[Al_U_Card]

Guess there is no chance of any coffee smells in here.....

[Winstonm]

Quote

Not if you do not give Gates personal permission to pay your fine.

Yes, even without permission. The law has been fulfilled - there is no more law. There are no more parking tickets to be paid - you cannot give permission for something about which you have no idea has occured, an event that does not happen.

There is no fine to be paid. You never have a pink ticket stuck under your windshield. As far as you know, you were lucky they didn't catch you this time - little did you know they never catch anyone - because the law has been fulfilled.

And if you were born 10 years from now, you would not even know that once upon a time the police used to give out parking tickets - but they don't any more because all past, present, and future fines have been paid in full.

You don't have to believe it, say thank you, or even know what happened - you are still exempt from parking fine punishment (consequence).

[mike777]

Winston, no Bill Gates cannot pay everyone's parking ticket without some higher power apporving it. There are conditions.

I cannot serve your prison term without permission, there are conditions.

Jesus did not die and absolve your sins and fulfill the law as it pertains to you, personally, without conditions.

His love is unconditionial to you, Justice comes with a condition.

[Winstonm]

Quote

If you believe God is the God of Justice, that is part of the nature of God, then Sin demands Justice. If you believe that Sin does not demand Justice than you deny the nature of the Christian God.

What is the difference between sin/justice and action/consequence? What is the justice in eternity in damnation for failure to have the right to be introduced to this doctrine?

Do you truly believe that everyone who ever lived from the time of the death of jesus unitl now have all had the opportunity to be enlightened that they had to believe in him to avoid hellfire?

How is it just, then, that those who had no chance to believe are punished?

It makes more sense if they are relieved of consequence without having to believe - and this is an action of perfect love - that you relieve the burden of consequence without asking anyting in return - not even belief.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Guess there is no chance of any coffee smells in here.....

One would have to awaken first, no?

[mike777]

"Do you truly believe that everyone who ever lived from the time of the death of jesus unitl now have all had the opportunity to be enlightened that they had to believe in him to avoid hellfire?"

Yes, this is the old what about the poor guy in the middle of nowhere who never heard of Jesus, very common and excellent question. There are books written on this subject.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Jesus did not die and absolve your sins and fulfill the law as it pertains to you, personally, without conditions.

His love is unconditionial to you, Justice comes with a condition.

Mike, don't get me wrong. I understand where you are coming from. I was raised in a strict enviroment that taught me the same thing you are saying - until I finally figured out for myself that it was a bunch of crap.

And I don't mean to put you down with that comment - or anyone else who believes that way - as I know how extremely difficult it is to break away from that indoctrination. It almost drove me into insanity. Those who have not been indoctrinated into the hard evangelical faiths cannot grasp the base, underlying fear that warps your personality. It is hard to describe to one who has not suffered the religious abuse of the consequences of being told at ages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and on and on about a vengeful god who will make you burn in hellfire forever - rembember, these are ages where you believe still that Santa Claus is real and the Tooth Fairy brings your quarters - and when the authority figure (preacher) thunders at you twice on Sunday and once again on Wednesday night that you are doomed, you will burn, unless you follow the leader - well that deep of imbedded fear of god's wrath for disbelieving is almost impossible to overcome.

Back to you points:

"Jesus did not die and absolve your sins and fulfill the law as it pertains to you, personally, without conditions.

His love is unconditionial to you, Justice comes with a condition"

You present a paradox. These two statements are mutually exclusive. If one is true the other cannot be true.

Uncoditional love is love without conditions. If god is unconditional love (which he should be), then he cannot place conditions - it would be impossible, a violation of his nature. (And I happen to believe the story of the prodigal son is not at all about the son but a parable to teach what the love of god is like. In that story, the father (god) did not try to stop the son, did not judge him, did not condemn him, did not punish him, did not ask in fact anything of the son - only gave to the son what the son asked - his inheritance. And when the son returned the father did not demand repentence, contrition, repayment, or belief. The father in this story never changed, never faltered in the way he treated his son. His love for his son was unconditional. It was the consequences of his own actions that caused the son to return. To the father, none of that mattered.)

Now, if we take this story and compare it to the ideology you espouse, then the son would have had to have to pay conditions to return - the father would have said, yes, you are welcome back but have to slop the hogs for a year as repentence. But there was none of that. It was unconditional acceptance.

If the sacrifice was an act of love without conditions, how can there be conditions to accept it? If it was an act of Justice, then Justice has been served and belief or lack of it has no bearing.

And you do not have to serve my prison term, and I do not have to give you my permission to do so - because there was never a crime committed. It was wiped off the books - unconditionally.

[mike777]

You raise excellent points.

A more complete answer is going into the Nature of God and understanding what it means if he is fully the God of love and fully the God of Justice.
I agree that God does not act against his nature.

As to your second point, if I understand your argument, you are saying there is no sin or evil in the world, it does not exist today, it is not a crime? The answer is there is.

[Winstonm]

mike777, on Feb 8 2007, 10:26 PM, said:

"Do you truly believe that everyone who ever lived from the time of the death of jesus unitl now have all had the opportunity to be enlightened that they had to believe in him to avoid hellfire?"

Yes, this is the old what about the poor guy in the middle of nowhere who never heard of Jesus, very common and excellent question. There are books written on this subject.

I have found that those who write these books are biased and trying to prove their own beliefs - they start with the concept that belief in jesus in necessary for salvation - and then write and very deep and convoluted theses as to why that is so and how it pertains to the guy in the desert who never heard of jesus.

I think this is better served as an example of Occam's razor: instead of a book, I can summarize in three simple sentences.

There is a natural law of action and consequences to which both mankind and god must adhere. God found a way to fulfill this law for mankind so that mankind is no longer subject to the provisions of this law. Because this was an act of unconditional love, god asks nothing in return.

[Winstonm]

Quote

As to your second point, if I understand your argument, you are saying there is no sin or evil in the world, it does not exist today, it is not a crime? The answer is there is.

I hate to dominate this thread but am trying to answer your questions.

I am saying there is evil in the world and there is crime, but no punishable sin for these actions. Actions still have consequences, as that is a natural law. The consequences of spiritual death, though, have been absolved - removed from the pages of the lawbook. Fulfilled.

If original sin has been conquered, that means both past, present, and future sins have been conquered, as someone born 10 years from now will still be stained with original sin. If sin is possible, then in theory someone who sins an instant before a mugger shot him in the head, killing him instantly, would be condemned to hell, as he hadn't had time to ask forgiveness - and even in the strict evangelical sects, you can't ask for forgiveness in advance. The only way for this to make sense logically is not to have to ask - sin has been pre-forgiven, which in essence eliminates sin as a punishable spiritual deed. Which also fits in with another theological question of a baby born with original sin who dies in the first year of life. Does the baby go to hell? Yes, I know, age of accountability and all that - but then you are saying that until accountability the baby is not a human being, right? Because if it were a human being, it would have to be stained with original sin. Again, instead of convoluting, why not apply Occam's razor? The sin is not counted against anyone - ever - from birth until death. A lot simpler than accountability ages and such, isn't it?

If you don't accept this you can read my book - it's not very good but it's short.

[mike777]

Again if I understand you saying there has been a final judgement, and there is no punishable sin for evil crimes committed today. Judgement has been passed the penalty paid without condition.

This is not mainline Christian theology.
Final judgement day has not come yet.
However, I respect your beliefs.

There are many counterarguements to what I wrote above. One possible theme is
we are born into sin, our nature is sinful. We cannot act against our nature. We do not have that amount of free will. It would be unjust of God to punish us for sin we do not have responsibility over. God cannot act unjustly.

[mike777]

A second counter arguement is that God called some of us to be saved, not all, at the dawn of time, he did not call me......why blame me?

[Winstonm]

mike777, on Feb 8 2007, 11:41 PM, said:

Again if I understand you saying there has been a final judgement, and there is  no punishable sin for evil crimes committed today. Judgement has been passed the penalty paid without condition.

This is not mainline Christian theology. 
Final judgement day has not come yet.
However, I respect your beliefs.

The feeling is mutual. Everyone is entitled to hold their own beliefs.

And you expressed well what I have tried to say - the only thing I would add is I believe there is still earthly consequences for evil actions, but as far as spiritual consequences those have been rendered mute.

And you are quite right that I do not believe in a day of judgement - I believe this to be - along with the stories from the old testament - Jewish folklore and myth, not so different from Greek mythology or other tribal folklore. It would make sense to me that a culture of peoples who have been oppressed as often as the Jews would like to hold out a hope for a get-even day where god whomps up on all the pharoahs who did the Jews wrong - I believe in southern U.S.A. culture this is known as "opening a can of whup-ass" on their butts.

If you hold out hope for an eventual get-even, whup-ass day, you can tolerate a lot of oppression along the way - opiate of the people - see how that ties in?

[Winstonm]

mike777, on Feb 8 2007, 11:46 PM, said:

A second counter arguement is that God called some of us to be saved, not all, at the dawn of time, he did not call me......why blame me?

I grow weary of this debate - every time this subject is broached by someone who has a background in the Wesleyan judgemental-god theologies, I can recognize the fear that underlies all their beliefs - even if they themselves cannot see it and will not accept it as there.

It is not a love of god that holds these denominations together - it is fear of damnation - of god's justice - of god's wrath. Fear is a powerful tool.

The only way to know god is to lose the fear of god; if your concept of god is that of a punishing, wrathful god, then I suggest you destroy him and recreate a god that does not punish.

If you do not fear god, then you do not fear to question god, his decisions, reasons, wrath, and vengeance. But when you fear god, you defend his decisions, reasons, wrath, and vengeance - because you are afraid of what he will do to you if you doubt.

A god you fear is not a god worthy of loyalty - you don't have one-on-one, heart-to-heart conversations with someone you fear, that you bow and scrape to please.

In my world, I don't serve a monarch god - god is simply a buddy to whom I can turn over any problem too big for me to solve and he always does the right thing with it, the thing that turns out to be in my best interest - even when I don't understand. I can trust a buddy to do that - without fear.

For some, god is a someone to whom you must kneel, genuflect, and show deference. To me, god is someone with whom you exchange high fives.

[helene_t]

I certainly don't believe in the free will (although I admit it's a very practical concept in moral reasoning, which is probably one of the reasons why the illusion of the free will evolved). I'm less sure about sentience, which I consider a puzzling phenomena. Pinker's "How the mind works" disappointed me and Penrose's idea that sentience relies on an Einsteinian meta-quantum explanation for wave function collapses seems, although intriguing, not plausible and his argument suffers from lack of a foundation in modern biology.

However, I can say this much about sentience: "my" sentience is bound to my brain and will decay as my brain decays. I strongly believe that this should be obvious to everyone who has a basic knowledge of neuroscience and is able to put intuition aside for a moment and focus on what can objectively be said.

I like the hardware-software metafore for the brain-sentience system (although sentience is just one of many functions of the software the runs in our brains). Just like a running software session can be evacuated to another CPU before the original CPU wears out, it is theoretically possible to copy a human's sentience to another platform (whether made of silicon or neural tissue). Something akin of this has been demonstrated in epileptic patients who had their corpus callosum seized and subsequently develop dual sentience systems. Making a human's sentice immortal may one day be possible but I don't expect to live long enough to acquire that privilege. So I have to opt for Gerben's solution which is quite difficult with my limited gifts. I certainly won't be immortalized as a great bridge player.

As for whether Gandhi went to Hell or Heaven, I don't care. Sending him to Heaven could serve two purposes:
1) an altruistic concern for Gandhi's comfort-loving soul. But that applies to Hitler and Stalin as well, maybe even to GW. If there's a limited number of available bedrooms in Hotel Heaven, I would probably keep Hinduist and Bhudists out since they should be able to do OK in Hell by meditating.
2) to motivate others to follow Gandhi's example in order earn a Green Card to Heaven. But that won't work since we will have no way of knowing if he went to Heaven or not.

If I were God, I would send some prophets to tell the earthlings that they would be rewarded in Heaven if they followed the example of Ghandi. But in the end I would send everybody to Heaven. Then again, people who don't "deserve" (whatever that means) to go to Heaven, I wouldn't have created in the first place.

[Gerben42]

Quote

people who don't "deserve" (whatever that means) to go to Heaven, I wouldn't have created in the first place.

This is a good point!

An omnipotent and benevolent God would make humanity in a way that we would all get along quite well, and there would be no crimes and no war. And we would be living in a world where weather phenomena would not suddenly wipe out your house and family.

So either our creator was really poor compared to other creators who could buy themselves the Ferrari of universes whereas we got stuck with Al Bundy's wreck, or there is no God-like creator.

At least this seems logical to me...

[helene_t]

You never know, Gerben.

Suppose you were a lab mouse, genetically engineered to get cancer and subsequently exposed to all kind of nasty "therapies". You have a theological discussion with some fellow mice:
A: The Technologist let us suffer as punishment for our sins.
B No, we are free of sin, as written in the scripture, the Technogist once sent his own clone to the lab, to
die for our sin and save us.
C: Then why are we still suffering?
B: The technogist has a meaning with everything, it's beyond the scope of our comprehension.
But don't worry, your suffering is final and you will be rewarded in heaven.
C: For what? What am I supposed to do to get that reward?
B: You have to believe in the Technologist.
C: Which technologist? I hear mice preaching about thousands of technologists, some requiring prayer,
some requiring material sacrifice, some requireing altruistic love, some requiring ritualized Hexadiene
inhalation. How do I know which of the stories is true?
B: If you were chosen in the first place, your heart would tell you.
A: So if I wasn't chosen in the first place there's nothing I can do? How do I deserve this?

And so on. It's all not very orginal, except for the True Story which is that the Technologist made the mice suffer for the higher aim of developing new cancer therapies for some super-murine beings know as "humans".

But although this story could be true for us as well as for the mice, the theory doesn't fullfill any of the requirements for a good scientific theory.

[Gerben42]

The story could be true, in a way, of course. Or a Matrix-like story You never know. But the mice won't be rewarded in the afterlife, and the technologist is not really benevolent from the mice point of view.

And more importantly, it won't matter for the mice if they believe or not. Yet religion is based on the hope that it DOES matter. And my observation is that the universe is not consistent with a situation where it matters.

[helene_t]

hrothgar, on Feb 9 2007, 02:32 AM, said:

Beautiful religion you got there Todd...

You're being sarcastic, but it could be a lot worse.

Suppose someone told you that you had to do this and that to be saved. Abstain from certain kinds of sex, donate half of your money to some obscure institution, vote for a so-called "Christian" politician, blow yourself up in the London Metro killing as many random by-standers as possible .....

At least, believing that Mary was made pregnant by some wireless insemination process is relatively harmless.

[Al_U_Card]

Now, what is the difference between Christian Evangelism and Fundamentalism?

Is (Christianity vs Islam) this the "final battle" between the forces of good and evil?

As for the answer to the thread....something to do with angels dancing with pinheads?....