Sure there is free will. You can go eat when you want, can you not? You can go to the restroom when you want, can you not? You can worship God or not, can you not? You can do anything you wish or not do anything you wish. That is free will. Just because there is a consequence/reaction to that action you took, doesn't mean you don't have free will. We worship God out of our own will, we aren't forced to worship him. Notice, our OWN WILL. That would be using our free will to worship our father. Not out of direst, or anything of such. But out of our own will to do as such.

Cowboy wrote:

Would YOU praise your child, give him/her all they ever wanted, and even build a paradise for this person even though they do not consider you their father? Even though they spread hateful lies about you? Even though they disobey your every command?

I don't care who claim to 'follow' that's totally irrelevant.

I'm not concerned about followers. I speak to the concept of the religion, not the followers.



Yes, the Biblical God hates non-belivers Cowboy. His actions toward them speak far louder than his words.

Love is in actions Cowboy, not in empty words. You can't claim to love someone that you are casting into a lake of fire, your actions would not match your empty meaningless words.



Your analogy here makes absolutely no sense at all. God is not a 'cliff'.



I personally don't believe there is ever any justification or need for any form of punishment. IMHO, that is itself a totally ignorant ideal that holds no value. Thus to associate punishment with a concept of love is, IMHO, extremely perverse and demented.

The biblical picture of a God is just a hateful selfish picture Cowboy. There's no way that that such a picture represents anything even remotely close to love. It's nothing short of pure religious bigotry and hatred toward all who refuse to cower down to its religious bigotry.

It's a man-made region, it's not the word of any "God". It's far too hateful and insane. It's simply doesn't exhibit true wisdom or love.

I personally don't believe there is ever any justification or need for any form of punishment. IMHO, that is itself a totally ignorant ideal that holds no value. Thus to associate punishment with a concept of love is, IMHO, extremely perverse and demented.

Cowboy wrote:

That's great, you're starting to think like God :D. God doesn't punish anyone. He rewards people for their actions. Heaven is merely a reward for the obedience one has through love. Good job, you're actually gaining grounds :D

The religion you support stands for bigotry and hatred toward non-believers. It has nothing at all to do with love.

This religion has people spreading hate for Jesus' sake.

It's truly sad.

I'm sure that Jesus himself would be extremely saddened by the hatred that is being spread in his name.

As far as I can see Cowboy, everything you preach just confirms the kind of non-stop bigotry and hatred that your religion spreads in the name of Jesus.

There's no love in anything you speak of. All you ever do is condemn anyone who rejects your bigoted religion. That's really all you do, even if you think that somehow behind that facade you are supposedly be loving everyone. That's just a false empty claim that isn't supported by your views and accusations that God hates non-believers.

Like Dragoness has rightfully pointed out, the so-called 'love' of Christianity is empty hypocrisy. It's truly nothing more than a very deep-seated hatred toward non-believers being falsely propagated and proselytized in the name of Jesus.

It's just become nothing more than a way of using Jesus to support religious hatred toward sincere loving people just because they don't buy into a hateful fable of a god that demands blood sacrifices be made before he will even consider "loving" anyone.

It's just a very sick demented religion that took a potentially grand idea like spirituality and turned it into nothing more than hate machine that spreads hatred toward all who do not jump on the bigotry wagon in the name of Jesus "The Christ Almighty".

There's no love in that.

Cowboy wrote:

Has nothing to do with hatred. Just because one doesn't reward another doesn't mean they hate that person whom they did not reward.

There is no free will if you believe in god. So that explanation doesn't work.

This again? Really?

Christians make decisions every day. We frequently sin. That is a side effect of free will. We CHOOSE to believe in Jesus. We CHOOSE to try to obey his commandments. We CHOOSE what we do, we aren't puppets. Honestly, I think you guys are so intellectually bankrupt to post this kind of silly nonsense. It's absolutely shameful that adults will actually say these sorts of things. Those are the thoughts of an angry rebellious teenager, not an adult who has spent even a small amount of time thinking about religion. smh

This again? Really?

Christians make decisions every day. We frequently sin. That is a side effect of free will. We CHOOSE to believe in Jesus. We CHOOSE to try to obey his commandments. We CHOOSE what we do, we aren't puppets. Honestly, I think you guys are so intellectually bankrupt to post this kind of silly nonsense. It's absolutely shameful that adults will actually say these sorts of things. Those are the thoughts of an angry rebellious teenager, not an adult who has spent even a small amount of time thinking about religion. smh

You are certainly entitled to your views Spider.

However, if you want to speak about intellectual bankruptcy consider the following:

Sin is willful disobedience of God. In fact, if you claim to have "Free Will" then you cannot blame your choice to willfully disobey your God on anyone but yourself

So now you're trying to tell me that you have chosen to "TRY" to obey the commandments of your God but you constantly fail.

Well, if you are constantly failing, that can only mean that you aren't trying very hard at all. Obviously, you either don't truly believe in your God, or have seriously problems with having to constantly obey his commands.

What good would it do you, even if you managed to be forgiven by 'grace' to obtain entrance into his eternal heaven?

You would still be just like a rebellious teenager as you are now, you would constantly be willfully choosing to disobey his commands.

What is going to change when you are in heaven?

If YOU don't change then what changes? Will God strip of your free will entirely to assure that you can never do anything against his will again?

This idea that anyone can 'sin' by mere accident is absurd.

If sin is willful disobedience of God, and the only reason it makes any sense to hold you responsible for sin, then that can only work if you truly have a CHOICE to not sin at all.

So when you say that you continue to sin after you supposedly accepted Jesus as your lord and savior, then that sure sounds like a totally superficial claim to me.

How can you claim to have accepted Jesus as your "LORD", if you continue to willfully disobey him?

Where is there any intellectual rationale in that?

The very notion that you are attempting to propose sounds like intellectual bankruptcy to me.

Either obey your LORD to every letter of his desiser, or confess that you willfully reject him and refuse to obey him via your own Free Will, and you aren't about to consider obeying him completely, ever. Period.

Until you can say that you obey the commands of your God willfully 100% of the time, then you're worse than a non-believer, because you actually believe in your God yet you refuse to obey him.

At least a non-believer reject the whole dogma as being not from God, and therefore they aren't refusing to obey anyone, they simply don't believe the doctrines have anymore merit than the fables of Zeus.

But YOU!

You claim to believe in this God, yet you continue to blatantly disobey him favoring your own free will, and you're calling other people "rebellious teenagers".

Sounds to me like you're the one who is rebelling against your God.

We just don't believe that this religion has anything to do with God, but supposedly you do. Yet you continually choose to willfully rebel against him anyway.



I can tell you this much, if I truly believed that the biblical scriptures were true, and if I was willing to accept the kind of God portrayed in those scritpures, I'd obey every jot and tittle. Without exception.

But of course, I don't believe those ancient stories are true, and I wouldn't want to have anything to do with the God as it is portrayed in those stories anyway. So there's no reason for me to obey every jot and tittle. It's just Hebrew folklore to me.

But for you, there is absolutely NO REASON to continue to "sin".

That's totally uncalled for and only tells me that you truly don't believe a word of it yourself. Why would you continue to willfully disobey if you truly believe in it?

That makes no sense to me Spider.

And there _you_ go again-- comparing anyone who doesn't agree with your version of The Truth to nincompoops and 'rebellious' teenager.

Funny thing is, Calvanist Christians have ALWAYS maintained that a soul is pre-destined in the omniscience of the Almighty to be capable of ONLY doing what that omniscience of God already "knows".

It's like having a computer malfunction and 'proving' that it isn't the software by turning off parity error checking.


-Kerry O.

Calvin also burned Jews to death. Maybe...just maybe he was wrong? Do you think? Maybe?

tl;dr;

When I sin, it's solely my fault. I've never claimed otherwise.

Well I guess so. If sin is willful disobedience of your Lord then of course it would be your choice, and thus your 'fault' if you want to place blame on it.

That wasn't my point.

My point is that if you told Jesus that you have accepted him as your "Lord" and savior, and you continue to willfully disobey him, then you're not being honest with him about having accepted him as your "Lord" and savior.

So what are you telling me?

If I become a Christian I won't need to obey the Christian God either because nobody actually does that? Not even the Christians?

What sense does that even make?

Why would I want to lie to Jesus like the Christians do?

I think honesty would be a far better policy.

Yes if a sin is done intentionally. Then asking for forgiveness would be in vein. That is why as Christians we do our best to walk in the path Jesus set out before us. We don't "intentionally" lie. We may do it occasionally not paying much attention to what we do. But we then ask for forgiveness for we did not intentionally do as such.

There's no such thing as "accidental sin".

That very notion is utterly absurd.

Yup, so absurd that the Hebrews even acknowleged it.


So who studied theolgy and who didn't here?

Well that's no surprise since their whole religion is absurd.

If the whole idea of 'sin' is that it's willful disobedience that is done by CHOICE, which it necessarily must be if we are going to be held "guilty" of it, then it can only be done on purpose.

Otherwise it would be an "innocent" sin. A sin that was done in perfect innocence. If the innocence was any less then perfect, then it was done knowingly.

The ancient Hebrews were out to make sure that everyone is considered to be a sinner anyway, so I'm sure they would love to consider totally innocent people to be sinners.

No news there.

Isn't this Christmas eve?

Shouldn't you Christians be preparing for a birthday celebration or something?

Or at least putting out cookies for Santa Claus?

I want to play a thought game...

Imagine you lived in the wild west days of America. Every man is a law unto himself, because there are no laws, cities, police or military. Now imagine that a family of vicious murderers moved onto your land and was a threat to you and your families safety and security. Imagine that they were rapists and murderers of men, women and children. They ignore your warnings that the land is yours and absolutely refuse to leave.

Would you a) Move away, b) Risk your and your children's lives by letting them stay or c) Kill them or d) Try to drive them off with force? Or some other action?

You tell me. He was "one of yours". How could someone so full of the Spirit do such awful things?

Just maybe... maybe..._everyone_ who believes in the Infallible Omniscient godhead who allegedly ghost-writ the Holy Bible is wrong, too? D'ya think? Maybe?

I mean really, you guys have no proofs to offer, just dogged faith in your doctrines and dogmas and a tendency to go after anyone who won't subscribe to said faith with ad hominems.

Or worse. History is replete with examples where Christianity has turned off its moral parity bit error checking so as to 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil'-- all while DOING evil in the name of the Almighty.

Free will is an excuse, more like the hangman's mask than some sort of favor Fundy God bestows on humans. Because if he IS testing them with it? Whoo boy, everything's coming up thorns, isn't it?

Maybe?


-Kerry O.