Posted on 09/03/2023 10:10:00 AM PDT by daniel1212
So sue me! Nowadays, it's shorthand for "bad thing." I sometimes use widely-known and easily accessible references to reach a "broader" audience - or maybe out of convenience. I've always included an "e.g." - to make it clear that it's only an example. I'm surprised that you would even find it worth mentioning!
You are a cretin.
Have I once directed a personal insult towards you in the entire course of this conversation?
Regards,
Not yet. But your mischaracterization of my use of the word "worldwide" as an instance of the Fallacy of Popularity, was so egregious an error, GIVEN the question I was answering when I used the word "worldwide," that you deserved a rebuke.
I respect the man who proclaims: "I've examined all the evidence, read all the accounts, seen all the footage - and can't with certainty say that bin Laden was, indeed, killed that day (or any other day).
I would not damn any man to eternal torment because he was not convinced by the available evidence.
I wouldn't even insult him as "evil," a "demon," or a "cretin" if he refused to budge.
In an imperfect world, it is frequently necessary to make real-world decisions and consequently take real-world actions based on incomplete or less-than-forensic-level evidence, etc. I fault no man for doing so.
I would not damn him, nor indeed even insult him, for making the "wrong" (by my lights) decision or coming to the "wrong" conclusion, as long as it pertained only to his own Salvation.
Your vindictive God seems to view that matter differently.
Regards,
Contradicting yourself again!
IN POST #551 you said (and this is in context):
I sincerely don't understand how you people (i.e., apologists of Evil and Suffering in the world) can make utterances like that without instantly thinking also of the innumerable cases of a similar or even worse nature.
And then you turn around and say, "I"m surprised that you would even find it worth mentioning."
You can't have it both ways. And yet you appear to be fatuously sliding the beads along the wire to congratulate yourself on each of your self-assessed "points scored".
It goes against your claim to be considering dispassionately.
I didn't. I insulted you for fallaciously accusing me of something I simply wasn't doing.
You're sliding into long-suffering intellectual martyrdom again.
Shall I send you some liver, Prometheus?
I would not damn him, nor indeed even insult him, for making the "wrong" (by my lights) decision or coming to the "wrong" conclusion, as long as it pertained only to his own Salvation. Your vindictive God seems to view that matter differently.
The door is locked on the inside. It is only pride that is holding it shut.
My observation was legitimate. Your use of the word "worldwide" was unnecessary and hence confusing. The accusation of "ad populum" was not unreasonable. Would your argument have been any weaker if you had instead chosen, say, "consistently" or "uniformly?"
And not all Christian churches employ the Cross as a symbol. The Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, view the Cross with disgust (while still honoring the concomitant Sacrifice).
Regards,
How many believers have you sought to dissuade from their faith?
Millstones. It was not delivered humorously or as idle talk.
Indicating it was not merely a cultural or regional preference.
Jehovah's Witnesses are heretics, not Christians: they believe Christ was created, not God; they're kind of an encore performance of Arianism.
And I've spoken in person with Jehovah's Witnesses who sound like they deny the deity / personality of Holy Spirit, it being more like "The Force" in Star Wars.
...and they deny Hell.
In all due respect, do you really think you are engaged in a debate with an honest opponent.
When someone in debate says, "Your mother's a whore," the appropriate response to such an opponent isn't to conclude that "His allegation is to the integrity of my mother and now I must respond in a way that demonstrates that her integrity is indeed beyond reproach.";-)
Excellent point. You have been wrestling with a pig...albeit a clever one.
Do you think he has read your responses with the care they deserve? Has he taken them to heart?
Or is he scanning your comments to pick a few cherries that can be used to insult the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
You're a cretin. Again.
1. Have you ever known any farmers? These kinds of things bore them and are a waste of time.
2. You can see religions which stories everyone now agrees are the works and legends of men, intended to explain a confusing world: the Greek and Roman gods, lots of little gods each with their own specialty. You can tell they are invented "Man made (gods) in his own image" by their internecine squabbles and that the worship involves getting drunk and getting laid.
Which are things people want excuses to do without feeling guilty.
3. The God of Abraham, has very little explanative text regarding natural phenomena: painful childbirth, and rainbows. And NO interest in cosmology in the modern sense ("He made the stars also.") Rather the emphasis is on moral development:and further of a sort which disallows many of mankind's favorite activities, such as theft, adultery, and even the moral failing without action of envy, (on which most contemporary advertising is built, along with pride and lust.)
You're gonna have to up your game, your copybook GNU atheist objections are getting more and more shrill and more and more boring. Do you even bother to consider what you're writing at all...?
Been meaning to get back to this.
We should normally assume ignorance in the face of such charges, until unreasonable recalcitrance in the light of substantiation becomes the norm. Normally on FR we have debates with those who hold to the Bible as being the word of God, all of which affirm the 66 books of the Prot. canon as being so, to which Catholics add 7 to 9 books which are of little support as regards their distinctive doctrines.
But with the real debate we typically have btwn Caths as well as with cultists has little and often nothing to do of which Bible to use, but it is that of teachings due to the presumed ensured veracity of their leadership, and teachings that result from that. Which includes holding to another body of purported Divine revelation besides the Bible, and or at least treating the teachings of past leaders as being assuredly definitive of the Bible.
Catholics invoke oral tradition and so-called "church fathers" (as defined and promulgated by leadership). Mormons have their additional pseudo-scriptures, likewise, SDA adherents look to the writings of Ellen G. White, and so-called "Christian scientists" look to Mary Baker Eddy, and the list goes on.
However, aside from Catholicism (for which, as said, the apocryphal books offer little help), for such the contents of the Bible are not a cause of debate, and all such rely upon the Bible for their authority as claimants of additional God-inspired revelation, or as assuredly faithful teachers if it, thus the Bible only authoritatively means what their leadership says. In contrast, the veracity of the teaching of a SS evangelical is only to rest upon their degree of Scriptural substantiation.
I myself have posted extensively in debates with many of the above, by the grace of God, mainly RCs (and in response, so save much time and typing, I often cobble together previous replies, which usually have been ignored by the same propagandists who persist in posting the same assertions as were refuted), while those who reject the Bible as the word of God, and think the cause of most confusion and division is due to which Bible to read, are in a different universe, predominated by those who are looking for a reason to reject the Bible (as my own engagement with such evidences), consistent being liberal. And which atheists overwhelmingly attest to being),being consistent with their beliefs/opinions regarding a Creator with moral laws.
Not that the rejectors of the Bible all are, however, such still seem to have been baptized in the pool of those who cite such things as 400,000 differences in the New Testament manuscripts, and of redactions and missing books etc. as justification for their position, and equate the Bible to a technical manual, and see honest seekers being bewildered by "a variety of heavily redacted versions," when that is hardly an objective analysis of both seekers as well as of the state of research on the supporting side.
That of a book of almost 800,000 words existing in thousands of manuscripts of varying quality, mostly fragments (mss qualities are not uniform, yet discernible) yet unparalleled relative to its antiquity. And which body overall has and is being examined with fine-toothed combs, because of the wealth and access to manuscripts that scholars have.
But with spelling and other inconsequential differences constituting almost all of the differences in canonical mss, and with an estimatedc 99% of the text of the NT being certain while inn any dispute conflation should resolve copyist errors or editing. It's the Nature, Not the Number, That Matters.
And with the the jaundiced attacks on the Bible having been much examined and quite amply dealt with, , with many resources dealing with such.
But it has been my experience that rather than honest persons humbling seeking enlightenment looking for and being confused by differences (if they even know of such), and supposedly missing books outside of the basically uniform canons (the obscure added books of the Deutros rarely being of consequence for seekers), then as souls seeking spiritual food they are not looking for a technical manual, as if doing heart surgery, and looking for ways to reject the Bible, but for medicine for the soul, for food for their spiritual need.
In which the gospel and is basic message is clear. Which is that of one being a sinner, by violation of conscience and of laws, and in need of salvation, which man;s creator provided on His own expense, sparing not His own dear Son, that of Jesus the Christ, from death as man's prophesied scapegoat, (Lev. 16; Mich, 5:2 Is. 7:14; 9:6; 53:1-12; Rm. 8:22) who rose from the dead as mankind's present savior and future judge. (1. Pt. 3:18-22) And which salvation is received by simply penitent faith in this Lord Jesus of a kingdom of such souls, as even the contrite criminal crucified next to Christ expressed, to His salvation.
After I did this, yet being in great ignorance of the Bible, then even nature seemed "new" to me, and later I learned how by which faith the redeemed soul is "accepted in the Beloved" and positionally seated with Him in Heaven, on His account, glory to God. (Ephesians 1:6; 2:6; cf. Phil. 3:21)
The other criminal that railed on Christ would have welcomed citations of differences in manuscripts as a pretext for justification for his rejection of His crucified savior, yet their is no basis for this despite differences.
At length the basic non-contradictory gospel message is that there is a creator, who gave us both good laws and good things, but which we have broken and misused, thus spiritually being separated from God, (Genesis 2:15,16; Is. 59:1; Eph. 2:5) and affecting others, (Romans 8:20-22) and thus are in need of salvation. Which comes at price, sin itself being costly, yet which was provided by the Creator Himself, with the Father sending the Son to be the prophesied (Is. 7:14; 9:6; Mich, 5:2) Savior of the world. (I Jn. 4:14) Who did everything Right and then took responsibility for all we did Wrong, paying the price the forgiveness of our sin with His own sinless shed blood. (Isaiah 53:4–11; Luke 24:47; Luke 24:47; Col. 1:14) And 3 days later then rose and ascended to His Father in Heave n as Lord of all, and thus enabling being spiritually born (as a child of God John 3:3-7; 7:37, 38; 14:24,25; 16:7) when one essentially believes on Him with penitent faith. (Acts 15:7-9; Eph. 1:13; Titus 3:5)
And which faith is imputed for righteousness, (Romans 4:5) and results in following the Lord, (Jn. 10:27, 28; Romans 8:14) which is to formally begin with being baptized (Acts 2:38-47; 8:12,36,37) And those who die in that obedient faith will go to be forever with Him at death or His return.(Phil 1:23; 2Cor. 5:8 [“we”]; Heb, 12:22,23; 1Cor. 15:51ff'; 1Thess. 4:14, 17) “the resurrection of life. ”(Jn. 5:29a) In contrast to those who were never born of the Spirit or who terminally fall away. (Gal. 5:1-4; Heb. 3:12; 10:25-39) This is essentially what the devout Jews - the first Christians - believed. As they should.
Warning: not much proof read, but that's it for me. I think.
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