2nd Peter 3:3-4ff

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The hebrew root word for that is resh kopf chay RohKeyAch

ruveyn

keet, Sand, come on guys, kiss and make up already! I'd really hate to see this thread locked, but you two are getting out of hand.

keet: for what it's worth, I agree with a lot of your viewpoints; you yourself told me I was arguing with silicon dioxide. The war we're fighting is an intellectual stalemate at best. Resorting to aggressive behavior will not help the cause. Allowing veiled insults to get under your skin and reacting to them (which is what these guys want) does not make you look any better. I'm on your side, but you gotta keep a cool head. Besides, calling someone an idiot is the final line of argument when someone can no longer figure out what to say. If you react rashly to it, you only prove their point. Don't fall for that trap.

Sand: You and ruveyn are VERY good at hurling insults that aren't exactly insults. You two are very good at making your points without that kind of language, so please dispense with the "all Christians are delusional idiots" undertones in your writing. You can deny the tenets of our faith all you want, but the thing you CANNOT take away, explain, or deny are the actual experiences that believers have in their walk of faith. Those things might be simplistic to someone like you who refuse to understand and difficult for believers to try to express in your terms, but that does not mean that they don't exist. Challenge our beliefs. But ease up on the language (you know very well what I mean) that ANYONE might find inflammatory.

OK...

Now, everyone, back to your corners. I'll ring the bell...

...NOW *ding* *ding* *ding*

Last edited by AngelRho on 11 Apr 2010, 9:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That is true, as in "Do not permit a witch/sorcerer/poisoner to live." Right? Often used to make the case for witch-hunts.

I believe the OT also imposes penalties for divination. The difference between divination and prophecy is that pagan diviners use their "powers" to manipulate forces of nature to bring favorable results (rain for crops, for example). A prophet, by comparison, was allowed to divine the future through God's revelation, but was also a teacher in the same capacity. Also, the future a prophet might predict wasn't necessarily fixed in stone. It was often a foretelling of God's wrath should they continue in sinful behavior. The Bible records that God spared His people His wrath when the repented. Diviners, on the other hand, were involved in idolatrous practices for their predictions and abilities. Notable example: The witch of Endor who acted as a medium for Samuel when Saul became desperate. Saul had previously made this an illegal practice, though the roots of this go back before Saul's time.

A "poisoner" sorcerer might also be interpreted as someone who mixes potions, MAYBE like an alchemist, to bring about the supernatural.

At any rate, God deemed all such activity as mixing potions, poisoning (obviously), necromancy, astrology (the stars tell direction and season--the "signs" that tell when to plant/harvest crops, and so on, like a calendar--NOT a means of telling one's fortune), and other attempts at manipulating supernatural forces as evil punishable by death. God's will was that we ask what we want/desire so that we may receive it in accordance with His will. Sorcery, to include the other things I mentioned, are clearly in defiance of God's intent for mankind.

Matthew 6:5? "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward."

Praying on the street corners in Judea back then would have been to show off their religiosity in front of men. Instead of actually praying to God, they'd be praying so as to be heard and respected by men. Jesus was saying that the contents of their prayers were for the ears of humans alone, and that would be their only reward instead of God answering their prayers.

That all believers in the existence of a superbeing that they have contact with are delusional is not an insult, it is merely a clear psychological diagnosis. These people desperately need help and at times a bit of rough language is just the medicine they require to shake them back to sanity. It's difficult having such beneficent motivations but persistence is frequently worthwhile.

Didn't you know Al Gore also invented time travel and went back to tell Peter

You have a point. I'm stressed out anyway, with only 34 days until my fiancee and I are married. I should probably take a break. Sand, don't reply to this.

I don't think the term diagnosis is appropriate here, unprofessional opinion would be better which is the way I classify the opinion that I am an aspie; I might add the term uninformed assuming the word “all” includes people that you have never had any contact with.

What is this opinion based on? Is it any more than that you have never had any contact with a superior being? Have you ever tried?

I have had no actual contact with flying saucers, fairies, ghosts, vampires, dragons, banshees, Martians, nor what might be termed superior beings and until I do they remain for me delusions of other people. I will immediately change my mind when one of these makes an actual appearance.

Christians believe in a dead man who is not dead and an all powerful God who evidently does not exert His power. Diagnosis seems to me to be accurate

I know no way to contact a superior being. They are not listed under "S" in the phone book and no device is on the market to make contact.

If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
Thomas Szasz

They remain "for you" delusions. Ergo we should just disregard everything you say? j/k

We each must determine reality through our own experience. If you see a flying saucer and want to convince me it was real it's your problem to do so. If you are sure of a God and want me to accept your acceptance as my own that's a problem you have to solve. So far you haven't even begun to approach that problem.

It's not a question of "should". Its merely a matter of what you do. Faith, to you, is belief in something which is essentially unprovable but accepted purely on the authority of, to me, an extremely doubtful piece of ancient literature and the dogma maintained by a hierarchy of religious officials. To me it is the total abdication of the powers of basic rationality which is the genetic and cultural legacy of humanity and is a frightful tragedy.

Aw, come on, Sand! Join us! Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies.

Terribly sorry. I have this awful impediment called reason and basic good sense and I make my own cookies that have a delicious flavor.

Given the Bible was only written by people, who would be given power over others as a result of these writings? What group of people would benefit from getting everyone else to simply follow what the Bible teaches?

The Pope, for one.

Even if you were to claim the entire "copies of copies written a century after the events described", then that would still be within the 2nd century AD when the New Testament copies still existent today were transcribed. The end of Christian persecution in the Roman Empire wasn't until the 4th century AD and neither was the Roman Catholic Church or the Greek Orthodox Church in existence until the 4th Century AD.