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MH2
climber
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Dec 19, 2009 - 09:04am PT
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Stating it simply, based on these thirteen prophecies alone, the Bible record may be said to be vastly more reliable than the second law of thermodynamics.
Thank you for stating it so simply.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 19, 2009 - 12:26pm PT
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Jan wrote
I know it is very important to some people to believe these scriptures literally but personally I just don't get it. Why can't you just accept Jesus on the merits of His message and then try to live as He described?
Why do you and others feel it necessary to go through such complicated and convoluted interpretations to appreciate His life and message? Why use intricate head games to explain a man who was all heart?
I'm with Jan here. Quit the idolotry of the book. Jesus interpreted it rather liberally himself and often seemed to contradict its literal teaching.
In the new testament there's plenty of bending apparent prophecies that they appear to be fulfilled or bending events to meet the prophesies.
The two gospels renditions of the birth of Jesus are no reconcilable and some of their explanations have no basis in common sense or history. Did they go to Egypt or Nazareth afterwards?
(Imagine Obama establishing a tax that required everybody return (even with cars) to their ancestral homeland of many generations ago. Why? Where would people go? No record of any such thing ever in the ancient world.
Looking back at the prophesies used to establish the old testament credentials of Jesus, it's clear if you read them that they referred to something else entirely, (like Israel)
I mean Jesus predicted the coming of the kingdom of God and said it would come to pass during the generation of the people he was speaking to. I have to count that as a prediction that didn't come true.
There are 5000 existing manuscripts of the Bible, Not one of them is identical to even one other. Some major stories (like the almost stoning of the woman for adultery) weren't even included in the bible until after the year 1200.
But why quibble? I just suggest you don't make a God out of a book. Jesus didn't
Peace
Karl
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Dec 19, 2009 - 02:04pm PT
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illusiondweller-
The world suffers from tens of thousands of rapists, murderers, and hideous torturers, not to mention the liars and cheats, but you have to pray for me because I'm in danger of going to hell for not interpreting the Bible like you do?
That's a little out of proportion don't you think?
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Dec 19, 2009 - 08:02pm PT
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Jan, I'm sure your better then most of us, I know I'm a sinner and need forgiveness myself, but it's not that God keeps an account that with more checks in the good column your in? God still has forgiveness left for everyone even after forgiving me!
The Righteousness of God Through Faith
Romans 4:21-31, But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.
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jstan
climber
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Dec 19, 2009 - 08:26pm PT
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Gobee:
I think what Jan is saying is that god would be more pleased were you to apply your prayers to
people in desperate immediate need. Your interpretation of the bible is your interpretation and
there is a real possibility your interpretation is not god's. If so your prayers for Jan are wasted.
There is no question those other people need help.
It is simply a matter of getting the most good out of your prayers.
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Dec 19, 2009 - 08:59pm PT
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Rom.3:23 (KJV)
"[23] For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;"
John.8:7 (KJV)
"[7] So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
No need to be casting stones at one another, because it can certainly be thrown back many fold. Every believer is at a different place in their walk with GOD. Some are far down the road, others are just starting. The fact that we all have faith in GOD and his Son and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ should be sufficient for getting along and talking it out without judgement. Lord knows we will not agree on all doctrine or the value of GOD's Holy Word.
We need to be patient with one another with love and humility. Remember, the first shall be last, and the last shall be first among us.
Regarding Werner Von Braun, he was a Nazi. We brought him over in Operation Paperclip. In his later years it does seem that he had a change of heart. Even GOD can save the worst among us if we truly repent. I would like to think that he did and his faith was sincere. The book, Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA, goes into this in great detail.
It was Werner who warned us what the power elite would do some day . . .
"Just before he [von Braun] died, he gave an interview to Carol Rosin, in which he basically said that in order to sustain the military-industrial complex that first a false threat of terrorists would be created and used on the public and then asteroids and finally a false alien threat."
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/cosmicdeception04apr03.shtml
"As immense as that game is, there is a bigger one: Control through fear. As Werner Von Braun related to Dr. Carol Rosin, his spokesperson for the last 4 years of his life, a maniacal machine - the military, industrial, intelligence, laboratory complex - would go from Cold War, to Rogue Nations, to Global Terrorism (the stage we find ourselves at today) to the ultimate trump card: A hoaxed threat from space.
To justify eventually spending trillions of dollars on space weapons, the world would be deceived about a threat from outer space, thus uniting the world in fear, in militarism and in war.
Since 1992 I have seen this script unveiled to me by at least a dozen well-placed insiders. Of course, initially I laughed, thinking this just too absurd and far-fetched. Dr. Rosin gave her testimony to the Disclosure Project before 9/11. And yet others told me explicitly that things that looked like UFOs, but that are built and under the control of deeply secretive 'black' projects, were being used to simulate - hoax - ET-appearing events, including some abductions and cattle mutilations, to sow the early seeds of cultural fear regarding life in outer space. And that at some point after global terrorism, events would unfold that would utilize the now-revealed Alien Reproduction Vehicles (ARVs, or reversed-engineered UFOs made by humans by studying actual ET craft - see the book 'Disclosure' by the same author) to hoax an attack on Earth."
--Dr. Steven Greer
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mark miller
Social climber
Reno
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Dec 19, 2009 - 09:40pm PT
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Get this and TR's song thread off my Climbing website. I'm gonna go cook dinner and dream of sunny Granite moderates.....
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Dec 19, 2009 - 11:03pm PT
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Klimmer-
This is your first conspiracy theory that has made any sense to me at all. I think however that alternative explanations are possible. In any case, eventually we will know.
Personally, I have maintained for years that the U.S. Air Force was testing saucer like machines on the secret. When the stealth bomber came out and photos of it from the front were published it was obvious that some of the saucer sightings were that. Now we read that similarly designed predator drones exist so that accounts for more. The significance of Roswell seems pretty clear too, as it is the turnaround point on a direct flight path out of Edwards Air Force Base in southern California where most aircraft are tested.
As for black ops, I wouldn't be surprised if we weren't designing saucer like devices to wage psychological war on somebody some day. I also wouldn't put it past some of our Air Force and psyops folks to make alien dummies to put in some of these machines to try to scare people away from them if they crash and also just for the fun of it.
We have special elite units who make a practice of sneaking into various government installations just to test their ongoing security, and they also like to leave signature calling cards behind as jokes. We have other units who practice by doing strange things and telling people tall tales just to test what they can get away with and how people react psychologically. Whole other groups of our people are trained in how to hypnotize the unwary.
Before we have to worry about a great saucer hoax being launched on us however, our treasury will first be drained by the costs of replacing all the equipment destroyed in the past ten years of warfare. And since terrorism isn't going away any time soon, I think that will keep our military in business beyond our own lifetimes.
Anyway, we will see.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Dec 19, 2009 - 11:16pm PT
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illusiondweller-
I find it really sad that on this website, Christian history is repeated once again. Instead of focussing on the very real evil in this world, Christians once again waste their time pointing out perceived errors in other's interpretations of dogma and then try to scare them with threats of hell.
I personally believe that praying that someone will come to agree with your own religious interpretations is a form of blasphemy. If you really believe that we are created with free will, don't you think it's an infringement on that free will to try to force someone else's beliefs to agree with your own, with prayer or other means?
Doesn't the Bible say God is the one who will judge us?
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Dec 20, 2009 - 12:50am PT
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"Doesn't the Bible say God is the one who will judge us?"
That's why we need Jesus!
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jstan
climber
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Dec 20, 2009 - 12:59am PT
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When you read the words in a book and you decide how another person shall conduct their lives
you are playing god.
Jan has used the correct word.
Blasphemy.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 20, 2009 - 02:21am PT
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It really does seem blasphemous when somebody tries to tell you that God condemns perfectly sincere people of integrity to billions of years of suffering with no possibility of respite for the crime of lack of blind faith in a doctrine.
It would be less insulting to suggest that Jesus sexually molested children than to posit such a monster deity.
I can see how such thinking helped missionaries scare converts into signing up but the evidence is thin enough in the book to call this sort of fire and brimstone heresy to lovers of God.
Peace
Karl
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illusiondweller
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Dec 20, 2009 - 02:30am PT
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I'm not judging you at all Jan...I just said I'd pray for you for it appeared by your responses that you weren't saved from going to hell. I am saved, wouldn't you want to be? That's all that was intended. Here's where I got some motivation among many others in the Bible...
"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all mannner of evil against you falsely, for my sake." Matt 5:11
Based on this scripture alone, look at what responses I've already generated and what further responses it'll generate and what God promises to me for doing so. Again, my intention is not to judge you Jan. You know, as well as I do, that it is very difficult to express your real intentions through text and this is an obvious example. I need so much help myself, I'd hope to hear that you'd pray for me if I asked or even if I didn't and I wouldn't take it as a judgement but a sincere act of compassion. If you would do this I sure could use it. Thanks Jan. And if you don't mind, I'll keep you in my prayers too. In closing check out this biblical definition:
Love - "The willing, sacrificial, giving of oneself, for the benefit of another, with no thought of return." So, if that person retorts back at me with wrath or an intent to do harm when my intent was to help, it doesn't matter or offend me for I was willing to sacrifice my reputation for the benefit of you, Jan, with no thought of return or gain. This is not about me Jan, but to those that might perish, for:
"The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." 2 Peter 3:9
Stay in touch,
Gary
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Dec 20, 2009 - 08:45am PT
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illusiondweller-
The problem with religious people is that they tend to hang out with other religious people who think like they do and then they presume that their reality is everyone else's.
If you can't see that it's more than a little presumptuous to think that you can know the state of my mind and the mind of an infinite God and are sure that you are "saved" and I am damned for eternity, then of course you won't perceive yourself as arrogant and judgmental.
Instead, you see yourself as the victim, misunderstood and persecuted for speaking the "truth".
I could of course, retaliate by threatening to pray for you, that you become more open minded?!
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Dec 20, 2009 - 09:39am PT
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"Blasphemy"
John 3:17-18, For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Jesus is the sure way otherwise your on your own!
Me and Thee
The Christmas Story is not
at Baby Jesus birth
but at Calvary
Where He took are sin's
and nailed them to a tree
Their debt was paid (in-full)
in Christ's atoning death
In His Resurrection
we are freed to live in
God's Glorious Presence
(for all eternity)
God so loved the world
Jesus died for you and me
Christ lives for me and thee!
Gobee
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Dec 20, 2009 - 10:38am PT
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Hugs everybody.
C'mon get along.
:-))
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 20, 2009 - 02:56pm PT
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well interesting seeing how all this has developed since I last posted here.
I haven't posted largely because I felt that it was useless to argue against what everyone "knows" to be true. An article in today's NYTimes Magazine got me thinking again.
It really points out, as this thread also exemplifies, that there are two largely different ways of thinking, and that the arguments are actually centuries old and not likely to end based on logical confrontation because their foundations are based on very different beliefs, which are fundamentally incompatible.
There is a classic belief that human logic alone provides the basis understanding the human condition. It is essentially the viewpoint of the religious, spiritual, mystical, and classical humanities schools of study. The point being that we can logically understand what is "natural law," and a set of ethics based on that natural law which defines morality. Not only that, but the origin of that natural law may not be accessible empirically.
The second competing school believes that human logic is flawed and that for it so be useful it must adhere to two constraints: rigorous mathematical logic and empirical testing. These constraints ensure that we are not lead astray by logical arguments which cannot be resolved.
The classical example is the "proof of god" arguments. Simply put, one can make a logical construction of god that avoids all empirical tests. Oddly enough, mathematics is structurally agnostic and its logical foundations are used by both sides of the debate. So constructed, one cannot disprove god. Similarly it is easy to provide an empirical model of the universe which does not require god. It is more difficult to demonstrate those empirical models are correct in every instance, the basis for provisionalism of empirical models.
Most people are unconcerned with the extreme points of view of either of these two competing intellectual view points. And people who strongly believe in one, often discount the other as being obviously irrelevant. When pushed into argument, both sides will often use extremes in logic to underscore their debating points.
Both sides of this argument do believe that there is a "truth" out there. Both camps of scholars believe that their pathway to that "truth" is the correct one, and they both chafe under the burden of proof demanded by the other.
The NYTimes article, to me, brought home the fact that this is not an idle academic exercise, but one that influences our lives directly.
The "enlightenment" period of European history took up "science" because it moved the authority of argument from people to nature, by demanding those two previously stated constraints. They, the enlightenment, appropriated the term "natural law" from the "scholastics," who meant it to be about what we "know" to be true, not what we could demonstrate to be true.
The problem with "people based authority" in these matters opens up the problem of establishing a person who is the authority. As hundreds of posts to this thread have shown, since I last posted, there is no accepted authority. Even within the Christian belief there are major disagreements on doctrine. When one expands even slightly to Judaism and Islamism the disagreements are much much larger. Now try to take it to even a larger group of religious, spiritual, mystical set of beliefs and there is no resolution. Yet they all believe that there exists a realm beyond the mere physical realm that explains the human condition.
So who is the authority, and who decides, and how do we know it?
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 20, 2009 - 03:03pm PT
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Ed
Excellent analysis with an excellent last sentence.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 20, 2009 - 03:41pm PT
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Ed writes
There is a classic belief that human logic alone provides the basis understanding the human condition. It is essentially the viewpoint of the religious, spiritual, mystical, and classical humanities schools of study. The point being that we can logically understand what is "natural law," and a set of ethics based on that natural law which defines morality. Not only that, but the origin of that natural law may not be accessible empirically.
I would thoroughly deny that the mystical or spiritual schools would have that belief in logic. There are other forms of knowledge and perception.
then
"...Now try to take it to even a larger group of religious, spiritual, mystical set of beliefs and there is no resolution. Yet they all believe that there exists a realm beyond the mere physical realm that explains the human condition.
So who is the authority, and who decides, and how do we know it?..
In some ways the bottom line is this: Life is a great mystery and adventure. You're not going to be able to be fulfilled by any else's answers, even if they have good ones, because the ultimate things in life need to be experienced within yourself. We each have to evolve and grow ourselves.
Take unconditional Love. Do you know it exists? How logical is it and how do we apply math to it? If somebody could prove it is real, that still wouldn't mean you have access to its benefits.
We all have to find out for ourselves. We all have to ask ourselves how to live, what our values are, what our standards of truth are.
Scientific method? I'd love to hear about this, because it escapes me... Let's propose that certain mystical analogies are correct and that this universe is basically the persistent dream of the ultimate Being. Let's also assume this Being sees no reason to contradict nor interfere in the actions of it's own laws in this dream universe. What are some experiments and mathematics that we can bring to bear on testing this?
PEace
Karl
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