Have you ever denounced or changed your religious affiliation? If so, why?

Adam trying to be true and faithful to God wouldn't partake of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for fear of death. Although, he did not understand what death is. Never saw death. But, he was true and faithful. Eve latched on to the commandment to multiply and replenish the earth. She somehow knew that they needed the knowledge the fruit would give them to accomplish this. Once her eyes were open and she understood, she went to convince Adam it was necessary for them to go through the sorrow of transgression because she had already done so. He saw he'd be left a lone man in the garden so he partook so that God's plan would happen. He broke the one commandment to keep the other.
The question comes up that what if Adam and Eve did not eat the fruit of that tree. Would God still be able to move his Plan of Happiness and Salvation forward? Yes. Perhaps another Bill and Ester would have been the first man and woman. The plan was never going to be derailed.

 

The lineage of Judeo-Christian Bible somehow is proof that Adam existed? How so?

Does the lineage of star wars movies prove Darth Vader is real too?

Your question was not addressed to me, so of course I did not answer it.

Nor can I answer it to your satisfaction, because I can't tell how far back you imagine your imaginary Adam to go.

 

No, the 23rd king after the flood is at 4700 years. This has been shown through archaeological evidence, the first of the Sumerian kings that we have been able to fairly accurately place. There was a great flood, some 6000-7000 years ago. There is evidence for that. But it didn't cover the whole world. It changed the shape of the Persian gulf. The gulf used to be quite a bit shorter. A few cities were probably swallowed up, but it wasn't some worldwide drowning, though to those swallowed by the Persian Gulf, it probably felt that way. All of the Sumerian cities we know of today were obviously untouched by the flood, though I'm sure it was a time of hardship.
As for Adam being the first one to speak and write, that is pretty unlikely. Speech evolved a long time before reading and writing.

 

I know little but that God lives and Jesus Christ is the Savior who made intercession for sin and mortality. And that to escape those consequences, one need accept his offering just as we might make our meager offerings to God. Followed by baptism, reception of the gift of the Holy Ghost, then laboring thru ones life learning principles of salvation, line by line, growing in truth.

 

Did the writers of Star Wars write it to be a history of the universe? No. They wrote it to be a great imaginative movie. The writers of the Bible wrote their real experiences with God and their people. Moses was given more information to fill in things that happened before Noah. Even the lineage genealogies. The Bible is history of the earth and God's works with mankind and the universe. Star Wars was a fictional movie made as a fictional movie, not history of the universe. Do you not know this? If you are going to do this with the Bible, you might as well do this with any written history including anything from any ancient people like the Samarians. The question really isn't that both are history. They are. The question, is the timing correct that is given from various authors looking into this. I say that those who say the first king of the Samarians was 4,700 years ago is off by a few hundred years because they are part of Adam's family, not the other way around.

 

I don't believe you. I don't see why anybody would. Which is why I asked you to prove it without pointing at the bible storybook.

I would treat their religious claims the same, sure. I also would not take a Homerian Epic as an accurate historical account.

Archeology has a role to play here.

Are they? The existence of people going far back is evidenced by many forms of archeology. We know ancient kings existed. We have no evidence aside from the bible stories that Adam ever did.

 

I trust God, the Bible, the story of creation and the plan of salvation. But then there is this, a temple in Afghanistan determined to be about twelve thousand years old. Is the science of determining the age of a thing wrong or in error? Could they have misdated it by half?

 

I was raised ELS Lutheran, but it became an inner conflict for me to reconcile those fundy beliefs about life, the universe and everything with what science revealed. I even had issues with the moral side of it.

About 10 years ago now, I finally admitted, first to myself, what I knew deep down and became an atheist. My logical, skeptical mind just doesn't have room for sky fairies and creation fables, nor for misogyny, homophobia, or condemning good people for being who or what they are despite being good people like myself who just don't share the silly beliefs that Christians today derive from a collection of Iron Age fairytales.

 

Its determined through carbon dating, which is pretty accurate. And you keep saying "first" king after the flood, when it was the 23rd king after the flood. Your timelines are wrong by quite a bit. There may have been an important person named Adam. However, he surely was not the first human being. And he surely was not the first to speak, to read, and to write.

Science applies the natural rules of the universe set forth by god. Carbon dating is a part of that. I'd say science is god's way of providing us physical truth, rather than having to rely on a book written by humans, who are prone to using things like religious texts for personal gains.

 

The science is pretty clear, and quite accurate. I think of it as god's way of saying "hey guys, that book has a lot of human influence in it. don't be fooled".

 

How would we have archeological evidence of Adam since Noah's Flood left nothing to see. Continents formed and it was devastating. Although, at Adam-Ondi-Ahman in Daviess County, Missouri is where Adam dwelt after being banished from the Garden. The Lord has preserved some things. And, there are plenty of archeological sites that have been proven to be from the Bible. In any event, the Bible is true. I've got all the proof I need.

 

The sacrifice wasn't to/for himself, was it?

What I find disturbing is Jesus' murder and what that says about us.

Because us.

I would submit that there's more to consider here than our own personal salvation, be it here in this world or possibly the next. Jesus was overturning the entire Ancient order and how we defined ourselves. He overthrew and liberated us from the accepted assumptions of natural inequality that had existed since time immemorial. As Nobel laureate Boris Pasternak put it in Doctor Zhivago:

There you had the blood and beastliness and cruelty and pock-marked Caligulas untouched by the suspicion that any man who enslaves others is inevitably second-rate. There you had the boastful and dead eternity of bronze monuments and marble columns. It was not until after the coming of Christ that time and man could breathe freely. It was not until after Him that men began to live in their posterity and ceased to die in ditches like dogs.

You know how we are. No man, including Jesus, was going to survive what he was doing, and countless others died following in his footsteps. You change the world, you die. You challenge the authority and legitimacy of the ruling secular and religious elite, you die. Furthermore, not only will you die, you will die in the worst way imaginable - the cross, the stake, the knife - and you will die in the worst way imaginable in front of everyone so that everyone gets the message.

Why the need for blood and torture, indeed...

 

All could not have been wiped out in that flood. There's civilizations the world over that were around way before said flood and some remain today.

...
The San People of Southern Africa trace their history directly to ancient peoples who lived around 140,000 to 100,000 years ago.

...
Recent archaeological finds have uncovered the oldest known ritual ceremonies, which have been been attributed to the San. Archaeologists discovered 70,000-year old spearheads in a cave in the Tsodilo Hills of Botswana that were sacrificed to the python.

...
Although the people who settled in Mesopotamia are often credited as the first civilization, new research shows that Aboriginal Australians are one of the oldest known civilizations on Earth. The Aborigines can trace their ancestries back to about 75,000 years ago, but became a distinct genetic group around 50,000 years ago.
10 Oldest Civilizations in the World (Updated 2021) - Oldest.org

 

Well, it appears all you need to believe is faith. I need more.

And that's good for you. Especially if it brings you peace and purpose, etc. But you shouldn't expect it to convince anybody else.

Again, unlike with Adam, we have actual tangible evidence about others existing long ago.

 

lol, continents were not formed, that happened far far earlier. The coastlines shifted a bit, that’s all. Some cities were swallowed up, and the Persian gulf increased in size.

 

It wasn't? It seems Christians agree on very little amongst each other.

It isn't my story or belief or claim, so it isn't for me to say. But I can see what is written in the books and I can hear what various Christians say, and it is usually that Man can be forgiven his sins by God only at the cost of the suffering and death of Jesus, and that you need to accept and praise this to be forgiven your own wrongs (or disobedience to the creator; which they declare as wrong).

Sounds to me like God requires suffering and blood of somebody in order to forgive you, and that somebody does not have to be yourself.

That it's blood sacrifice he needs to do this, and not good deeds... Is disturbing... Is it not? And that it can be somebody other than you paying the price.. is also disturbing... Is it not?

Ok sure. But wasn't that all God's plan from the start? If humans didn't murder Jesus, you couldn't have your salvation. God specifically sent Jesus to be murdered and created the very beings who did that murder knowing as he created them that they would do it. Is that not the story?

And also, I note your use of collective guilt. It was not "us" who nailed Jesus to a cross. I wasn't born yet (nor were you) and my ancestors were half a planet away with zero contact yet from Jews or Christians.

This brings us back to the Hippy Jesus vs Christ thing.

Hippy Jesus, including his sermon on the Mount and other things did indeed appear to be quite progressive in advancing human ethics. I praise him (or whoever was merged into him or created the story of him if there was not one historical him).

But despite the Hippy Jesus push for peace and love and equality etc, and reforms over the times before (restrictions on slavery are a good example), the church that grew out of the Christ went on to solidify the morals of that time, making them resistant to further moral progress (ie, slavery being permitted again a good example, as is the subjugation of women, homophobia, and later antisemitism from the story of the "Jews killing Jesus").

There is a reason why anti-Christians can so easily point at really twisted immoral things in the Bible. Humans have developed better moral values since the. Most modern Christians ignore the immoral bits or call them allegory or some other hand waive, which is good, but it took quite some time to get there.

So yes, Jesus and Christianity did indeed take a step forward morally speaking over what pre-existed it. But it has also held us back since.

Sure. And in Jesus's day he was the one pushing for that change. And then for centuries later he was held up as the symbol of the religious elite, colonizing nearly the entire planet at spearpoint and gunpoint, pushing conversion by force. And those who dared question that, such as many of my own ancestors, died, similarly to your Jesus. Those who pushed against the new religious elite using Jesus's name suffered similar fates to Jesus himself.

The religion and the holy book demands that the only way to God is to accept and praise Jesus' torture and death. You are saved by blood, aren't you? Not by good deeds. None of what you wrote above justifies any of that regarding God's requirement for granting salvation.

It is a religion demanding blood sacrifice. It is an improvement that this became a symbolic blood sacrifice with Jesus, and we don't have modern Christians murdering their children because they think God demands it, but it is still based on the same idea.

 

Of course, it wasn't. Why would God need to save himself?

Elementary logic, my friend, and you're correct - Christians agree on very little amongst each other (hence the Hussite Wars, the Thirty Years War, etc., etc.).

And what various Christians say proves what?

Is the lineage of the Judeo-Christian Bible proof that Adam existed?

I'm rather skeptical of this requirement or need, much less the blood sacrifice thing. As for good deeds and salvation, that's something Christians have disagreed about since the Protestant Reformation, when Luther "discovered" his doctrine of sola fide and Erasmus challenged him in The Freedom of the Will. In fact, the 500th Anniversary of this ongoing argument will be on us in 2024.

Some people believe that. Some don't.

Mistakenly noted on your part. I used the term "us" to differentiate between us - human beings - and God, not to establish or assert some form of collective guilt. I don't even blame Pontius Pilate for Jesus' death, much less you or me and everyone who wasn't complicit in his death.

It's both an ironic and unfortunate thing, and it's the product of Christians losing control over their own Church, which wound up becoming no better or different than the religious institution that put their savior to death.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

I don't blame Christianity for that. I blame the men and women in the religious institutions that have existed since the time of Jesus for that. Good Christians were often the victims of those officials/authorities.

True, and I'm sure Jesus would not have approved of this, which is why prominent voices within the Catholic Church rejected and/or condemned the idea of coerced belief. I would think there were voices in the Protestant churches who spoke out against that, too. It's a sad fact that power-hungry men exploited their churches for their own self-aggrandizement.

I don't believe in anything you just wrote. How am I bound to the demands of religions and holy books created by men? How am I, or anyone else for that matter, bound to other people's interpretations of the religion and holy book? I'm not a Lutheran - how am I bound to the doctrine of sola fide and the notion that good deeds count for nothing, particularly when there are passages in the Bible that Luther claimed was the sole source of religious authority that flatly contradicts that? When it comes to Christianity, some Christians can't even agree with themselves.

Judging from your own posts I think you share my position vis a vis these people, institutions and texts.

Sorry, but I don't buy the argument and generalization that "it is a religion demanding blood sacrifice". I don't buy the argument that God demands it, either.

 

You misunderstood me. I didn't say anything about him saving himself. I said he demanded the sacrifice as a condition for him to forgive you.

What various Christians say is all I have to go on regarding their beliefs. Again, these aren't my beliefs. If you want to talk about a particular mythology, you need the mythology explained, and it this one varies from person to person, so there are so many versions of it.

No. It is proof that somebody wrote something. And I see no reason to believe what they wrote was anything less fantasy than Star Wars, hence by comparison to Darth Vader.

Oh ok. So your version is a lot less disturbing then? You don't say God needed a blood sacrifice, such as Jesus dying on the cross for your sins to be forgiven? Do you think good people generally are forgiven for their minor bad deeds?

Well, unless everyone is forgiven regardless of anything (which would be ok I suppose), then basing forgiveness on being a good person and doing good deeds seems the only moral path I can imagine. Can you imagine another? Many who call themselves Christian say forgiveness from God only happens if you "accept Jesus' sacrifice"... the blood sacrifice... which is what I was talking about before.

Then what did you mean when you wrote it says something about "us"? It says something about all human beings? You seemed to be pointing at us as if we are all responsible and would all have done the same to Jesus, as if it is our inescapable nature. If I misread that, what did you mean instead?

Yes. As I said, Hippy Jesus seemed like a cool guy. And I feel bad that he was strung up and tortured and killed by pre-Christians, same as I feel bad for the millions who were later strung up and tortured (or burned at the stake) by Christians.

One form (the one in control) of Christianity is definitely to blame for that. But as we both noted above, there are a million different understandings of what "Christianity" is. As I wrote to Greatest I am, some forms of Christianity are quite benign and even uplifting. Others are very disturbing and some are even murderous.

You aren't. I mistook you for a bible literalist Christian. If you aren't, then you aren't bound by anything such people believe. Nor am I.

That very well could be.

So is everyone forgiven by God for their wrongdoing, out of his mere mercy, or is something required of them? Do you think we have to believe in or support Jesus and his dying on the cross to get salvation? Is "salvation" even a thing that we need?

 

For the first twenty six years of my life I had no religion other than life, family, friends, hobbies, work, etc. And throughout it all, God never condemned or judged me aside from the occasional private guilt of conscience over this or that deed or word, if you want to call that religion. Then when at age twenty six I received a revelation/vision, when heaven opened and his spirit poured out, filling my heart with peace and my mind with light, sweeping the table of my soul of darkness and stirring my remembrance of him. Yet still he did not judge me. Though he impressed upon me the necessity of repentance and baptism, still there was no judgment. I was not thrust down or even dipped in any purgatory to create any sense of punishment. Just the gentle call to do the right thing. Still thru it all God did not judge or condemn me more than to point the way and leave the latter to me to judge. This is why I say God is kind, a friend, Brother, Father, Savior and Husband. Nothing that anyone can say to me can change this. It is eternal and true.

 

I did not denounce it.
I have clicked for it.

There: http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/do-you-belong-to-any-religious-community.593275/

 

Correct - I don't subscribe to the whole blood sacrifice thing, and you asked earlier, why was that necessary when God could have just sent a message of forgiveness and be done with it?

Setting aside how things played out, it's conceivable that none of that had to happen. I get that some Christians believe his death and resurrection were necessary, but where does that leave all his teachings about salvation? Were they worth nothing?

I certainly don't think so, and there are a lot of Christians and people who follow Jesus' teachings who think his message was sufficient - his death and suffering were unnecessary.

Do I think good people are generally are forgiven for their minor bad deeds? Based on my reading of Jesus' teachings I would presume that they would be, because he asserted that God was a forgiving God who understood his children were imperfect creatures and he didn't damn them for that.

I'm in agreement with you, and I expressed this in a thread here:

http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/erasmus-and-luther-free-vs-unfree-will.593173/

The question you're posing is essentially the same one Erasmus and Luther contended with 500 years ago, and it was the question that tore Western Christendom apart. As I mentioned there, I fall into Erasmus' camp, and it sounds like you do, too. Obviously, there are people who don't subscribe to the notion that following in Christ's footsteps, living a virtuous life and performing good deeds is the path to forgiveness/salvation/justification. There are some (e.g., Martin Luther) who would go so far as to vilify the people who believe that (e.g., Erasmus) and there might be some here who would, too.

It's a major philosophical and theological dispute, and 500 years later it remains unresolved to this day.

Again, I was differentiating between Man and God and I was not blaming everyone for the actions of the complicit. However, the complicit are part of us, whether we like it or not.

I've tried to make the same point to him.

I got the impression you may have mistaken me for someone else. I'm not a Bible literalist Christian, and having followed your posts I'm inclined to think that we have a better understanding of Christianity and what it takes to be a Christian than many literalists do.

Three questions, three answers:

1) Based on my understanding of Jesus' teachings, everyone is forgiven out of the infinite goodness of God's being, and that infinite goodness is the "news" that Jesus brought to us.

2) No, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate what Jesus did (assuming it is true) and why he did it and the value of the lessons that we can draw from it all.

3) I guess we have to ask ourselves what is salvation, what is associated with salvation and what are the benefits of salvation, be it here in this life or (allegedly) the next.

 

Archeologists can be wrong, it's not an exact science. I read that after examining the destruction caused by Mount Saint Helen, they realized that it could easily be mistaken for being millions of years old. I would trust the Bible more.

 

I like how you think. Thanks.

 

Both - no longer partake in the dogma .. but remain spiritual.. was baptized twice - second time to get married.

 

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