Profile: Fishermage
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• • Your All-Time Movie?

  • Originally posted by Briansho
    

    John Carpenter's They Live

     

    That's a great one, with one of the coolest fight scenes ever shot. Rowdy Roddy Piper FTW!

  • Posted: 12/01/08 5:38 PM
    General Discussion
• • Your All-Time Movie?

  • North By Northwest

  • Posted: 12/01/08 5:36 PM
    General Discussion
• • Secret Quest: The Path of the Christian Gnostics

  • Originally posted by Aelfinn
    

    Originally posted by MarleVVLL
    

    Originally posted by Sharajat
    

    Now why is the Christian God the True and Living God, instead of the Hindu Gods or something?  

     

    That is a good question.

    Its because He proved/s it and the hindu gods cant and will not.

    Blessings,

     

    Um, right.

    Did I miss something? If unverified textual "proof" is given a fair chance at equality, the Christian god has no more proof going for him than any of thousands of other religions, most of which are now dead and gone.

    Or are you talking about something other than the bible and related texts? Textual evidence is a fickle thing, over such long periods, there is nothing to say that the core body of the text did not start off the same way Tolkien's Middle Earth did, a couple of bedtime stories for his children.

    Except for that and any personal experiences, the only substantial evidence that any of the Judeochristian religions are true is the fact that they comprise the by far majority of the world's population.

    That of course is no reason on its own not to believe. God does not need proof to inspire faith.

     

    Actually the word we translate as "faith" from the new testament is pistis. It means "to be convinced" as in evidence. That is how Aristotle and Plato used the word. the Christian faith is evidentiary.

    How thoroughly have you studied the evidence? The validity of the various texts, historical accuracy of the New Testament, the claims of the gospels and so on?

    I went from being a pretty hardcore non-believer to a believer after studying the evidence over the course of many years. I fought very hard against what I thought was pretty much what you seem to think it is, but in the end, the evidence convinced me.

    For me God very much needed proof for me to believe. Proof which he provided.

  • Posted: 12/01/08 4:19 PM
    General Discussion
• • Secret Quest: The Path of the Christian Gnostics

  • Originally posted by Briansho
    

    Originally posted by Draenor
    

    Apocrypha

    Pseudopigrapha

    Gnostic Gospels

     

    All left out of the canon because they etiher are completely contradictory to what the rest of the Bible preaches, or because they are not verifiable enough, among a few other smaller reasons not having anything to do with the vatican.

     

    Since your concern is primarily with the Gnostics...i'll just tell you that the Gnostic gospels appeared some time after the life of Paul, they were written some time after the Canon, and were therefore not included.  To say nothing of the dubious theology of the Gnostics, their timeline was all wrong as well.

     

    Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't many of the teaching throughout the New Testament contradict or reverse some of the teachings in the Old Testament?

     

    Not exactly. But then, that view would all depend on how you interpret both. When Jesus spoke with the people, he was asking folks to move away from a legalistic interpretion of the law more towards a spiritual, theme-oriented interpretation.

    The idea was the people were getting too hung up on the letter of the law (much like today's fundamentalists), and forgetting about the spirit of the law and its purpose -- which was threefold: to draw men closer to God, to encourage us all to love one another and work together for the betterment of society, and to teach us that we all fall short of perfection (hence the need for redemption and forgiveness).

    In Jesus' time, people were using the Law as a means to oppress one another and to practice cruelty (much like today, my how some things never change). Jesus rebuked that and taught for us to live in the spirit, by love, which was the purpose of the law in the first place.

    This is why to some, this might seem a contradiction, but the only contradiction is in legalism vs spiritualism. If you are a literalist, however -- they might seem contradictory -- which is another problem with a literalistic or fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.

    For instance, if God commands "Thou shalt not jaywalk," yet the He says, "seek to preserve life," someone running out into the middle of the street to save a child might seem in contradiction -- but only in the most literal sense. It comes from recognizing that the reason one makes Jaywalking illegal it to preserve human life, so when one violates that rule to preserve human life one is not violating the higher law in which the lesser law is rooted.

     

  • Posted: 12/01/08 1:10 PM
    General Discussion
• • Secret Quest: The Path of the Christian Gnostics

  • Originally posted by upallnight
    

    Originally posted by MarleVVLL
    

    There are sevaral texts that have a date composition of ~50 - 100 AD that weren't marked at canon. It is an interesting study if you look into it. However, what is in the Bible today is sufficient for the purpose of the Bible - experience salvation (its three fold - justification, santification and glorification). Also, in order for something to be canonized, that text must have some very special things to it, ie, did an Apostle write it? Was it written in the generation of Jesus? Was it someone who was with Jesus?

    So, if you were wondering, what is in the Scripture is sufficient. You may not believe me, and that is your choice and I respect that, but if you were to disagree, please study hard why exactly you disagree. Just to say, "the church changed it" is ignorant - because that isn't true. There are so many ancient manuscripts that, when compared to the ones we have today in our laps, are not changed at all - minus the language difference.

    I do not want to get into a religion debate because I don't have time, but for the heck of it, praying to 'your own' god will get nothing done because a god made up from an imaginiation is not a god but an imaginiation. It will not answer nor satisfy you.

    Blessings,

    It's sort of hard to study texts that are being kept hidden from us.

    Nothing is being hidden -- it's all publicly available. I have dozens of books about it in my own library. Just hit up the Religion section of Borders. Plenty there for you.

  • Posted: 12/01/08 3:05 AM
    General Discussion