Sure there is. You see an old lady trying to cross the street, but you drive right by. You should have helped her. You are so caught up in your own problems that you aren't there to be a friend when a friend is down. You should have put your problems aside and helped your friend. etc etc etc

Of course you call Christianity and Judaism "absurd"...because James is a rebel! Ohhhh! Nobody has ever done that before.

I really hope that I'm around when you finally read the Bible to see what it is that you are so angry with.

Like I said previously, that which miltant Christians can't refute with logical argument, they arrogantly slander with ad hominem attacks. Thank you for once again falling back on the staple behaviours and proving my point.




Which of course is baloney, because no one was holding your children personally responsible for anything. You ARE however, repsonsible for your words and the causes you enlist in when you use them. It's not at all intellectually bankrupt to point out examples which refute your claims. You can say all you want that you don't think Calvin was a 'True Christian' but you can't deny he flew the same flag and worshipped the same God you do.

I'm just the messenger. Don't like the message? Stick to the message, and do something about it rather than trying to silence the critics with ad hominems.


-Kerry O.

How do you know for sure James doesn't already do that?



Fortunately for Unbelievers, Fundies can no longer have the Church's political power imprison or torture them for speaking out against religion's shortcomings.

That's not to say the Dark Ages can't come back, though, if enough people get complacent enough.


-Kerry O.

I'm a Christian, but I agree with Miss Ruth on this one. Given the situation described, my overriding concern would be for the safety and well being of my family. I'd just have to worry about my eternal soul after the fact. I'm a Christian, but I don't claim to be a saint.

Hmmmm, I thought I was the only one
noticing the maturity level here.

But then, there is no maturity in the unwise.

Being a Christian, in this WILD west city;
I would very much rely on the Wisdom of Almighty God.
I would already have an established prayer life.
The Lord being The Lord of my life
and of all that I own...

I would wait for God's wisdom,
remembering we are the salt of the earth.

I'd also keep in mind...Romans 8:28

I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home and have been Christian almost my whole life. I never met a Christian who didn't believe in the right to self defense before this thread. Interesting.

It's not a sin to meet a deadly threat with deadly force. In fact, my opinion is that when the threat is imminent, it's sinful to not act in defense of yourself, your loved ones, or other innocents.

If this weren't true then every member of the police, the military, or any other sanctioned authority would be condemned.

I will be sure to pray for your soul though, after I've dispatched of you as a deadly serious threat...

Well, I probably wouldn't have moved there to begin with. However, if they came in after and started that, it would be WAR! Destroy them all. No worries about God's thoughts, opinions or ASSumptions on the matter. Me and mine are more important then those who want to roll that way.

I think we will roll that way first. The Middle East was the height of power and enlightment, and then it went downhill while Europe was in its Dark Ages. When it went down, Europe went into its Enlightenment. (Relatively speaking since religion was still a problem).

Now it's America's turn to go downhill. UInfortunately, with nuclear armament, it should be interesting if we can keep it only in this country, or if some trigger-fingered religious nut will take out the rest of the world.

IMO!

I've seen a lot of good answers here and we've had some interesting discussions.

Now I would like to turn this discussion in a different path.

In the Bible is the story of the taking of Canaan by the Israelites. The Canaanites practiced child sacrifice, killed travelers and were basically a people without a moral compass. God gave Canaan to the Israelites. How is this situation any different from the original question? Canaan belonged to the Israelites and according to Rehab, the Canaanites had received dreams from God warning them to leave Canaan or be killed. They choose to ignore the warning, in spite of the warning from the land's owner. The Canaanites would have killed or corrupted the Israelites.

I have a new question...If you answered the original question with "Kill them", do you feel that God did the right thing with the conquest of Canaan? If not, why?

History is written by the winners. One is dealing with how the Israelites saw things, and what they perceived as truths in order to make genocide more palatable. That certainly doesn't mean that's what the Canaanites were actually doing. The winners just did a better job "demonizing" the losers in order to make their win valid.

My goodness...

"Dark Ages" is used by laymen to describe the periods of time in which little was written and for which we lack historical records. Historians use "Early Middle Ages". Modern research into the so called "dark ages" of Europe show that people considered themselves free from religious control then and that there was no actual slowdown in the progress of society. The term "Dark Ages" was coined in the 1300s to describe a period of decline in Latin literature.

Nonsense.

If you sincerely believe that you are being disobedient of you Lord if you don't help every old lady to cross the street, then you are consciously, knowingly and willfully being disobedient every time you see an old lady cross the street and CHOOSE to serve your own agenda over your LORD's agenda.

There's no getting around it Spider.

You can take the most trivial "sin", and try to make an excuse for it, but the TRUTH is that if YOU BELIEVE that it's a "sin" (i.e. disobedience of your Lord) then you are flatly guilty of refusing to obey your LORD. And instead you are CHOOSING to serve your own agenda.

The only way you could truly serve your Lord would be to become a Christian Monk, and do only what you believe your Lord asks of you. Anything short of that and you are refusing to SERVE your Lord in favor of rebelling and serving your own interests instead.

If you're going to believe in a religion then BELIEVE it in, and act like you believe in it.

Otherwise, you haven't convinced me that you believe in anything. You're treating your religion superficially like as if you don't honestly believe in it yourself.

You seem to think that to just pretend to have accepted Jesus as your LORD, is enough. Evidently you don't feel compelled to follow through on the essence of that supposed acceptance.

How can you claim to have accepted the the Christ as your LORD, if you continue to live out your days completely ignoring what you believe he expects you to do?

Sorry, the Israelites still haven't been declared "winners". If you think about it, God showed his "wrath" to them more often than to others...

The fact that they don't paint a perfect picture of themselves shows honesty...

Yes.

Not to burst your bubble, but most of what we know about Ba'al worship comes from the Ras Shamra tablets, which is a non-Israelite source.

lol

Arrogance personified. "Billions of people (Christians, Jews and Muslims) believe that they can sin accidentally? That's nonsense!"

Do you really believe you are smarter than every living Christian, Jew and Muslim? Do you actually believe that you have thought more about religion than any Christian, Jew or Muslim? From your writings, I can safely say that I have thought put more thought into "What should I have for breakfast" than you have into the Abrahamic religions.

In this meaning I'm referring to the time from about the fall of Rome to the beginning of the Enlightenment. The time when Christianity held the greatest amount of sway, and happily killed people in order to force their views on those people.