So you buy into the lie. That is your prerogative.

I need to respond to this a second time because I keep falling into the trap of responding to you in terms of the extremely limited box that you insist on placing God into.

Open your eyes Cowboy and step back away from the biblical picture of God just for one tiny second, and you'll see the light of the big picture.

You are basically asking me if I would praise my children if they praised me? Well of course I would! In fact, I wouldn't even necessarily require that specifically, but clearly it would be nice to see my children at least trying to praise me.

So let's imagine that I'm the creator of Earth and humans and I look down on creation and I see people praising me via religions like Buddhism and Wicca. Why should I be pleased that they are indeed attempting to praise me?

For you to suggest or claim that these people are not attempting to praise the creator of the universe would be your own judgmental bigotry. As the creator of the universe I can clearly see that these people are trying their very best to praise and revere me.

So why would I condemn them or punish them in any way? Also why would I want to call them liars when in fact all they are doing it offering their sincere truthful views of how they perceive the world around them to be.

Clearly you would condemn them since you apparently feel that their condemnation is justified.

But I wouldn't. I would embrace them as the sincerely loving, caring, souls that they obviously are.

So I can only imagine that if there is indeed a creator of this universe he/she/it/them must necessarily appreciate and value all loving souls who are making any effort at all to show appreciation and love for me, or for my creation.

In fact, I would personally see scientists as some of my most devout "worshipers". They seek to know me deeper than most others. They have absolute awe and appreciation for my creation, and they don't go around spreading religious bigotry in my name.

So yes, try for one second to get your head out of a book that condemns non-believers of its hate speech, and imagine what it might be like to actually view the world through the eyes of the creator. You might suddenly realize that there are far more loving people on the planet than your religious doctrine has led you to believe.

That's great, you're starting to think like God :D. God doesn't punish anyone. He rewards people for their actions. Heaven is merely a reward for the obedience one has through love. Good job, you're actually gaining grounds :D

The religion you support stands for bigotry and hatred toward non-believers. It has nothing at all to do with love.

This religion has people spreading hate for Jesus' sake.

It's truly sad.

I'm sure that Jesus himself would be extremely saddened by the hatred that is being spread in his name.

As far as I can see Cowboy, everything you preach just confirms the kind of non-stop bigotry and hatred that your religion spreads in the name of Jesus.

There's no love in anything you speak of. All you ever do is condemn anyone who rejects your bigoted religion. That's really all you do, even if you think that somehow behind that facade you are supposedly be loving everyone. That's just a false empty claim that isn't supported by your views and accusations that God hates non-believers.

Like Dragoness has rightfully pointed out, the so-called 'love' of Christianity is empty hypocrisy. It's truly nothing more than a very deep-seated hatred toward non-believers being falsely propagated and proselytized in the name of Jesus.

It's just become nothing more than a way of using Jesus to support religious hatred toward sincere loving people just because they don't buy into a hateful fable of a god that demands blood sacrifices be made before he will even consider "loving" anyone.

It's just a very sick demented religion that took a potentially grand idea like spirituality and turned it into nothing more than hate machine that spreads hatred toward all who do not jump on the bigotry wagon in the name of Jesus "The Christ Almighty".

There's no love in that.

Has nothing to do with hatred. Just because one doesn't reward another doesn't mean they hate that person whom they did not reward.

If you want to spread religious bigotry in the name of God be my guest.

Don't expect me to condone it, or give my support to it.

That's all I know to tell you.

This again? Really?

Christians make decisions every day. We frequently sin. That is a side effect of free will. We CHOOSE to believe in Jesus. We CHOOSE to try to obey his commandments. We CHOOSE what we do, we aren't puppets. Honestly, I think you guys are so intellectually bankrupt to post this kind of silly nonsense. It's absolutely shameful that adults will actually say these sorts of things. Those are the thoughts of an angry rebellious teenager, not an adult who has spent even a small amount of time thinking about religion. smh

And there _you_ go again-- comparing anyone who doesn't agree with your version of The Truth to nincompoops and 'rebellious' teenager.

Funny thing is, Calvanist Christians have ALWAYS maintained that a soul is pre-destined in the omniscience of the Almighty to be capable of ONLY doing what that omniscience of God already "knows".

It's like having a computer malfunction and 'proving' that it isn't the software by turning off parity error checking.


-Kerry O.

You are certainly entitled to your views Spider.

However, if you want to speak about intellectual bankruptcy consider the following:

Sin is willful disobedience of God. In fact, if you claim to have "Free Will" then you cannot blame your choice to willfully disobey your God on anyone but yourself

So now you're trying to tell me that you have chosen to "TRY" to obey the commandments of your God but you constantly fail.

Well, if you are constantly failing, that can only mean that you aren't trying very hard at all. Obviously, you either don't truly believe in your God, or have seriously problems with having to constantly obey his commands.

What good would it do you, even if you managed to be forgiven by 'grace' to obtain entrance into his eternal heaven?

You would still be just like a rebellious teenager as you are now, you would constantly be willfully choosing to disobey his commands.

What is going to change when you are in heaven?

If YOU don't change then what changes? Will God strip of your free will entirely to assure that you can never do anything against his will again?

This idea that anyone can 'sin' by mere accident is absurd.

If sin is willful disobedience of God, and the only reason it makes any sense to hold you responsible for sin, then that can only work if you truly have a CHOICE to not sin at all.

So when you say that you continue to sin after you supposedly accepted Jesus as your lord and savior, then that sure sounds like a totally superficial claim to me.

How can you claim to have accepted Jesus as your "LORD", if you continue to willfully disobey him?

Where is there any intellectual rationale in that?

The very notion that you are attempting to propose sounds like intellectual bankruptcy to me.

Either obey your LORD to every letter of his desiser, or confess that you willfully reject him and refuse to obey him via your own Free Will, and you aren't about to consider obeying him completely, ever. Period.

Until you can say that you obey the commands of your God willfully 100% of the time, then you're worse than a non-believer, because you actually believe in your God yet you refuse to obey him.

At least a non-believer reject the whole dogma as being not from God, and therefore they aren't refusing to obey anyone, they simply don't believe the doctrines have anymore merit than the fables of Zeus.

But YOU!

You claim to believe in this God, yet you continue to blatantly disobey him favoring your own free will, and you're calling other people "rebellious teenagers".

Sounds to me like you're the one who is rebelling against your God.

We just don't believe that this religion has anything to do with God, but supposedly you do. Yet you continually choose to willfully rebel against him anyway.



I can tell you this much, if I truly believed that the biblical scriptures were true, and if I was willing to accept the kind of God portrayed in those scritpures, I'd obey every jot and tittle. Without exception.

But of course, I don't believe those ancient stories are true, and I wouldn't want to have anything to do with the God as it is portrayed in those stories anyway. So there's no reason for me to obey every jot and tittle. It's just Hebrew folklore to me.

But for you, there is absolutely NO REASON to continue to "sin".

That's totally uncalled for and only tells me that you truly don't believe a word of it yourself. Why would you continue to willfully disobey if you truly believe in it?

That makes no sense to me Spider.

tl;dr;

When I sin, it's solely my fault. I've never claimed otherwise.

Calvin also burned Jews to death. Maybe...just maybe he was wrong? Do you think? Maybe?

You tell me. He was "one of yours". How could someone so full of the Spirit do such awful things?

Just maybe... maybe..._everyone_ who believes in the Infallible Omniscient godhead who allegedly ghost-writ the Holy Bible is wrong, too? D'ya think? Maybe?

I mean really, you guys have no proofs to offer, just dogged faith in your doctrines and dogmas and a tendency to go after anyone who won't subscribe to said faith with ad hominems.

Or worse. History is replete with examples where Christianity has turned off its moral parity bit error checking so as to 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil'-- all while DOING evil in the name of the Almighty.

Free will is an excuse, more like the hangman's mask than some sort of favor Fundy God bestows on humans. Because if he IS testing them with it? Whoo boy, everything's coming up thorns, isn't it?

Maybe?


-Kerry O.

Well I guess so. If sin is willful disobedience of your Lord then of course it would be your choice, and thus your 'fault' if you want to place blame on it.

That wasn't my point.

My point is that if you told Jesus that you have accepted him as your "Lord" and savior, and you continue to willfully disobey him, then you're not being honest with him about having accepted him as your "Lord" and savior.

So what are you telling me?

If I become a Christian I won't need to obey the Christian God either because nobody actually does that? Not even the Christians?

What sense does that even make?

Why would I want to lie to Jesus like the Christians do?

I think honesty would be a far better policy.

Yes if a sin is done intentionally. Then asking for forgiveness would be in vein. That is why as Christians we do our best to walk in the path Jesus set out before us. We don't "intentionally" lie. We may do it occasionally not paying much attention to what we do. But we then ask for forgiveness for we did not intentionally do as such.

There's no such thing as sinning unintentionally unless you're claiming to be some sort of zombie.

If you give someone misinformation by accident then you weren't lying, you were simply mistaken. That's not lying.

If you gave them misinformation knowingly on purpose then you knew full well what you were doing was wrong and you did it anyway.

It's impossible to commit a sin by accident.

If you killed someone by accident then you didn't commit murder, nor did you actually "kill" them intentional. Somehow there was an accident and someone died. That would not be a sin.

You cannot commit a sin by accident.

You either knowing-fully and willfully do something that you know is wrong, or you don't. And if you don't do it intentionally, then no matter what you do it can't be considered to be a sin.

For example it's impossible for you to lust after a woman by accident. If you see a woman and notice that she's sexy that in and of itself is not a sin. That's just an observation of fact.

It becomes a sin if you dwell on it knowing full well that you are lusting after the thought of becoming sexually intimate with her. But if you go that far my friend, then you are intentionally disobeying your Lord willfully. No accident about it.

You cannot sin by accident. You either willfully and purposefully disobey your God, or you don't.

There's no such thing as "accidental sin".

That very notion is utterly absurd.

Yup, so absurd that the Hebrews even acknowleged it.


So who studied theolgy and who didn't here?

Well that's no surprise since their whole religion is absurd.

If the whole idea of 'sin' is that it's willful disobedience that is done by CHOICE, which it necessarily must be if we are going to be held "guilty" of it, then it can only be done on purpose.

Otherwise it would be an "innocent" sin. A sin that was done in perfect innocence. If the innocence was any less then perfect, then it was done knowingly.

The ancient Hebrews were out to make sure that everyone is considered to be a sinner anyway, so I'm sure they would love to consider totally innocent people to be sinners.

No news there.

Isn't this Christmas eve?

Shouldn't you Christians be preparing for a birthday celebration or something?

Or at least putting out cookies for Santa Claus?

This just shows how little you really know about the Bible and Christians.

So are you going to acknowledge that X-mas is a pagan tradition or will you still believe the lie?

Drive them off with force, killing, if necessary.

So many words, so little thought put into them.

I am not responsible for the actions of anyone other than myself and my minor children. To hold me responsible for the actions of a man who died hundreds of years before I was born is illogical. Which goes to prove my point about "intellectual bankruptcy".

Anyways, sure, we might be wrong. But it's important to understand that right or wrong, we have the right to defend our beliefs. And the problem you and the non-Christians have is that you guys rarely even get what we believe right. But let's ignore that...when someone says something that is demonstrably untrue "Christians don't have free will", it seems that ANYONE who is rational and intellectually coherent would disagree with that. You attack me for attacking her statement...so you agree with it? At the very least, you are intellectually dishonest. You claim to be guided by logic and reason, but you defend illogical and unreasonable statements.

Our proof would make a great deal more sense if you actually listened to them without plugging your ears and screaming "you are wrong you are wrong you are wrong" That would require intellectual honesty of which you might lack. I recently had a conversation about religion with a Muslim friend of mine and I found that I agreed with much of what he said and learned from him...but I'm still a Christian. An intellectually honest person (as I try to be) can admit when those he disagrees makes a good point. Why is it that you can't do that? Hmmmm....

"Free will is an excuse, more like the hangman's mask than some sort of favor Fundy God bestows on humans. Because if he IS testing them with it? Whoo boy, everything's coming up thorns, isn't it?"

No idea what this means. Free will is used to test everyone, not just Christians. And when you become a Christian, you don't lose your free will and the test doesn't end...Did you think that Christians hadn't thought of that? Really? You think that you typing away at your little keyboard found a flaw in Christianity that nobody had found in the 2000 years of it's existence? It really goes to show how shallow your understanding of Christianity, theology and apologetics really is.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy the holiday season.