and also think that on some matters they are wrong maybe even disasterously wrong clh
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re revelations phil launchbury almac co uk phil launchbury writes the apostate church of revelation most likely refers to the st century jews who rejected their messiah and had him crucified john refers to them i m afraid not it refers to the church that christ founded many many times he warns that the church will fall away into heresy as do the apostles for an example look at the parables in matthew they refer to the kingdom of heaven the church and the process of how they will be corrupted sorry but i think this interpretation of the matthew parables is nonsense i e yeast always stands for sin corruption heresy for example beware of the yeast of the pharisees matthew explains that by leaven of the pharisees jesus was simply referring to their teaching not sin corruption heresy jesus gaves his apostles the keys of the kingdom and said that the gates of hell would not prevail against his church tom albrecht
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environmentalism and paganism i would like to see christians devote a bit less effort to bashing paganism and more to figuring out how to present the gospel to pagans christ is the answer the pagans have a lot of the right questions unlike materialists who deny the need for any spirituality michael a covington associate research scientist artificial intelligence programs mcovingt ai uga edu the university of georgia phone athens georgia u s a amateur radio n tmi
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr athos rutgers edu dleonar andy bgsu edu pixie writes in article apr athos rutgers edu pardon me a humble atheist but exactly what is the difference between holding a revealed truth with blind faith as its basis i e regardless of any evidence that you may find to the contrary as an absolute truth fully expecting people to believe you and arrogance they sound like one and the same to me pixie p s if you do sincerely believe that a god exists why do you follow it blindly why do we follow god so blindly have you ever asked a physically blind person why he or she follows a seeing eye dog the answer is quite simple the dog can see and the blind person cannot i acknowledge as a christian that i am blind i see but i see illusions as well as reality watched tv lately i hear but i hear lies as well as truth listen to your radio or read a newspaper remember all that tastes well is not healthy so i rely one the one who can see hear and taste everything and knows what is real and what is not that is god of course you may ask if i cannot trust my own senses how do i know whether what i see and hear about god is truth or a lie that is why we need faith to be saved we must force ourselves to believe that god knows the truth and loves us enough to share it with us even when it defies what we think we know why would he have created us if he did not love us enough to help us through this world i also do trust my experiences to some extent when i do things that defy the seeming logic of my experience because it is what my father commands me to do and i see the results in the long term i find that he has led me in the proper direction even though it did not feel right at the time this is where our works as christians are important as exercises of the body make the body strong excercises of faith make the faith strong as for you no one can convert you you must choose to follow god of your own will if you are ever to follow him all we as christians wish to do is share with you the love we have received from god if you reject that we have to accept your decision although we always keep the offer open to you if you really want to find out why we believe what we believe i can only suggest you try praying for faith reading the bible and asking christians about their experiences personally then you may grow to understand why we believe what we do in defiance of the logic of this world may the lord bring peace to you malcusco
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re pantheism environmentalism in article apr athos rutgers edu by cleveland freenet edu gary v cavano writes i m new to this group and maybe this has been covered already but does anybody out there see the current emphasis on the environment being turned unintentionally of course into pantheism yes i am adamantly an environmentalist i will not use styrofoam table service please keep that in mind as you read this post i do not wish to attack environmentalism a half truth is at least as dangerous as a complete lie a complete lie will rarely be readily accepted while a half truth the lie subtly hidden is more powerfully offered by one who masquerades as an angel of light satan has for some people loosened the grip on treating the earth as something other than god s intricate handiwork something other than that on which the health of future generations is based it is being treated with respect you think he s going to happily leave it at that no when one error is rejected it is his style to push people to the opposite error therefore the earth is not god s intricate handiwork not because it is rubbish but because it is god mother earth is the one you are to primarily love and serve i see two facets of a response to it care for the environment treat it with proper respect both because it is god s intricate handiwork and the health of future generation and because showing the facet of one who is disregardful of such things does not constitute what the apostle paul called becoming all things to all men so that by all possible means i might save some don t say forget the environment i ve got important things to spend my time on putting your foot in your mouth in this manner will destroy your credibility in expressing the things that are more important show that it is not the ultimate entity that it is creature and not creator show that its beauty and glory points to a greater beauty and glory show that it is not the ultimate tapestry but one of many cords woven in the infinite tapestry god give me mountains but the greatest jonathan hayward to climb and the of these is love jonathan hayward wheaton edu strength for climbing i corinthians jhayward imsa edu
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re did he really rise i don t understand who this post is directed towards who are you trying to convince by its subject i would assume you are directing the argument towards people who do not believe that christ rose from the dead but in your proof you use the bible exclusively the post is therefore immediately useless to anyone who doesn t believe that the bible is an unadulterated truth and to everyone else it is just a reaffirmation of a belief already held as far as i know there is no disagreement between christians over the resurrection of christ so my question is what is the purpose of this post tomas because no battle is ever won he said they are not even fought the field only reveals to man his own folly and despair and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools william faulkner
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re accepting jeesus in your heart in article apr athos rutgers edu gsu uxa ecn bgu edu eric molas writes i was raised in a religious atmosphere and attended years of religious educational institutions i know the bible well so well i can recognize many passages from memory stuff deleted for brevity christianity is an infectious cult the reasons it flourishes are because it gives people without hope or driven purpose in life a safety blanked to hide behind oh wow all i have to do is follow this christian moral standard and i get eternal happiness for all of you found jeezus how many of you were on the brink your very starting point is wrong christianity is not based on following a moral standard for it is by grace you have been saved through faith not by works so that no man may boast eph you say that you know the bible well and can recognize do you mean recite many passages from memory that could very well be so however it looks like there are a few more passages that you should pay attention to titus and james are among them obedience to the moral law is imporant however it is supposed to be the result of turning your life over to christ and becoming a christian it is by no means the starting point virgilio dean velasco jr department of electrical eng g and applied physics cwru graduate student roboticist in training and q wannabee bullwinkle that man s intimidating a referee my boss is a not very well he doesn t look like one at all jewish carpenter
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re prophetic warning to new york city note reply to a message in soc religion christian evenson thomas randall wrote in a message to all which brings me around to asking an open question is the bible a closed book of scripture is it okay for us to go around saying god told me this and jesus told me that also interesting to note is that some so called prophecies are nothing new but rather an inspired translation of scripture is it right to call that prophecy misleading hi you might want to read charismatic chaos by john macarthur in it he discussed exactly this queation amongst others in my own words very simplified his position is basically that one must decide what is the most important experience or scripture people tend to say scripture without living according to that their own feeling prophecy etc tends to be put across without testing in the light of scripture there s a lot more than this really worthwhile to read whether you re charismatic or not groetnis cheers deon timed b internet deon strydom f n z fidonet org via the catalyst bbs in port elizabeth south africa catpe alt za hst or v bis hst
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ethics vs freedom being a parent in need of some help i ask that you bear with me while i describe the situation which plagues me i am a divorced father chance would have it that my weekend with my daughter has fallen upon easter weekend this year although i am presbyterian i had married a catholic woman we decided that the catholic moray of indoctrination of the spouse into the faith was too confining and restrictive due to time as we had already set a date and we were married in a christian church which was non denominational during the years of our marriage we did not often attend church when our daughter was born some years later my wife insisted that she be baptised as catholic this wasn t a problem with me during a separation of five years my ex wife was taken ill with a disease that affected her mental capacities she was confined to a mental ward for two months before it was diagnosed it has since been treated effectively in other words professionals have deemed her a functioning member of society during the recuperation my ex wife has embraced buddism her influence over my daughter has been substantial and has primarily allowed me only saturday visitation for a number of years during this period i have read bible study books to my daughter and tried to keep her aware of her christian heritage last fall our divorce was finalized after a year of viscious divorce hearings at that time i was awarded visitation rights every other weekend at that time i started taking my daughter to church quite often although not every weekend i did this to attempt to strengthen the christian ethic and expose her to a religious community today easter sunday i took my daughter to church when it came time for communion my daughter took the bread the body of christ but left the wine the blood of christ professing that she was too young for wine she then balled the bread up in her hand and tried to descretely throw it under the pew in front of us i feel this was a slap in the face to me my religion and an afront to her religious heritage it can be construed as breaking several of the commandments if you try i really felt dishonored by the action my daughter is only nine years old but i think she should have been old and mature enough to realize her actions i have difficulty blaming her directly for religious teachings her mother swears to but when i discussed this with my daughter she made it clear she believed in buddhism and not christianity my initial response of anger moderated was to suggest if there is no faith in christ then why does she celebrate easter or christmas i suggested i would never force her to practice my religious beliefs by celebrating holidays with her again i do not want to drive her from the fold and would be willing to allow her to continue practicing buddhism as though i had a choice seeing her only for two days out of fourteen but i want her to want to embrace christianity any suggestions if you have a response please e mail me a copy i m not a regular reader of this newsgroup naturally feel free to post too thanks and i hope you ve had a happy easter drew drew watson systems analysis encore computer corp dwatson encore com customer services
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re revelations hudson athena cs uga edu paul hudson jr writes now as to the suggestion that all prophecy tends to be somewhat cyclical can you elaborate i m not exactly sure what you mean how does the suggestion relate to isaiah s prophecy of the birth of christ by a virgin i don t see any cycles in that prophecy maybe cyclical is not the best word another example would be the scripture quoted of judas and his bishoprick let another take another example is something that isaiah said of his disciples which is also applied to christ in hebrews the children thou hast given me how does the preterist view account for this phenomenon ah double fulfillment first of all i would say that i m not sure all the prophecies had double fulfillment e g the isaiah prophecy i would say that just because this happens on some occasions does not mean it will occur always especially with regard to nt prophecies the apostles who quoted the ot and applied those passages to jesus were acting as divine messengers and giving the inerrant word of god to the church no one has that authority today no one has the apostolic authority to say that such and such a prophecy has double fulfillment if the imagry of revelation fits with events of the st century it is folly for us to try and make it apply to events centuries later tom albrecht
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re easter what s in a name was re new testament double standard moderator this is a replacement for an earlier more clumsily worded submission on the same topic which i submitted a few minutes ago i think we need to distinguish etymology from meaning regardless of how the word easter originated the fact is that it does not now mean anything to christians other than the feast day of the resurrection of jesus christ the meaning of a word is only what people understand it to mean and the same goes for other cultural practices the festival of easter may possibly have some historical association with some pagan festival but today there are as far as i know no christians who intend to honor any kind of pagan goddess by celebrating easter it is nonsense to say this word or this practice really means so and so even though nobody realizes it words and practices don t mean things people do this is basic semantics i m a linguist they pay me to think about things like this michael a covington associate research scientist artificial intelligence programs mcovingt ai uga edu the university of georgia phone athens georgia u s a amateur radio n tmi further easter is specific to english in many other languages the word used is based on passover or resurrection is it ok to celebrate it in countries using those languages but not in those using english clh
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catholic liturgy the problems with catholic liturgy are likely to continue for some time the problem is in a nutshell this the liturgy is a symbolic action in other words catholics do or should believe that the signs during the mass water blessings vestments altar relics etc are real that is the sprinkling of water bestows real almost tangible holiness the vestments are a real indication of real sacred time the point of a symbol is that it is understood by all to be connected to an underlying real referent this kind of thinking precludes analysis holy water is not holy because of anything it simply is holy but modern westerners find it extremely difficult especially if well educated to think of the mass as a symbol we are more likely to see it as a sign ie an action that represents grace but which could be replaced with other signs in concrete terms this means the mass has become a commercial for god s grace rather than the real thing you can mess around with a commercial in a way you wouldn t dare with the real thing ask coca cola co these attitudes have been encouraged by liturgy workshops etc which instead of focusing on how to do do liturgy have focused on how to create a meaning in liturgy you can only create signs symbols have to come from god or the heart or somewhere deeper than analysis the most dramatic example of this shift in understanding has been in the treatment of the sacred species the consecrated host and wine now with pita bread etc it is common to come away from the altar with hands covered in particles if the host is a sign of grace this isnt and issue but catholics in the past would have been distraught at this real desacration of the real symbol of jesus body modern catholic liturgy is caught in this epistemological shift we try to perfrom the old rites but then we have some liturgomaniac priest get up and explain what we are doing so we stop doing it and start pretending to do it this is not a soul filling experience it doesn t help btw that we have got stuck witha huge amount of two and three chord ersatz folk music again a result of mis analysis complicated tunes are in fact easier to remember than simple ones this was the genius of wesley and the c anglican hymn writers taize is only slightly better what are we to do well i suggest rejecting the parish system if it doesn t work for you search out a church where the liturgy is well prepared not well explained they exist in every city this is not btw a matter of particular style the music might be old or new it is the attitude of the church that counts also note that a conservative liturgy harking back to pre vatican ii days does not necessarily mean the church will be socially conservative in nyc i can recommend corpus christi w st st corpus christi w st st very conservative liturgy st joseph s greenwich village modern clean largely gay oratorian church brooklyn very beautiful avoid anywhere anytime a church with electric candles happy easter christos aneste christos voskrezhne christ is risen paul halsall halsall murray fordham edu
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re pantheism environmentalism in article apr athos rutgers edu steve hayes f n z fidonet org writes i realize i m entering this discussion rather late but i do have one question wasn t it a reagan appointee james watt a pentacostal christian i think who was the secretary of the interior who saw no problem with deforestation since we were living in the last days and ours would be the last generation to see the redwoods anyway terrance heath heath athena cs uga edu your comfort is my silence act up fight back talk back
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hell atterlep vela acs oakland edu cardinal ximenez wrote here s how i talk to non christians who are complaining about hell me do you believe you re going to heaven him i don t believe in heaven me so are you going there him if there was a heaven i would me but since there isn t a heaven you re not going there are you him no the point is that heaven is based on faith if you don t believe in heaven there s no way you re going to be in it hmmm people in the americas before the time of christ children who die young etc of course the next step is i don t believe in hell either so why will i be there it seems to me that hell is eternal death and seperation from god but of course the popular conception of hell correct or incorrect is something akin to eternal perpetuation of consciousness at the very least most atheists do believe that when they die they will die forever and never see god so they do in fact believe that they re going to hell i think a good number of atheists believe there is nothing beyond bodily death but it is simply an abuse of language to say they believe they re going to hell they believe they re going to die understand that you ve turned hell into a verb using the same logic it also follows that all animals are going to hell are you sure this is what you want to say presumably animals don t have the opportunity to get to heaven but this still doesn t change the fact that they re going to hell die a final death i don t claim to know whether or not there is an afterlife of some sort but if hell is as you described final death and not eternal perpetuation of consciousness it will be true that there will never be a moment when i am aware of my non existence assuming i go to hell and not to heaven in other words i ll never know i m dead hmmm hell doesn t have to be worse than earth to be hell because it s eternal ever hear people say of a loved one who was ill and has died at least she s not suffering any more she s in heaven now consider the following statement at least she s not suffering any more she s in hell now the above statement sounds odd but according to your definition of hell it would be a true statement the person in hell would not be suffering granted they wouldn t be anything wouldn t be having any conscious experience whatsoever you say hell death is eternal however this loses its meaning to a dead person and to me it seems that the threat of some sort of eternal punishment only makes sense has force if one expects to be conscious throughout this eternity many atheists believe that the thirst for an afterlife is simply the product of propaganda friend do you want the free gift of e ternal life it s my understanding that the early jews did not believe in an afterlife can anyone back me up on this combined with the survival instinct all animals share the difference is we have consciousness and once we get the idea of eternal life drilled into our brains we then desire a sort of super survival and it s a lot worse than heaven that s the only comparison that matters that would depend on what heaven is like if god is a king and an eternity in heaven consists of giving thanks and praise to the king i might opt for hell i read a lovely account of a missionary trying to convert eskimos to christianity in the book the illusion of immortality by corliss lamont the missionary started to speak about heaven are there seals in heaven will we be able to go hunting asked an eskimo the missionary said no the group of eskimos then said something to the effect of well what good is your heaven if there s no hunting scram i highly recommend the above book ioi to anyone who wants an account of the other side of the immortality coin that there is no immortality alan terlep incestuous vituperousness oakland university rochester mi atterlep vela acs oakland edu melissa eggertsen rushing in where angels fear to tread pax dana
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr athos rutgers edu caralv caralv auto trol com carol alvin writes vbv r d eeap cwru edu virgilio dean b velasco jr writes no imo mr stowell missed the point we affirm the absolutes of scripture not because we are arrogant moralists but because we believe in god who is truth who has revealed his truth in his word and therefore we hold as precious the strategic importance of those absolutes mr stowell seems to have jumped rather strangely from truth to absolutes i don t see how that necessarily follows are all truths also absolutes is all of scripture truths and therefore absolutes if the answer to either of these questions is no then perhaps you can explain to me how you determine which parts of scripture are truths and which truths are absolutes the answer to both questions is yes all scripture is true being inspired by god the evidence for this claim has been discussed ad nauseum in this group similarly all truth is absolute indeed a non absolute truth is a contradiction in terms when is something absolute when it is always true obviously if a truth is not always true then we have a contradiction in terms many people claim that there are no absolutes in the world such a statement is terribly self contradictory let me put it to you this way if there are no absolutes shouldn t we conclude that the statement there are no absolutes is not absolutely true obviously we have a contradiction here this is just one of the reasons why christians defy the world by claiming that there are indeed absolutes in the universe there is hardly consensus even in evangelical christianity not to mention the rest of christianity regarding biblical interpretation so people sometimes disagree about what is true this does not negate the fact however that there are still absolutes in the universe moreover evangelical christianity at least still professes to believe in certain truths man is sinful man needs salvation and jesus is the propitiation for mankind s sins to name a few any group that does not profess to believe these statements cannot be accurately called evangelical virgilio dean velasco jr department of electrical eng g and applied physics cwru graduate student roboticist in training and q wannabee bullwinkle that man s intimidating a referee my boss is a not very well he doesn t look like one at all jewish carpenter
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re prodigal son the parable of the prodigal son is not about who is and who isn t an immoral person it is about grace and the love of god most people would agree with that concerning the younger son the elder son is simply a negative example of the some thing he thinks that he must earn his father s love that he has earned it that he is entitled to it his father tells him that he is on the wrong track he has always been loved for the same reason his brother has always been he is his father s son we are too performance oriented to consistently get the point we are willing to be saved by grace but once we are christians we want to go back to earning and deserving are you so foolish after beginning with the spirit are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort gal niv stan armstrong religious studies dept saint mary s university halifax n s armstrong husky stmarys ca att clyde watmath water dalcs armstrng
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re did he really rise in article apr athos rutgers edu emery tc fluke com john emery writes the one single historic event that has had the biggest impact on the world over the centuries is the resurrection of jesus at the same time it is one of the most hotly contested topics did jesus christ really rise from the dead since the eyewitnesses are no longer living we have only their written accounts because of the magnitude of significance involved here either the resurrection is the greatest event in the history of man or the greatest deception played on man massive amounts of data deleted john while i will not take the time to rebut you point by point i will suggest three current works which i think will be helpful in your quest to answer this question john dominic crossan professor of religion at de paul univ the cross that spoke harper and row pub also his latest work the historical jesus the life of a mediterranean jewish peasant harper and row pub also two works of burton mack professor of new testament at the claremont graduate school a myth of innocence fortress press and his latest book the lost gospel the book of q and christian origins harper and row you might start with mack s book on q and then examine the others afterward however i think that once you do that you will see that your evidence is not as sturdy as you d like most of the tired arguements you stated assume eyewitness accounts such is not the case but anyway look at mack and crossan and then get back to us randy
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re did he really rise in article apr athos rutgers edu luomat alleg edu timothy j luoma writes in article apr athos rutgers edu suppose you were part of the christian consipracy which was going to tell people that christ had risen never mind the stoning the being burned alive the possible crucifixion let s just talk about a scourging the whip that would be used would have broken pottery metal bone and anything else that they could find attached to it you would be stood facing a wall with nothing to protect you scream out in agony that your raw back was being torn at again you would say to yourself all this for a lie and you had more coming at the third hit you would scream out that it was all a lie beg for them to stop and tell them that you would swear on your life that it had all been a lie if they would only stop no one was ever flogged beaten burned fed to the lions or killed in any other way because of a belief in the resurrection sorry to disappoint you the idea of resurrection is one which can be found in a host of different forms in the religions of antiquity the problem was not the resurrection which was a mediorce issue for a tiny fragment of the jewish population the saducees but was a non issues for everyone else the real problem was that christians were pacifist and preached there was only one god when the state operates by a system of divinitation of the emperor monotheism becomes a capital offense the jews were able to get exemption from this and were also not evangelistic christians were far more vocal and gentile and hence dangerous and were therefore targets of persecution also since christians were a relatively powerless group they made good scapegoats as is seen by nero s blaming them for the burning of rome let s not cloud the issues with the resurrection randy i agree with you that christians were not persecuted specifically because they believed in resurrection however the beliefs that did cause trouble were dependent on belief in the resurrection of jesus of course the problem with it is that there are alternatives other than a great conspiracy the most common theory among non christians scholars seems to be that the resurrection was a subjective event in effect a delusion clh
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eternity of hell was re hell our moderator writes i m inclined to read descriptions such as the lake of fire as indicating annihilation however that s a minority view it s my personal view but the only denominations i know of that hold it officially are the jw s and sda s i can t find the reference right now but didn t c s lewis speculate somewhere that hell might be the state of once having been a human soul
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summer program does anyone know any good decipleship trainning program during min august to end of sept or any missionary programs i currently belong to the missionary alliance church in oregon please reply by mail thanks luom storm cs orst edu
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re can sin block our prayers mike boulder snsc unr edu mike mccormick writes not honoring our wives can cause our prayers to be hindered you husbands likewise live with your wives in an understanding way as with a weaker vessel since she is a woman and grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life so that your prayers may not be hindered i peter one interpretation i ve heard of this verse is that it refers to the sin of physically abusing one s wife the husband is usually physically stronger than his wife but is not permitted to use this to dominate her he must honor her as his sister in christ this would therefore be an example of a specific sin that blocks prayer this verse also makes me think of the kind of husband who decides what is god s will for his family without consulting his wife god reveals his will to both the husband and the wife there needs to be some degree of mutuality in decision making even those whose understanding of the bible leads to a belief in an authoritarian headship of the husband need to incorporate this in order to have a functional family one way to look at it is that god speaks to the wife through the husband and to the husband through the wife jayne kulikauskas jayne mmalt guild org
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atheist s views on christianity was re accepting jeesus in your heart eric damien was presenting his views on christianity i ll respond to a few of his points in article apr athos rutgers edu gsu uxa ecn bgu edu eric molas writes firstly i am an atheist i am not posting here as an immature flame start but rather to express an opinion to my intended audience strong opinions start here the human being is an animal who has due to his her advanced mental facilities developed religion as a satisfiable solution to explain the unexplainable for example the ancient greeks believed that apollo drove his chariot across the sky each day was real due to the advancement of our technology we know this to be false this is certainly a valid objection to religion as explanation of nature fortunately for the convenience of us believers there is a class of questions that can never be reduced away by natural science for example why does the universe exist at all after all the time space world didn t have to exist why does anything exist and is it possible for persons e g man to come into being out of a purely impersonal cosmos these questions which look at the real mysteries of life the creation of the world and of persons provide a permanent indicator that the meaning of life in the material world can only be found outside that world in its source we are just animals we need sleep food and we reproduce and we die religion especially christianity is nothing more than a drug some people use drugs as an escape from reality christians inject themselves with jeezus and live with that high when you say that man is only an animal i have to think that you are presenting an unprovable statement a dogma if you will and one the requires a kind of faith too by taking such a hard line in your atheism you may have stumbled into a religion of your own but before you write off all christianity as phony and shallow i hope you ll do a little research into its history and varieties perhaps by reading paul johnson s a history of christianity from your remarks it seems that you have been exposed to certain types of christian religion and not others even an atheist should have enough faith in man to know that a movement of years has to have some depth and be animated by some enduring values with best wishes richard aquinas chonak norris mit edu usenet addict intp i have very exclusive and nuanced opinions license info available on request
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr athos rutgers edu dleonar andy bgsu edu pixie writes pardon me a humble atheist but exactly what is the difference between holding a revealed truth with blind faith as its basis i e regardless of any evidence that you may find to the contrary as an absolute truth fully expecting people to believe you and arrogance they sound like one and the same to me i see no wisdom whatsoever in your words i m not surprised that you see no wisdom in them that is because your premises are wrong from the word go you claim that christianity is based on blind faith but this simply is not so just look at the current thread on the evidence for jesus resurrection for evidence that jesus was real and that he triumphed over death furthermore you say that christians hold to their beliefs regardless of any evidence that you may find to the contrary without any evidence to support your claim this statement is little more than an ad hominem argument mind you i don t mean this as a personal attack i m merely pointing out the intellectual dishonesty behind condemning christianity in this fashion it would make much more sense if you could prove that all christians do base their belief on empty nothings and that they do ignore all evidence to the contrary only then can you expect your attack to make sense virgilio dean velasco jr department of electrical eng g and applied physics cwru graduate student roboticist in training and q wannabee bullwinkle that man s intimidating a referee my boss is a not very well he doesn t look like one at all jewish carpenter
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re prophecy on nyc marka travis csd harris com mark ashley writes in soc religion christian you write regarding david wilkerson s prophecies while i m not real sure of his credibility i do remember a book he wrote called a vision or something like that he made a prediction that people who bought gold would be hurt financially at the time gold was up to about now it is less than half that this prediction stuck in my mind because a lot of people where i worked were buying gold note that the above type of prediction does not require a god to be made an expert in a field can also predict things based on experience beware of predictions like the volcano will erupt tomorrow don t follow the preacher because of such statements that come true note also that if i m describing a hypothetical death of a friend as a result of his passion for fast motorcycles i might say his mother predicted he would die of course his father may have said he ll make good money because of his hobby and depending upon the final outcome of the situation i end up mentioning the one that s relevant a reader down the road will get the impression that the mother or father had predicted accurately the event when it was just a casual statement finally on prophesies note that there are many prophesies that can be fulfilled my people often to fool believers if i say beware the terminal will unexpectedly be shut off and then after secs i turn it off or have someone come out from another room and do it there was no prediction a similar situation arises with the establishment of the jewish state while pressing for it prominent jews argued that it was predicted that they d have a state again and that the time has come i ve read this somewhere but can t think of the source if you can please let me know in this case the establishment of the state does not really fulfill the prophesy since the prophesy was used in order to push for the establishment of the state deciding what was truely a fulfillment of prophesy is very tricky leo my mother wanted to save herself until marriage every leonidas hepis day i thank god that she didn t because without pre marital sex i would never have been born premarital lhep ltd uhura sex what a beautiful choice greg weeks cc rochester edu
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rfd soc religion islam ahmadiyya moderated dear netters a new religious newsgroup soc religion islam ahmadiyya was pro posed on oct the discussion about this new proposed newsgroup went on in various related groups the proposal was supposed to enter a vote during the last week of november due to a false call for votes by some opponent the voting had to be canceled i quote here a statement from the moderator of new announce newgroups the current call for votes cfv for an ahmadiyya newsgroup is being canceled a new call for votes will be issued within a few weeks possibly with a new impartial vote taker discus sion on the proposal is still open until the new vote is called by lawrence nov a lot of confusion arose among the netter as to whom to vote therefore it was decided to give a cool down period so that all confusions are over it has been over months of that instant and now we are again attempting to create this newsgroup a fresh rfd is hereby being issued please take part in the discussion under the same title heading and in news groups or at least cross post it to news groups request for discussion name of proposed newsgroup soc religion islam ahmadiyya charter a religious newsgroup which would mainly discuss the be liefs teachings philosophy and ideologies of all major reli gions of the world as they exist to foster better religious knowledge and understanding among followers of all religions as they share common basis this newsgroup will be devoted to build a peaceful mutual understanding of the ahmadiyya branch of islam its peacefull beliefs ideology and philosophy and how it is different from other branches of islam in fostering world peace and developing better understanding among religious people it may also be used to post important religious events within the world wide ahmadiyya islamic community in general purpose of the group the following are some of the main purposes this group will achieve i to discuss the common beliefs of all major religions as they relate to ahmadiyya muslim community ii to discuss the doctrines origin and teachings of this puissant spiritual force on earth iii to examine islamic teachings and beliefs in general in light of the quran and established islamic traditions of centuries from ahmadiyya perspective iv to discuss the similarities between ahmadi muslims and people of other religions of the world and discuss how religious tolerance and respect to other s faiths can be brought about to eliminate inter religion rivalries and hatred among people of religions v to discuss the origin and teachings of all religions in general and islamic and ahmadiyya muslims in particular to foster better understanding among ahmadi muslims and other religious people vi to discuss current world problems and solution to these problems as offered by religion vii to exchange important news and views about the ahmadiyya muslim community and other religions viii to add diversity in the religious newsgroups present on usenet ix to discuss why religious persecution is on the rise in the world and find solutions to remedy the ever deter iorating situation in the world in general and in the islamic world in particular x to discuss the contributions of founders of all reli gions and their people for humanity society and world peace in general and by the international ahmadiyya mus lim community in particular type the group will be moderated for orderly and free religious dialo gue the moderation will not prevent disagreement or dissent to beliefs but will mainly be used to prevent derogatory squalid use of dialect and irrelevant issues the moderators have been decided through personal e mail and through a general consensus among the proponants by discussion in news groups the following moderators have been proposed and agreed upon moderator nabeel a rana rana rintintin colorado edu co moderator dr tahir ijaz ijaz ccu umanitoba ca a brief description about ahmadiyya islam the ahmadiyya movement in islam an international organi sation was founder in in qadian india the founder of this sect hazrat mirza ghulam ahmad proclaimed to be the promised reformer of this age as foretold in almost all the major religions of the world today islam christianity judiasm hin duism he claimed to be the long awaited second comming of jesus christ metaphorically the muslim mahdi and the promised messiah he claimed that the prophecies contained in almost all the great religions of the world about the advent of a messenger from god have been fulfilled the claims hazrat ahmad raised storms of hostility and extreme oposition from many priestlike people of muslims chris tians jews and hindus of that age such opposition is often wit nessed in the history of divine reformers even today this sect is being persecuted specially in some of the muslim regimes dispite the opposition and persecution this sect has won many adherents in countries it has over million followers who come from a diverse ethnic and cultural background the sect is devoted to world peace and in bringing about a better understanding of religion and the founders of all reli gions its mission is to unite mankind into one universal broth erhood and develop a better understanding of faith ahmadi muslims have always been opposed to all kind of violence and spe cially religious intollerance and fundamentalism among its many philanthropic activities the sect has es tablished a network of hundreds of schools hospitals and clin ics in many third world countries these institutions are staffed by volunteer professional and are fully financed by the sect s internal resources the ahmadiyya mission is to bring about a universal moral reform establish peace and justice and to unite mankind under one universal religion newsgroup creation when the call for votes is called the discussion will officially end voting will be held for about three weeks if the group gets rd majority and more yes create votes than no don t create votes the group shall be created any questions or comments may be included in the discussion or directly sent to rana rintintin colorado edu
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re the arrogance of christians in a previous article dleonar andy bgsu edu pixie says do the words question authority mean anything to you i defy any theist to reply well despite what my mother told me about accepting dares here goes you have to be very careful about what you mean by question authority taken literally it is nonsense that which is authoratative is authoratative and to say i question to word of this authority is ridiculous if it is open to question it isn t an authority on the other hand it is perfectly reasonable to question whether something is an authority the catch phrase here should be authenticate authority once you have authenticated your authority you must believe what it says or you are not treating it as an authority the difficulty is that authenticating an authority is not easy you can perhaps discredit a claim to authority by showing logical inconsistency in what it teaches or by showing that it does not obey its own rules of discourse but the fact that i cannot discredit something does not in inself accredit it nor does the fact that i can convince myself and other that i have discredited something necessarilly mean that it is false i cannot accredit an authority by independantly verifying its teachings because if i can independantly verify its teachings i don t need an authority i need an authority only when there is information i need which i cannot get for myself thus if i am to authenticate an authority i must do it by some means other than by examining its teachings in practical matters we accept all kinds of authorities because we don t have time to rediscover fundamental knowledge for ourselves every scientist woring today assumes on the authority of the scintific community all sorts of knowledge which is necessary to his work but which he has not time to verify for himself in spiritual matters we accept authority because we have no direct source ofinformation we select our authorities based on various criteria i am a catholic in part because the historical claims of the rc church seem the strongest without authorities there would be no subject matter for belief unless we simply made something up for ourselves as many do the atheist position seems to be that there are no authorities this is a reasonable assertion in itself but it leads to a practical difficulty if you reject all authority out of hand you reject all possibility of every receiving information thus the atheist position can never possibly change it is non falsifiable and therefore unscintific to demand scintific or rational proof of god s existence is to deny god s existence since neither science nor reason can in their very nature prove anything mark baker the task is not to cut down jungles but aa freenet carleton ca to irrigate deserts c s lewis
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re pantheism environmentalism in article apr athos rutgers edu heath athena cs uga edu terrance heath writes i realize i m entering this discussion rather late but i do have one question wasn t it a reagan appointee james watt a pentacostal christian i think who was the secretary of the interior who saw no problem with deforestation since we were living in the last days and ours would be the last generation to see the redwoods anyway i heard the same thing but without confirmation that he actually said it it was just as alarming to us as to you the bible says that nobody knows when the second coming will take place michael a covington associate research scientist artificial intelligence programs mcovingt ai uga edu the university of georgia phone athens georgia u s a amateur radio n tmi
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re does god love you davem bnr ca dave mielke writes however god s love is qualified the bible says the way of the wicked is an abomination unto the lord but he loveth him that followeth after righteousness proverbs for the lord knoweth the way of the righteous but the way of the ungodly shall perish psalm i am extremely uncomfortable with this way of phrasing it god s love is unconditional unqualified unfathomable we are capable of rejecting god s love but he never fails to love us these verses do not show that god s love is qualified but rather that he is opposed to evil i am uncomfortable with the tract in general because there seems to be an innappropriate emphasis on hell god deserves our love and worship because of who he is i do not like the idea of frightening people into accepting christ i see evangelism as combining a way of living that shows god s love with putting into words and explaining that love preaching the gospel without living the gospel is no better than being a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal here s a question how many of you are christians because you are afraid of going to hell how many are responding to god s love jayne kulikauskas jayne mmalt guild org
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quality of catholic liturgy jemurray magnus acs ohio state edu john e murray writes i would like the opinion of netters on a subject that has been bothering my wife and me lately liturgy in particular catholic liturgy in the last fe years it seems that there are more and more ad hoc events during mass it s driving me crazy the most grace filled aspect of a liturgical tradition is that what happens is something we all do together because we all know how do it led by the priest of course which makes it a kind of dialogue we present to god but the best masses i ve been to were participatory prayers on the one hand there are advantages to having the liturgy stay the same john has described some of these on the other hand some people seem to start tuning out the same old words and pay attention better when things get changed around i think innovative priests and liturgy committees are trying to get our attention and make things more meaningful for us it drives me crazy too different people have differing preferences and needs in liturgy my local parish is innovative i prefer to go to mass at the next parish over sometimes we don t have the option of attending a mass in the style which best suits us john put a smiley on it but to just offer it up probably is the solution a related issue that it sounds like john does not have to deal with is that spouses may have different liturgical tastes my husband does like innovative litury it is a challenge to meet both of our spiritual needs without just going our separate ways when you include the factor of also trying to satisfy our children s needs things get pretty complicated one thing to remember is that even the most uncongenial mass is still mass jayne kulikauskas jayne mmalt guild org
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accepting jeesus in your heart gsu uxa ecn bgu edu eric molas writes firstly i am an atheist i am not posting here as an immature flame start but rather to express an opinion to my intended audience deleted we are just animals we need sleep food and we reproduce and we die i am glad that i am not an atheist it seems tragic that some people choose a meaningless existence how terrible to go on living only because one fears death more than life i feel so sorry for eric and yet any attempts to share my joy in life with him would be considered as further evidence of the infectious nature of christianity as a christian i am free to be a human person i think love choose and create i will live forever with god christ is not a kind of drug drugs are a replacement for christ those who have an empty spot in the god shaped hole in their hearts must do something to ease the pain this is why the most effective substance abuse recovery programs involve meeting peoples spiritual needs thank you eric for your post it has helped me to appreciate how much god has blessed me i hope that you will someday have a more joy filled and abundant life jayne kulikauskas jayne mmalt guild org
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re every lent he suffers to save us the story i related is one of the seven apparitions approved by our church as worthy of belief it happened in la salle france the moral lesson of the story is the lamb of god has been sacrificed and his blood has been used to cleanse us of our sins every moment as god perceives worthy of being done in heaven mary weeps for the lamb and for the rest of her offsprings this will continue while we disobey god or sin against him mary as a messenger has been given the task to make us be aware of the evil serpent communism wars famine unfaithful disobedience to god etc running after the rest of her offsprings the children who went astray by disobedience led by the dragon is brought back by her peace and loving messages reparations for sins to obey god s commandments and be more worthy to be in the presence of the lamb as she was conceived without sin to be worthy of bearing the son of god in her womb mary has been preparing us the church the body of christ for his second coming making sure we are protected from the dragon also she has been preparing the new eden by reversing the deed of the ancient eve the new eden will be the sanctuary of the righteous as judged by christ in his next coming i relate the story again i believe this and mary in one of her apparitions in th or th century she appeared to these two children who tends goats and cows i forgot the exact place she was weeping and telling the children that she is afraid she s going to lose her son s arm she is mourning too for these townfolks because it was their fault that there would be drought in their harvest not much good food again this year as it was last year mary tells the children most of the townfolks in this place worked whole week even on sundays when they should be in church honoring god these townfolks swears and uses her son s name in bad words that is why her son s arm is so heavy in pain then she asked them if they pray the children said hardly she asked them to pray every morning and night when the children went back from work they had to tell somebody about this when the news was spred and after thorough investigation of the incident the townfolks were converted and faith and obedience to god were restored in their community once again the lamb succeeds marida spreading god s words through actions mother teresa
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re atheist s views on christianity was re accepting jeesus in your heart norris athena mit edu writes this is certainly a valid objection to religion as explanation of nature fortunately for the convenience of us believers there is a class of questions that can never be reduced away by natural science for example why does the universe exist at all must there be a why to this i ask because of what you also assume about god namely that he just exists with no why to his existence so the question is reversed why can t we assume the universe just exists as you assume god to just exist why must there be a why to the universe after all the time space world didn t have to exist why does anything exist and is it possible for persons e g man to come into being out of a purely impersonal cosmos these questions which look at the real mysteries of life the creation of the world and of persons provide a permanent indicator that the meaning of life in the material world can only be found outside that world in its source it may be that one day man not only can create life but can also create man now i don t see this happening in my lifetime nor do i assert it is probable but the possibility is there given scientists are working hard at decoding out genetic code to perhaps help cure disease of a genetic variation again though must there be why or a divine prupose to man s existence when you say that man is only an animal i have to think that you are presenting an unprovable statement a dogma if you will and one the requires a kind of faith too by taking such a hard line in your atheism you may have stumbled into a religion of your own as far as we can tell man falls into the mammal catagory now if there were something more to the man say a soul then we have yet to find evidence of such but as it is now man is a mammal babies are born live mother gives milk we re warm blooded etc as other mammals are and is similar in genetic construction to some of them in particular primates for more on this check out talk origins but before you write off all christianity as phony and shallow i hope you ll do a little research into its history and varieties perhaps by reading paul johnson s a history of christianity from your remarks it seems that you have been exposed to certain types of christian religion and not others even an atheist should have enough faith in man to know that a movement of years has to have some depth and be animated by some enduring values well then buddhism confucianism taoism hinduism judaism zoerasterism shintoism and islam should fit this bit of logic quite nicely all have depth all have enduring values thus all must be true stephen atheist libertarian pro individuality pro responsibility jr and all that jazz
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weirdness of early christians halsall murray fordham edu paul halsall writes but recently i read peter brown s body and society it is very well researched and well written but is raises some very upsetting questions the early christians were weird even more so than today s carzy fundies they had odd views on sex odder views on the body totally ludicrous views about demons and distinctly uncharitable views about other human beings if possible last i heard it was out of print but they were considering reprinting read barbara hambly s search the seven hills it is historical fiction set in rome at the time of the early church she captures the weirdness of the early christians and yet gives glimpses of the holiness too some of their odd views make a lot more sense in the context of the society they lived in i found it a remarkably positive view of christianity considering that the author is not a christian herself another plus is that each chapter begins with an original source quote so that it makes a good starting point for serious research jayne kulikauskas jayne mmalt guild org
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr athos rutgers edu dleonar andy bgsu edu pixie wrote in article apr athos rutgers edu vbv r d eeap cwru edu virgilio dean b velasco jr wrote we affirm the absolutes of scripture not because we are arrogant moralists but because we believe in god who is truth who has revealed his truth in his word and therefore we hold as precious the strategic importance of those absolutes pardon me a humble atheist but exactly what is the difference between holding a revealed truth with blind faith as its basis i e regardless of any evidence that you may find to the contrary as an absolute truth fully expecting people to believe you and arrogance if you would bother to check in any good dictioanry or thesaurus i think you will find that arrogance has to do with an offensive exhibition of presumed or real superiority a paraphrase from my own webster s arrognace is about pride and haughtiness a person can believe in absolute truth even blindly whatever that means without being obnoxious about it just as a person can be a humble authority questioning defying any theist to reply athiest and be quite arrogant arrogance is not about what you believe it is about how you relate to what you believe and how you present it to others if your overwhelming experience of christians has been that they are arrogant i apologozing both for myself and on the behalf of those who have offfended you but my own experience at least in forums like usenet where you see a good mix of people is that arrogant christians and athiests seems to occur in about equal numbers phil hey we re talking about the phone company here the phone company doesn t have opinions on this kind of stuff this is all me
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greek wordprocessor database hi there does anyone know about any greek database word processor that can do things like count occurrences of a word letter et al i m posting this up for a friend who studies greek thanks nico p s can you email as i seldom look into usenet nowadays nicodemus chan raffles hall nus kent ridge cres department of information systems singapore tel computer science hometown address national university of singapore nanyang estate jinjang north kent ridge crescent kuala lumpur malaysia singapore e mail isc nusunix nus sg channico iscs nus sg call unto me and i will answer you and show thee great and unsearchable things you do not know jeremiah
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re did he really rise mcovingt aisun ai uga edu michael covington writes nobody ever displayed the dead body of jesus even though both the jewish and the roman authorities would have gained a lot by doing so it would have discredited the christians it is told in the gospels that the pharisees sp and scribes bribed the roman soldiers to say that the diciples stole his body in the night good enough excuse for the jewish and roman objectives of that day clator lbutler hubcap clemson edu
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johnny hart s b c comic strip mailing address subject pretty much says it all i m looking for johnny hart s creator of the b c comic stip mailing address for those of you who haven t seen them take a look at his strips for good friday and easter sunday remarkable witness if anyone can help me get in touch with him i d really appreciate it i ve contacted the paper that carries his strip and they ll get back to me with it thanks for your help dave arndt st peter s evangelical lutheran church st peter mn darndt nic gac edu
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr athos rutgers edu mhsu lonestar utsa edu melinda hsu writes belief that their faith is total truth according to them their beliefs come from the bible and the bible is the word of god and god is truth thus they know the truth this stance makes it difficult to discuss other faiths with them and my own hesitations about christianity because they see no other way their way is the truth but i see their faith arising from a willful choice to believe a particular way that choice is part faith and part reason but it seems to me a choice my discussions with some christians remind me of schoolyard discussions when i was in grade school a kid would say all policemen are jerks i d ask how do you know because my daddy told me so how do you know you re daddy is right he says he s always right well the argument usually stops right there in the end aren t we all just kids groping for the truth if so do we have the authority to declare all other beliefs besides our own as false i find this argument very strange though not unfamiliar an analogy someone used a while back can perhaps illustrate it say for example there are people living on a volcanic island and a group of geologists determine that a volcano is imminent they warn the people on the island that they are in danger and should leave a group of people on the island is given the task of warning others of the danger they believe the danger is real but others may not does that mean that the first group are necessarily arrogant in warning others of the danger does it mean that they are saying that their beliefs are correct and all others are false some might indeed react to opposition with arrogance and behave in an arrogant manner but that is a personal idiocyncracy it does not necessarily mean that they are all arrogant steve hayes department of missiology editorial department univ of south africa p o box pretoria south africa internet hayesstw risc unisa ac za steve hayes p f n z fidonet org stephen hayes f n z fidonet org
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conversions on apr in environmentalism and paganism user michael covington aisun writes i would like to see christians devote a bit less effort to bashing paganism and more to figuring out how to present the gospel to pagans christ is the answer the pagans have a lot of the right questions unlike materialists who deny the need for any spirituality and what of those of us who already have answers to their questions without turning to christianity or in my case any religion whay right do you have to presume to lecture me about what i should believe david hunt
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does god love you i simply wish to thank dave mielke dave bnr ca for sharing the tract concerning god s love it was most welcome to me and a great source of comfort carol bocher
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re quality of catholic liturgy in article apr athos rutgers edu jemurray magnus acs ohio state edu john e murray writes example last sunday palm sunday we went to the local church usually on palm sunday the congregation participates in reading the passion taking the role of the mob the theology behind this seems profound when we say crucify him we mean it we did it and if he came back today we d do it again it always gives me chills but last week we were invited to sit during the gospel passion and listen besides the orwellian invitation on palm sunday at our parish we were invited to take the role of jesus in the passion i declined to participate last year at the liturgy meeting i pointed out how we crucify christ by our sins so therefore it is appropriate that we retain the role of the crowd but to no avail musicians readers and so on new things are introduced in the course of the liturgy and since no one knows what s happening the new things have to be explained and pretty soon instead of doing a lot of the mass we re just sitting there listening or spacing out in my case to how the mass is about to be done in my mind i lay the blame on liturgy committees made up of lay experts but that may not be just i do think that a liturgy committee has a bias toward doing something rather than nothing that s just a fact of bureaucratic life even though a simpler liturgy may in fact make it easier for people to be aware of the lord s presence as a member of a liturgy committee i can tell you that the problem is certain people dominating who want to try out all kinds of innovations the priests don t seem even to want to make any decisions of their own in many cases i guess it s easier to try something new than it is to refuse to allow it at our parish on holy thursday instead of the priests washing feet who wants to get around people s feet according to one of our priests the congregation was invited to come up and help wash one another s hands the symbolism of this action distressed me and again i refused to participate i thought that if we were to have to come up with rubrics for this liturgical action i e body of christ amen for receiving communion that they could be i am not responsible for the blood of this man also for part of the eucharistic prayer blessed are you god of all creation was substituted some text read by a lay couple the priest certainly should not have given this part of the mass over to others and i was so disturbed that i declined to receive communion that night we aren t required to anyway i instead offered up prayers for our priests and parish so we ve been wondering are we the oddballs or is the quality of the mass going down i don t mean that facetiously we go to mass every thursday or friday and are reminded of the power of a very simple liturgy to make us aware of god s presence but as far as the obligatory sunday masses maybe i should just offer it up has anyone else noticed declining congregational participation in catholic masses lately the quality of the mass has not changed again if it were to be celebrated according to the rubrics set down by the church it would still be liturgically beautiful the problem comes about from people trying to be creative who are not i think the answer to your question on participation could be that given by father peter stravinskas in answer to the question posed by the title of thomas day s why catholics can t sing they don t want to because of all this nonsense by the way for any non catholics reading this the problem does not reflect bad liturgy by the catholic church but by those who are disobedient to the church in changing it on their own authority steve creps indiana university creps lateran ucs indiana edu
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certainty and arrogance dean velasco quoted a letter from james m stowell president of moody bible institute the other day i was at the dry cleaner and the radio was playing it caught my attention because a talk show guest was criticizing evangelical christians saying we believe in absolutes and think we are the only ones who know what the absolutes are we affirm the absolutes of scripture not because we are arrogant moralists but because we believe in god who is truth who has revealed his truth in his word and therefore we hold as precious the strategic importance of those absolutes there has been a lot of discussion but so far nobody seems to have hit on exactly what the criticism of arrogance is aimed at the arrogance being attacked is that we think we are the only ones who know what the absolutes are in short many evangelicals claim that they are infallible on the matter of religious texts in particular the problem is one of epistemology as a shorthand you can think of epistemology as how do you know that question it turns out is a very troubling one the problem with absolute certainty is that at the bottom at least some of the thinking goes on inside your own head unless you can be certain that everything which happens in your head is infallible the reasoning you did to discover a source of truth is in question and that means you do not have absolute justification for your source of authority which means you do not have absolute certainty let s take the specific example of biblical inerrancy and a fictional inerrantist named zeke the following arguments applies to the idea of papal infallibility too zeke has we presume spent some time studying the bible and history and several other topics he has concluded based on all these studies and possibly some religious experiences that the bible is a source of absolute truth he may be correct but even if he is he cannot be certain that he is correct his conclusion depends on how well he studied history he may have made mistakes and the references he used may have contained mistakes his conclusion depends on how well he studied the bible he may have made mistakes his conclusion depends on his own reasoning and he may have made mistakes noticing a common thread yet everything about his study of the world that he did everything that happened in his own head is limited by his own thinking no matter what he does to try and cover his mistakes he can never be certain of his own infallibility as long as any part of the belief is based on his own reasoning that belief cannot be considered absolutely certain zeke believes that he has found a source of absolute truth but that belief is only as good as the quality of the search he made for it unless he can say that his own reasoning is flawless his conclusions are in doubt any belief that you hold about absolute sources of truth depends in part on your own thinking there is no way out of the loop only an infallible thinker can have absolute certainty in all his beliefs this is easy to demonstrate let s go back to our shorthand method of doing epistemology how do you know imagine a hypothetical discussion a the bible is a source of absolute truth b how do you know a i studied history and the bible and religious writings and church teachings and came to this conclusion b how do you know you studied history correctly a well i double checked everything b how do you know you double checked correctly a well i compared my answers with some smart people and we agreed b just because some smart guy believes something that doesn t mean it is true how do you know they studied it correctly a and as you see b will eventually get a to the point where he has to say i can t prove that there are no mistakes and as long as you may have made a mistake then you cannot be absolutely certain there is no way out of the loop this is where the arrogance of christians arises many people believe that their own personal research can give them absolute certainty about the doctrines of christianity they are implicitly claiming that they are infallible and that there is no possibility of mistake claiming that you cannot have made a mistake and that your thinking has led you to a flawless conclusion is pretty arrogant people who want to see this argument explained in great detail should try to find the infallibility of the church by george salmon he is attacking the idea that the pope can be knowably infallible and he does so very well but the general argument applies equally well to the idea that the bible is knowably inerrant darren f provine kilroy gboro rowan edu at the core of all well founded belief lies belief that is unfounded ludwig wittgenstein
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re the arrogance of christians vbv r d eeap cwru edu virgilio dean b velasco jr writes in article apr athos rutgers edu caralv caralv auto trol com carol alvin writes are all truths also absolutes is all of scripture truths and therefore absolutes if the answer to either of these questions is no then perhaps you can explain to me how you determine which parts of scripture are truths and which truths are absolutes the answer to both questions is yes perhaps we have different definitions of absolute then to me an absolute is something that is constant across time culture situations etc true in every instance possible do you agree with this definition i think you do similarly all truth is absolute indeed a non absolute truth is a contradiction in terms when is something absolute when it is always true obviously if a truth is not always true then we have a contradiction in terms a simple example in the new testament sorry i don t have a bible at work and can t provide a reference women are instructed to be silent and cover their heads in church now this is scripture by your definition this is truth and therefore absolute do women in your church speak do they cover their heads if all scripture is absolute truth it seems to me that women speaking in and coming to church with bare heads should be intolerable to evangelicals yet clearly women do speak in evangelical churches and come with bare heads at least this was the case in the evangelical churches i grew up in evangelicals are clearly not taking this particular part of scripture to be absolute truth and there are plenty of other examples can you reconcile this many people claim that there are no absolutes in the world such a statement is terribly self contradictory let me put it to you this way if there are no absolutes shouldn t we conclude that the statement there are no absolutes is not absolutely true obviously we have a contradiction here i don t claim that there are no absolutes i think there are very few though and determining absolutes is difficult this is just one of the reasons why christians defy the world by claiming that there are indeed absolutes in the universe there is hardly consensus even in evangelical christianity not to mention the rest of christianity regarding biblical interpretation so people sometimes disagree about what is true this does not negate the fact however that there are still absolutes in the universe but you are claiming that all of scripture is absolute how can you determine absolutes derived from scripture when you can t agree how to interpret the scripture it s very difficult to see how you can claim something which is based on your own interpretation is absolute do you deny that your own background education prejudices etc come into play when you read the bible and determine how to interpret a passsage do you deny that you in fact interpret carol alvin caralv auto trol com
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re prayer in jesus name according to what i have read on biblical idioms speaking in x s name is a standard aramaic hebrew legal idiom for what we today would call power of attorney a person from jesus culture authorized to conduct business in john s name had full authority over john s financial affairs but was held under a solemn fiduciary obligation to work only for john s benefit and consonant with john s wishes it was not required for the steward to preface each business transaction with in john s name it was sufficient to have valid power of attorney and be operating in good faith note the overlap here between legal and religious definitions of faith with this cultural background praying in jesus name does not mandate a particular verbal formula rather it requires that the petitioner be operating faithfully and consciously within an analogous fiduciary relationship with jesus and for the purposes of his kingdom the message of praying in jesus name is thus closely aligned with the parable of the talents and other passages about god s delegation of kingdom business to his stewards both resources and responsibilities this idea of praying in jesus name is not only present but prominent in the lord s prayer although the verbal forumula is absent the act of praying the words in jesus name may be beneficial if they cause us to clarify the relationship of our requests to the advancement of god s kingdom for that reason i m not quite ready to say that the praying the formula is without meaning prayers to god for other purposes desperation anger thanksgiving etc don t seem to be in this category at all whether uttered by christian or non christian whether b c or a d that s b c e or c e for you p c i don t see anything in christ s words to contradict the idea that god deals with all prayers according to his omniscience and grace van kelly vek research att com the above opinions are my own and not those of at t
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nature of god re environmentalism and paganism in article apr athos rutgers edu mcovingt aisun ai uga edu michael covington writes i would like to see christians devote a bit less effort to bashing paganism and more to figuring out how to present the gospel to pagans christ is the answer the pagans have a lot of the right questions unlike materialists who deny the need for any spirituality one of the things i find intersting about pagan beliefs is their belief in a feminine deity as well as a masculine deity being brought up in a christian household i often wondered if there was god the father where was the mother everyone i know who has a father usually as a mother it just seemed rather unbalanced to me fortunately my own personal theology which will probably not fall into line with a lot others recognized god as a being both without gender and posessing qualities of both genders as being both a masculine and feminine force it provides a sense of balance i find sorely lacking in most theologies a lack which i think is responsible for a lot of the unbalanced ways in which we see the world and treat each other terrance heath heath athena cs uga edu your comfort is my silence act up fight back talk back
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re accepting jeesus in your heart disclaimer throughout this post there are statements and questions which could easily be interpreted as being sarcastic they are not i have written this reply in the most even handed manner that i can with no emotions boiling to the surface as it was written please accept this as a serious attempt to foster dialog and rest assurred that i make every attempt to make fun of no one except myself gsu uxa ecn bgu edu eric molas writes firstly i am an atheist i am not posting here as an immature flame start but rather to express an opinion to my intended audience the human being is an animal who has due to his her advanced mental facilities developed religious as a satisfiable solution to explain the unexplainable hmmm there are other animals on this planet with advanced mental facilities which have not developed religion as a satisfactory explaination for the unexplained why is this so further it appears that only humans have a need to explain the unexplained why is this so the other animals on this planet including those with advanced mental facilities seem perfectly content in their ignorance i d like to point out that your presuppositions scream out at me from your unsupported statement they are humans are animal only religion exists as a crutch so that the unexplained need not be researched religion was made up by humans to address a perceived need the biological aspect of humans is deified that is all aspects of human life can be categorized in a hierarchical structure with biology at the apex needless to say i disagree with your strong opinion and the underlying presuppositions christianity is an infectious cult the reasons it flourishes are because it gives people without hope or driven purpose in life a safety blanked to hide behind oh wow all i have to do is follow this christian moral standard and i get eternal happiness for all of you found jeezus how many of you were on the brink i disagree that christianity is an infectious cult it has certainly shown itself to be persistent as a belief system in spite of various persecutions throughout the past two millenia that it continues to persevere does not demonstrate that it is infectious in a derrogatory sense it may be that it provides a workable system for its adherents and i would argue that this is the case i disagree that christianity is a safety blanket which supplants hope and purpose rather it points an individual to the one source of hope and purpose there is nothing hidden about a christian s source for hope and purpose of what usefulness to you is the distinction between internally motivated hope and purpose and externally given hope and purpose is the apparent loss of control over one s own life the problem or is it something else finally one does not appropriate eternal happiness by following christian moral standards indeed the sole reason for the existance of christianity is because standards are inadequate to save people from their imperfections moral standards are merely guides to the christian the real power to moral living is given to the christian in the person of god s spirit heaven is one of two final states that christian doctrine postulates however christians are generally not motivated to live according to christian moral standards by this promised future reward rather they are motivated by the perceived benefits to them in the here and now but i digress the other reason christianity flourishes is its infectious nature a best friend of mine breifly entered a christian group and within months they set ministry guidelines for him which basicaly said this priority spread the word many christian organizations are concerned with evangelism as a priority and rightly so for it was jesus himself who gave this as a priority for his followers however it is not the penultimate priority as evangelism is normally understood i e preach the word convert at nearly any cost repeat with new convert ad infinitum rather such evangelism is generally best done through respecting the opinions of others while demonstrating the very real benefits of a christian lifestyle this demonstration should be so powerful that it compels the non christian to seek out the christian to ask why needless to say such a demonstration is not easily accom plished it takes a radical committment to the person of jesus it does not happen quickly so perseverance on the part of the christian is required and it cannot occur where no personal bonds of friendship exist it is ineffective with strangers who cannot evaluate the demonstration over time and it is easy to alienate or harm others if the sole purpose of being a friend is to gain a conversion as a long time christian nearly years i view with some skep ticism all evangelism programs which incorporate a hurry up attitude pressured conversions may ultimately be worse than no conversion at all because the pressured convert realizes s he was coerced and disavows christianity when they would have been open to it in the future had they not been taken advantage of now the bible states that it is the very spirit of god which brings conviction of wrong doing to people i am content to do my part witness and let the spirit do the rest we are just animals we need sleep food and we reproduce and we die we are far more than animals we sleep eat reproduce and die just as other animals do true but we are also capable of more than this if your personal vision of humanity or of yourself is so limited i can only hope and pray that you will someday find a more expansive view for reflection what animals have the wide variety of performing arts that humans do how is it that humans can learn the language of other humans or animals but that other animals cannot do so how is it that humans can organize themselves in various social structures whereas other animals have only one structure religion especially christianity is nothing more than a drug blatant assertion christianity is not physically addictive christianity is not psychologically addictive christianity is not a thing which one snorts ingests shoots up it is a relationship with a living being you might as validly characterize any close knit relationship with this appelation some people use drugs as an escape from reality christians inject themselves with jeezus and live with that high there are jesus freaks who let the emotional aspects of worship and christian living gain and retain the upper hand even so this does not by itself invalidate the foundation from which these things flow it pities me how many millions of lives have been lost in religious wars of which christianity has had no small part guilty by association that christianity which forces itself upon another is not christianity at all when christians see a non believer they say that person is blind to the truth but they cannot realize that it is they who live with this mask of fakeness each day jesus was just prophet who happened to have a large influence because at that time the romans were circa ad dispersing the jewish population and communities needed some sort of cohesive element to keep them strong in that time of dire need you appear to have an amazing certainty about what really happened years ago how did you come by it i cannot accept your conclusion that jesus influence was a sole result of the roman sack of jerusalem in ad he was years gone by this time it strains the bounds of credulity to assert that nothing about jesus life was noteworthy until the sack i must go these are but a few of my thoughts on christianity christianity is having a relationship with jesus christ himself what do you know of him we read the world wrong phil buckland and say that it deceives us psb eece ksu edu tagore from stray birds psb matt ksu ksu edu
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re did he really rise in article apr athos rutgers edu reedr cgsvax claremont edu writes the real problem was that christians were pacifist and preached there was only one god when the state operates by a system of divinitation of the emperor monotheism becomes a capital offense the jews were able to get exemption from this and were also not evangelistic i disagree with your claim that jews were not evangelistic except in the narrow sense of the word jewish proselytism was widespread there are numerous accounts of jewish proselytism both in the new testament and in roman and greek documents of the day jim eggertj atc ll mit edu jim eggert
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re questions from a newbie the concept of god as a teacher is indeed interesting does he grade on a curve does he cheat that is interesting not to mention thought provoking my own concept is that he is a father and we are his children in that he loves us with a love that we can never understand until we are with him the bible says that he looks on the heart as the final measure from that perspective in a grading context the heart is the final test specifically most christians would agree that there is only one heaven and one hell from that perspective it is heaven or hell you either go to one or the other the grading on a pass fail basis is done by god the father with intervention by jesus the son not by others for only god sees the heart the bible says of the heart who can know it i would say there has always been and always be an unchanging method that is what makes a relationship with christ so secure in an uncertain and ever changing landscape he is always the same yesterday today and tomorrow concerning whether or not our childhoods are considerd as part of the test my own conviction is no were that the case i certainly wouldn t be going to heaven the bible speaks very plainly about the love and care jesus had for and about children the reality is that we are all children some of us just have bigger bodies and grey hair but the father our father is always there like most fathers he wants only the best for his own there maybe decipline but there is more love it s sometimes looks like christianity is a test to see who makes it and who doesn t those who do pass heaven and those who don t go to the other place but it is really much more than that there are few experts most of us are just travelers looking for the light and the way home praying that we can bring others with us
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re eternity of hell was re hell vic mmalt guild org vic kulikauskas writes our moderator writes i m inclined to read descriptions such as the lake of fire as indicating annihilation however that s a minority view it s my personal view but the only denominations i know of that hold it officially are the jw s and sda s i can t find the reference right now but didn t c s lewis speculate somewhere that hell might be the state of once having been a human soul why is it that we have this notion that god takes some sort of pleasure from punishing people the purpose of hell is to destroy the devil and his angels to the earlier poster who tried to support the eternal hell theory with the fact that the fallen angels were not destroyed remember the bible teaches that god has reserved them until the day of judgement their judgement is soon to come let me suggest this maybe those who believe in the eternal hell theory should provide all the biblical evidence they can find for it stay away from human theories and only take into account references in the bible darius
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re ancient books in article apr athos rutgers edu atterlep vela acs oakland edu cardinal ximenez writes i don t think it s possible to convince atheists of the validity of christianity through argument we have to help foster faith and an understanding of god i could be wrong are there any former atheists here who were led to christianity by argument this is an excellent question and i ll be anxious to see if there are any such cases i doubt it in the medieval period esp th cent when aquinas flourished argument was a useful tool because everyone knew the rules today when you can t count on people knowing even the basics of logic or seeing through rhetoric a good argument is often indistinguishable from a poor one sorry just one of my perennial gripes ken miner kuhub cc ukans edu nobody can explain everything to everybody opinions are my own g k chesterton
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sspx schism hi all hope you all had a blessed easter i have a document which i believe refutes the notion that the sspx society of saint pius x is in schism or that there has been any legitimate excommunication if anyone is interested in reading the truth about this matter please email me and i ll send them the document via email its pages long so i wont be posting it on the news group its titled neither schismatic nor excommunicated this article was originally an english translation by the society of saint pius x in ireland from the french journal courrier de rome the french article in its turn was a translation from the italian of the roman newsletter si si no no this booklet contains the transcription with some minor editing of the irish article and was transcribed and produced by john clay townsville queensland australia there is no copyright attached simon shields contents neither schismatic nor excommunicated catholics on the rack the choice of the sensus fidei ambiguity the church is not bicephalous two headed the person and the function of the pope unity of faith and unity of communion the criteria of choice ecumenism an attack on the unity of the church the extraordinary situation within the church extraordinary duties of lay people duties and powers of bishops from the fact of their greater duties from the fact of their greater power the power and the duty of the papacy the election of bishops state and right of necessity there is in the church a real state of necessity for souls for seminarians all the ordinary means have been exhausted the act itself is not intrinsically evil and there resul in the limits of effective requirements the authority of the pope is not put into question the excommunication conclusion bibliography god bless ye all an irish fairwell may the road rise to meet you may the wind be always at your back may the sun shine warm upon your face the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again may god hold you in the palm of his hand simon p shields programmer viva cristo rey monash university college gippsland ph jhs switchback rd churchill fax australia internet simon giaec cc monash edu au m j
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re easter what s in a name was re new testament double stan seanna bnr ca seanna s m watson asks what is the objection to celebration of easter the objection naturally is in the way in which you phrase it easter or eashtar or ishtar or ishtarti or other spellings is the pagan whore goddess of fertility therefore your question to me is what is the objection to celebration of the pagan whore goddess when phrased that way i suspect or at least i would hope that it becomes immeadiately apparent what my objection to celebrating her would be it is celebration of the resurrection of jesus no you are thinking perhaps of ressurection sunday i think though i m not too crazy about the word sunday but i certainly like this phrasing much better than envoking the name of the whore goddess for that matter stay biblical and call it omar rasheet the feast of first fruits torah commands that this be observed on the day following the sabbath of passover week sunday by any other name in modern parlance why is there so much objection to observing the resurrection on the st day of the week on which it actually occured why jump it all over the calendar the way easter does why not just go with the sunday following passover the way the bible has it why seek after unbiblical methods i don t recall a command in scripture for us to celebrate the resurrection but it is the sole and only reason that we are christians how could we not celebrate it so what does this question have to do with easter the whore goddess i am all for celebrating the resurrection just keep that whore out of the discussion if it is only the name which is a problem i suggest that if we are too concerned about etymology there are a lot of words we are going to have to drop as an aside some terminally pc people here in ottawa want dictionaries to be altered so that there are no negative definitions associated with the word black so as not to offend people of colour yes i have heard of your newspapers speaking of the need to repave streets with afro canadiantop grin i still think blacktop sounds better though as a short person i hope they will also remove the definition curt or surly associated with my physical description fine by me and while we are at it the left handed people are both sinister and gauche so we probably will have some objections from that quarter as well in quebec french the word for the celebration of the resurrection is pa ques this is etymologically related to pesach passover and the pascal lamb so is the french canadian mostly roman catholic celebration better because it uses the right name yes that sounds much better to me is there anyone out there would thinks that phrasing sounds worse so from this i infer that there are different rules for christians of jewish descent what happened to there is neither jew nor greek slave nor free male nor female for all are one in christ jesus read the letter to philemon now tell me was philemon s slave returned to him were there different rules upon the slave than upon philemon how about male and female are there different rules that apply to them as well or if there is no more male and female can adam and steve get married to each other in your congregation yes there are differences in form and function but the way we come to salvation in messiah remains the same no matter what our position in life i am in general not in favor of continuing this discussion as it seems repetitive but this particular point is one that i believe is new the objection is not to having a holiday but to its name i d like to suggest that people think very carefully about this argument words often change their meaning over time the days of the week are of course originally based on pagan gods some christians prefer to refer to first day second day etc however the majority of christians have not been persuaded the question seems to be whether it makes any difference what the dictionary shows as the derivation of a word if what people mean by it and think when they use it is different indeed i d like to suggest that postings like this could themselves be dangerous suppose people in general use easter to mean the celebration of christ s resurrection postings trying to convince them that they really mean a celebration in honor of some godess run the risk of creating exactly the situation that they claim to oppose they are doing their best to create a linkage in people s minds between their celebration and the pagan goddess it s not clear that this is a healthy thing clh
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end of discussion easter i just about closed this once before i m now doing so for real after tonight s posting
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easter not derived from ishtar several recent posts have identified the english word easter with the babylonian goddess ishtar easter is a pagan word all right but it has nothing to do with ishtar if easter and ishtar were related their history would show it but in old english easter was eostre cognate with english east and german ost the reconstructed proto germanic form is austron not until after did easter have a high front vowel like ishtar clearly the two words have quite separate origins there may be neo pagans who worship ishtar at easter but if so they are making either a mistake of etymology or a deliberate play on words michael covington ph d linguistics michael a covington associate research scientist artificial intelligence programs mcovingt ai uga edu the university of georgia phone athens georgia u s a amateur radio n tmi
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re easter what s in a name was re new testament double stan daniel segard dsegard nyx cs du edu wrote a lot of stuff deleted for that matter stay biblical and call it omar rasheet the feast of first fruits torah commands that this be observed on the day following the sabbath of passover week sunday by any other name in modern parlance why is there so much objection to observing the resurrection on the st day of the week on which it actually occured why jump it all over the calendar the way easter does why not just go with the sunday following passover the way the bible has it why seek after unbiblical methods in fact that is the reason easter jumps all over the calendar passsover itself is a lunar holiday not a solar one and thus falls over a wide possible span of times the few times that easter does not fall during or after passover are because easter is further linked to the vernal equinox the beginning of spring more deletions so what does this question have to do with easter the whore goddess i am all for celebrating the resurrection just keep that whore out of the discussion your obsession with the term whore clouds your argument whore is a value judgement not a descriptive term more deletions overall this argument is an illustration of the etymological fallacy see j p louw semantics of nt greek that is the idea that the true meaning of a word lies in its origins and linguistic form in fact our own experience demonstrates that the meaning of a word is bound up with how it is used not where it came from very few modern people would make any connection whatsoever between easter and ishtar if daniel seagard does then for him it has that meaning but that is a highly idiosyncratic meaning and not one that needs much refutation revdak netcom com
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rebuilding the temple was re anybody out there chuck petch writes now it appears that nothing stands in the way of rebuilding and resuming sacrifices as the scriptures indicate will happen in the last days although the israeli government will give the permission to start i think it is the hand of god holding the project until he is ready to let it happen brothers and sisters the time is at hand our redemption is drawing near look up how is a scriptural levitical priesthood resumed are there any jews who can legitimately prove their levite bloodline todd stevens tcsteven iaserv b ingr com
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re easter what s in a name was re new testament double stan in article apr athos rutgers edu dsegard nyx cs du edu daniel segard writes seanna bnr ca seanna s m watson asks what is the objection to celebration of easter the objection naturally is in the way in which you phrase it easter or eashtar or ishtar or ishtarti or other spellings is the pagan whore goddess of fertility it is celebration of the resurrection of jesus no you are thinking perhaps of ressurection sunday i think tsk tsk too much argument on non issues i m roman catholic and it seems to me that people celebrate easter and christmas for itself rather than how it relates to jesus i don t really care about some diety if people have some other definition of easter then that s their business don t let it interfere with my easter resurrection sunday where did that come from if people celebrate easter for the cadburry bunny that s their business so from this i infer that there are different rules for christians of jewish descent what happened to there is neither jew nor greek slave nor free male nor female for all are one in christ jesus i ve always been curious about this is jesus important to jews at all i thought he was thought of only as a prophet if that s true what do they celebrate easter for
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the mystery in the paradox i have been looking for a book that specifically addresses the mystery of god in the paradox i have read some that touch on the subject in a chapter but would like a more detailed read is anyone aware of any books that deal with this subject please e mail me thanks barbara
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when are two people married in god s eyes i would like to get your opinions on this when exactly does an engaged couple become married in god s eyes some say that if the two have publically announced their plans to marry have made their vows to god and are unswervingly committed to one another i realize this is a subjective qualifier they are married joined in god s sight suppose they are unable to get before the altar right at the current time because of purely logistical reasons beyond their control what do you think about this post or e mail me with general responses if you need clarification as to what i am asking please e mail thanks and god bless robert m anderson iii randerso acad sahs uth tmc edu
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proof of resurection i have a few minor problems with the article posted as proof of christ s resurrection first the scriptural quotations this sort of reasoning is such that if you beleive you are justified if not then your beleif is in vain so you might as well beleive most of these quotations are of people who do beleive people who would try to justify their own positions second the logical proof quoted text from xx yfn ysu edu family magazine sysops subject witness proof of christ s resurrection date apr gmt much deleted in nearly centuries no body has ever been produced to refute jesus assertion that he would indeed rise from the dead the probability of being able to perpetrate such a hoax successfully upon the entire world for nearly centuries is astronomically negative end quoted text the period of time that has elapsed from the event growing larger does not increase the odds that a hoax would be discovered in fact the longer a hoax is perpetuated the stronger it becomes finally there is no proof of the resurrection of christ except in our spirits communion with his and the father s it is a matter of faith belief without logical proof incedently one of the largest stumbling blocks for rational western man myself included i hope that this is taken in the spirit it was intended and not as a rejection of the resurrection s occurance i beleive but i wanted to point out the weakness of logical proofs
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re every lent he suffers to save us correction the story i related is one of the seven apparitions approved by our church as worthy of belief it happened in la salle france that should be la salette france i must admit geography is not my forte once again the lamb succeeds marida spreading god s words through actions mother teresa
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr athos rutgers edu caralv caralv auto trol com carol alvin writes vbv r d eeap cwru edu virgilio dean b velasco jr writes in article apr athos rutgers edu caralv caralv auto trol com carol alvin writes are all truths also absolutes is all of scripture truths and therefore absolutes if the answer to either of these questions is no then perhaps you can explain to me how you determine which parts of scripture are truths and which truths are absolutes the answer to both questions is yes perhaps we have different definitions of absolute then to me an absolute is something that is constant across time culture situations etc true in every instance possible do you agree with this definition i think you do similarly all truth is absolute indeed a non absolute truth is a contradiction in terms when is something absolute when it is always true obviously if a truth is not always true then we have a contradiction in terms yes i do agree with your definition my use of the term always is rather deceptive i admit a simple example in the new testament sorry i don t have a bible at work and can t provide a reference women are instructed to be silent and cover their heads in church now this is scripture by your definition this is truth and therefore absolute hold it i said that all of scripture is true however discerning exactly what jesus paul and company were trying to say is not always so easy i don t believe that paul was trying to say that all women should behave that way rather he was trying to say that under the circumstances at the time the women he was speaking to would best avoid volubility and cover their heads this has to do with maintaining a proper witness toward others remember that any number of relativistic statements can be derived from absolutes for instance it is absolutely right for christians to strive for peace however this does not rule out trying to maintain world peace by resorting to violence on occasion yes my opinion evangelicals are clearly not taking this particular part of scripture to be absolute truth and there are plenty of other examples can you reconcile this sure the bible preaches absolute truths however exactly what those truths are is sometimes a matter of confusion as i said the bible does preach absolute truths sometimes those fundamental principles are crystal clear at least to evangelicals sometimes they are not so clear to everyone e g should baptism be by full immersion or not etc that is largely because sometimes it is not explicitly spelled out whether the writers are speaking to a particular culture or to christianity as a whole this is where scholarship and the study of biblical contexts comes in it s very difficult to see how you can claim something which is based on your own interpretation is absolute god revealed his truths to the world through his word it is utterly unavoidable however that some people whill come up with alternate interpretations practically anything can be misinterpreted especially when it comes to matters of right and wrong care to deny that virgilio dean velasco jr department of electrical eng g and applied physics cwru graduate student roboticist in training and q wannabee bullwinkle that man s intimidating a referee my boss is a not very well he doesn t look like one at all jewish carpenter
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re eternity of hell was re hell db n andrew cmu edu d andrew byler writes and we also know that it is impossible to destroy the soul hmmm here s food for thought but rather be in fear of him who can destroy both soul and body in gehenna math jack
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need help with they came for the jews quote years ago i grabbed the following from the net maybe from this newsgroup does anyone know of a source for whether this is an accurate quote thanks bartletts leaves out the homosexual lines but they were one of the groups the nazis tried to exterminate in germany they first came for the communists and i didn t speak up because i wasn t a communist then they came for the jews and i didn t speak up because i wasn t a jew then they came for the trade unionists and i didn t speak up because i wasn t a trade unionist then they came for the homosexuals and i didn t speak up because i wasn t a homosexual then they came for the catholics and i didn t speak up because i was a protestant then they came for me but by that time there was no one left to speak up pastor martin neimoller
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re accepting jeesus in your heart in article athos rutgers edu jayne mmalt guild org jayne kulikauskas writes gsu uxa ecn bgu edu eric molas writes firstly i am an atheist i am not posting here as an immature flame start but rather to express an opinion to my intended audience deleted we are just animals we need sleep food and we reproduce and we die i don t meant to defend eric molas i find it somewhat annoying when someone pops up on alt atheism to tell us all about his usually atheistic beliefs so i can certainly see how christians might be annoyed but i d like to point out a few things i am glad that i am not an atheist it seems tragic that some people choose a meaningless existence no meaning from god is not the same as no meaning from my atheistic point of view if you want meaning in your life you get to go and get some or make some no free gifts of meaning i never quite understood how any god can just give your life meaning actually if he says you exists to do or be x that gives you a purpose if you care to accept it but is that the same thing but i digress how terrible to go on living only because one fears death more than life this would truely be a miserably existance which i doubt eric endures life can be enjoyable so you can live it because you like it or purposefull so you can live it to get something done one should endeavour to make it so if it is not otherwise it would be as you say terrible i feel so sorry for eric and yet any attempts to share my joy in life with him would be considered as further evidence of the infectious nature of christianity probably true remeber he almost certainly sees that particular joy as an illusion and does not want it so maybe it isn t so bad as a christian i am free to be a human person i think love choose and create as an atheist i am free to be a human person i think love choose and create i will live forever with god ah now here we begin to diverge i will not live forever with anyone i don t think you will either but you are welcome to your opinion on the matter christ is not a kind of drug i tend to agree with you it s my opinion that unlike drugs religions are normal parts of human societies i think they have outlived their usefullness but they are evidently quite ordinary normal things that haven t proved lethal to humanity yet drugs are a replacement for christ those who have an empty spot in the god shaped hole in their hearts must do something to ease the pain i have heard this claim quite a few times does anybody here know who first came up with the god shaped hole business this is why the most effective substance abuse recovery programs involve meeting peoples spiritual needs you might want to provide some evidence next time you make a claim like this thank you eric for your post it has helped me to appreciate how much god has blessed me i hope that you will someday have a more joy filled and abundant life i don t know eric but i do not think it is wise to assume he has a less joy filled and abundant life because he holds certain beliefs dan johnson and god said jeeze this is dull and it was dull genesis these opinions probably show what i know
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clarification easter in response to a lot of email i ve gotten i need to clarify my position i am not in favor of paganism i am not in favor of the easter bunny or other non christian aspects of easter as presently celebrated incidentally easter eggs are not non christian they are a way of ending the lenten fast my point was to distinguish between intentionally worshipping a pagan deity and doing something which may once have had pagan associations but nowadays is not understood or intended as such many people who are doing are being accused of it would be illogical to claim that one is really worshipping a pagan deity without knowing it worship is a matter of intention one cannot worship without knowing that one is doing so michael a covington associate research scientist artificial intelligence programs mcovingt ai uga edu the university of georgia phone athens georgia u s a amateur radio n tmi
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re prophetic warning to new york city i just started reading the group i was wondering if someone could re post exactly what the prophetic warning to nyc was thanks jh i suggest sending it to him via email with a cc to me i ll hold it in my files in case someone else needs it clh
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same sex marriages there has been some talk recently of latin rites from the early church used to bless same sex unions if anyone has any idea where copies of these rites exist in whole or in part please notify me by e mail i understand that similar ceremonies written in slavonic exist as well let me know where i can find these it doesn t matter whether the latin rite is in the original or a translation however i would prefer to have an english version of the slavon ic rite if it exists thanks in advance doug hayes psu we ve had questions about this in the past the only source i know of is claims by john boswell in some talks he is said to be working on publication but as far as i know nothing is published yet i haven t heard of any other source if anyone knows of another source please tell us but i think we re going to have to wait for boswell s publication to appear in order to see what he s really talking about clh
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re eternity of hell was re hell darius darius lecointe dlecoint garnet acns fsu edu writes darius vic mmalt guild org vic kulikauskas writes darius let me suggest this maybe those who believe in the eternal darius hell theory should provide all the biblical evidence they can darius find for it stay away from human theories and only take darius into account references in the bible like most topics we ve been through this one before but here is a good start matthew then they will go away to eternal punishment but the righteous to eternal life i may post more on this subject when i have more time in any case it is clear that the fate of the damned is most unpleasant and to be avoided david wagner sola scriptura a confessional lutheran i d like to suggest that discussions based on single quotations are a bad way to proceed there are passages consistent with either theory the sensible way to proceed is to look at them all and see if we can come up with a view that encompasses all of them clh
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re a question that has bee bothering me in article apr athos rutgers edu atterlep vela acs oakland edu cardinal ximenez writes religious people are threatened by science because it has been systematically removing the physical proofs of god s existence as time goes on we have to rely more and more on faith and the spiritual world to relate to god becuase science is removing our props i don t think this is a bad thing first of all i resent your assumption that you know why i am threatened by science or even that i am threatened at all although i admit the latter the reason i am threatened by science has nothing to do with my need for proof of my lord s existence god reveals himself in many ways including to some degree science my problem with science is that often it allows us to assume we know what is best for ourselves god endowed us with the ability to produce life through sexual relations for example but he did not make that availible to everyone does that mean that if science can over ride god s decision through alterations that god wills for us to have the power to decide who should and should not be able to have children should men be allowed to have babies if that is made possible people have always had the ability to end lives unnaturally and soon may have the ability to bring lives into the world unnaturally the closest thing to artificially created life is artificially created death and as god has reserved judgement about when people should die to himself i believe we should rely on god s wisdom about how people should be brought in to the world this is not to say that i reject all forms of medical treatment however treatment that alleviates pain or prevents pain from occuring is perfectly acceptable i believe as it was acceptable for jesus to cure the sick however treatment that merely prolongs life for no reason or makes unnecessary alterations to the body for mere aesthetic purposes go too far are we not happy with the beauty god gave us i cannot draw a solid line regarding where i would approve of scientific study and where i would not but i will say this before one experiments with the universe to find out all its secrets one should ask why they want this knowledge before one alters the body they have been given they should ask themseles why their body is not satisfactory too them as it is i cannot make any general rules that will cover all the cases but i will say that each person should pray for guidance when trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe and should cease their unravelling if they have reason to believe their search is displeasing to god malcusco
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re ancient books in article apr athos rutgers edu miner kuhub cc ukans edu writes any former atheists converted by argument this is an excellent question and i ll be anxious to see if there are any such cases i doubt it in the medieval period esp th cent when aquinas flourished argument was a useful tool because everyone knew the rules today when you can t count on people knowing even the basics of logic or seeing through rhetoric a good argument is often indistinguishable from a poor one the last sentence is ironic since so many readers of soc religion christian seem to not be embarrassed by apologists such as josh mcdowell and c s lewis the above also expresses a rather odd sense of history what makes you think the masses in aquinas day who were mostly illiterate knew any more about rhetoric and logic than most people today if writings from the period seem elevated consider that only the cream of the crop so to speak could read and write if everyone in the medieval period knew the rules it was a matter of uncritically accepting what they were told bill mayne this may be unfair to lewis the most prominent fallacy attributed to him is the liar lunatic and lord as quoted by many christians this is a logical fallacy in its original context it was not clh
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re pantheism environmentalism in article apr athos rutgers edu mcovingt aisun ai uga edu michael covington writes in article apr athos rutgers edu heath athena cs uga edu terrance heath writes i realize i m entering this discussion rather late but i do have one question wasn t it a reagan appointee james watt a pentacostal christian i think who was the secretary of the interior who saw no problem with deforestation since we were living in the last days and ours would be the last generation to see the redwoods anyway i heard the same thing but without confirmation that he actually said it it was just as alarming to us as to you the bible says that nobody knows when the second coming will take place nor does it say that if you do find out when it will happen you should rape everything in sight just before
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re the arrogance of christians in article apr athos rutgers edu caralv caralv auto trol com carol alvin writes vbv r d eeap cwru edu virgilio dean b velasco jr writes in article apr athos rutgers edu caralv caralv auto trol com carol alvin writes are all truths also absolutes is all of scripture truths and therefore absolutes the answer to both questions is yes perhaps we have different definitions of absolute then to me an absolute is something that is constant across time culture situations etc true in every instance possible do you agree with this definition i think you do similarly all truth is absolute indeed a non absolute truth is a contradiction in terms when is something absolute when it is always true obviously if a truth is not always true then we have a contradiction in terms i agree with carol here determining absolutes is practically speaking a waste of time and we easily forget that relative truth is in fact relative for example i recently was asking some children the question what temperature does water boil at i got the answer degrees consistently i asked if they knew what scale and was told it s just degrees any scale that s what all thermometers say well that s sincere and may be true in the experience of the speaker but it is simply wrong it is not an absolute truth similarly scripture is full of truth which we should nurture and cherish but trying to determine which parts are absolute truth and which parts are the manifestations of that in the context of the time and culture in which the text was penned is missing the point then religion easily becomes an intellectual head trip devoid of the living experience of the indwelling trinity and becomes dead scholasticism imo example of head covering in church deleted this was a good example there may be an absolute truth behind the writing but the simplest understanding of the passage is that the instructions apply to the corinthians and not necessarily elsewhere the instructions may reflect absolute truth in the context of first century culture and the particular climate at corinth which was having a lot of trouble with order is it absolute truth to me no and i see no compelling or even reasonable reason that it should be evangelicals are clearly not taking this particular part of scripture to be absolute truth and there are plenty of other examples can you reconcile this even the most die hard literalists do not take all of the bible literally i ve yet to meet anyone who takes the verse blessed is he who takes your babies and smashes their heads against the rocks literally the bible was not printed or handed to us by god with color codings to tell us what parts should be interpreted which way many people claim that there are no absolutes in the world such a statement is terribly self contradictory let me put it to you this way if there are no absolutes shouldn t we conclude that the statement there are no absolutes is not absolutely true obviously we have a contradiction here i don t claim that there are no absolutes i think there are very few though and determining absolutes is difficult i agree very few and even if we knew them personally we may not be able to express that in a way that still conveys absolute truth to another the presence of absence of absolutes may not make any difference since i know i can never fully apprehend an absolute if it walks up and greets me there is hardly consensus even in evangelical christianity not to mention the rest of christianity regarding biblical interpretation so people sometimes disagree about what is true this does not negate the fact however that there are still absolutes in the universe i can t prove the existence of absolutes i can only rely upon my experience i also trust god s revelation that we cannot fully comprehend the infinite therefore we can t comprehend the absolutes so i don t need them i can never know the essence of god only the energies by and through which god is manifested to god s creation so the reality can be that there are absolutes but it is of no practical importance it s like claiming that the original scriptural autographs were perfect but copies may not be swell who cares it doesn t affect me in any practical useful way i might as well believe that god has made a lot of electric blue chickens and that they live on mars maybe god did so what is that going to have any effect on how i deal with my neighbor or god whether or not i go to this or that cafeteria for lunch no this attitude leads many non christians to believe that all christians are arrogant idiots incapable of critical reasoning christianity is true wonderful and sensible it appeals to reason since reason is an inner reflection of the logos of god explanations that violate that simply appear to be insecure authoritarian responses to a complex world note i m not claiming there is no place for authority that d be silly there is a world of difference between authoritative and authoritarian authoritative is en expression of authority that respects others authoritarian is en expression of authority that fails to do that and is generally agressive good parents like god are authoritative many christians are simply authoritarian and not surprisingly few adults respond to this treatment larry overacker llo shell com lawrence overacker shell oil company information center houston tx llo shell com
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re atheist s views on christianity was re accepting jeesus in your heart in article apr athos rutgers edu trajan cwis unomaha edu stephen mcintyre writes norris athena mit edu writes the discussion begins why does the universe exist at all must there be a why to this i ask because of what you also assume about god namely that he just exists with no why to his existence so the question is reversed why can t we assume the universe just exists as you assume god to just exist why must there be a why to the universe one of the laws of nature specifying cause and effect seems to dictate at least to this layman s mind there must be a causal event no reasonable alternative exists as far as i can tell the very laws of nature demand a why that isn t true of something outside of nature i e super natural it may be that one day man not only can create life but can also create man now i don t see this happening in my lifetime nor do i assert it is probable but the possibility is there given scientists are working hard at decoding out genetic code to perhaps help cure disease of a genetic variation again though must there be why or a divine prupose to man s existence i believe the genetic code will be entirely deciphered in our lifetimes but we will not see man convert entirely inert material into self sustaining reproducing life ever i ve never been much of a prophet though i can t even picture new york in my mind i don t believe any technology would be able to produce that necessary spark of life despite having all of the parts available just my opinion when you say that man is only an animal i have to think that you are presenting an unprovable statement a dogma if you will and one the requires a kind of faith too by taking such a hard line in your atheism you may have stumbled into a religion of your own as far as we can tell man falls into the mammal catagory now that preposition sort of precludes an absolute doesn t it without an absolute conclusion what are we left with i believe the word faith works nicely if there were something more to the man say a soul then we have yet to find evidence of such but as it is now man is a mammal babies are born live mother gives milk we re warm blooded etc as other mammals are and is similar in genetic construction to some of them in particular primates for more on this check out talk origins but before you write off all christianity as phony and shallow i hope you ll do a little research into its history and varieties perhaps by reading paul johnson s a history of christianity from your remarks it seems that you have been exposed to certain types of christian religion and not others even an atheist should have enough faith in man to know that a movement of years has to have some depth and be animated by some enduring values well then buddhism confucianism taoism hinduism judaism zoerasterism shintoism and islam should fit this bit of logic quite nicely all have depth all have enduring values thus all must be true well then with an equal scale and under an equal standard investigate them all and discover where god is or whether he is for the denial of god is ultimately a statement of faith non falsifiable as his existence may be for isn t this the purpose of religion to discover and in discovery to know god you don t mind if a few of us send up a prayer on your behalf during your research do you after all if we of christ are deluding ourselves you really have nothing to worry about eh until the king returns jason jason d smith jasons atlastele com i m not young enough to know everything x
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re the arrogance of christians they believe the danger is real but others may not does that mean that the first group are necessarily arrogant in warning others of the danger does it mean that they are saying that their beliefs are correct and all others are false some might indeed react to opposition with arrogance and behave in an arrogant manner but that is a personal idiocyncracy it does not necessarily mean that they are all arrogant no the members of the first group are not necessarily arrogant but when i ask them if they are absolutely certain that the volcano will erupt i expect them to say so no but i ve chosen to believe some knowledgable people who have determined that the volcano will erupt rather than yes i am absolutely certain when it comes to religious discussions arrogance or at best naivete is reflected in the latter type of statement louis j kim o ph southwest research institute fax post office drawer lkim swri edu san antonio tx compuserve com
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re sspx schism in article apr athos rutgers edu simon giaeb cc monash edu au simon shields writes hi all hope you all had a blessed easter i have a document which i believe refutes the notion that the sspx society of saint pius x is in schism or that there has been any legitimate excommunication if anyone is interested in reading the truth about this matter please email me and i ll send them the document via email its pages long so i wont be posting it on the news group i may be interesting to see some brief selections posted to the net my understanding is that sspx does not consider itself in schism or legitimately excommunicated but that s really beside the point what does the roman catholic church say excommunication can be real apart from formal excommunication as provided for in canon law after all we orthodox don t cinsider ourselves schismatic or excommunicated but the catholic church considers us dissident if this is inappropriate for this group or beyond the charter i m sure ofm will let us know larry overacker llo shell com lawrence overacker shell oil company information center houston tx llo shell com i think it s within the charter whether this is actually the best group in which to discuss it is up to the people concerned i am not interested in having this reinvoke the general catholic protestant polemics but i don t see why it should the issue is primarily one specific to catholics clh
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need a book i appreciate if anyone can point out some good books about the dead sea scrolls of qumran thanks in advance please reply by e mail at bassili cs arizona edu
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re what did lazarus smell like in article apr athos rutgers edu rolfe dsuvax dsu edu tim rolfe writes my guess is that the lazarus come out was also for the sake of the crowd i read somewhere i think in morton smith s jesus the magician that old lazarus wasn t dead but going in the tomb was part of an initiation rite for a magi cult of which jesus was also a part it appears that a day stay was normal i wonder i haven t read that book but another one by smith in which similar claims were made about jesus while i m sure smith knows more about early chrisitanity than i do i found his arguments similar to those of books like holy blood holy grail building conjectures on top of other conjectures there was no direct evidence if you d like to summarize the argument for us i d be happy to see it but in doing so i d like you to pay careful attention to the nature of the evidence clh
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re questions from a newbie jerry kaufman writes the bible says that he looks on the heart as the final measure from that perspective in a grading context the heart is the final test very true one might also say that life is an open book test
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re pantheism environmentalism in article apr athos rutgers edu mcovingt aisun ai uga edu michael covington writes in article apr athos rutgers edu heath athena cs uga edu terrance heath writes i realize i m entering this discussion rather late but i do have one question wasn t it a reagan appointee james watt a pentacostal christian i think who was the secretary of the interior who saw no problem with deforestation since we were living in the last days and ours would be the last generation to see the redwoods anyway i heard the same thing but without confirmation that he actually said it it was just as alarming to us as to you the bible says that nobody knows when the second coming will take place michael a covington i do recall watt making a comment to this effect though it was quite a few years back and i can t cite the specifics i also recall that cecil andrus who was secretary of the interior during the carter administration responded to watt s comments by pointing out the stewardship role that god gave to man as recorded in genesis which makes me wonder who are the true conservatives it seems to me that a conservative should want to conserve things of value for long term societal benefit this form of conservation should logically extend to the physical environment in which people live as well as the moral environment in which they relate to one another and to god imho watt s stewardship status is not enhanced by the fact that he served on the board of directors for jim bakker s organization during a time in which bakker committed criminal acts which eventually landed bakker in federal prison bob rgolder hoh mbl edu just another baptist
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re quality of catholic liturgy in article apr athos rutgers edu creps lateran ucs indiana edu stephen a creps writes in article apr athos rutgers edu jemurray magnus acs ohio state edu john e murray writes on palm sunday at our parish we were invited to take the role of jesus in the passion i declined to participate last year at the liturgy meeting i pointed out how we crucify christ by our sins so therefore it is appropriate that we retain the role of the crowd but to no avail musicians readers and so on new things are introduced in the course of the liturgy and since no one knows what s happening the new things have to be explained and pretty soon instead of doing a lot of the mass we re just sitting there listening or spacing out in my case to how the mass is about to be done in my mind i lay the blame on liturgy committees made up of lay people to be aware of the lord s presence as a former catholic and now as a very active lutheran it is some of the innovations of the mass which made me leave the catholic church and return to the more traditional catholic chuch the lutherans i spent many years as a lector reading the passion parts as appropriate in the catholic church and i found it very meaningful our lutheran parish just instituted the tenebrae service for good friday and i was the lector for a paraphrased passion which was exceptional i heard and learned things that i have previously overlooked in the gospels yet those facts were always there as a matter of interest the pastor and i were talking about the differences between the rc and lutheran church during holy week over breakfast easter sunday as a member of a liturgy committee i can tell you that the problem is certain people dominating who want to try out all kinds of innovations the priests don t seem even to want to make any decisions of their own in many cases i guess it s easier to try something new than it is to refuse to allow it my wife is the member of the liturgy committee in the family called music and worship at our church our pastor does have control of this committee but listens very carefully to the committee s suggestions it needs a strong hand to lead and guide to keep the intent and the message clear and strong as it should be through lent and the rest of the liturgical year additional reason for my leaving the catholic faith lack of any selfless spiritual guidance by priests in my parishes aka wishy washy as you may gather from my comments i feel that it is very important ir regardless of denominational guidelines to have a service mass which promotes the true reason that we are gathered there i am quite comfortable in a traditional mass with receiving holy communion on the tongue the sacrament of penance not reconciliation stations of the cross so on and so forth the reason other types of masses and parishes exist is because these feelings are not shared by everyone i want more people to attend church and to find the lord but i don t want them attending a show it s not my church works hard to have a meaningful service during lent on wednesdays but follow traditional lutheran book of worship guidelines where things are changed or omitted during lent such as the hymn of praise it is noted so that we are aware of the reasons that it is not there quite frankly it is very hard for a non catholic to go to a mass and fit in my dear wife never could former methodist and holy week masses and vigils would intimidate the daylights out of a non catholic those catholics who have beared with me this far understand what i mean please keep in mind why we are there to gather together in worship not to worry about how something is done or not done if there is something wrong that you feel needs addressing by all means talk to your priest or pastor i have only ever met one who wouldn t listen they are there to provide spiritual guidance and to help use them my differences with the catholic church are much more fundamental but my decision to change faiths was done with prayer intervention and sessions with priests and ministers in christ kershner kershner wyatt kwyatt ccscola columbiasc ncr com my opinions are my own and aren t necessarily my employer s
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mission aviation fellowship hi does anyone know anything about this group and what they do any info would be appreciated thanks
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re sda doctrinal distinctives in article mar athos rutgers edu jodfishe silver ucs indiana edu joseph dale fisher writes there is a book provided by the sda which is entitled the seventh day adventist church believes or something like that it is a basic coverage of the ideas that sda s hold to for further info about it please write me later once i get the actual title and or copyright date or celia chan cmchan amber ucs indiana edu because she first introduced me to the book i must also add that she is not a member of the sda anymore the book is called basic fundamental beliefs or something very close to that the number is not i have a copy at home i m away at school tammy
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national day of prayer the n a t i o n a l d a y o f p r a y e r m a y immmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm join america in prayer to acknowledge our dependence upon god give thanks for his many blessings ask god to guide our leaders and to bring healing reconciliation and whole ness to our nation and all its people hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm our founding fathers said george washington i now make it my earnest prayer that god a d would be pleased to dispose us all to do justice to love mercy and to demean ourselves with charity and humility and a pacific temper of mind which were characteristics of the divine author of our blessed religion and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation john adams it must be felt that there is no national security a d but in the nation s humble acknowledged dependence upon god and his overruling providence abraham lincoln it is the duty of nations as well as of men a d to own their dependence upon the overruling power of god to confess their sins and transgressions and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the holy scriptures and proven by all history that those nations only are blessed whose god is the lord note you can join with people in your area in observing the national day of prayer to learn who is affiliated with the concerts of prayer group in your area contact mr barry garred coordinator p o box springdale arkansas voice fax
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