Cowboy wrote:

That is incorrect my friend. I've showed you this on this very forum. In a "discussion" BOTH sides get to say what they feel as true.

1. You state what you believe/how you feel about certain things. Your knowledge of this specific subject in discussion.

2. Then someone else states how they see it.

3. If it's not in lines with what YOU think, you totally fly off calling people paper popes and saying they are "renouncing" what you are saying.

That's how a discussion works my friend, you say what you believe then another says what they believe. We're not here to make the other believe what another believes. We're having a DISCUSSION. Not a debate. Nor is anyone trying to change the other person's outlook on anything, again we're having a DISCUSSION.

Cowboy wrote:

No there is no need to accept Jesus as a personal "sacrificial lamb". Jesus is lord, Jesus is the truth, Jesus is the pathway to God who art in heaven.

Cowboy wrote:

1. You state what you believe/how you feel about certain things. Your knowledge of this specific subject in discussion.

2. Then someone else states how they see it.

3. If it's not in lines with what YOU think, you totally fly off calling people paper popes and saying they are "renouncing" what you are saying.

I have learned a lot. The biggest and most alienated thing I've learned is just how many people are out there to try to end the Christian faith and or try to renounce it. It's one thing to just not believe then it is to totally try to renounce a belief.

Opposing beliefs will not grow a community closer if there are strong disagreements.

Hopes and desires are not religious beliefs, or beliefs at all.

The point in NOT sharing one's beliefs where God or religion is concerned, is that this often will tear people apart rather than bond them closer. Besides, religious beliefs are very personal and should not be shared with just anyone. You are asking for big problems if you do.

Cowboy wrote:

What's the point in not sharing one's beliefs? Does sharing one's beliefs not grow a community closer? Even if the beliefs are not "shared" amongst one another? Just the communication and bonding between the two from sharing with one another their hopes and desires?

You don't "share" your views Cowboy.

You PUSH them!

If you were sharing, you'd simply say, "I believe that Jesus was the Christ and I accept him as my savior, and I follow the teachings of the Bible verbatim"

Period.

Then when someone else says to you, "I see the Jesus story in a totally different light and from my perspective I see no reason to accept anything in the old testament as being anything more than fables, and I feel that Jesus was most likely a Mahayana Buddhist."

You'd simply say, "That's an interesting view, I've never heard a view like that before".

And that would be it.

But that's not how you "Share".

You then come back with arguments that demand that the Bible is indeed the word of God and that anyone who refuses to accept that as fact is rejecting God!

You've suddenly gone WAY BEYOND "sharing" at that point my friend.

You don't seem to understand what religious bigotry actually is Cowboy, you practice it, and preach it, but you don't even seem to understand that you're doing it yourself.

It's not about having a DISCUSSION. It's about the things that are being demanded by you within any particular discussion.

You also, "preach" totally conflicting things yourself.

At one point you claim that only the BLOOD of Jesus can "wash away your sins" which is your own personal opinion by the way. Can you even quote a verse where Jesus supposed actually says that explicitly with requiring your vauge irrelevant perosnal interpretations?

But then you claim the following:



Now now your renouncing any need to accept Jesus as a personal "sacrificial lamb". Could you then explain what you mean by "Only the Blood of Jesus can wash away your sins?"

In what way? And again, post a verse where Jesus makes this claim explicitly in terms of washing away any sins. If you can't then you need to rethink your position on that perhaps?

You say:


Hogwash. You are indeed "renouncing" what I am saying by demanding that you speak the TRUTH of GOD, and I have it all wrong. You act like as if you speak for "God" and therefore you hold the "absolute truth" demanding that unless other people accept your interpretations explicitly you are judging them to be "rejecting God" and refusing to obey the commands and directive of "God".

In other words, you are claiming to know what God wants from people and everyone who disagrees with you is clearly refusing to acknowledge, obey, and worship "God".

That is religious bigotry my friend, completely with an absolute judgment placed on anyone who refuses to accept your religious opinions and views of the ancient Hebrew scriptures

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I don't come anywhere close to doing anything like that Cowboy!

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I explain my interpretations of how I believe the stories of the ancient Hebrews came to be.

I renounce the Old Testament as being pure mythological fables that have no more merit than Greek mythology. They may coincidentally contain some spiritual truths, but then Greek mythology probably contains some spiritual truths too.

Read my next words very carefully Cowboy.

Am I demanding that if someone doesn't agree with my views of the Hebrew writings they are refusing to acknowledge their creator?

No, I'm not doing any such thing.

I pass no judgments on anyone's relationship with any God.

There is no religious bigotry in anything I say.

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But you, on the other hand, hold out that if I refute the Old Testament, then I'm rejecting the "Word of God" and therefore refusing to acknowledge my "creator".

That, my friend is your religiously bigoted opinion nothing more, and nothing less.

You have convinced yourself that you hold the absolute truth in the Bible, and that you speak for God. You have convinced yourself that you are a "servant of God" and that this somehow give you absolute authority to "Speak on God's behalf".

This is precisely why Christianity is such a dangerous religion and creates so much religious bigotry that it causes some of it's followers to become extremists like yourself.

And then you go around attempting to convince other people to believe LIKE YOU! That's not good! This kind of thing can, and has, led to events like the Jim Jones, incident, etc.

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After I have rejected the Old Testament as mere fables that have no merit, I address the question of how the stories of Jesus most likely came to be. I offer a very sane and reasonable explanation for this that actually holds more merit than the orthodox Christian view, IMHO.

I'm not asking anyone to "believe me", especially not on pure faith. If they want to consider the scenario I present and recognize that it has more merit than the orthodox Christian view, then more power to them. But I'm not even asking them to do this.

And I'm certainly not judging anyone's relationship with God if they choose to not believe my hypothesis on these historical writings.

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There is no religious bigotry in anything I do Cowboy!

But with you it's an entirely different story.

With you, not only do you accuse people of rejecting God if they don't agree with your views, but even argue that if they don't agree with all of your interpretations and conclusions, then they are not quite in agreement with GOD.

I could, and have, argued against many of your scriptural interpretations, even from a "Christian" point of view. Yet you even renounce all of that, and continue to make your Hardcore Fundamentalists Extremists Views that I wouldn't even have agreed with when I was a Christian!

I wouldn't accept your views Cowboy, even if I was STILL a Christian Cowboy! IMHO, you are a blaspheme of what Jesus even stood for.

You don't preach "brotherly love" in the name of Jesus. On the contrary you preach "religious bigotry" against anyone who refuses to accept Jesus as "The Christ", their Lord and Savior!

That wasn't the message of Jesus, IMHO.

That's just religious bigotry taken to the extreme, and it serves no one any good, not even you. All you're doing is making Jesus and Christianity look bad by demanding that it be a highly bigoted religions and a very exclusive club.


"Refuse to join our club and Jesus will condemn you because by refusing to join our club you are rejecting Jesus, because our club owns Jesus exclusively!

Jesus is the ONLY WAY to God, and the ONLY WAY to Jesus, is through OUR CLUB!"

I say, hogwash on both counts.

First I disagree that Jesus is the "only way" to God, and I'm convinced that even the gospels themselves can clearly be shown to have Jesus agreeing with me on this point.

Secondly, I accept Jesus as a wise spiritually enlightened Buddhist sage. I have no need to believe in a virgin birth and superstitious zombies being resurrected from graves in order to have "faith" in the things that Jesus taught.

So I have no need to join your religiously bigoted club in order to believe in spirituality or to be "saved" from the wrath of some angry irrational male-chauvinistic Godhead who's chomping at the bit to cast the vast majority of souls he creats into everlasting punishment.

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In short, my views of spirituality and "God" are every bit as valid as your views. I can show every bit as much 'evidence' to support my views as you can show for you views.

Moreover, my views don't require any justification for the absurdities and contradictions that are contained in the biblical stories (like a supposedly all-merciful God who casts the vast majority of souls that he creates into a state of everlasting punishment).

Those utterly unsupportable concepts simply aren't even part of the scenario I offer. My scenario for Jesus contains no absurdities that need to be justified. I don't even require a virgin birth or a resurrection from the dead. My picture of Jesus is not dependent upon a verbatim believe in the Old Testament either.

There are no problems with my hypothesis, and it deserves to be communicated and put out there where other people can consider it.

Although, in truth, I did not invent this hypothesis. It's true that I came up with it on my own, but since that time I have come to realize that other people have suggested the same scenario. So I'm certainly not alone in this insight.

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But the bottom line is that I don't accuse people of rejecting God if they don't care for my views.

You, on the other hand, are constantly speaking as though you "speak for God" and for "Jesus".

In fact, you even hold that this is indeed your mission. You have stated several times that you are a "servant of the Lord" spreading "His word".

I don't see it that way at all. What I see is someone who is spreading blaspheme against the very principles that the man named Jesus supposedly taught even based on the what is written in the gospels themselves.

All you're doing it stressing the RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY of the religion.

"Either join our club or be branded as having REJECTED GOD!"


That's basically what you are preaching Cowboy. You're basically just condemning everyone who refuses to cower down to your religious views as having "Rejected God".

And that is the foundational religious bigotry of the Christian religion. It's clearly not about "Jesus" at all. It's about condemning everyone who doesn't cower down to the orthodox Christian interpretations and views of the Hebrew stories.

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I accept "Jesus", you just don't like the way in which I do it.

Because the way I do it does not support your religious bigotry.

It's your religious bigotry that I must support before you'll be happy.

And if I refuse to support your religious bigotry, you claim that I'm refusing to acknowledge "God".

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If you truly want to preach the "message" of Jesus, honor Christian "Protestantism", then you need to start acknowledging that other people's views of who Jesus was and what his "message" was are just as valid as your views!

In fact that was the very foundational tenets of Protestantism.

Protestantism was born out of a protest against the Catholic Church and the idea that one human being (i.e. the Pope) should interpret these scriptures for everyone. The idea being that everyone should read the scriptures for themselves, and come to their own conclusions based on what they are inspired to believe.

You are actually a blaspheme against Protestantism itself (as are many "fundamental protestant preachers". All you're doing is trying to become the POPE again!

You want to demand that everyone accept your interpretations of these stories lest they are rejecting God and refusing to obey God.

All you've become is a "self-appointed" Pope.

That's all.

It's not about having a DISCUSSION. It's about the things that are being demanded by you within any particular discussion.

Now now your renouncing any need to accept Jesus as a personal "sacrificial lamb". Could you then explain what you mean by "Only the Blood of Jesus can wash away your sins?"

Opposing beliefs will grow communities closer. They will grow in the bond from accepting each other's beliefs. Not being prejudice against their beliefs, not persecuting them for their beliefs. The acceptance will grow great bonds.

You don't "share" your views Cowboy.

You PUSH them!

If you were sharing, you'd simply say, "I believe that Jesus was the Christ and I accept him as my savior, and I follow the teachings of the Bible verbatim"

Period.

Then when someone else says to you, "I see the Jesus story in a totally different light and from my perspective I see no reason to accept anything in the old testament as being anything more than fables, and I feel that Jesus was most likely a Mahayana Buddhist."

You'd simply say, "That's an interesting view, I've never heard a view like that before".

And that would be it.

But that's not how you "Share".

You then come back with arguments that demand that the Bible is indeed the word of God and that anyone who refuses to accept that as fact is rejecting God!

You've suddenly gone WAY BEYOND "sharing" at that point my friend.

What rock have you been living under for the past 200 years? You know what brings communities together? Natural disasters. Sharing and pushing religious beliefs on each other is the cause of wars.

Cowboy said:

Because Jesus is our savior, Jesus is whom will judge each and everyone of us. Jesus sacrificed himself in the fact that he knew by giving us the new covenant between man and God some people of this earth would be against him. Would crucify him because they would not believe. But Jesus himself in that exact sense wasn't a "sacrificial lamb" for with the coming of the new covenant there was NO NEED FOR SACRIFICING ANYTHING FOR FORGIVENESS. He brought an end to that and is why his death is seen as the sacrificial lamb for God.

If someone does not believe in something that does not mean they are renouncing YOUR belief. They only renounce it when you (or someone) attempts to tell them that what THEY OR YOU believe is the TRUTH, which means that they are renouncing YOUR belief.

So what this means is that when you tell me that your belief is the truth, that is YOU renouncing MY belief. Do you understand this?

According to Christianity, Jesus's death WAS the final SACRIFICE.
That has been stated over and over. Some of us non-Christians refuse to accept that sacrifice because in doing so, we are saying that we would let God die for our crimes/sins.

Would you, today, allow Jesus to go to the electric chair for a murder you committed? Would you, today let Jesus die for your sins?
If you would, then you have accepted him as your savior.

And you would be, in my opinion, an irresponsible coward.

Cowboy wrote:

Because Jesus is our savior, Jesus is whom will judge each and everyone of us. Jesus sacrificed himself in the fact that he knew by giving us the new covenant between man and God some people of this earth would be against him. Would crucify him because they would not believe. But Jesus himself in that exact sense wasn't a "sacrificial lamb" for with the coming of the new covenant there was NO NEED FOR SACRIFICING ANYTHING FOR FORGIVENESS. He brought an end to that and is why his death is seen as the sacrificial lamb for God.

No, I'm sure he doesn't.

But let's FACE IT.

Cowboy is not here to discuss GENERAL RELIGION. He's already confessed to this on numerous occasions. He's here as a "Servant to God" with the sole intent of "Spreading the word of God".

So clearly, in his mind, he holds the "only truth" there is, and all other views are therefore necessarily false.

He CAN'T BE WRONG! He's doing the WORK OF GOD!

That's the mentality.

How could he possibly be wrong? He has sincerely CHOSEN to do the work of God. Therefore that must be what he is doing, right?

Cowboy is not here to discuss GENERAL RELIGION. He's already confessed to this on numerous occasions. He's here as a "Servant to God" with the sole intent of "Spreading the word of God".

That's not "Sharing" Cowboy.

Where in any of that did you say, "I believe,..."

You didn't. You stated everything as though it is some sort of absolute fact that must be accepted.

Jesus is not our savior.

How's that?

Jesus will not judge anyone. Jesus is DEAD.

How's that?

In fact, I personally don't BELIEVE anything that you've stated above. None of it.

That's not "Sharing" Cowboy.

Where in any of that did you say, "I believe,..."

You didn't. You stated everything as though it is some sort of absolute fact that must be accepted.

Jesus is not our savior.

How's that?

Jesus will not judge anyone. Jesus is DEAD.

How's that?

In fact, I personally don't BELIEVE anything that you've stated above. None of it.

Jeanniebean wrote:

The very idea that Christianity promotes is that Jesus died for our sins. Where is the logic in that Cowboy?

What horrible sins have YOU committed that the son of God would have to be tortured and killed so you could be forgiven?

How cowardly would a person have to be to allow Jesus to be tortured and killed to pay for their sins?

As a small child I was burdened with that terrible guilt, that Jesus died for my sins so I could be forgiven. I did not know what I had done that was so sinful. I did not understand how that could be true because I did not live 2000 years ago. I decided that if I had been there in person I would not have allowed it. I would have said, "take me, I am the sinner."

If I would have done that back then, there is no way that I am going to accept the sacrifice as having been for me or my sins. I would NOT allow it, and I will not carry that guilt around on my back.

This is why I reject and renounce that story altogether because IT IS FICTION. It is a lie.

I don't believe it either. Why?
Because Jesus does not and never has ever existed.
That's a fact.

How's that?