Serious Debates

[PoikSpirit]

I think this may be my last post before I sleep.

1. Deist's don't believe that God particularly set up a moral system before he left, although most of Deism is open for interpretation.

3. I actually don't believe in worshipping God myself, as if I am good enough, as I strive to be, or if I sin, which as I am human I will, I shouldn't need to announce it to Him, He knows. I meditate on what I can do better instead. I believe specifically in good in the name of humanity, not good in the name of heaven. So if He is selfish enough to think my trying to be good, but not taking time out of the day to worship Him, is reason to condemn me, I actually cannot say I would follow that God. I am sorry. Besides, he made us in his image, and I believe the bible did mention somewhere that doing a good deed brings you closer to God, I haven't studied the bible in years, so I can't be more specific right now.

5. I think your counting is a bit labored tonight Josiah. Maybe I'm not the only one who needs a bit of sleep?

Those are pretty much my only comments, as I like what Josiah has said myself.

[Josiah]

Nab makes a very good point about translation issues. There's a reason that there's so many different versions of the Bible that you can buy. Aside from the general difficulty with translation, many translators also allow their own beliefs (either consciously or unconsciously) to affect their translation. Some popular versions have quite a lot of that while others are fairly straight up. The New King James is a pretty good one, BTW. It's not the most accurate, but it's fairly close and a whole lot easier to find copies of.

On that note, aside from being written in other languages (Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic, depending on the book), the Bible was written for people thousands of years ago. As such, it contains a lot of references, figures of speech, and idioms that, while quite obvious to people living in Isreal a couple thousand years ago, are mostly lost on modern audiences. This can make it very easy to misunderstand certain parts of it. if you haven't done your research.

[Winters Rage]

AK likes the NIV better than the NKJ because AK thinks the NIV is easier to read and that the NKJ is really confusing @.@

[Josiah]

The original KJ is hard to read, NKJ isn't too bad though. NIV is certainly easier to read, it's just not quite as accurate of a translation.

[Blue Fire Cyndaquil]

Wow, so many posts.

Well, in the bible, a lot is called wrong. I meant murder when I said killing. The 7 deadly sins, lust, gluttony, greed, envy, pride, wrath, and sloth, are definitely wrong. And the whole forgiving sins thing, you have to sincerely accept Jesus in your heart, and then follow his teachings to the best of your ability.

Being a Christian does not make you a good person. (My) God's teachings say to follow the government's laws and rules, so long as they do not oppose the Bible's rules There's also the Ten Commandments.


Oh, and, walking down the street is not inherently good or evil, so whether it's Black or White depends on what the person is headed to do.

I quoted the Ten Commandments from Wikipedia.

Edit: Sorry about all that, I wasn't paying attention.

[Winters Rage]

Wow, so many posts.

Well, in the bible, a lot is called wrong. I meant murder when I said killing. The 7 deadly sins, lust, gluttony, greed, envy, pride, wrath, and sloth, are definitely wrong. And the whole forgiving sins thing, you have to sincerely accept Jesus in your heart, and then follow his teachings to the best of your ability.

AK has to disagree with you there, as long as someone believes in God and prays for forgiveness to Him and the person he wronged, then he will be forgiven, it is, by no means, required to follow His teachings as good as you can to be forgiven although He still wants you to do them.

[Blue Fire Cyndaquil]

Not necessarily. whether or not you need to follow the teachings is up for debate.

[NabMaster]

Just a small bit of confusion, I was under the impression that the worshippers of the biblical God named him by the tetragrammaton (Yhwh, Yah, Yahweh, or the translation I do not fully accept or understand - "Jehovah"), not Allah...

[Winters Rage]

I personally think in my head which contains my brain and where I think my sole is contained that someone made what we call a miss-take or mistake when typing with the keys of their keyboard about the Lord God and about allah, for, the god that is known by the name of allah is the god of what we humans call the moon, if my brain, mind, and soul are correct, and for allah to simply be the god of what we call the moon, how could the god of the moon create the moon of which he is the god of? And if he is the good of a moon, where did the moon from where he rules come from, since allah is the god of the moon, there had to be a moon for allah to be a god of, therefor I state my theory that, although some people believe that allah, the god of the moon, is the only god, I believe that there is a greater being, one that is not the god of a moon or planet, bot a god of the uni or multiverse!

((Do I need to click the 'edit' button with my finger moving along the mouse pad, then depressing the button on the left under that mouse pad and type in a lot more words to describe what I just said in fewer words so that it is readable?))

[Josiah]

OBJECTION!!! Those are NOT the 10 Commandments.

At least not the ones from the Bible. And, to be pefectly honest, I'm very disapointed in anyone who says they're a christian yet doesn't know the 10 Commandments well enough to tell that those aren't them. I mean, that's one of most basics of the basics there... One of the most obvious things is that there is no Allah is the Bible and Allah is NEVER used to refer to the God of the Bible. Those might be ten commandments from the Koran, though I don't know if the Koran has its own "ten commandments" or not. Anyway, the Real Biblical 10 Commandments are as follows.

1 And God spoke all these words, saying:
2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
7 “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
8 “ Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
12 “ Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you.
13 “You shall not murder.
14 “You shall not commit adultery.
15 “You shall not steal.
16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”

I'd also like to note that, while the 10 Commandments are certainly the most famous Biblical laws, they're hardly the only ones. There's 613 (give or take a few) commands giving in the Old Testament and even more than that (though I can't remember the exact number) in the New Testament. While the 10 Commandments make for a nice summary of some of the key points, they're hardly all inclusive.

[Winters Rage]

I agree with Josiah there, I knew there has to be something wrong with them because I didn't even recognize them, and I hear them all the time in church because I got to church 6 days a week and my dad always preaches about the same thing in every church for a week then he moves on to another thing, but 'reminds' everyone about the week before, so I figured there was something seriously wrong with those commandments that BFC posted!

[Blue Fire Cyndaquil]

Thanks, I didn't actually look. I was tired, so I just copied it from Wikipedia

Oh, and.... Josiah, if your Jewish, why do you know so much about Christianity, and why is it that you used to listen to AIO, which is Christian?

[Josiah]

You mean Adventures in Odyssey? Not sure where you got the idea that I listen to it. I actually did when I was a kid, but I don't recall ever mentioning it anywhere on the forums.

First off, my family was 7th Day Adventists until I was 11 or so, which is a type of christianity. And now, I'm Messianic Jewish. In a nutshell, it means I believe in Jesus and the New Testament (unlike other types of Judism, which tend to dislike Messianics because of it) but I also believe that He, Peter, Paul, and the other major people in the New Testament never did away with the laws from the Old Testament (like all the major branches of Christianity do). So, while I believe in Jesus, I also believe that God still wants us to keep the holidays, dietary laws, and the like that are in the Old Testament. Of course, many simply aren't possible to keep these days, since there's no longer a temple, but we keep the ones we can. My congregation in CO also digs quite a lot into the history, language, and context of the Bible, along with related events, such as how Christianity actually split from Judism and became its own religion (since, if you pay attenion, no one in the New Testament actually began or called for such a split).

[Blue Fire Cyndaquil]

Oh, I get it. And I meant that you used to, and you mentioned it in one of the game threads when I said I was listening to Adventures in Odyssey.

And what I mean is, while an overall thing you do, like giving money for glory, might not be Black or White, each separate action is either right or wrong. Giving the money is right, bragging about it is wrong.

[Josiah]

Uh huh. If you pay attention to the language and context of the gospels, one of the key points Jesus was trying to get across was that your attitude and reasons for doing something are nearly as important as the act itself.