A Question of Christianity, Hell and Free Will.

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Yeah, I see ypour point. My use of the word 'altered' was wrong. I didn;t mean intentionally. I mean more of the sort of translational difficulties, and misunderstadnings which impair study of the Bible. These do happen, and can result innewer editions containing mistakes. One of the things we did in our philosophy class was to compair different edityions of Bibles, and then tp compare them tp the pother two books

 

No NOG its not and I queted the old testemony so no mather what you cant apply the holy trinity to my quote, secondly to Daie d'Malkin, most likely translation altered some bids of the bible, but if they sat down and changed bits of it, they would come up with one serious problem, whic is the core of this descoution, the fact that they would be changing the words of god and thereby thier belive, secondly we have the earlier transcriptions of the old testemony, both in jewidism and in the earliest christian versions, so we know for a fact they havent changed them.

So no, no mather what, you cant apply the wholy trinity to any part of the old testemony, since it was writen by people who dont believe in jesus christ or the holy spirit.
but of cause if you choose to ignore facts, you can argue and do whatever you want.

 

What exactly are those "sons of God" mentioned in the 6th chapter of Genesis, who mate with human females? After all, the New Testament cites Jesus as God's only son.

 

@Abomination:

Excuse me for my slight hyperbole, they could have done it with a time machine and mass hypnosis, too. Seriously, though, the changes you are suggesting in the time that is available for them to have been made is unrealistic.

@Rotku:

Mmm, there's some heavy evidence for a few, like a global food and the ten plagues, though they explain them in a scientific manner, thus not making the event itself supernatural, but for the most part you're right, I can't prove it to you. Just so long as you don't use that lack of proof to try and say it didn't happen or couldn't happen, we'll be fine.

But it claims to be just that. Thus you either have to accept it as such or reject it as such, but since everything that has been tested so far has been proven right, throwing it out as an unrealistic claim, or even 'going too far' is rushing things a bit, especially when you throw in the matter of prophecy. When parts of a book that were written hundreds of years before an event predict the event with detail, you tend to pay attention.

@Gnarf:

And even if speak is right, it is applied to a specific situation, not as an all around rule, so either way it isn't saying that women are inferior in any way.

Exactly, God doesn't answer prank calls, but He'll answer a genuinly curious call, even if it's a wrong number.

Readers, please understand that Gnarf believes the original texts were mistranslated acording to the Mormon prophet, much like Muslims believe Jesus's claims to divinity were added later on. Just want to make sure everyone understands the whole situation here.

 

You're missing the point of the argument. Before I asked why God doesn't prove to everybody, beyond all doubt, that He is real. To prove once and for all what is correct rather than let everyone live in sin because they don't know any better. Why should somebody believe what some guy with a white collar and a book with a cross on it says over that other guy with a square beard and his book with the Star of David on it, or that guy wearing the turban and the book with a crescent on it, or that guy in the orange robes, or that guy praying to that statue with elephant heads and six arms? Each have compelling arguments, each fall short of being able to be proven beyond a doubt yet one comes with something along the lines of "Do as this book tells you or suffer."

Why doesn't God or whoever sort all that out? Help all these people not go to hell for not following Him? The argument given was that if he was to prove himself to all then there would be no free will. But that was refuted and although you didn't actually say so you admitted that the reason given was incorrect because apparently God has done that before yet people still didn't follow Him. Why does God force people to have faith when He could allow people to 'know'?

How is it unrealistic? An argument was presented that you believe God intended something when there is nothing in God's writing about whatever his intention was. I believe all Christians agree it's not anyone's place to assume what God intends and all should accept that whatever He does is in our best interests. Many an argument has been made defending the questions such as "Why?" via "because God intends us to do <such and such>" when there is no recording of God ever saying "I want you to do <this and this> and that is why I have given you <these> laws/rules.".

I have been genuinly curious time and time again yet I've never recieved an answer, not even the hint of an answer, no signs, nothing. But apparently it's because I don't have faith or something, but this was when I DID have faith, I WAS a Christian. The problem was I kept encountering all these questions along the lines of 'why is this?' 'what if this happens?' and having no way to get a clear answer. As our world view grew we realised there were people who had never heard of God and those people hadn't heard of God for many years, entire generations would have gone to hell because according to the Bible, the ten commandments that everyone holds in such high regard, that you shall not worship any other god or idol bar God. I feel seriously sorry for all those hindu, confucian, shinto, sho, celt, saxon, nordic tribes and religions that will burn in hell for eternity because God didn't get around to spreading his word to them.

The other bit was the so called 6000 year old earth or whatever and carbon-dated fossils of human skeletal remains exceeding that time. When the foundation is proven wrong, well, the whole tower of cards comes a'tumblin' down.

 

God is the father of our souls. As such, we are all brothers and sisters of the same divine father in Heaven. Does that help?

It will happen, but it's going to take a really long time...

In the Red Sea story (I still call it the Red Sea for convenience), it was so that his people (the direct decendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) could leave the oppressive bondage of Egypt. Many of the answers you seek are in the Bible, but it's a huge book (arguably a 66 book volume), which is a heavy read. Even harder to memorize the whole thing, but parts of it are easier to remember than others...

Taking you at your word that your faith was in Jesus Christ, I should point out that these answers are not (usually not anyway, but there have been exceptions) grand displays, but through a feeling of peace or a thought that comes to mind and comforts you. The Holy Ghost has been described as a "still small voice". It is easy to miss if you are otherwise distracted...

 

So what about all those people who have gone to Hell because nobody told them that if they continue to worship these other "false" gods and idols they will go to Hell? So sad, too bad, suffer for eternity?

 

This question has been answered before in this same thread, maybe I can add that God is perfect in everything He does, so He will give these people what they deserve.
The great thing about this is that we don't have worry about the fate of your hypothetical people. So instead of asking about them, you should better think a bit about yourself, who heard a lot about all this stuff but try to disprove it..

 

I'm going to call bull**** on this one, if you don't mind, and ask for you to provide sources. I am quite certain that there isn't evidence for a global flood (assuming you meant flood, not food there ), and haven't heard of this evidence for the plagues, as you say.

 

The answer given had no biblical backing. According to the 10 Commandments those people would go to Hell.

 

@Abomination:

This is a good question, and if it came down to just that, I wouldn't have an answer for you. The answer, though, is that when you really listen to them with an open mind, willing to accept that one of them may be right, you hear more than just the people speaking. When one of them speaks, something else speaks softly to your heart, and you KNOW that it's right. But you must be willing to listen with your heart and mind as well as your ears.

Umm, I thought we were arguing about whether or not the Bible had been changed since the original people wrote the original books. When did we get into arguements of what God intended. On that matter, though, there are plenty of places where God tells us what He intended. God's rules tell us what He intended. God's prophecies tell us what He intended and intends. The Bible's chalk full of God telling us His intentions.

But the answers are out there. I've answered every one of your problems. Take, for example, the people that never hear of God. Well, they aren't immediately condemned to hell, they're judged by what they knew and how they acted. As for the age of the Earth, I've discussed that with you in the past, too, and how the Bible never actually says how old the Earth is, and those that say it does don't know what they're talking about. I encourage you to critically look at how they came to those conclusions because you'll see the problems in their arguements.

Only partly. There are two major beliefs as to what this may mean.
1.) Fallen angels married human women, frequently accredited with Nephilim (or giants like Goliath) as offspring.
2.) Others believe the 'sons of God' refer to holy and righteous men, probably descendants of Seth whereas the 'daughters of men' would be evil and promiscuous women, probably Cainites. A few even suggest that these may have been cro-magnon women or other homosapien groups that may have still survived at the time.
Either way, the 'sons of God' is not intended to be literal.

@Aikanaro:
How about evidence that until about 5000 BC there was a thin layer of liquid water in the upper atmosphere. It changed the way the light shone on the Earth, causeing a number of plant and mineral formation that can only be explained this way. For some reason, we don't know why, it collapsed around that time, raining what would be considered massive amounts of water onto the Earth, which would likely have had a very low humidity at that time. You want a global flood, imagine what would happen if all the ice in the world melted and most of the humidity came out of the atmosphere. It likely formed about 500 million years ago, causing a massive planetary drought that caused the single largest species extinction in known planetary history (this was well before the dinosaurs, by the way).

As for the plagues, scientists have shown how they all could have resulted from a volcanic eruption in the Mediterranian Sea. This caused a massive outbreak of red tide, turning the water to 'blood' and killing all the fish. Tons of dead fish attract tons of flies and various other bugs, which attract tons of frogs. The changing winds could easily have blown large swarms of locusts off their regular migratory tracks. It goes on, ending in the ash and smoke from the volcano raining over Egypt. They can only guess the 10th plague was some kind of disease outbreak, though why it only affected the first born and all animals, not just humans, is beyond them. Anyway, there was a volcanic eruption right where it would have needed to be, right when (season) it would have needed to be to cause all of this, so they're guessing that was the cause.

@Abomination again:

You're wrong there. The Bible itself says those that do not hear will be judged 'by what they know'. The 10 commandments don't directly apply to them.

 

But they can't ALL be right!!

 

Now, please correct me if I'm wrong NOG, but the bible does state that God made the world in seven days. And if I remember right, at the end of the sixth day God made man. Yet above you stated that the world was around a long time before the dinosaurs. Does this mean that man was around during the dinosaur ages?

 

I'm sorry, where does it say 'by what they know'? I'd imagine it would be a fairly important part of the Bible since that phrase pretty much means that billions of people who apparently should go to hell won't go to hell.

 

Including me. Because I don't "know" anything about which God is the right God and which bible is the right bible and which rules are the right rules, therefore I should be OK, if does turn out that ignorance is a valid defence on judgement day.

 

Excluding explicit rules from the bible, you infact do know what are the right rules in terms of morality.

 

Sort of. But I'm a little hazier on things like:
- whether I should condemn gay people
- whether contraception is evil
- whether it is evil to eat meat on a Friday
- whether it is sinful to eat shellfish
- whether I should only kill cows by slitting their throats and praying to Mecca in a halal way
- whether my wife should wear a head scarf
- whether my sons should be circumcised
- whether I'll be damned for teaching the theory of evolution
- etc

There are 1001 religious principles which seem to be vital to proper worship of God and to ensure safe passage to heaven and it's hard work sorting through them all to determine the ones that are correct.

 

Those fall into explicit rules, and thus are a matter of dispute, as I have mentioned in a previous post.

 

Which is exactly my point. The resolution of the dispute. Either they are vital rules and if you don't do them, you're doomed, or alternatively, there is no consequence to disobedience - in which case, why does everyone get so heated up about them?

 

They aren't in hell yet. Their Souls are in a Spirit world where they await ressurection. While there, they are being taught the truth by those that were of the faith in mortal life.

Since they are in this spirit world, and being taught the truth, they still reserve the right to repent, and be forgiven. From that point forward, they can work to do good and live rightly and thus avoid damnation.

I was referring to Acts 17:28-29 I believe, where Paul was teaching in Athens and declared that God is the father of our souls.

The term I've heard used was Creative periods, which was not specificaly a 24 hour period. This means that geological information suggesting that the earth is billions of years old can be valid. The Dinosaurs I have heard nothing official on, and Evolution is hard to reconcile within the Creation story. It will likely be possible...