When did I ever acclaim " thou art a sinner"? to anyone in this forum ?
I'm merely using semantics to restate the declaration in a way that could potentially give meaning to any readers on the fence. If for you, it has no meaning, that's fine... But if your intention is to declare that it has no meaning for anyone, except those who believe in Christ's teachings and morals, that leaves out those who have yet to decide the meaning for themselves.
I'm not critisizing your faith, or lack of it in your beliefs, but when you critisize mine I'm called to defend them within the rules of this format.

That's exactly my point of view too.

When I respond to your thoughts, I am just bouncing off your thoughts for the sake of the public in general.

I'm not trying to convince you to change your mind.

Thank you. I both respect and appreciate that reply.

Abra...Sir... You've made me realize that I'm in serious need of specialized study, regarding your sentiments about a possible relationship between Christianity and Buddhism. All I can say on that matter at this point is that I will endeavor to do so...
I find the topic interesting and will research it accordingly.

I had this same concern when I was a Christian Allen.

I finally faced the truth.

It is the tenet of Christianity that it is the one and only true word of God.

It begins at the very beginning with the very first of the Ten Commandments.

"Thou Shalt have no other Gods before me for I am a jealous God".

Therefore by the simple fact of becoming a Christian you are accepting that God is a jealous God and that it is wrong for anyone to have any other Gods before this God.

Moreover, the doctrine you have accepted to worship also states that this God is the creator of all.

The doctrine also goes on to say that anyone who is not with this God is against this God and even siding with an evil demon named Satan.

These are the tenets of Christianity Allen. By the very fact that you accept that religion demands that you accept these tenets.

Therefore it's truly meaningless to claim to be a "Christian" and to simultateously say thing like, "I'm not calling non-Christians heathens and sinners".

You are necessarily support the very religion that demands that this is the case.

This goes right back to what I said before, and it's not meant as an insult in any way.

To proclaim that you are a "Christian" but do not hold to the tenets of the Christians Doctrine (The Holy Bible), then what are you really?

You just a 'Designer Christian" who would like to keep Jesus as the sacrifical lamb of God, but at the very same time reject the very tenets of the God who supposedly sent the sacrifical son.

Designer Christianity is a nice concept.

I actually like Designer Christianity because it does indeed reject all the negative crap in the Bible.

But let's face it. It's just a New Age view of an old religion.

It's nothing more than an attempt to cling to Jesus whilst denouncing the God of Abraham.

As a Christian I came to the realization that to become a "Designer Christian" is truly futile.

The Holy Bible must be taken as the verbatim word of God, or else fully recognized that it is totally undependable.

You can't have a book that is supposedly the "word of God" and just root though it picking out what you'd like to attribute to God and tossing out what you don't want to believe.

Actually if Christians are free to do that then I could call myself a Christian!

I toss out the whole Old Testament as being total garbage.

I toss out all of the New Testament save for the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

And then I root through those picking out only the good teachings of Jesus and tossing out any demagogurey that claims that Jesus was in any way related to the false God of Abraham.

So there you go.

Be being a "Designer Christian" I can claim to be a Chrisitan and claim that Jesus was just a mortal man who denonced the Old Testament.

But wouldn't that be utterly silly?

Why cling to all that when instead I can just turn to Buddhism and accept the teachings of Buddha which is precisely what Jesus was actually trying to teach all along?

Then I don't need to worry about all the negative stygma that is attached to the Old Testament and the idea of a jealous God who sends non-believers to hell.

Just denounce Christianity altogether and recognize for myself that this is in no way a rejection of either Jesus or the Holy Spirit.

That's where I'm at today. And I'm never going back to accepting the hate-filled Old Testament.

I don't believe that God is a male-chaunvinistic heathen-hating God who lusts for blood sacrifices and tells people to judge each other and stone sinners to death.

I just don't believe that God is like that.

I believe that God is far nicer than that.

If I go to hell for believing that God was nice then so be it. I will have been wrong, God won't have been nice and that makes the whole deal moot.

A God who isn't nice is no "God" at all. It would just be a powerful demon who has no parents to teach it good morals.

Well, for whatever it's worth, I would like to apologize to you Sir for my obvious disgust with the Old Testament.

You said that I have an axe to grind, and perhaps you're right. The axe I have to grind is with many of the authors of the Old Testament.

However, I feel that you have some sympathy for this as you have also voiced a concern with the obvious violence associated with those stories.

I agree. Most of my problems stem from the OT in general, although much of the NT is also questionable. Saul Paul, I could have lived without. That man was about as divinely inspired as Jim and Tammy Faye Baker.

You have never acclaimed that anyone was a sinner as far as I know.

It is not my intention to declare that the term "sin" has no meaning for anyone.

My declaration is that it's meaning extends only to people who accept the religious doctrine it arises from. (These people don't even have to be Christians or Muslim or belong to any religion at all.)

My point is only that the term "sin" is owned by religious doctrine. If there were no religion the word "sin" would probably not exist.

If you think a man is a criminal, you think he has broken the law and is subject to punishment by the law.

If you think a man is a sinner, then some kind of religious doctrine has put that label on him, and you may think of that man in need of forgiveness or repentance.

I do not object to people of religious faith using the words "sin" or "sinner" on each other.

What I might object to are those who would expect me to accept those terms as words that have meaning in my life or pertain to me.

I don't think this is being critical of your religion at all.

Abra, I read and considered your post with interest. I appreciate that you'd spend time out of your day to grace me in particular with your obviously well considered thoughts of the alledged paradoxes of the Bible. I appreciate also that you're an ex-Christian as you've blessed me with such intimacy into your convictions concerning the definition of God, and the way you see the Christian Bible.
I don't claim to have complete understanding of every possible interpretation of Scripture.
I won't be drawn into debate and I won't resort to bashing or ranting.
I'd offer to pray for you but as some folks on this site only despise that blessing, I shall refrain.
I'm happy to still chat with you on any other subject but at least for now, I think we should refrain from this one because I don't want to risk insulting or offending anyone unduly.

Well, that's true.

However, once a person comes to the realization that the OT isn't the divine word of any God, then it should be pretty obvious that neither is the NT.

And once, that realization falls into place, then not only do the non-gospel books appear to be nothing more than the commentary of humans, and even the four gospels themselves must be taken as nothing more than the opinions of men as well.

I mean, truly, the whole idea of Jesus having been the 'sacrifical lamb of the God of Abraham' pretty much evaporates once the Old Testament is recognized as the word of men, and not the word of any God.

Also, the reason I included the term "sin" in this post is because it directly relates to "freedom" and the idea of "commandments."

In that the basic meaning of "sin" is to "disobey" God's laws, which some believe are the "commandments."

Freedom, and free will demands that there are no "commandments."

There can only be guidelines or suggestions.

"Disobedience" (which is "sin") cannot exist if there are no commandments, therefore, there is no disobedience and no "sin."

My religion is the pursuit of freedom, and therefore it does not allow "commandments."

Therefore that is why I declare that there is no "sin."

There are bad decisions and mistakes and bad choices that all will reap consequences of the true laws of cause and effect.

The laws of cause and effect are the true laws of the Universe (or God) not the ten commandments.

Well...I appreciate what you're saying and I can only hope that you do the same.

In my opinion, a lot of the worlds problems are caused by body thetansOnly by using an E-meter and completing the Scientology courses can a person be alleviatted from his body thetans and obtain a state of "clear".

It’s all written by men. Of course even the Christians admit to that yet they still seem to cling to this concept of "divine inspiration."

If I told you Abra that god came to me in a dream last night and said it would be best for James to send me $1000 in the mail, would you question my motives or just believe that yep, probably god said it.

I heard those treatments cost thousands of dollars and take hours to perform by "certified technicians". Do they accept plastic?

So if a man has never read the law
Doesn't know it exists
and decides to murder someone
that man is not a criminal?
I mean the law is in place
even if he has yet to read it.
You know he's a criminal because you know the law
However he has never read the law
so he doesn't understand what the term is
all he knows is it holds a negative context
So the term criminal now only applies
to you, because he has yet to see the law
He may argue he's not a criminal because
he never seen the law.

You can replace the word 'criminal' with 'sin'
Same difference.

JMHO

What you say is absolutely true.

Even in a religious context "sin" is truly nothing more than disobedience of God.

Therefore if you don't know what God wants, then it's impossible to disobey, and thus its impossible to 'sin'.

In fact, many scholars have argued this with respect to the story of Adam and Eve.

They supposedly did not know the concept of "good and evil" (or right and wrong), prior to disobeying God.

However, that implies that they could not have understood the very idea that to disobey God would be "wrong".

So it's an oxymoronic story.

Clearly they would have had to have a sence of "Good and Evil" long before they could have been guilty of commiting the "Sin" of disobeying God!

Mortal humans were able to logically figure this one out. And we're supposed to believe that an all-wise God wouldn't have understood the fallacy of the story of the Garden of Eden?

Clearly the story was made up by men who didn't realize the fallacy of thier logic. Adam and Eve would have had to have already been created with the knowledge of good and evil prior to having eaten the forbidden fruit.

Otherwise their action of having done it could not have been considered to have been a "sin" because clearly they could not have understood the concept of "sin" prior to that.

So even if the story were true, it would have been nothing more than a dirty trick played on man by this ficticious mythological God.

So the story breaks down before it even get's underway.

Its worth it.

Probably been posted before somewhere, but..

To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. ~James 4:17

Not sure if the person who started this thread is Christian or not, but that's to clarify if you are. If not, go ahead and follow your own faith, which can be anything you want it to be these days, it seems.