the church at one time also taught that the earth was the center of the universe and the center of the solar system and persecuted those who proved differently. It also taught that witches existed and that they should be burned at the stake.
You substitute the darkened wits of man for the eternal God. God gave you a mind so that you could learn His ways and worship Him, not so that you could deny Him and worship at the altar of Reason and Knowledge, but that is what sinful man is apt to do. Yet the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of man.
Nope, God gave man a mind to reason...he also gave us the freedom of choice whether or not to worship him.
Then it is meaningless as a guide to God and suspect as a guide to life. If scripture is nothing more than a hint book-with false leads thrown in to boot-we are left to conclude that God (or more likely his self-appointed acolytes) are nothing more than jokesters.
It is no more worthless as a guide than a road map is to a unknown distant place.
If I believed as you do I would not call myself a Christian. But then again, I don't know if you have either, so I might be presuming upon our conversation.
Well, I do call myself a Christian but one apparently very unlike yourself in that I am not a judgemental one.
This "judgemental" stuff is ridiculous and as a believer I'm so tired of it being misused. We are supposed to be accountable to one another. And we are to share repentance and salvation.
James 5: 19-20
My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.
Lk 17:1-3
Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. So watch yourselves.
"If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents forgive him".
"Judge not lest ye be judged" has been totally twisted. We are not to judge others more harshly than we want to be judged. That's ALL that means. Do not hold others to a higher standard than we hold ourselves.
I could call myself a physicist, but if I reject many of the established laws of physics and substitute my own theories, am I really a physicist? To wit: how do you know that Christ even existed? Because the Bible tells you so, perhaps? What if it is wrong on that point? And even if Christ did exist, most of His bona fides run counter to reason. Being born of a virgin is impossible, of course. So is returning from the dead. A quick analysis of Jesus' claims also proves that he was quite insane. A rational man does not claim to be God.
From a purely logical standpoint, this Jesus guy is pretty unlikely.
but one apparently very unlike yourself in that I am not a judgemental one.
Where have I been judgemental? I told you the truth: speaking for myself, if I didn't believe that the revelations of God (the scripture and the church) were trustworthy, it would be intellectually dishonest for me to call myself a Christian, because they are the only tangible sources of information about Christ.