Born-again christian with doubts

Post Reply New Topic

I think you and I are of two different Christian traditions.
As a Lutheran, I believe for the three days after his death, Christ had descended into hell to proclaim his victory to the fallen angels there, then was resurrected. This, I believe, can be found written by Peter, and is also in the Ecumenical Creeds.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Oh, Quakers have no creeds.

Samuel D Caldwell - a former executive secretary of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting - offers this statement as a succinct definition of the Quaker Faith. It's from a lecture he gave in 1998 entitled, "The time has come to choose". Enjoy!

Mr. Caldwell has a very educated opinion, there is something that sets humans apart from the rest of the animal order.

I believe the last statement to be true, but simply not for humans. Other intelligent beings have ears that hear too, like...

@ shrox

I'm unfamiliar with the teachings of various religions, and I'm just curious then according to what you wrote, does that mean that Yahweh, even though He created "man and earth", did not understand the creature "man" until He lived as a man?

Last edited by goodwitchy on 28 Feb 2012, 10:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

If anyone were to say "you don't know what it's like to be us and how hard it is", He can say he does know.

Ah, okay thank you for responding.

Last edited by goodwitchy on 28 Feb 2012, 10:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'll let Pulp respond to this one. They weren't singing about God, but it's the same principle:



He can't know what it's like to be human, because he can always snap his fingers and become a deity again. He can't understand the doubt and the fear of the future, because he knows what's going to happen. He won't ever worry that he's doing the wrong thing. He can't ever have that nagging doubt that many humans have when praying that no-one is listening.

No, he could not! That was the whole point of it all!

Sure, He could have asked his Father to pull him out of it all, but he didn't, even to the point of death. He experienced being human, from zygote to corpse.

Actually, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was pretty scared of what he knew was coming. In fact, he prayed so hard that he was supposed to have sweated blood when he prayed to "take this cup from me." Sounds pretty human to me.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Yeah, I looked up started reading it and then decided it was in my own best interest to stop.

I'm not so interested in defending atheism as to do damage to myself by reading such hateful drivel. I prefer to be ignorant.

Admittedly, stuff like that makes me wonder if the entire Bible is actually inspired.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

It sounds like you had a good upbringing, then.

The "Hell" you were taught about is a Pagan concept, and it's not found anywhere in the Bible. The Hell referred to in Mark refers to "worms that never die," in one wording or another, depending on your version. That's all they mean: worms. They aren't trying to use some code-word for "soul," but they're talking about something that eats your body. They mean that you're dead forever.

Satan is a servant of God who challenges and tests the moral righteousness of individuals. You will find that in Job. This old concept that he's a "rebellious angel" or some other nonsense is rubbish and horse feathers. If you ignore all of the Pagan nonsense out there, Satan is just someone sent by God to point out if you are being an arrogant ninny.

The New Testament is pretty clear on "eternal life." Only the followers of Jesus are resurrected, and that is the end of it. That is final. That is self-evident if you read the Bible, without trying to superimpose onto it a lot of Pagan nonsense.

Everything that you have been taught is Pagan. Christianity has never been the dominant religion in the West. It never will be. The old faith, Paganism, lives on, just under different pretenses. You are a Pagan, and you were raised on Pagan values. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it ain't Christianity if you consider Christianity to have anything to do with Christ from the Bible.

Now, read your Bible, and read it with a sense of scholarship this time. Don't miss a single page, and please, for the sake of my sanity, don't try to superimpose your Pagan beliefs on scripture that is translated into reasonably plain English. If you can make it through our secondary education system, you can read the Bible. It's the same method of scholarship our country has lovingly tried to instill in you since you were in Kindergarten.

Why? Why does it take an atheist to realize what is plainly obvious?

What are you on about?

The Bible is a collection of books that contradict each other on a lot of the doctrines. You can't reasonably argue that the Bible never states that hell is eternal when you have the Book of Revelation stating exactly what you're arguing against.

I always thought it was peculiar Jesus would even pray. Who exactly was he praying to?? He is god, after all (Right?), did he really find it necessary to pray to commune with himself or something? This sounds remarkably schizo. Someone enlighten me?

Pagan? Who said anything about paganism? Pagans are polytheistic and the Christians did usurp many Pagan traditions to better incorporate them into the Christian collective.