and there is where we differ .. all the religions have a belief in a god .. different names.. but still a god ..still they are not promoting one over the other. that is the basis of it all..that's how i can say that..

Be that as it may, it's an inescapable fact that the Bible is _the_ bedrock document on which Christianity (and only Christianity) is based.

If you don't think that's an important distinction, then what would be the problem with having people sworn in with their hand on a Q'uran instead? A rose (or a god) by any other name is still ...?

-Kerry O.

and the point goes whizzing past never to be seen ..several relogions use the bible.. the state is not promoting any of them .they are still seperate from the state...the founding of this country should dictate what is used to begin with .. not weather it's the contemporary feeling of a few loud groups..

Ok, name the religions that use the King James Bible or even other translations as their bedrock documents.

You can't say the Jews do because they don't accept the N.T. You can't the Muslims do because they _don't_. I'm guessing you're purposely confusing sects of Christianity with whole other 'relogions' in an intellectually dishonest attempt to obfuscate the issue with semantics.

Semantics, by the way, which the Supreme Court of the United States hasn't supported in its past decisions. Now, you can stomp your feet and yell "Activist Courts" from the tallest bell towers, but as one former SCOTUS Justice said "No religion means NO religion" in one First Amendment Establishment Clause case.

So no, the point hasn't gone whizzing by anyone. We know _exactly_ what you're trying to do and it hasn't worked in the past.


-Kerry O.

Truly.

Besides, all religions that are based on the "God of Abraham" are basically the same religion. Just because they are utterly confused and at odds with each other doesn't mean that they are different religions. It's just one huge religion that is so thoroughly confused by the ambiguous contradicting doctrine that no one knows what the "God of Abraham" even supposedly wants.

The Christian off-shoot of the religion violates the basic Ten Commandments by placing Jesus before the God of Abraham. It's the most oxymoronic off-shoot of all the Abrahamic Religions.

I am christian, I am curious as to why it is you think I violate the ten commandments in worshipping(revering) Jesus? Do you feel this is the same as putting Jesus BEFORE God? I revered my brothers growing up, but that did not place them ABOVE my parents,,,,,Im just curious of how you come to that conclusion?

Yep, it's my oft-quoted Tower of Babel syndrome turned back on its creators.

I read last week that sectarian violence in Northern Ireland has flared up again. I mean really, it's not like the atheists are killing each other in the streets, 'godless heathens' that they are.


-Kerry O.

John 14:6
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Think the verse explains everything i'm saying.

Well, according to the Christians it's impossible to get to God without going THROUGH Jesus. Therefore they are putting Jesus BEFORE God.

The commandment says "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Yet the Christians are doing precisely this by placing Jesus between mankind and God. They are putting Jesus BEFORE God.

And the real IRONY of all this is that the orignial commandment was no doubt made up by men in an effort to demand that no one place any other religion before their religion.

But the Christians weaseled their way around that by creating a "New God" who they placed BEFORE the God of Abraham all the while PRETENDING that it's the same religion, when in fact it's NOT.

Can you not see that these man-made religions were just competing with each other to try to command the most authority?

The Christians (the authors of the New Testament) were trying to claim that their religion holds the "Greatest Authority" by pretending that no one can even get to the old Jewish God unless they come THROUGH Jesus (the Christian's NEW jealous Godhead)

It's just a religious gimmick to try to pull the greatest clout.

These religious schemes are nothing more than the left-over cut-throat politics from ancient societies who were trying to make their religion more powerful than someone else's.


Note: When I use the term "Christians" I'm talking about the actual authors of the New Testament. Not today's subservient followers.

It's not putting Jesus before God. When we pray, we don't pray "to" Jesus, we pray through Jesus. And is why we'll end our prayers with "In Jesus' name we pray, amen" Jesus is the way to God, but we worship God, not Jesus. Again we worship God through Jesus.

*The commandment says "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Yet the Christians are doing precisely this by placing Jesus between mankind and God. They are putting Jesus BEFORE God. *

And how would praying through Jesus to God be putting any God before the true God?

John 10:30 "I (Jesus) and the Father are One."

I think these verses will help out as well


John 10:34-39
34Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'[e]? 35If he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken— 36what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, 'I am God's Son'? 37Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. 38But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." 39Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.

I dunno... ask God. He should know. He led those men to write the constitution, not me.

When the constitution was written up, there were ten times as many non-Christian inhabitants of the present day USA than Christians. Ball park figure, don't hold me to it, please, but there WERE a lot of native heathens.

You missed the whole point Cowboy.

You're looking at it entirely from the delusion of the religion. Which is precisely how the authors had hoped you would.

That's precisely how they "justify" what they are doing.

But what you miss is the fact that they STOLE the religious power from the previous Abrahamic religion.

In other words. You fell for their political tactics.

what's delusional there? And what proof or evidence do you have of such?

I don't need any proof or evidence since there is no proof or evidence for the biblical story. (although, in truth, I actually do have proof and evidence)

At best all we can do is ask if these things are "reasonable".

I've already given more than enough reasons on these boards to show why the biblical stories are totally unreasonable in both the Old and the New Testaments in terms of any supposedly "all-wise" and "all-powerful" surpreme being.

However, in terms of "proof and evidence" for the fact that these religions were indeed politically motivate, history speaks for itself. These Christian religious views were shoved down the throats of the masses via the sword and Crusades.

So it's clear that there was a VERY STRONG political motivation to shove this religion onto the masses. So that's both PROOF and EVIDENCE that these religions were indeed quite political in their nature.

So there you go. History speaks for itself on those facts.

I am not on anyone's side of this argument, whether Jesus is before God, but this above argument does not hold water, for the prayers don't end simply "in the name of Jesus, Amen", but "in the name of the Lord, the Son, of the Holy Spirit, amen".

Which, the true version of ending prayers, puts Jesus on equal footing with the Lord God as far as praying "thru" or praying "to" is concerned.

The problem is not this; the problem is how decide the concept whether Jesus is God, or Jesus is put before God, beside God, after God, on top, below, or into Him.

This is tough. Christians have developed a theological answer that says there is the Holy Trinity, which is one god and includes three units, the God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Even just in and by itself this is an undeniable contradiction, a joke of Biblical proportions by trying to make people believe it's possible, to have 1 God that is 3 Gods. However, that's again a different argument. And it is even more of a joke, it is a social experiment of Biblical proportions, that people can be made to believe something that is inherently impossible: One being three or the other way around. "I have one god for you which is three gods" gets through to us, while "I have one apple for you which is three apples" would attract public ridicule.

This conundrum of the divinity of Jesus, and his place in the deitary hierarchy can be further mined with the following thought-experiment:

Who came first? God or Jesus?

If God came first, then Jesus became God later. But God is everlasting. If something is everlasting, it cannot join to become that something in mid-stream of the timeline of the universe. So God could not have come first.

The only remaining alternative is that Jesus came first, and the Christian God was created by Jesus; meaning, that before Christianity there was no Christian God, only a Jewish God. (Who, incidentally, himself, was not actually Jewish; he was the OTHER party in the covenant, He never was circumcised, and he was not born to a Jewish mother. Furthermore, he never converted to, or assumed Judaism. He just likes Jews, they are His chosen people. He cannot become His chosen people, because His people cannot be chosen. For instance, I can be adopted by a man and a woman, if they choose me; but I cannot be chosen by my father and mother.)

So if Jesus came first, and then the Christian God in His triumviratic presence came second, then who was it that divined the Angels to tell the pastors that a King was born? Because the Christian God has no historical or even legendary presence in the world before Christ. There was a God of the Jews, there was Ka, there was Ankh, there was Jupiter, and a million and one others. But there was NO Christian God before Jesus.

????

Jesus is on the right hand of God.

Ephesians 1:20 shows God raised Jesus and set him on his right hand.


20Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places,

This, my one and only true friends, is an amazing quote.

It would be extremely helpful to know what the question was that Jesus answered thus.

"Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'[e]? 35If he called them 'gods,'

Who is this mysterious "he" who called them (whom?) gods, lower case h lower case g?

These are the words of Jesus, so the "he", the "them" and the "gods" are in reference to not God, The Christian God, the Lord, the Jesus, the Holy Spirit, but are in reference to a human male, who talks about some other humans, and calls them "gods". "I have said you are gods" could not have been uttered by God, as 1. this sentence is in quotes in Jesus' speech, and 2. in the sentence immediately following next, the person who uttered this sentence is defined not as God, but as a man, since the pronoun "he" that refers to the utterer of the sentence is not capitalized.

What is the meaning of this? Without knowing who "he" is, who the units he called "gods" were, and what the authoritative credibility of "he" is valued at, this passage is unfortunately over my head. Not intellectually, but by virtue of not carrying enough information that would give it sense.

Sense, my one and only true friends, is a very important part of a statement or argument in a debate.