There's no such thing as sinning unintentionally unless you're claiming to be some sort of zombie.

So many words, so little thought put into them.

I am not responsible for the actions of anyone other than myself and my minor children. To hold me responsible for the actions of a man who died hundreds of years before I was born is illogical. Which goes to prove my point about "intellectual bankruptcy".

Sure there is. You see an old lady trying to cross the street, but you drive right by. You should have helped her. You are so caught up in your own problems that you aren't there to be a friend when a friend is down. You should have put your problems aside and helped your friend. etc etc etc

Of course you call Christianity and Judaism "absurd"...because James is a rebel! Ohhhh! Nobody has ever done that before.

Drive them off with force, killing, if necessary.

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

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?

It's not a sin to meet a deadly threat with deadly force. In fact, my opinion is that when the threat is imminent, it's sinful to not act in defense of yourself, your loved ones, or other innocents.

If this weren't true then every member of the police, the military, or any other sanctioned authority would be condemned.

I will be sure to pray for your soul though, after I've dispatched of you as a deadly serious threat...

Fortunately for Unbelievers, Fundies can no longer have the Church's political power imprison or torture them for speaking out against religion's shortcomings.

That's not to say the Dark Ages can't come back, though, if enough people get complacent enough.


-Kerry O.

I've seen a lot of good answers here and we've had some interesting discussions.

Now I would like to turn this discussion in a different path.

In the Bible is the story of the taking of Canaan by the Israelites. The Canaanites practiced child sacrifice, killed travelers and were basically a people without a moral compass. God gave Canaan to the Israelites. How is this situation any different from the original question? Canaan belonged to the Israelites and according to Rehab, the Canaanites had received dreams from God warning them to leave Canaan or be killed. They choose to ignore the warning, in spite of the warning from the land's owner. The Canaanites would have killed or corrupted the Israelites.

I have a new question...If you answered the original question with "Kill them", do you feel that God did the right thing with the conquest of Canaan? If not, why?

I think we will roll that way first. The Middle East was the height of power and enlightment, and then it went downhill while Europe was in its Dark Ages. When it went down, Europe went into its Enlightenment. (Relatively speaking since religion was still a problem).

Now it's America's turn to go downhill. UInfortunately, with nuclear armament, it should be interesting if we can keep it only in this country, or if some trigger-fingered religious nut will take out the rest of the world.

IMO!

Sure there is. You see an old lady trying to cross the street, but you drive right by. You should have helped her. You are so caught up in your own problems that you aren't there to be a friend when a friend is down. You should have put your problems aside and helped your friend. etc etc etc

Of course you call Christianity and Judaism "absurd"...because James is a rebel! Ohhhh! Nobody has ever done that before.

I really hope that I'm around when you finally read the Bible to see what it is that you are so angry with.

History is written by the winners. One is dealing with how the Israelites saw things, and what they perceived as truths in order to make genocide more palatable. That certainly doesn't mean that's what the Canaanites were actually doing. The winners just did a better job "demonizing" the losers in order to make their win valid.

I've seen a lot of good answers here and we've had some interesting discussions.

Now I would like to turn this discussion in a different path.

In the Bible is the story of the taking of Canaan by the Israelites. The Canaanites practiced child sacrifice, killed travelers and were basically a people without a moral compass. God gave Canaan to the Israelites. How is this situation any different from the original question? Canaan belonged to the Israelites and according to Rehab, the Canaanites had received dreams from God warning them to leave Canaan or be killed. They choose to ignore the warning, in spite of the warning from the land's owner. The Canaanites would have killed or corrupted the Israelites.

I have a new question...If you answered the original question with "Kill them", do you feel that God did the right thing with the conquest of Canaan? If not, why?

History is written by the winners. One is dealing with how the Israelites saw things, and what they perceived as truths in order to make genocide more palatable. That certainly doesn't mean that's what the Canaanites were actually doing. The winners just did a better job "demonizing" the losers in order to make their win valid.

Nonsense.

If you sincerely believe that you are being disobedient of you Lord if you don't help every old lady to cross the street, then you are consciously, knowingly and willfully being disobedient every time you see an old lady cross the street and CHOOSE to serve your own agenda over your LORD's agenda.

There's no getting around it Spider.

You can take the most trivial "sin", and try to make an excuse for it, but the TRUTH is that if YOU BELIEVE that it's a "sin" (i.e. disobedience of your Lord) then you are flatly guilty of refusing to obey your LORD. And instead you are CHOOSING to serve your own agenda.

The only way you could truly serve your Lord would be to become a Christian Monk, and do only what you believe your Lord asks of you. Anything short of that and you are refusing to SERVE your Lord in favor of rebelling and serving your own interests instead.

If you're going to believe in a religion then BELIEVE it in, and act like you believe in it.

Otherwise, you haven't convinced me that you believe in anything. You're treating your religion superficially like as if you don't honestly believe in it yourself.

You seem to think that to just pretend to have accepted Jesus as your LORD, is enough. Evidently you don't feel compelled to follow through on the essence of that supposed acceptance.

How can you claim to have accepted the the Christ as your LORD, if you continue to live out your days completely ignoring what you believe he expects you to do?

My goodness...

"Dark Ages" is used by laymen to describe the periods of time in which little was written and for which we lack historical records. Historians use "Early Middle Ages". Modern research into the so called "dark ages" of Europe show that people considered themselves free from religious control then and that there was no actual slowdown in the progress of society. The term "Dark Ages" was coined in the 1300s to describe a period of decline in Latin literature.