So then you have faith in Satan. You have placed your faith in his reality.



Then your have placed your faith in the belief that you are being threaten with spiritual death as well. These go hand-in-hand.



If you are not being saved form "Satan" then you are necessarily being saved from a hateful demonic God who is threatening to do something horrible do you.

Otherwise why even speak of it in terms of being "saved"?

It makes no sense to speak of being "saved" from something that is neither horrible, nor a threat to you.

If you believe that you are being "saved" from something by Jesus, then clearly you must also believe that whatever it is that you believe you are being saved from is horrible fate.

Otherwise you wouldn't be so desperate to be "saved" from it.

So since you refuse to give Satan the power to threaten you, and your God as well. Then your fears can only come from your God himself. There simply is no one else to threaten you.

The bottom line is that you necessarily need to place your faith in the idea that your creator is threatening you with something horrible that you desperately wish to avoid.

Why do Christians place so much faith in Satan?

Without Satan there would have been no need for God to sacrifice his own Son to appease the mighty powerful Satan.

Without the fear of Satan there would be no need to be "saved" through Jesus.

Of course, I realize that some Christians do not accept this. They refuse to give Satan such power over God, and claim that we aren't being saved from Satan at all.

But then this begs the question: "If we're not being saved from Satan, then who are we being saved from?"

The only deity left would be the Christian God.

So this leaves Christians with having to have faith that they need to be "saved" from their own demonic God.

None of this makes any sense to me. If they don't wish to give Satan any power, and they refuse to allow him to be a threat to God, then it makes no sense that this God would have needed to "sacrifice" his Son in order to appease anyone, other than possibly himself. But clearly that makes no sense at all.

So it seems to me that the whole religion is based either are the faith that Jesus is saving them from a demon (which means they must first place their faith in the power of the demon), or it means that they have faith that their very God is demonic and it is his wrath that they ultimately need to be 'saved' from.

The bottom line for the whole religion, in any case, appears to me to be a matter of placing their faith in the idea that they need to be "saved" from something horrible.

So that necessarily has to be the foundation of their faith.

It makes no sense to me to believe in a religion on pure faith, where the bottom line for the faith requires that they have faith that someone is out to hurt them in the first place.

It's a very strange religion to be sure.

I certainly would not care to place my faith in the idea that some God is out to harm me. That's just not my idea of what a "God" is supposed to be about. That can only be a fear-based faith that has people fearing that if they don't appease this God he will hurt them severely or potentially even kill them in the most permanent spiritual sense. It's the deadliest God myth ever created by mankind.

Well, if his sense of righteous is far greater than my sense of righteousness, then he could never do things that I would consider to be unrighteous.

So my point still stands.

Moreover, if you are suggesting than God could have a sense of righteousness that is lesser than mine, then you have done two things:

1. You have placed God's sense of righteousness beneath mine.

2. You have guaranteed that I cannot even trust God to be as righteous as me.

~~~~

I realize this is hard for you to comprehend. But if you are going to suggest to me that your God is "righteous" and expect that to have any meaning to me at all, then clearly you are going to have to accept my understanding of what it means to be "righteous".

Otherwise, your claim to have a "righteous" God is utterly meaningless to me.

You may as well tell me that whatever Satan decides to do is "righteous" because, by definition, that's what YOU mean by "righteousness" when you refer to your God.

You claim:


Well, this God clearly thought it was "righteous" to command his followers to murder heathens, their wives and BABIES!

That far beneath what I can imagine as being "righteous" already.

This God clearly thought it was WISE to have his son nailed to a pole so he could forgive people of their sins. Again, that's far beneath what I can imagine as being "righteous".

So this God already has a track-record of doing things that are far beneath what I can imagine being "righteous".

So clearly there's a major flaw in this religion.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Which is precisely what you must do if you want to continue to support these ancient Zeus-like fables.

You just sweep everything under the carpet and pretend that it could make sense if you just pretend that anything that this God does is "righteous".

I'm not willing to pretend, like you do.

If I'm going to pretend I may as well believe in Peter Pan and Tinker Bell and Never-Never land.

Why not? It makes just as much sense if you're willing to blindly believe it on FAITH. Maybe even more sense actually. At least that story isn't asking anyone to believe that a hateful jealous God who condemns people to eternal suffering and hell fire is "righteous".

In fact, one problem with believing that such a God is "righteous" is that it can lead people like Hitler to believe that putting heathens in fiery furnaces is indeed a "righteous" thing to do.

I mean why not?

If God, by example, thinks this is a 'righteous' thing to do then surely it must also be 'righteous' for humans to do it too.

Well, there you go Cowboy.

Now you have proof positive that the term "righteousness" is utterly meaningless in Christianity because it's based on a God who can do anything he so desires and claims that to be "righteous".

In other words, this God is totally untrustworthy, just as I had said, because the very thing that we are supposed to trust him on has no definition beyond his whim.

Like I say, this very same notion could be applied to Satan or any demonic God.

Moreover all you are basically saying is that if the Christian God condoned the behavior of Hitler then that would make it "righteous". And for all we know, maybe he DID! After all, Hitler was killing "heathens" who refuse to accept Jesus as their LORD. And according to the Bible the Christian God loves to see heathens slaughtered with no mercy. That was his biggest thrill in the Old Testament.

So for all we know, Hitler might have been the most "righteous" man who ever lived in God's eyes.

If the very concept of "righteousness" has no meaning beyond the unbridled whims of some jealous egotistical entity, then it has no meaning at all.

If a human cannot TRUST the Christian God to have the same sense of "righteousness" that they have, then it's an utterly meaningless concept.

All you are doing is verifying that humans have no reason to TRUST the Christian God.

Of course this comes as no surprise to me. This is par for the course when it comes to these ancient Hebrew fables. They never amount to anything more than this kind of utterly meaningless gibberish.

That's absurd Cowboy. That's just a play on words that is utterly meaningless. The very word "righteous" has no meaning in such a circular circus.

A God that is said to be "righteous" cannot do anything to you that you deem to be "unrighteous". For if he did, he would be an untrustworthy God that is clearly not righteous by your very meaning of the word.

Therefore to call a God "righteous" that you cannot TRUST is foolhardy. If you can't trust God to be "righteous" in terms of what "righteousness" means to you then all is LOST.

Satan would be "righteous" GOD by that definition.

So you don't like what Satan does?

Too bad! Anything that Satan does is righteous because that's the definition of righteousness!

That's basically all you're saying Cowboy.

You're proclaiming that your God has no need to be "righteous" by anyone's meaning of that term. You're claiming that no matter what God does it's automatically "righteous" just because God did it.



No, it can't work that way.

We could not TRUST such a God to be "righteous" in terms of what we mean by righteousness. So it would be utterly meaningless to even use the term to describe such a God.

All you're basically doing is preaching that your God cannot be TRUSTED to be "righteous" in terms of what people understand "righteousness" to mean.

You've just told me that you don't TRUST God, and neither should I.

Because according to you ANYTHING this God does is considers to be "righteous".

That's a totally meaningless definition of "righteousness".

I could make the same claim of Satan. Accept that as a definition and we're done. Anything that Satan does is "righteous".



Typical "Have your cake and eat it too" - Christianity

No Cowboy. The Christian God must adhere to human standards of "righteousness" otherwise it's an unrighteous God that is completely untrustworthy in terms of human standards.

So the Christian God must be "righteous" according to the human who is judging God to be "righteous" or "unrighteous".

Otherwise, it's an utterly meaningless description.

You may as well toss the word in the trash can.

No Cowboy you're wrong.

A religion that claims to have a "righteous" God has limited their God to only be able to do what is "righteous". Otherwise, it would be an "unrighteous" God.

This is a common pitfall that Christians all too often fall into. They act like their supposed "righteous" God can do anything at all that he wishes to do, with nothing restraining him. But that's false. A God who is not restricted by doing only that which is "righteous", cannot be said to be a "righteous" God.

Since the Christians demand that their God is a "righteous" God, then they must also limit their God to only being "righteous".

Now the Greek Zeus, on the other hand could kill you for no good reason. No one claimed that he had to be "righteous" or anything else. They just recognized that he is God and can therefore do anything he so desires, whether it's "righteous" or not.

The Greek God of Zeus was truly unlimited.

But this is not true of the God of Bible. The God of the Bible is restricted by "righteousness" and therefore cannot do "unrighteous" things.

The Biblical God is not free to do whatever he wishes without any need to excuse himself. Because he would then be an "unrighteous" God, but that flies in the face of what the Bible claims God to be.

So you're not paying attention.

You preach total falsehoods that simply cannot be supported by the Bible.

You can't have the Biblical God going around doing "unrighteous" things simply because he can do anything he wises.

He is NOT Zeus!

He doesn't have that kind of freedom.

He's restricted by the character trait of being "righteous".

In fact, if there is anything in the Bible that this God has done that is "unrighteous" then that is a valid reason to question the validity of this religion. And many people, including myself, seem many of the things that this God has done according to the biblical stories as being totally "unrighteous" and thus we have grounds for rejecting the stories as fables because the stories fail to support the premise that this God is supposed to be "righteous".

If you want a God who can do anything without having to excuse himself, you need to turn to Zeus. Because the Biblical God does not have that freedom. The Biblical God is a limited God. He is limited by his very character trait of being a "righteous" God.

He cannot just do anything he so desires, as you suggest.

That's false.

Unless you are rejecting the ideal that he's a "righteous" God.

But then you'd have a religion with an unrighteous God, and you'd be right back with the Greeks and Zeus.

You have a quite interesting view of Christianity MorningSong.

I truly wish all Christianity believed like you do. Then there would be absolutely no need to proselytize or evangelize the religion because only God can draw people in. Evangelizing and proselytizing would be totally futile if that's the case.

And, by the way, I actually feel that your views here make far more sense. I believe that if there is a God who judges people, he certainly wouldn't need the help of proselytizers and/or evangelists.

So I support your view of Christianity MorningSong. It certainly allows for a far more righteous God than a religion that requires proselyting and evangelizing of individuals to believe in something that doesn't make any sense to them.

I accept MorningSongianity.

I reject Cowboyianity.

Truly.

Where did I say that she did?

I was the one that called them "immoral".

Dragoness merely pointed to them.

Try reading my post again.

I would say it does.

Good luck with resolving your issues by the way.

But Peter your thinking is flawed,... and not obvious at all.

If it required GOOD interpretations to be a moral GUIDE, then who is the GUIDE?

The book, or the person who is making the GOOD interpretations.

I've argued this many times before. If the reader of the Bible needs to be a good moral person in order to come away from having read the Bible with good morals, then from whence did those good morals come? The book? Or the reader?

Such highly moral readers probably could have just sat down and wrote their own book of morals and the result would have been "Good".

On the other hand if all these nasty people as Dragoness points out are coming away from the same book with horrible moral values, then clearly the book isn't doing a reliable job of teaching people good moral values.

In short, all this shows is the book itself it utterly irrelevant in all cases.

Nobody is getting their moral values from this book. They are putting their own sense of mortality onto the book and using the book to support their sense of 'morality' or 'immorality'.

And there can be no denying that the book can indeed be used to support those types of immoral behaviors that Dragoness pointed out.

Christianity is a man-made religion built to support religious prejudice.

I see no spiritual value in it.

And that's the TRUTH.

The one thing that I will agree with you on is that if there exist a divine entity it probably values TRUTH above all else.

I offer God TRUTH.

According to the Christians their God spits on my TRUTH and condemns me anyway.

And I'm supposed to view that picture of God as being a righteous picture?

I don't think so.

Well, just as a suggestion, you might want to consider both converting to Cowboyainity. Then you can just ask Cowboy when you aren't sure what's an issue, and what's a sin.

He seems to be supporting wild and crazy sex as long as you are married. I don't know what his stance is on using contraceptives, but if tubes had been tied, the contraceptive issue goes out the window I imagine.

Unless tying tubes is considered to be a sin in Cowboyainity.

You better check on that first.

I realize that Cowboyainity may take a unique stance on this.

But I was speaking to humanity throughout history. Most of those people never heard of Cowboyainity and have no clue what your personal views are on religion.

There are a lot of Christian fundamentalists who support the idea that sex without the intent to procreate is a sin. The Catholic Church also supported this ideal by refusing to condone contraceptives. This naturally implies that if you aren't at least trying to make a baby then having sex must be a sin.

It naturally follows that, if this is true, then having sex when you know you can't have a baby, or don't intend to have a baby would also be a sin.

In fact, if a man knows that his wife is already pregnant and he has sex with her, then he's actually using her pregnancy as a contraceptive for that particular act of sex.

If one of the partners in a marriage becomes sterile then their condition becomes a natural contraceptive. They can no longer have sex with the intent to procreate because they now KNOW that this is impossible. Therefore to have sex just for the pure physical enjoyment of it would be a sin, even if they are married. (assuming they accept these religious ideals that any form of contraception is a sin)

So again, if it's a sin to have sex when procreation isn't possible, then it doesn't truly matter why procreation is not possible. It would still be a sin to have sex if procreation isn't the goal.

A LOT of people have accepted this Christian view.

And they probably never heard of Cowboyainity.

They probably wouldn't recognize Cowboyainity even if they did hear of it anyway.

What makes you think that people would accept your personal views as if you are the ultimate Pope?

Christianity has caused a lot of married couples to have sexual inhibitions. I actually know of quite of few people who have made such confession. My sister is also a therapist and she often become quite upset and angry with Christianity because it has indeed caused a lot of her clients to have totally unwarranted hang-ups about sex. It's crystal clear to her that their hang-ups stem from this religion because she works with these people and they basically explain to her why they "feel guilty" about these things, and it always turns out to be related to the Christian religion.

So why deny that the religion has this affect on a great number of people when the evidence is clear that it does?

You can't expect these people to be aware of Cowboyainity.

The Catholic Pope himself may not even endorse Cowboyainity.

True.

The only problem is that you have nothing to support your frivolous claim.

On the other hand, I have supported my position in depth.

No, we don't know of any such thing.

All we know is that there exist outrageous rumors that make this claim. Even the HONEST clergy acknowledge that it requires FAITH to believe in these tales.

The problem is that before a person can have "faith" that this system of salvation is valid, they must FIRST have faith that a nasty judgmental God is a threat to them in the first place.

I see no reason to place my "Faith" in an idea of a God who is out to harm me to begin with.

But I absolutely must place my "Faith" in that before it would even make sense to place my faith in the idea that this nasty God has designed what I see as a truly rude and crude means of "salvation".

~~~~~~

As I continue to ask endlessly, which makes more sense?

1. These tales are the design of an all-wise supreme being?

2. These tales are the superstitious fears of men?

~~~~

When I ask myself which makes more sense to me, it's clear to me that it's the latter. The former simply makes no sense to me at all.

So why should I place my "Faith" in a nasty God who is out to harm me, when it makes far more sense to me to place my "Faith" in the conclusion that these stories are nothing more than superstitious rumors?

If this God did exist he would need to condemn me for simply not believing in these fables and for having publicly spoken out against them.

So this God would indeed be an extremely hateful and harmful demon with respect to me. He would have no choice in the matter according to these tales.

The only way I could avoid his evil wrath would be to "claim" to believe in these stories. But even that would necessarily be a lie.

The TRUTH is that I cannot possibly justify these stories in a way that make them believable to me. Therefore I truly do not even have the option of "believing" in them. At best, all I could possibly do is to "pretend" to believe in them simply because they claim that if I fail to this God will harm me.

So what does this tell me?

It tells me that this religion has created a God who doesn't even respect or see any value in TRUTH.

If the TRUTH of the matter is that I don't believe in these stories, then wouldn't this God want me to be TRUTHFUL about that?

Or do you think this God would be more pleased if I LIE about it and pretend to believe it when in fact I don't?

How can religion be true, that requires that the only way I can get to their supposedly all-righteous God is through LYING?

That makes absolutely no sense.

Therefore, the religion must necessarily be false.

Again...God was basically stating

"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow" .....

and once more, God's curse has affected all women..

OR,...

You can just recognize that birth is painful for almost all sexually reproducing animals, and it's just a natural part of this dog-eat-dog world, and it has absolutely nothing at all to do with any superstitious tales about humans being tricked by a serpent into disobeying a judgmental God who cursed the serpent to crawl on his belly for the rest of his days.

I have problems with a God who would even do that. But part of the story most certainly can't be denied, that's spelled out as bluntly as anything possibly can be spelled out.

He cursed a serpent to crawl on his belly and eat dust for the rest of his days?



Did he view this serpent as being beyond rehabilitation? And if so, then why punish him by ripping off his legs and making him crawl on his belly? If he's beyond rehab then why not just BLESS him with euthanasia and get it over with?

These are serious questions.

If this God knows that in the end times he's going to crush the serpent's head, why not do it now? What's the point in procrastinating?

I think it's pretty obvious that Christianity causes a lot of people to have sexual hang-ups and associate sexual desires with being "sinful", especially if they know full-well that they aren't having sex with the intent or purpose to procreate.

And lot of Christians (especially fundamentalists) preach that sex for pleasure (i.e. without the intent of procreation) is a sin.

This would place any Christian couple in an extremely difficult place should either one of them become diagnoses ad being "sterile". Then they only reason they could have sex at that point would indeed be for the pleasure of physical intimacy which is forbidden.

Also, the "light-outs" thing is probably related to shame as well. They are trying to remove themselves from act as much as possible. (i.e. at least they can't see what they are doing)

They can always claim on judgment day, "Gee whiz Jesus, it was dark and we couldn't see what was going on. We had sex by accident! Honest!"

I would argue that this apologetic excuse does not make sense in terms of the actual words used in the story.


[16] Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

This isn't God explaining to Eve the consequences of sin entering into the picture. This is God clearly saying to Eve
"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow"

This is God placing a curse on Eve just as he had placed a curse on the serpent. He's not explaining to Eve the consequence of her actions. He's clearly delving out a very specific punishment.

"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow"

He doesn't say, "Now look what you've done. You've caused yourself to experience greatly multiplied sorrow in your life because of your actions."

No, no, no!

That IS NOT the biblical story here. That's just an apologetic excuse from people who wish the story had been written differently.

The biblical story actually has God stating:
"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow"

So God is doing this to Eve. He also does this in the same context of a story that has him placing a curse on the serpent in the previous verses.

~~~~~

The problem with these apologetic arguments is that they truly are attempting to pretend that the Bible is saying things that it's clearly NOT saying.

This only verifies to me that even they recognize the absurdities contained in the stories as they are actually written. They need to twist the stories all around just to pretend to make sense of them.

But that's not accepting these stories for what they are. That's just a pretense that the stories are saying something other than what they actually say.

Apologists would re-write the entire Bible if they thought they could get away with it.

Sounds good so far.

Seriously. You've stated a problem that a creator of life could indeed potentially have to deal with.




This is where the biblical picture of God falls flat on its face for me MorningSong. Especially the Christian version of the Abrahamic stories.

I personally see no wisdom at all in the approach and methods used by the biblical God to achieve this goal.

I disagreed immediately with the Old Testament concept of God accepting blood sacrifices as atonement for "sin" (for disobedience). There's no way that I can possibly see any "wisdom" in that approach.

Add to this the fact that appeasing the gods via sacrifices, etc., was a very common superstition among just about every ancient culture. I see no reason to believe that an all-wise God would just coincidentally behave precisely as mankind superstitiously thinks that a God might behave.

Moreover, when it comes to something like Christianity, it has gone far beyond an ideal of morality or obedience to God. The Christians ended up creating a religion where mere disbelief is a fatal flaw.

As far as I'm concerned that blows it clean out of the water right there.

In short, I see no wisdom at all, in the "method" this Christian God used to offer a way for mankind to find salvation. To associate God's plan of "salvation" with such a negative thing as having his supposedly perfectly innocent son butchered at the hands of mankind makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

It's like this God would be saying to us, "Here. Nail my innocent perfect son to a pole and I'll offer to forgive you."

And now the ONLY WAY to obtain salvation is to condone that act on your behalf. The only way to obtain this God's LOVE is to say, "Yes I condone having your son nailed to a pole on my behalf. If I had been there I would have driven in the spikes myself!"

I mean, seriously, that's what is being asked.

We are being asked to say, "Yes! I am responsible for that. I am responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus just as much as if I had been there and nailed him to the pole myself".

That's what it means to accept this. And if you aren't willing to do the nailing yourself, you're at least willing to condone that someone else did the nailing for you.

~~~~~~

So this religion is basically telling me, "Hey, if you don't accept this bloody crucifixion on YOUR BEHALF, then you go to hell!"

WHAT?

This is where I have a deadly serious problem with this religion MorningSong.

What on "God's Green Earth" would butchering God's perfectly innocent son have to do with with mankind's choice of whether or not to "obey" God.

So this religion has totally MOVED from being about obeying any God to being about condoning the butchering of God's son on our behalf.

It has also MOVED from being about moral behavior, to now being about a BELIEF in this tale.

Failure to believe in this tale will now be your new reason for condemnation. Forget about morality, or obedience to God or anything else. If you fail to believe in these stories, too bad sucker! It's not longer about morality, it's now about BELIEF!

~~~~~

As far as I'm concerned this is a religion that has basically become a train-wreck and has gotten completely off the tracks from what it has originally started out being about.

It started out being about morals, and ended up being about condoning a bloody crucifixion to save your soul, and BELIEF that this is the only way.

Failure to believe is condemnation right there!

Forget about morals. This religion has totally left those tracks a long time ago. Now it's all about a BELIEF in a religion. Failure to believe has become a "Sin" in and of itself.



It's just superstition gone berserk.

It's totally out of control and has lost touch with it's original purpose altogether.

There is no way that I can even begin to imagine an all-wise supreme being THINKING like this.

And therein lies my problem with this religion.

I just cannot see this being the master plan of some supposedly all-wise God.

I mean, gee whiz, I can personally think up far better solutions than these. So how could I possibly imagine that some supposedly all-wise God couldn't come up with a better plan?

~~~~~

That's the bottom line right there for me MorningSong.

I simply cannot imagine a supposedly all-wise entity creating a system of salvation described by Christianity.

It makes absolutely no sense to me.

However, what I can very easily imagine, is mortal men making these things up. That is extremely easy for me to imagine.

So here's the tally:

Does this sound like it came from an all-wise supreme being? No.

Does this sound like man-made superstition and religious propaganda? Yes.

What more can I say?