Posted on 04/20/2008 6:09:13 PM PDT by Soliton
Isaac Asimov described faith as believing something that no one in their right mind could believe. He meant (as he explained) that if if something can be arrived at through logic then faith is impossible. faith is for miracles like virgin births and rising from the dead. Let’s face it, if your daughter came home pregnant and said she never had sex you wouldn’t believe her. No one in their right mind would.
There is a religion forum, you might want to go there. Everything you wrote is just witchdoctors dancing with a rattle if there is no God.
Do you use chairs? ... Are you prone to check the chair thoroughly to make sure it will holds you up EVERY TIME you use one? Didn’t think so ... faith is trusting the object to do as it is advertised to do and is strengthened by repeated assurances caused by relying on the object of your faith rewarded by consistent response from the object of your faith, much the way my thirty plus years as a Christian has ingrained in me the trust that God in Christ will continue to be my Savior (even when I confront physical death) just as He has during this thirty plus years. The Christian life is one of daily miracles. I could tell you of many in my own life, but the greatest is what He has done to change me from what I was before I trusted Him to be my Savior.
The Greek verb is ‘pisteuo’ and the noun is ‘pistis’. It is an action word. The English King James translators didn’t like repeating a word in a sentence or paragraph, so they used words like trust, believe, etc. for ‘pisteuo’ and ‘pistis’. We don’t have ‘to faithe’ in our English vocabulary, but it would be more instructive. [You can read more about this ‘faith’ at my profile page. PISTIS = action based upon belief sustained by confidence]
What is illogical about Mary believing the word of an angel (sent by God) that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and impregnate her?
BTW, the virgin birth was prophesied by Isaiah several hundred years before it occured.
You have a choice. You can believe Isaac Asimov, or you can believe God.
Atheistic evolutionists can believe that “time, plus chance, plus the impersonal” (Francis Schaeffer) resulted in the order, life, and beauty we all experience as humans.
Christians believe that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
You get to choose which you think is more reasonable...or more “logical.”
Would Hitler have acted on his stated belief in darwinism if he had never known what Darwin, or Nietzche said, or what Malthus, said, or what eugenics legitimated? To paraphrase, "Is 'modest' evil the excuse for 'profound' evil?" Is the euphemism for evil calling it good, as Hitler did, an excuse to effectuate what he did to the Jews, Gypsies, and Poles? Dahlmer was evil but he did not sink to the depths of Hitler, Mao, or Stalin, at least in the shear volumn o evil visited upon the human race. This is not to excuse Dahlmer. The guy who knock over the corner grocery store is evil, but he does not sink to the depths of Dahlmer. And so on. Agustine, Bishop of Hippo, and the Father of the Inquistion was both moral and immoral in his acts. For that matter, the Pope of Geneva, Jeane Cheauvin (John Calvin) after crying sola scriptura in France took off to the city state of Geneva and then did what the Pope he so rigorously hated had done before him. Calvin, was a sycophant of Augustine and derived most of his theological system from Augustine. There is plenty of blame to go around, but none was a directive from God. The human heart is deceitful above all things and desperatly wicked, who can know it?
Ask a Rabbi if they believe that
If angels came down and told me something, I might believe too. Mary didn't require faith; she had flying evidence with wings and everything. Joseph, on the other hand, must have had faith out the wazoo!.
Ahhhh, the Augustinian chair reposte, touche'! I didn't see that one coming. You have defeat me sir!
Mary had her angel, Joseph had his dreams. Both were faithful with the revelation they received from God, and obtained His approval of their faith (pistis).
I am beginning to think that if you received a revelation from God, no matter what form it was in, written, spoken, or visual, you might just possibly attribute it to the “bad” pizza you had the night before.
Rabbis believe and disbelieve lots of things. However, there are quite a number of “completed” Jews who have accepted Jesus at their Messiah, and accept the virgin birth. The very early Christian church was almost ENTIRELY Jewish.
Strong's Greek Dictionary defines pistis as: persuasion; moral conviction, especially reliance upon Christ for salvation; constancy in such profession. You see the word "faith" is different.
——I could just as credibly say that anti-semitism may have done the same, had Christianity not provided excuses for it.——
There were people from half-way around the world who came from a nation that more closely modeled their society after Christ, that put a stop to said genocide. Where were the Darwinian evolutionists during this time?
I'm fairly well vesed on Biblical History. I love the fact that conversions accelerated after circumcision ceased to be required of grown men. Imagine the sales pitch before that. "God is a kind and loving God. He forgives all sinners who come to him through Jesus his son. All you have to do is accept him into your heart to be born again, and, oh yeah, let us cut off part of your penis."
Would Hitler have acted on his stated belief in Christianity if he had never known what the Bible or Martin Luther said, or what they legitimated in his mind?
See the point? You can't tie Darwinism to the Holocaust without tying Christianity to it, as well. It's a package deal.
——See the point? You can’t tie Darwinism to the Holocaust without tying Christianity to it, as well. It’s a package deal——
Not when it was a Christian society that helped put an end to Hitlers Genocide.
Maybe they forgot to tell them they had to deny themselves and “take up their cross daily.”
Kind of like today.
However, I don’t think so, as many of the early Christians were martyred, and the church always grew rapidly when believers embraced and lived a faith worth dying for.
——I’m fairly well vesed on Biblical History. I love the fact that conversions accelerated after circumcision ceased to be required of grown men. Imagine the sales pitch before that. “God is a kind and loving God. He forgives all sinners who come to him through Jesus his son. All you have to do is accept him into your heart to be born again, and, oh yeah, let us cut off part of your penis.”——
Ha, can you imagine the conversations between the apostles on that point? Maybe that explains Peters vision.
AFAIK, there were no constitutional republics in the Bible, and Jesus never advocated such. I was under the impression that governments in both the OT and NT were Theocracies in the form of kingdoms and empires. Hitler, OTOH, was carrying on a long-standing, official policy of Christian Theocracies in Europe with his anti-semitism.
Where were the Darwinian evolutionists during this time?
I imagine those in England and the US were engaged in fighting the Axis powers. Do you have any evidence they were neutral or supported Hitler? Did any Christian ministers advocate neutrality or support Hitler before the War?
The Soviet Union was a Christian society?
</i>Ha, can you imagine the conversations between the apostles on that point? Maybe that explains Peters vision.</i> Perhaps the real reason they changed his name to “Peter” from Saul is that he was the only person with a complete one.
From the crucifixion of Christ to the present day, the Jews have fought Christianity or misused and falsified it in order to reach their own selfish goals. By Christian baptism nothing is altered in regard to a Jew's racial separateness, his national being, and his biological nature. A German Evangelical church has to care for and further the religious life of German fellow countrymen; racial Jewish Christians have no place or rights in it. [Helmreich, p. 329]
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