Free Republic

I admit it does seem a bit petty to hope that their last few minutes on earth were spent in agony. Especially considering their probable final destination.

If, on the other hand, some of them went to heaven instead, a little pain is of no importance to them either!

What nobody has brought up yet though, is that sarin gas and other weaponized chemicals can injure as well as kill. The deaths are just the tip of the casualty iceberg. There are probably many people who will live the rest of their lives with lung injuries - and possibly pain. That is to say nothing of executions and reprisals for incompetence. I don’t envy third world military “scientists”.

The funny thing is, if I admit that all you say about appearances of the age the earth is true, and if I retain my faith that the Bible is perfectly accurate, I find the claim that God created the sedimentary rocks complete with fossils to be rather satisfactory.

It is true that the claim is meaningless from a "scientific viewpoint", but that is because the "scientific viewpoint" MUST look at the world as if it was uncreated. To publish a paper, you need to explain something, and saying "God did it" is no scientific explanation.

But it is a philosophical/metaphysical explanation, and it therefor has a place in our thinking at the same level as science, but not as science. I'm sure you doubt that God would create fossils, but I think He might.

God said, "Let the earth bring forth..." the animals. When I imagine this, I imagine all over and throughout the sediments of the earth substances pulling together into shapes, fragments, shells, and bones, some of which are nearly exposed. The Wind of God blows across the few perfect specimens, clearing away the dust for the flesh which will form on them. And thus they walk the earth. And if some of the shapes, shells and fragments are of things that never lived and breathed, it is because God is an artist. He could concieve of so many other shapes and possibilities besides the ones He chose, that perhaps, in His generosity, He decided to share some of those other possibilities with us in the form of fossils.

In this way I can see how the world might make sense, and that is a very important thing.

Saying everyone before Darwin was a creationist is like saying everyone before Martin Luther was a Catholic.

Yes, I know exactly how to do it. But it is hard to understand, hard on people with fixed incomes, and requires a lot of people to participate. In a nut shell, we can collectively reinterpret our taxes as investments in the US, and reinterpret dollars as US bond certificates. I.E. at tax time we will trade some of our US securities certificates for US equities. Problem solved. :)

The time may not be right for this plan yet. People have to feel financial pain to be motivated to participate, and under Bush we will probably be OK in the short-term.

How about PINO? Peaceful in Name Only? How about we put
that in the Lexicon?

And by the way - "Allahu Akbar" does NOT mean
"God is great", it might mean "Allah is great". (Not suggesting you don't know this Ohioan.)
But God is NOT the god of PINOs.

"The Lord tests the righteous.
But the wicked, and the one who loves violence,
His soul hates.
Upon the wicked He will rain coals,
Fire and brimstone and a burning wind.
This shall be the portion of their cup.
For the Lord is righteous.
He loves righteousness.
His countenance beholds the upright."

Psalm 11:5-7

Christian martyrs are not like others, in that what they witness to is different than those who die of other religions.

Christians witness to the death, resurrection and salvation through Jesus Christ. That is what we Christians mean by a martyr.

We do not mean some vague hope or blind faith in the vaunted goodness of humanity. In fact, we Christians go so far as to say that anyone who witnesses to something against Christ or some salvation separate from Him are false witnesses. That definitely includes Islam - all of it.

Zero Tolerance has always been about avoiding embarassment. Perhaps it even goes back to collective guilt mistakes(*). If one is in the spirit of saying that the the real tradgedy is not that kids might die, but that kids might die HERE, then at all costs one will try to prevent kids from embarrassing the school. The school board thinks: if it becomes public that a kid in the school writes about murder, paranoid parents may think twice about going to that school, and moving to that neighborhood - and buying that house, and keeping those property values up! The administration thinks: If I want my career to advance, the last thing I want is a school with a reputation of violence under my watch! So what is the best way for a school to distance itself from a "violent" student? Detention doesn't work - that's like saying "don't worry folks, we know how to fix the kid" and then their reputation would be on the line to fix the kid. No, suspension or something equivalent is the only way for a school to disown a student. Zero Tolerance policies are policies to eliminate embarassment.

I agree with you completely that to watch it is a mistake. I don't even own a TV, and I don't miss it. However, there is some kind of weird assumption that always floats in the background of these discussions: That somehow the networks will know whether or not I watch a particular show.

I always thought that there were some individuals who had special "boxes" attached to their TV's, and that the networks know what these "special" individuals watch, but if I had a TV, I wouldn't be one of them. So how could the networks know? Or do all TV's transmit information to the networks via radio or something? I doubt it.

That leaves increased product sales as the only possible way to know the extent of conservative viewership. However, if the show itself is making you sick to the stomach and angry, that wouldn't have much of a tendency to reinforce buying behavior would it? So it is difficult for me to understand how someone could help them out by watching their own TV if they truly understand how vile CBS really is.

Of course, why let the filth into your brain in the first place? Or the brains of your family members? But the networks are not omnicient.

Ah. Well in that case you have a different definition of the word "holy" than I do. My mistake. I always assume people mean the same thing that I do by words. The word "holy" is one of the most difficult. But still, you must agree that murder of a living man is worse than something done to old bones.

In truth there are no such things as "holy" sites. That doesn't mean its nice to destroy something that someone else reveres, but God is not concerned with stones and bones. The murders that the terrorists commit are far more heinous than whatever they do to ancient relics, even if it all comes from the same rage.

Among the few differences between the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod and the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is a difference on prayer "fellowship". In short, the WELS believes that Wisconsin Synod Lutherans should not pray with people who do not belong to the Synod. The LCMS believes that prayer with Christians not in the LCMS is acceptable. In order to merge, one or the other group would have to compromise their consciences, by either refraining from praying when they think the Spirit leads them to, or participating in prayers which seem promiscuous to them. I do not believe it would be proper to ask the WELS members to go against what they believe is right.

Now as for the whole "it would be great if they were one" buisness, you forget that we ARE one in the body of Christ in the most important sense. I believe strongly that where there are divisions in the political organization of the church due to honest differences in following what we believe to be right, that the value of following our consciences freely far exceeds the value of having a monolithic organization.

I think the perspective inherent in the question "Did Christ die for all humans or only some?" is completely backwards. Rather, Christ's sacrifice was simply so valuable, that no amount of sin (of mere humans) could possibly overbalance it. The debt of the sin of a human, no matter how heinous, cannot even compare to Christ's worth. Nor can a million, billion, trillion or any amount by which the man's debt is multiplied. Compared to our own feeble efforts at good works, our sins are a bottomless abbyss of debt. Compared to Christ's sacrifice, our sins, and the sins of the whole world, are nothing, and less than dust on the scales. You cannot equate Christ's sacrifice to either the debt incurred by all of humanity, or by some subset of humanity. Christ's sacrifice is worth infinitely more than the sum total of all of humanity's debts.

Those who do repent have been loved from the foundation of the world, and predestined to become heirs of eternal life. Those evil things they do both before and after are covered by Jesus' Blood. Those who refuse Him do not have forgiveness, and they do not have a portion in Christ or his sacrifice. So then, I see no reason to rule out the possibility that of those who refuse Him, there is a subset of those who are also hated by Him. I too think that what I say is consistent with orthodox theology.

Doesn't orthodoxy say that to save us He could not have done less? And is it not equally clear that He could not have done more? Therefore, since He had no other choice (it was He himself that said, "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me"), other than to let us perish as we deserved, He chose to save us. If these things are true, then His sacrifice was general and not specific. His sacrifice is worth infinitely more than x sinners sins, no matter how great a number is x. Therefore, it is not clear to me that He had to love every specific individual in the general population to make the descision He did.

God loves Kate Michelman?

The last half of Psalm 11 goes like this:

The Lord is in his Holy Temple, The Lord's throne is in heaven, His eyes behold, His eyelids test the sons of men. The Lord tests the righteous, but the wicked, and the one who loves violence, His soul hates. Upon the wicked He will rain coals, fire and brimstone and a burning wind. This shall be the portion of their cup.

For the Lord is Righteous. He loves righteousness. The upright will behold his face.

Of course, the Lord also says: "Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, and not that He should turn from his wicked ways and live?" Perhaps I can make the case that there are those who are merely wicked, and then there are those who "love violence" (and loving abortion clearly counts as loving violence). Why should it be surprising that God hates people who love abortion? Abortion is that which God did not command, nor did it enter His mind! Think of it: abortion is an action so vile, that it didn't even occur to the omniscient Creator of the Universe! (And just to stave off any "Can God make a square circle?" sophistries, omniscient means knowing everything that it is good to know.) If sacrificing (unborn) children to the gods of success is therefore "over the top" in such a horrible way, can you be completely sure that God loves those who do so and do not repent?

What's going on? It looks like you posted the pictures of 3 different people. The man on the right appears to be a black man with clear beard divits underneath his lower lip (and the beard is lower on his cheeks). The man on the left has a filled in beard, higher on the cheeks, and appears to be a white Arab. The eyebrows also seem to have different angles. I haven't even mentioned the "fullness" of the nose, which could be a lighting thing, but of course the glasses mean nothing either way.

You couldn't prove by me that the left and the bottom are of different people. But the right picture is clearly someone else.

Someone should tell him that the ACT is wrong, not the "orientation". Perhaps a better word would be susceptibility. We are all susceptible to every evil, just not all to the same degree.

Suspicions are all well and good, but in this Post-Modern Age, logic tends to carry the day. Damage to James constitutes the sole collateral damage under my bid to objectively justify the bulk of New Testament Scripture. It is a price I am willing to pay to make the remainder solid. I have tried to explain this better in my other posts.

Every book has to give the plan of salvation, has to be self-contained? Where did this principle come from?

No, salvation plan is just an indicator. It makes me go "Hmmmm". I do not argue the point strongly. And "self-contained" has nothing to do with it (as far as I can tell).

It sounds to me like you have a pre-conceived notion of exactly what Scripture should tell you, and that you reject that which doesn't fit your notion. Perhaps James is there for a reason after all.

I do have a notion of generally what Scripture should tell me, pre-concieved with respect to the book of James, since I take the 24 besides James, Hebrews, Jude as my basis for figuring what Scirpture should generally tell me. In other words, James does not quite appear completely of a piece with the rest of what is clearly and definitively Scripture. It is certainly not a pre-conceived notion with respect to the 24, however, since the 24 is the basis for the notion in the first place. And, incidenally, Hebrews and Jude pass with flying colors. They are without any doubt of the same warp and weave, the same "stuff" as the others.

Your whole premise, and the reason why I think that Luther was wrong, opens a pandora's box for a cafeteria style canon. i.e. one guy accepts all while another denies James, Jude and Hebrews.

This situation of cafetria style is what we are saddled with, whether we like it or not. God has not told us which books belong and which don't. The group that put the origional so-called NT together was not necessarily inspired. Well, I just thought of something. Perhaps it was inspired, but how do we decide whether it was or not? We have to examine the books one by one, just like they did, and we are thus unable to escape the cafeteria. In fact, I don't see how you can say the cafeteria is bad, granting that the origional assemblers of the NT were forced to go to that exact same cafeteria.

These are either the word of God, carrying all the weight that implies, or they are not. This is not just simple logic but basic to the faith.

I agree with you on individual books. Cutting out certain verses and not others is irrational and destroys faith. However, I am sure that one can (and must) make descisions at the book by book level: for example, War and Peace is NOT scripture.

By your standards, the same thing could be said about the Letter to Philemon!

Philemon was written by Paul, and hence, by virtue of being written by Paul, it is golden. So, no, by my standards it clearly makes the cut, since "everything written by Paul" is one of my standards. :)

BTW, how do you know the Apostle John wrote the gospel with his name on it? Or for that matter, how do you know Mark or Matthew wrote the gospels with their names on them. Who are you trusting to get this information?

I trust that the church has correctly attributed these works to the correct authors, from the earliest times to the present day. Moreover, skeptical researchers have tried very hard to debunk them, and have failed. This makes the attributions very strong.

>>I personally am inclined to put a question mark next to >>James.

>If you cast a doubt on part, you cast a doubt on all.

Not at all. It is criticle to keep in mind the reason why doubt is cast, and on what it is cast. In my first post to you, I built up the canon piece by piece, judgeing the books one by one. Catholics are correct when they point out that just simply an up or down on the exact 27 books in the so called NT is a bit arbitrary. An up or down decision on the whole 27 is in reality an up or down decision on the group that selected those 27. In point of fact, that group did a very good job.

However, the only way to logically go about justifying the canon, especially as people put forward other candidates in addition to the 27, without a barefaced appeal to the origional authority, is to examine the books one by one. I have cast a bit of doubt, it is true, on one of those books, but at the same time I have asserted the others more strongly, by suggesting that the process of sorting them works, that the divisional process between clear scripture and others is effective in an objective sense.

The argument for striking James is specific. The main 24, (which do not include Hebrews, James, Jude), cannot seriously be attacked. They stand in a class by themselves, in a strong self-supporting rigid structure, with an incredible legacy of ancient manuscripts clearly showing that they have been faithfully passed down. What makes James different, is that, for one thing, James, like Jude, was not one of the twelve. We learn very little about him from Luke, unlike Paul who is clearly portrayed as an Apostle sent by God. Nothing from the other 24 gives any clue about what we should think about the book of James.

So we look inside the book, and try to judge the book based upon what it says. This is where I follow Martin Luther in saying that the book of James seems very legalistic. It is unlikely that the book of James alone could give a man a proper understanding of Redemption, which is criticle for salvation. Though it is quite right in much of what it says, its lack of grace, forgiveness, and the plan of salvation raise questions. Could a book truly inspired by God lack the most important message of all, especially one written after the accomplished fact of salvation? James fails to give us the message that Jesus died and rose again, and we can be justified if we confess him!

You see, applying arguments like that to, say, Romans is absurd.

The Gospels are clearly the minimum core of inspired post-ressurection writings. They all agree with one another splendidly, and we know that there MUST be a body of scripture preserved by God, which reflects what Jesus did say, since, as God's premier prophet, God would not allow that core to perish, and would preserve it. So, to put it most simply, the other three Gospels testify to Luke, and their four-fold consistency proves that they are indeed the ones sent by God into our time which tell us of Jesus.

The aggreement of research, the early church fathers, the present church, and all times in between, show that it is appropriate to attribute the Gospels and other NT writings to the authors that they have always been attributed to.