Too Taboo To Chew! (Religion) (Page 6 of 16)

Wouldn't it be better to post a link to the site you copy-paste those texts?

Oi, okay...I'm going to quote, because posts that seem like a bunch of random assertions that don't address specific problems in another argument might as well be copy/pasted as they're more just an assertion of one's own beliefs than a proper argument.
for starters:

The only way for you to verify this to yourself is experientially, rendering your weak rebuttal inert. lol. You can understand a lot conceptually, though I beg you this: Could you understand Christ's union with God better if you had the same experiential union with God, or would you prefer that your understanding remain purely theoretical?
I think what you're trying to say is that experiences are less testable, and thus, are less trustworthy in a theoretical framework. However, theoretical frameworks are belief systems, and not Truth itself.

Completely agreed. Intellect in service of experience is good. Intellect in service of itself doesn't lead to anything authentic though...only concepts and theories about concepts and theories. Lots of things work on paper, but not in practice, which is why theories and concepts must be tested against experiential realities.
The mind has a tendency to ignore a lot of factors, which is why lots of things that work on paper, don't work in reality (see Comminusm for example).

Unless you believe in a loving God and Karma.

Before we go on, an oft overlooked phrase in Corinthians for you to consider:
I Cor 13:7 ... [Love] bears all things, believes all things,
I Cor 13:8 ... where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

I think perfection is really the experiential reality of what the theoretical stuff points at. I imagine we might disagree on this point, but there you have an accusation that your refusal to consider at least the possibility of all things(believe all things) is not in fact loving...not in fact an openness to Truth. You place your theoretical understanding in place of perfection....and it is not that. You infer different meanings than I do, and project that your meaning is authority based on the teachings of historical scholars. You consider your own interpretation to be inspired and true, and yet you remain at the level of intellectual understanding...not experiential Lovingness, Peacefulness, and Enlightened.
If you are but a limited man, incapable of being exactly like Christ, then you must understand that your capacity to understand is limited. Experientially however, you are as unlimited as any man...those who did not understand Christ could still be witness to Him.

We are agreed on this. What is up for debate however, is what it takes in order to really have the oil. Obviously having the oil meant one knew Christ. Those who did not have oil most certainly knew all about oil though...they were probably content in knowing what it meant to have oil, though they never got around to actually getting it. Those that had the oil had more than a theoretical understanding of oil's importance...they had experiential understanding...their lamps were actually burning. The Spirit of God within is not some thing that comes from understanding, it comes from surrender to God. You can read all the scripture on the planet and not have the Spirit of God within...theoretical understanding(belief systems) are not synonymous with Truth.
The map is not the territory. Once one has arrived, the map can even be discarded.

The same authority that Paul had in interpreting his own writings. The same authority that Luke had when interpreting his own writings. The bible wasn't written as a collection. It was assembled as a collection. What discernment do you employ at all when you refuse to really analyze the God that is portrayed in some books as compared to others? Take a sober perspective, and you'll see that the God of Jesus isn't the same as the God of dragons and monsters in Revelation...or the jealous, angry God that is portrayed in a lot of the old testament.

Does this not appear contradictory to "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do?"
The Jesus of the gospels is forgiving, understanding, loving, and a teacher. This Jesus is cranky, and not understanding, and divided. He would prefer that evil stay completely evil, and righteous be completely righteous, because then his hate of the wicked and favor of the righteous would be easy and he wouldn't need to employ the sort of discernment that the real Jesus employs throughout the entire New Testament, save Revelation. The Jesus of the Gospels wants to clothe and feed the poor, blind and naked....this Jesus condemns them! How could you possibly take these as the same Jesus?

Can you be sure that you are not simply inferring a particular intention to suit your own ends? You come up with some rationalization as to how the Jesus of Revelation is just as loving as the Jesus of the Gospels...or how intolerance is necessary in order to be Loving. Had you not heard that the biblical God was jealous, you would have had to be insane to conclude that jealousy was a necessary component of Love. It may just be that you are blinded by your own faith so much that you can't take a sober view of the texts that you are so devoted to...and that is easy to understand, as the questioning of such devotion renders a pretty strong blow to one's pride.

I'm imagining a guy sitting in a bar full of beautiful women, reading a book about how to talk to women. Understanding (knowing about) is not the same as truly knowing. The map(book) is not the territory(experience). People who have never read the bible can pray to God just as effectively as people who have.

Stop. Think about this for a second. Now, if I were the author of Revelation, and I had a crazy dream with a big dragon, and I thought it was all symbolic of the apocalypse where God and Satan would duke it out for the title of ruler of the universe, and I was totally deluded, I would write that my dream was divinely inspired, even if it was just a dream of astral/satanic origin, depicting an evil Satan that could actually contend with something as almighty and perfect as God.
Here is where you have to use discernment, because, just because a book says it's inspired by God, doesn't mean that it actually is! God gave us brains surely expecting that we'd use them to sort this kind of stuff out.

I don't need to assert divine inspiration for it to be evident in the following writing:
"God is all-good, and His Love is All-encompassing."
It is really inconsequential whether the material is attributed to inspiration or not...you still have to think for yourself and assess whether something will or will not assist you on your spiritual journey.

True prophetic works have these qualities. However, not all works that claim to be prophetic are in fact prophetic.
Of note also, is that what we call the scriptures today, are mostly translations(read: interpretations) of things that may or may not be authentic prophecy. (note: I do believe that Genesis, Psalms, and the NT minus Revelation are all divinely inspired).

Well, the John that wrote Revelation, in my view, is not John the Apostle...and thus, is exempt from Jesus' promise. There are some very very loose parallels between the writing styles...about as many as one could identify between the writing styles of the two of us. The differences far outweigh the similarities...especially the fact that Revelation is absent of true depictions of a loving God.
Also, at the time of Paul, many other religions had extensive amounts of scripture (the Upanishads and Vedas for example). If he truly meant all scripture, then these ought to be included. He didn't say 'only all canonical scripture' after all. Certainly if God had inspired the works, he would've been quite specific if it was that important.
I believe Paul was inspired by God, though I also believe that inspiration does not negate error.

To this very day, the above description of inspiration is common among artists from every religion. In my own experience as an artist there have been numerous times where the experience was that of being a channel for inspiration, and not its author. Be careful here how much you infer. How can you be sure that the inspiration produced exactly what God wanted? Surely if God could be a burning bush, God could have simply manifested the pages out of thin air too...but instead, for some reason, they had to be penned by people...strange.

That's just what you infer. It is not a certainty.
Fortunately, through sober examination, we can at least attempt to discern for ourselves, hopefully via inspired honesty with ourselves.

So, he's saying that 'new' scriptures should be compared against old scriptures in order to be validated...and yet, Revelation is stuck in there with the Gospels, despite it being so different...not only in content, but in style.

A single true principle perfectly equips us. "Be kind and loving to all of life in all its varied expressions, including oneself" is sufficient to do what Paul is saying there. Scripture is totally sufficient because it contains all sorts of these principles...however, just because an axe is sufficient for cutting down trees does not mean that a saw is insufficient.
Was Paul's letter saying that the scriptures were sufficient the very last book/letter to be written that was included in the bible? if not, though all previous scripture was sufficient, why would further writings be included?
It is your presumption that the teachings of other religions are not given authoritatively for the same purpose.

And yet he kept writing, even though the Scripture that existed was sufficient.

An axe manual is not going to say much about how to use a swa, though both are sufficient for cutting down trees.

Sufficient is not a synonym for exclusive.

And yet, we are at a loss, since the scriptures and teachings of other religions make the same claims about themselves. Guess that means we have to use discernment and include experience as a relevant factor in our spiritual growth.

Passover was a tradition...but I guess that wasn't inspired by God...it was the work of man.

Ahh, but if you try to teach what Christ taught, it becomes your teaching. Thus, the validity of any teaching must be verified according to its own truth, not on the authority of the teacher, but on the authority of the teaching itself.
For example, a math brilliant math professor, early in his career, might have taught some brilliant proofs. Later in his career, he might lose his mind and be unable to teach. However, the teachings may persist on their own authority, and not according to anything regarding the teacher. Truth is the only thing that makes something True. Teachers (like the inspired scribes of the bible) are merely channels for Truth.

Like...working on the Sabbath?

Certainly, they were the context in which his followers would understand the teaching...
...I'm not sure he affirmed the historicity as much as he simply referred to these scriptures as a context within which Christ's own teachings could be understood.

See, I don't want to put myself on par with Jesus here, but I have used scriptural quotes here to challenge your perceptions and claims also. It ought to be of note that the Sadducees would have believed in the authority of scriptures just as you do - hence Christ's quotations would have been valid arguments to them. Christ's wisdom extended far beyond the scriptures though, and he only referred to them in passing. If they were the sort of authority that you're claiming that they are, Christ could've spent his entire time here simply explaining the true meanings of the scriptures. He didn't do that though...he taught about forgiveness and love...about a God that transcended the anger and jealousy and humanness of the OT God.

So we must refer to them where it is appropriate for making a point about a tradition or argument, and the rest of the time, speak of the God of forgiveness, miracles, and of unconditional Love.

Actually, he wa under the authority of Truth as it was recorded in scripture. Where scripture varies from Truth, Truth is still the only authority. Your presumption that Scripture and Truth are one and the same is idolatry. Some Scripture might be Truth, but ultimately you are responsible to answer for the Truth, whether the scriptures are accurate or not.
So much of your arguments here consist of 'because the scriptures say so'...and that is ultimately an invalid argument. If the scriptures do teach Truth(and I believe much of them does), it is not the words that have authority, it is the truth that they point at.

"Your Will be done" would suggest that God was the ultimate authority, and that if ever the Scriptures called for something different than God, God would be the one that Jesus would answer to.

Surely you know that Christ didn't do those things simply because it was written, but because that was what God desired. It so happened that there was congruency there, but Christ's life was of an experiential unity with the Father, coupled with an understanding of scripture that he used to help translate that reality for humanity.

Cool, so in fulfilling these prophecies, he could be taken seriously as the Son of God.
Now, the rest of the stuff that's written in the OT about an angry, jealous, spiteful God, Jesus did not affirm those teachings...he taught about a loving God, a forgiving God, a God that would guide us away from sin rather than punish us for it...a teacher God, not an executioner God.

So when Christ teaches of a God that is not jealous, are we to believe Christ, or the OT scriptures?
Or do you think that in sacrificing Christ God thought 'okay, i'll let up on these eople now'? Going from an adolescent, immature God, to a teacher, guiding God...

oooohkay, It ought to be noted that the writings of these historians is not considered canon, and thus is not divinely inspired. For the record, the Apocrypha works on an intellectual level like math or science(kinda) but doesn't seem to me to be relevant to spiritual enlightenment, or a true understanding of God's essence.

Also, whether something is considered canon or not has little to nothing to do with the validity of its contents. The Dhammapada and the Bhagavad Gita are not Christian canon in any sense, yet they speak of much higher truths than a lot of the cannonical Christian books.
The validity of teachings can be affirmed only by the ability of the teachings to stand up against the conditions of reality.

Because you say so? Or because scripture says so? or because you've actually had such an experience of divine inspiration and found that nothing could penetrate it?

so animal sacrifice was the creation of man then? or did god inspire all the pagan religions of the past too?
What came true has been validated, of course. However, that God is jealous was not supported by Christ, who was the fulfillment of the prophecy...so clearly, we can't just blindly take all things to be true, except as the understandings of those who wrote them. To someone who believed that a punitive God was a loving God, jealousy may have appeared to be a quality of real love. To someone that viewed God as a teacher, saviour and guide, jealousy would be wholly incompatible with an understanding of love.

It is possible to believe the right thing on wrong premises. Pretty much everyone in the bible believed in the same God...only some understood God to be something totally different than what God was.

See, we believe in the same God, but you believe that God is a jerk to naive people. You believe that he would condemn people to an ETERNITY in hell for nonbelief...and of course, that's totally irrational, because upon entering hell, you'd immediately regret that nonbelief and become a believer, thus, this supposedly loving God is not a teacher...he's a jerk. It is not a crime-appropriate punishment.
However, if you understand hell as a state of consciousness, God returns to being benign, loving, and non-jerky.

that's not jealousy. That's acceptance. You might need to redefine intolerance to mean something other than y'know...what it actually means...to be intolerant.

And to be fair, is the Spirit as persistent as you? or are some people just unlucky to not have had enough Christian influence, and are thusly condemned to hell more by their bad luck than by their lack of virtue?

Hmm, so hell is the consequence of their own doing, and not God's condemnation? Huh, sounds an awful lot like a state of mind thing than a location for eternal banishment.

The divergence is due to a difference in understanding, due to the differences in language and in interpretation. Also, it comes from the fact that Christianity does not explicitly say anything about reincarnation. However, if you would afford the same open mindedness in terms of compatibility between revelation and say, the Gospel of Luke, to the teachings of Buddha, you'd find they were very very compatible.

People that get children to fight in wars is what hell appears as on earth...The subjective reality of the person that does it, and of the children that are subject to it...that's hell.
Now, would you say that it's fair for those children, fighting for Allah, to be condemned to hell for not believing in Jesus? or maybe, a loving God might have them reincarnate?
How about children that are born to atheists, never baptized, and suffer from infant death...is it fair that they go to hell?
Your own view is not consistent with itself...you believe in a loving God, but the sort of God you believe in has no seeming compassion for these sorts of cirumstances.

On authority of common sense, I can say that the children who are brainwashed to fight in wars are not afforded the opportunity to experience Christ as their saviour...they are experiencing hell.

Who Christ knows? So it's not about who knows Christ now? It's about who Christ knows?
And now you're saying that 'the oil' is experiential, and not theoretical...that one can experience Christ, without knowing the 'person' of Christ? This is what I've been saying all along! Plenty of Buddhists live in the Spirit, though they may not call it by such a name....many believe in Christ...though not as a name, rather as a state of being, or an energy field...

You need to look up a definition for moral relativism. Relativism presupposes that there is not an absolute that exists. According to your own definition, by virtue of the fact that you're a sinner, you're a moral relativist too. You presume that Christianity offers you an absolute, but you fail to live up to it(since you sin), so until you do, your personal expression of morality is relative to that absolute morality which does not include fallibility. Relativism is something completely different.

You might consider it like a scale, where at the top is the perfect moral resolve that we aspire to have, and the various descending gradation represents the degree to which one's moral resolve has been refined in relation(relative) to the absolute. This is not a model of moral relativism, which has no gradations, only infinite positions that are equally morally astute by virtue of the subjective assertions of whoever holds their morality to be perfectly apt.

-Rob

Dude, you have way too much time on your hands.

Do you verify the beauty of a sunset against scripture too?
Or do you figure that the sunset is only beautiful according to its colors, or according to its warmth or according to its shape, or to the scent of the air at the time, or where you're seeing it from?
Truth is self-evident(Experiential). Verifying something against something else relies on the conceptual constructs of the mind, which depend on other mental constructs as well. This may offend you, but in many schools of Buddhism and Hinduism, thinking is considered just as one of the senses...not all that reliable unto itself. Buddha advised that chasing after sensation(storing one's treasures on earth) was less favorable than surrendering worldly pleasures(storing one's treasures with God/in heaven).

Truth is not based on anything but the is-ness of itself. Truth, by virtue of being Truth, cannot be based on anything other than itself, for things other than itself are non-Truth. Thus, mentation, intellectualization, reference to literature/scripture, and any other forms of verification that the mind employs are constructs of the mind, used to contextualize things that are much much larger than the mind. Does Truth require that anything be said of it in order for Truth to remain Truth? No. All that the mind has to say about it is superfluous. Truth is only accessible via experience...mentation is not the same as Truth. Mentation(inferring that scriptures are authoritative, for example) is subject to the same delusion as anything else, because, let's face it, mentation itself is an experience. Reading scripture is an experience. Thinking you understand scripture is an experience. The objective authority that you project onto things is a construct of your own mind. Authority is due only to Truth, which is synonymous with God.
We are simply experiencing the general will of God, as you say...and there's Luke 12:
4 "But I tell you, my friends, never be afraid of those who kill the body[sensation] and after that can't do anything more.
5 I'll show you the one you should be afraid of. Be afraid of the one who has the authority to throw you into hell after killing you[that'd be God]. Yes, I tell you, be afraid of him!
6 "Five sparrows are sold for two pennies, aren't they? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.
7 Why, even all the hairs on your head have been counted! Stop being afraid[of those who deny the senses/of denying your own senses]. You are worth more than a bunch of sparrows."
8 "But I tell you, the Son of Man will acknowledge before God's angels everyone who acknowledges me before people.
9 But whoever denies me before people will be denied before God's angels.
10 Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the person who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.
11 When people bring you before synagogue leaders, rulers, or authorities, don't worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say,
12 because at that time the Holy Spirit will teach you what you are to say."

hmm, so the bible says that authority is in the Holy Spirit...which makes sense if the Holy Spirit is God, and God is Truth. Also, it says not to worry about how one will defend himself - especially to folks that are entrenched in interpreting scripture(synagogue leaders, rulers, and authorities), because the Holy Spirit teaches the man who has abandoned attachment to worldly sensation(thinking, tasting, touching, etc.) since he is really committed to God. This commitment(to the non-worldly/to the Holy Spirit) is what determines whether one is capable of experiencing heaven. Concerns for the Son of Man(Christ's physicality) are inconsequential...we need only be concerned with the Son of God/Holy Spirit/Truth.

My personal conception of Christ does not need to stand up to the scriptural conception of Christ...only to Christ/God/The Holy Spirit.
To hold the scriptures as higher authority than God/The Holy Spirit, is idolatry...and you really have been insisting that they are the highest authority available to us...as though we are distant from access to the Holy spirit when discussing things.

Step one, complete. Sinner redeemed, check.

See, I find this disheartening, because you equate knowing a book with knowing God. Christ the man(Son of Man) is not what I want a personal relationship...that body is long dead(unless you believe heaven is a physical domain too, where everyone treats each other nicely, but it otherwise a spitting image of this same world). Christ as the Son of God...I have a personal relationship with Him, for he's my brother...since God is also my creator; my father.

People who believe in the authority of the bible misinterpret it all the time. You can find 10 people who hold it to be the same authority that you do, and none of you will agree on the meanings of every passage. All of you hear only what your itching ears want to hear just the same as you accuse me.
I believe that you can only really know the Truth of your experiences via confirmation by the Holy Spirit...not according to historians or theologians, or folks on message boards, lol. You can create an intellectual foundation that may support the experience, according to a book that your mind holds to be authority...but the experience itself can only be authenticated by God. Your mind is as fallible as any other sense. God is not fallible.

You're not too familiar with Bipolar disorder and other forms of psychosis, are you? Of just a handful of people I know with such a disorder, about 90% of them have been in 'direct conversation with God'.
Just because it is written that something came from God, does not mean that that is so. Revelation is more alike to a bipolar delusion than it is to anything that came from the Gospels...
...and most often, these episodes occur to people who have led very religious lives....just go to any mental institution and you will find at least a handful of people who are divinely inspired. I mean this absolutely literally too. The statistics of delusional religious experiences are surprisingly high.

That's what the serpent had to say about the command not to eat from the tree of life too...that Eve's experience was not authentic, and that she had to eat from the tree of knowledge in order to verify it. Mind your forked tongue
Do you believe you can be fooled by your own mind? Be passionate for God, not for belief systems. Then, if God guides you to particular scriptures, their authenticity may be verified. How circular is it to verify scriptures in terms of other scriptures? Then, if one is false, the other must be too!
If the scripture says it is divinely inspired, then it must be! Why? because it says right in the scripture! Cartwheels.
The map is not the territory. You must walk the walk...reading the map is no equivalent. The map may be consistent with itself, but if it is not consistent with the actual roads, you must trust the roads, not the map.

The integrity of much of the bible remains intact for me(the Gospels, for example). Revelation does not stand up against logic, experience, or reality. It is very much like a psychotic episode or delusion.
Historical biblical scholarship cannot be trusted either, since it does not satisfy your own demands for authenticity:
a)Historians make no claim of divine inspiration.
You hear what you want to hear...that your cherished belief system is valid.
Historians are subject to the same pressures as you...to maintain the integrity of the belief system via whatever rationalizations are necessary. Whenever something appears to threaten its integrity, those historians are considered mistaken, or something magically comes up that mysteriously allows people to rationalize their way back to their prior position.
Each book must stand on the validity of its own words, as they are appliccable to reality and verifiable through experience, otherwise they are no better than any other construct of the mind.
If I do not take Revelation to be the authentic word of God, it makes no difference in my ability to take one of the Gospels to be authentic.
If I believe what you have to say about Star Wars, it does not render me unable to question what you have to say about television shows.
If your historians were all correct, then there ought not to be such a wide array of denominations...but unfortunately, not all historians agree on every point. If they did, the foundation might be more reliable...
however, the varyance in interpretation, and in historical accounts renders your concreteness more like pudding.

I'm saying no such thing. If 'These works were written by God' was actually written by God, and the rest were filtered through the mind of someone else, then God would be a liar, BUT, even the statement that 'these works were inspired by God' is in fact penned by a man! If anyone is to be called a liar, it would be the man.
Now, you give a nearly accurate account of what inspiration in its perfect form is: a St. Hildegaard described herself to be "God's Trumpet" or Mother Teresa saying that she was a pencil in the hand of God, writing a most beautiful love story(These people made claims of divine inspiration, and yet, their works are not canon, so you won't hold them as equal authority....
In any case, inspiration, due to free will, is often filtered through the mind/ego of whoever is inspired. Unless you claim that God also eliminated their free will while they were writing, your claim to the perfection of the word choice and clarity of intention and meaning is weakened.

That is a logical fallacy. Logically, you have to employ that sort of discernment...you have to discard the false, and keep hold of the true. If one thing is true, it doesn't follow that everything grouped with it is also true. Agreed?

Do you think that because I question the authenticity of some things, that I do not aspire to live in unity with God? Should I repent for that which I have already been forgiven for?

Now, in humanizing the message, it becomes something other than direct divine transmission, does it not?

Most important? Don't you hold that they are all equally important? On what grounds woud you say that some are more or less important than others?
I ask this, because you have accused me of engaging in fallacy when I assert that some books are less valuable(or not valuable at all). If you have some condition that allows you to determine whether one teaching is more or less important, then perhaps we can find a common ground.

"worshiped and served the creation[the Bible?] 53  rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen."
"Although they claimed 45  to be wise, they became fools 1:23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings[the physicality of Christ?]"

Have you understood it? or only what your ears want you to hear?

If you believe that there are no logical fallacies in Christian teaching, then such logical fallacies might appear threatening to you. However, if you eliminate the clearly false from any religion, all religions become completely compatible. 

Right, but The Dark Knight outsold The Passion of the Christ at the boxoffice. You're using the argument of 100 people jumping off a bridge, so others ought to do it too.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think that most of the bible deserves its place as the most widespread and well known literature...it's just that you're using persuasive tactics that have nothing to do with the content of the conversation.

It's logically fallacious only if you think that the descriptions are in competition with one another. As I have said before, Christ teaches about Salvation(using an axe) and Buddha teaches about Enlightenment(using a saw). The teachings relate to different contexts, but are not in essence, in conflict with each other. Buddha taught to a particular audience, several hundred years before Christ....Christ taught to a completely different crowd, in a different area, and had different methods.
It's like saying it's a logical fallacy to think that two different teaching styles could be effective. Most often, it is the material being taught that determines the best delivery method, and since they are two different subjects (Salvation and Enlightenment), different content, and style are appropriate, but not conflicting.

It's just a little narrow-minded. A theory of black dots may satisfy the needs of black dots...but a theory of all coloured dots is more condusive to satisfying the requirements of the larger reality of existence.

Well, your identification of logical fallacy doesn't extend to any sort of self-reflecting approach. You are quick to identify the seeming specks in the eyes of another, but hesitant to address the logs in your own eyes.
With a refusal to even wonder whether the bible has inconsistencies, or whether the depictions of God are not accurate, of course it will be impossible for you to see logical fallacy in your own view.

Well, if God establishes traditions, then what does the whole previous discussion about traditions have to do with anything? So what if scripture doesn't talk a lot about tradition. If God establishes tradition, then such a tradition would be important. I honestly don't know why you brought up tradition in the first place.

Awesome. And let God's inspired word reveal itself through the discourse. Let us not be fooled by words falsely claiming to be inspired. What could be the source of Truth but Truth itself? Let us attempt to decipher whether anything that comes up adheres to the standards that Truth requires.

He worked on the Sabbath, which was against the teaching of Moses/the Word. In the very least, he was reinterpreting what it meant to 'work' on the Sabbath...for the interpretation of the scholars was limited by the intellectual nature with which the scholars had interpreted.

Well, here i'll concede a little. The scriptures that I deny are not entirely false. Continuing in the practice of discernment, it is clear that there are true statements amongst the many false.

Fascinating. Through the Holy Spirit we can come to know Truth....Scriptures can point at Christ, but the Holy Spirit can bring union with Him in God.
Let me be pointed by that which makes sense, and have the Spirit carry me the rest of the way.
Let me not be caught up in understanding the finger, but let me follow where it points.

Agreed that Christ is and was eternally present. For this reason, it is not the man of Christ, but the God of Christ that I commit to...to the eternal, living, God.

Fulfillment, or parallel? The seed is a child, and Christ was a child, thus, Christ is the seed? Pretty vague.

Was that a prophecy? That there would come a lamb that would end the need for all sacrifices? or was this inferred after the fact...seeing Christ's sacrifice as a parallel?

If those are prophecies of Christ...that's pretty weak.
It's like saying 'one who can do this job will come', and then, to your suprise, an applicant comes that can do what is required.
They all vaguely refer to an enlightened awareness that would help them. That's just a sensible prediction, not a prophecy. You could apply those things to any number of historical figures. Gandhi for starters.

God wasn't with God...God was God. And God doesn't have internal debate, and thus, can't be considered to make decisions. God is not conflicted with Himself, so there is only God's Will, not God's decision. God does not have a change of mind, because God anticipates all things, and knows all things. If you try to argue that the future is not determined and that God reacts with the unfolding of events, then you undermine all your claims of prophecy, since prophecy requires that the future unfolds in a particular direction. If God can change His mind, then all prophecy is lucky speculation.

This is not calling God jealous.
He could just have well have said 'Are you trying to make God angry?'
It does not mean that God in fact will be jealous or angry, but that their actions arise out of spite and an insistence upon their own sovereignty from God. Jealousy is a term that would apply to the God-view of the audience, but not to the Truth of God. If you are at all familiar with the Astral entities that Christ dubbed 'demons', it is the teaching of most religions that such astral entities are jealous of God! They imbue their followers with 'secret knowledge' and special titles that can be aquired only upon the performance of various demonstrations of allegiance. It's a classic flipping around argument. He's asking what they aim to accomplish by partaking in their own jealous endeavors.

lol
Let's add some context:
"1 I hope you will put up with a little more of my foolishness. Please bear with me. 2 For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself."
Later, Paul says this:
"6 I may be unskilled as a speaker, but I’m not lacking in knowledge."

He knows that the words are silly in their application. He uses them however, to illustrate his point as he is not especially skilled with words.

He doesn't confirm it at all. He uses the terms in the context of simplicity(foolishness). By his own admission, it is silliness that he is speaking. It's a bit of a tongue in cheek humor that lightens the passage.

I'm not attempting to disprove something based on the character of the one who declared it. However, I am using this as a way of illustrating that neither can you consider something to be true based solely on the character of the one who declared it. Just because the bible declares itself to be divinely inspired does not mean that it is in fact divinely inspired. Just because some people consider some books to be canon, does not mean that they are in fact the divine word of God Himself. I have not engaged in these logical fallacies in my approach to the Bible. I take what is experientially verifiable to be true, and what is verifiably false to be false, and hold the rest as speculative.

yep.

The only way to truly verify reality is through experience.

The references to scripture being divinely inspired were made before canon was established. My point was that you're just picking and choosing yourself...that he must have been referring to this scripture and not that scripture...to this gospel, and not that Gospel(Gospel of Thomas?).

Why would the right God require animal sacrifices? It's silly. A God of Love would require no such thing. As per Luke, God knows us better than we know ourselves...why would such a barbaric act be necessary to a God that knows our hearts, and could tell that we were repentent by simply glancing at our souls? It sounds more like the consequence of a primitive understanding of God where appeasements would have been seen as necessary...like keeping a hungry beast satiated to minimize its wrath.

Agreed. However, Christianity does not have an exclusive claim to such a God. Krishna makes claims analogous to Christ in the Bhagavad Gita...you might remember the famous quote "I am become death, destroyer of worlds", as spoken by J. Robert Oppenheimer at the testing of the first Nuclear bomb...the quote is an excerpt from a much larger section where Krishna is explaining to his friend that he is the Alpha and Omega, so t speak. However, in Hindu tradition, the enlightened do not attain a 'state' per se, but have realized themselves as enlightenment...as the Supreme/God/Brahma, not as experiencing the Supreme, but as the Supreme itself. Claims to enlightenment by idividuals are recognized as false, because in enlightenment, no individuality persists to make such a claim...there is only the Supreme/God, manifest as man. Now, such a condition had been spoken of throughout history many times....Krishna was the fulfillment of so called 'prophecy' in the same way that Christ was....and he claimed to BE the Supreme...and the same goes for Buddha...who was aware of Hindu tradition and teaching, and recognized no conflict between his own realization and that of Krishna, or any of the other enlightened masters. It was acceptable because it is recognized that there is only One Truth(no golden calf substitutes allowed) and that full realization permitted no duality between the realizer and the realized Truth. I am God, and none shall get to the Father but through me, is understood more clearly in the context of this understanding which predates Christ's claim.

Intolerance is not compatible with freedom. You can't be intolerant, freely giving, jealous and loving...as you can see, these things are not compatible logically.

and for people who can't read?

God is Consciousness. The states are like states of water...at a low temperature, ice; at a high temperature, steam. God is not like a block of Swiss cheese, where mankind fits in the holes.

Idolatry of what?

I am God is a false statement, because intransitive verbs like 'am' imply duality; this 'is' that, is a superfluous way of stating the isness of Divinity. The nondual relationship between the individual and God is like that of Christ's relationship where individuality is dissolved in the wholeness of the One Truth/One God. There is nothing apart from God that is idolized.

I fear the Lord, but not the scriptures. Wisdom and discipline are wonderful, but I do not expect to get oil from the writings of others...I must get my oil from God Himself.
I don't want to arrive at the Lord and say, I have no authentic experience to corroborate my intellectual understanding of what was written.

Deluded people never think they're deluded. Just as the Spirit is not divided against itself, these kids aren't either.

An energy field does not deny Christ's power. It explains it.
And nobody is casting out demons in the name of Beelzebub.
Those kids have no chance to answer to the Spirit, because they are deluded/brainwashed by those who hate Truth. Are they not loved by God? Surely these godless murderers will not be welcome in heaven...but is that fair? ETERNAL damnation, because as a kid who didn't know any better, you were brainwashed? That's hardly fair at all. Equal opportunity to reach heaven(as permitted by teachings like reincarnation) seems more like what a loving God would ensure.

Remember, the word 'Christ' means 'Salvation'...not a person.

But Christ is Christ, even though His body has been given up. To know Christ is to know Truth, and therefore, to know Truth is to know Christ. It is not the name or the physicality that is important. Why are you so concerned with the flesh of Christ when the flesh is what we are not to be concerned with?

You're stuck on a word/on a name. By any other name, the rose smells just as sweet. If you let go your idea that one is exclusive, you can reconcile the differences with greater ease than the differences between the angry/vengeful God and the Loving God.

I did comment on this above. The ones that make sense are useful. The ones that don't, aren't.
Your objection is one of pride, not of logic.
I trust the integrity of some of what you say, and not of other things that you say. It is logical that I should be allowed to refer to the things you say that stand to reason to be true....but not that I should use your false statements as a means to engage you in further falsities.

Interesting. Why and how do you end up doing what you don't want to do?
I would argue that in the moment of your 'fall', you choose to do exactly what you want, according to some sort of justification...even if you come to regret it the moment later.
If you knew the full truth, you would see through the fallacy of your own justifications.
If it is not by your own will that you sin, then surely you cannot be held responsible and have no need to repent.

Your morality adheres to something that it considers absolute. I do not consider you a relativist. However, you could apply the 'fallen' explanation just as well to my morality...I fail to live as an expression of the absolute sometimes. My absolute is God Himself.
I know God himself as well as you can be certain that the Bible is completely infallible.
Your knowledge is not perfect(though certainly stubborn).
Imperfect knowledge means imperfect morality, for how can one know how to act in circumstances where he does not know?
You are as pursuant of the absolute as I am...and neither of us are relativists.
REALLY, if you want to carry on with this, I beg you to actually read up on what moral relativism is.

No, that's not it. We're not just going on relative gradations...it is simply that these gradations represent the fact that we are pursuant of perfection.
The absolute is and always has been manifest, though there remain blocks in awareness that preclude our direct experience of it. So long as blocks persist(so long as one remains sinful), morality shall not be infallible...for perfect morality does not allow sinfulness to persist.
I believe in an absolute as you do, but I don't call it 'my' morality until I can live it flawlessly. My morality is the way I live my life.
So long as you sin, at least in this view, your morality is not absolute.

I expect that we might be in agreement on this issue though...the matter is just confused by the two different semantic approaches, and by a misdefining of terminology.

Ahh, but if you could only see the logical fallacies that you commit to, this discussion could really go somewhere

-Rob

Dude! Srsly...

I can't read it but I like it - seems like a decent conversation - and now we also get slides - nice

I love good diagrams and charts...so if you like the slides, I might just be able to incorporate more of them!

They can say very quickly what it takes several essay posts to get across, lol.

-Rob

Well, I wouldn't say that I confirm my experiences against a worldview...but that explanation, contextualization, substantiation and general sharing of experiences is only possible via the medium of a worldview. Descartes said "Je pense, donc je suis" or, "I think, therefore I am"...when really, am-ness is a priori to thinkingness...he'd have better expressed the idea as, "I am, therefore I think".
The limitation belongs not to the experience itself, but to the language and context within which one is able to express it. Experience is so much larger than communication permits...it is analogous to analyzing a painting according to the sense you can make of tiny pieces of it. Language is inherently unable to communicate effectively concerning nondualistic reality since language is based on relationships of separate things...even to say "I am that I am" is incorrect. Even "I am", is incorrect. The intransitive verb 'am' indicates a duality between the actor and the action. The limitation of language in this sense, is widely recognized in other religions besides Christianity. Given the understanding of the limitations of language, people who are familiar with nondualistic traditions have an easier time making sense of the trinity, since they can see past the limitations of language there. Jesus and God are One...not two separate minds that would have a discourse...One (at least in the context of an extensive understanding of nonduality).
The limitation of the intellect(which you seem to have subscribed to as your only means of verifying things, according to trusted sources, past experiences, formal understandings, etc.) is that it permits only degrees of certainty...which do not amount to faith the size of a mustard seed, since obody we know of has been able to tell a tree to get up and plant itself somewhere else...nobody has moved mountains with the faith provided by the mind (lol, I sure hope you don't think I've misinterpreted that story too...but if I have, so be it, lol).
The mind can't figure out how or why the tree would uproot itself and replant itself somewhere else...but faith...real faith, transcends the intellect...it is not based on a 'frame of mind' or a 'worldview', it does not require a 'how' or 'why'...it is concerned only with what Is. It is closer to God than the mind, for the mind looks for validation in the world, in books, in all sorts of things, but true faith has no worldly cause...it arises spontaneously by Grace...

Well, the thing is, that we both believe that there is One God, right? So naturally, my answer would be 'God'.
There's this idea that if people are in disagreement about the nature of God, that they must be referring to different Gods...which is as absurd as saying that if we have different opinions or understandings of Brad Pitt, that we must be talking about different Brad Pitts, lol. We both know that our subjective understandings of God are not of the omniscient sort, and so we can infer that neither of us has all the answers. We both think that we have the necessary understanding to get us through wherever we are at currently on our spiritual journeys, but we're both aware of our potential to grow and learn more that will be of value, correct?
Now I realize that this doesn't exactly satisfy the mind, since it wants something 'in' the world to verify things against...it wants that higher power to be in the world...and so naturally it clings to stuff like the bible. That's not inherently bad or good...it simply is what the mind does. The mind doesn't put its faith in love alone, because love can't be trusted/understood(the mind can't quantify it or apply any predictive formula to it, so faith in love alone doesn't satisfy the mind). The mind wants things defined, concrete, and linear....so just saying the higher power and authority for morality is 'God', is just as suspect as moral relativism...unless you define what God is...bring God into the world...put God in a box....then we can be totally sure that what we mean by 'God' appeals to a consistent standard. That'd be absolutely great except for the fact that we'd have put God in a box, lol.

Hmm...I'm not sure I explained myself correctly. Basically, the sunset is beautiful, even if there is no explanation for it. Explanations are constructs...they are not the actual meat of reality itself. It would seem odd to base one's acceptance of reality on something that was not itself, 'reality'. When you reduce the beauty of a sunset to something non-metaphysical, note how quickly the beauty disappears...when we think of it in terms of chemical reactions and synapses...when we think of it in terms of color schemas and image composition, framing, symetry, depth, etc.
I suppose I could say it succinctly as though 'Analyze Beauty' is as much an oxymoron as 'Jumbo Shrimp'...lol

Well, there are two contexts within which 'uncaused first cause' can be considered. The first, and most obvious one (to the linear mind anyway) is in the context of causality...in which deductive reasoning does in fact lead backwards, because existence is understood in a deterministic framework, where causes and influences can be traced backwards. The difficulty in this view is that nothing beyond the first cause can aptly be considered a true 'cause' since every event is itself an effect of the uncaused first cause. Now, it is possible that whatever the 'uncaused first cause' is, it would also be able to uncausedly influence the proceeding chain of events at some time over the course of its happening too, in which case, it would be an uncaused second cause and third cause and so on, for every instant where it acted upon the sequence of events that it initially set in motion. This framework is also difficult to marry with the idea of free will, since free will, in the context of causality, has to be uncaused. Presumably, the uncaused first cause can create uncaused wills though. If the will is made to be a certain way according to antecedent events, it is not in fact free - 'Reason' is thus the inferred 'cause' of an uncaused decision of the will. In the context of causality, reason and free will are at odds with each other. We say that we did something be[/i]cause[/i] of this or that factor...deferring responsibility to things outside ourselves.

The other context within which to understand an 'uncaused first cause' is within a non-causal framework. In this context, the uncaused first cause needn't be seen as distant and separate in time and space from the appearance nor from the essence of existence. The first cause is not in the past, but a constant. The passing of time is recognized to be a perceptual phenomenon that is due to a limitation in the scope of awareness. Imagine seeing a bottle and a baseball card...in perception there is a sequence, but in reality they exist simultaneously. Like frames in an animation, cause is inferred based on appearances of sequence, when in fact one does not cause the other. Something more concrete might be to say that the rosebud does not cause the rose, but that each arises spontaneously from God (the uncaused first cause).
Where in a causal framework, the first trees were made by God, and the following trees occured according to deterministic biology and whatnot, in a non-causal framework, EVERY tree is God's creation.

Now, you might argue that in the causal framework, every tree is God's creation then also by virtue of him setting things in motion that trees would go on occurring, but surely you couldn't say that a child, that is the result of two individuals with their own uncaused free will, is a creation of God's in the causal framework.
In the non-causal framework though, the will of the parents remains free as their existence arises spontaneously in every instant, from God, just as the chld arises spontaneously from God too. The will in the non-causal framework, is not a device for initiating action, but rather, an instrument of alignment. Aligned with the non-time-dependent perfection of God, happiness, peace and enlightenment is how divinity is subjectively experienced...not aligned with God, separation, disappointment, struggle, pride, etc. are the subjective experience that we have of God. God then, is not made to be reactive to man, for God is always a constant, unchanging, perfectly Loving, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent...it is man who, via nonalignment, experiences duality between himself and God...as though Love were the benefit of a transaction, and not something that was ever and completely all-encompassing.

...certainly, the nonlinear non-causal context is beyond the domain of provability(since provability is itself within the domain of causality/the linear), but it allows for consistency between a great many world-views that to the linear mind, appear to oppose each other, and it also entails a recogniton of the limitation of language inherent in spiritual literature since nonduality cannot exactly be spoken of in universally comprehensible terms. Terms take on different significance and meaning depending on one's alignment, and are thus limited in their ability to point one toward Truth.

Fair enough. I think everything belongs to God...both mysterious and otherwise...even though the rest of that passage goes on to say "what has been revealed belongs to us". Certainly it doesn't imply that in belonging to us, it no longer belongs to God...but there's a sense of being stewards of what is given...
However, in being mere stewards, there is no guarantee that we don't mess it up somehow...what is revealed is ours...it is filtered through us...it is no longer exclusively and perfectly God's.
It seems somewhat contradictory to the idea that scriptures would be the infallible word of God, if the bible itself says that the words/teachings belong to us once they are given. It gives the sense that inspiration may not be fallible, though the ones who experience it could be.

My purpose was never to argue for classical anything anyway, lol. i know you wanted me to take a strict Buddhist position from the start, but my position has always been one of marriage between spiritual truths and realities as expressed in different words, in different times. I'm passionate for Truth, not for the exclusivity of belief systems.

I can honestly appreciate your concern here. The way that I think it is resolved is that ultimately, reality/Truth(I consider them synonyms anyway) can be all that exists...falsity and illusion are not actual things that can be present...they are the absence of Truth/Reality. Thus, this perceived individuality must ether be discarded as illusion, or married with Truth itself. Ultimately Truth is all that is important, even if one has to sacrifice himself in the pursuit of it(perhaps the meaning in dying to oneself in order to truly have life?).

I can't say I'm familiar with the problems of the early church and its encounters with mysticism. I've always found Luke's gospel to be quite mystical myself.
...actually, my favourite non-biblical Christian writing is 'The Cloud of Unknowing'...written by a 13th century Christian monk I believe. I'm not sure how well it is accepted in Christian circles, though it is definitely a beautiful work, regardless of people's positions concerning it. (The William johnston translation is best).

Well, here we have to get a bit more technical again. Contrary to common belief, Enlightenment isn't an exclusive state that is identical for everyone...there are progressive stages of enlightenment. The highest state would be that of the Avatars of most major religions...Jesus, Buddha, Zoroaster, Krishna, etc. These are the folks who are called 'Lord'. Next, on the way down, there are sages...ones who have transcended the duality of existence vs. nonexistence...next on the way down, are those called 'mystics' who have transcended the dualities of 'Self'...where Self and Existence are no longer separate, and so on, into increasing levels of duality. At the top, the Avatar is One with God/The Supreme/the Allness...at the very bottom, in complete nonenlightenment, there is such a duality between God and self that one feels abandoned, and even despised by God(or doesn't believe that there is a God at all).
I think the apostles were Sages...they believed in eternal life(not in nonexistence), and they performed miracles, and were in the Presence of Christ for quite some time, so that must have rubbed off on them...
...they weren't exactly One with God in the sense that Christ was, but they were still what is classically called 'enlightened'. More than any others recognized in Christian tradition they wrote inspired works, and did things that were in the highest good...surely they were God's candidates for writing the bible for a reason, right?

Hmm, I think there's a lot of inference going on there. Could you substantiate this in terms of other passages? or is this just your interpretation? I'm not really clear on how it was a parable either...it was more of a blunt statement, even moreso than the 'none shall come to the father except through me' statement.  In keeping with the stages of enlightenment, those words are consistent with one who has transcended the duality of Self and Existence...(and being descended directly from God, Christ, unlike other Avatars, would have always been beyond that duality. The others ascended from ignorance to enlightenment...Christ descended down to enlightenment and form)

I'm not sure I get what that has to do with the passage. Whether Christ was glorified or not, he still gave up his body. Someone who is not glorified could do the same by diving in front of a bullet to protect somebody. I agree that Christ is glorified...I just don't get the relevance.

If they are the legend, what is the map? I feel as though you've twisted the map/territory metaphor without really clarifying how.

And how do you know that eisegesis has not happened with the scholars themselves? How can you be sure it's not just a 'groupthink' phenomenon going on? I wouldn't say that there's a conspiracy of intentional eisegesis behind currently accepted understandings...only that you can't trust the uninspired to be authorities on the inspired...their interpretation is as fallible as anybody's. They're going to infer the causal framework that they subscribe to, and translate according to that framework...confirm it to the masses that also subscribe to that same common framework, which are eager to accept it because it doesn't really require them to suspend much disbelief.

can you speak then concerning the following?
Matthew 13:55
Matthew 27:56
Mark 3:31
Mark 6:3
Mark 15:40
Mark 16:1
Matthew 1:24-25
Matthew 12:46
John 2:12
John 7:3-5
Acts 1:14
Galatians 1:19
Acts 1:14

If belief, faith and trust in Christ is not by our own effort, then what is it by? I don't see the difference...
In other religions, belief, faith and trust in God is required too...in Christianity even, before Christ, those orders, to believe, trust in, and have faith, were still in effect. To abandon sinful ways is the common prescription of everyone with even a bit of spiritual knowledge.
What I don't get, is why forgiveness is only found through the crucifixion...I mean, as a demonstration, it is profound and beautiful...but for those who weren't there we're taking it on faith that that's how it happened. Ultimately, on faith, we believe that God forgives our sins. I'm not sure what the importance is of dwelling on the crucifixion, is it not better to dwell in forgiveness than in sorrow?

I just don't understand why it's so important to people to remain attached to the idea of a distant God. The Presence of a God that is always and ever with us IS Glorious...if salvation is in effect at all, then how could the Glorious be distant? Every hair on my head is counted...Glory Be!

A refutation is usually a persuasive argument, not just a contrary statement.
I think the OT God was real too, btw...just seen in a way that was filtered by a limited understanding. If I look through red sunglasses and see a yellow car, it looks orange. i'm not seeing a nonexistent car...I'm just not seeing it as yellow. The God of the OT wasn't seen as loving...he was seen as demanding, punishing, and rewarding. In bad relationships, these are the traits that are confused for real love...especially the rewarding bit...'If I can just do enough good things, I'll be worthy"...there is no understanding of what forgiveness and love have in common...that they are not demanding, conditional, or punishing.

I get the impression that you have an aversion to the terms 'ego' and 'consciousness' without really knowing what they mean. 'Ego' is basically a synonym for 'personality'...those traits that make you you...that's your ego. Consciousness is that which can be said to 'have' an ego/personality/karma. According to this explanation, Lucifer is both a Consciousness and ego...in fact, it is his ego which made him the epitome of pride.

And what came before as divine had to stand up to what scrutiny? and what about that which came even earlier?

Separating light from darkness is tricky, since darkness is not a 'thing'. It's like separating hot from cold....as such, it is separation in one context, and unity in Truth in another. Inferring a purpose of separation vs. unity is tricky, because it can't just be blanketed over all understanding. You can't separate light from darkness, because wherever there is light, there is no darkness.

Christ said 'go and sin no more' to people way before the crucifixion. Were they able to sin no more only until the crucifixion, and then they had sin within them again, and had to struggle against it?

Misunderstandings do not necessarily make for a lack of credibility. Credibility depends only on the truth of what's said, not on the statistical historical accuracy of what they said before. Even great scientists get corrected...it doesn't make them lose all credibility. Sme of scripture stands up well, other parts don't. You may call it 'separating the wheat from the chaff' if you like...some is certainly absolute Truth...some is quite questionable and requires a great deal of rationalization in order to keep it with the rest.

Except now there are a bunch of different Christian churches and denominations that disagree with each other on various theological issues...heck, the church is an actual institution now! it grants licenses and sacraments...it's very different than it was 2009 years ago. Also, there are many different bibles...and even disagreement in Greek vs. Aramaic primacy on some of the scriptures....in the Lamsa edition of the bible, which was translated (supposedly) from the aramaic peshitta, on the cross Christ says, instead of "Why have you forsaken me?", he says "For this I was kept/spared!"
It's interesting, because it is more in line with the previously displayed Character of Christ, who knew in advance what was coming, and that his death was the fulfillment of God's promise...
Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever...but Christianity is not. I'm a Christian for goodness' sake! A different sort of Christian than my parents or my grandparents.

Then I do not yet know God. To me, it's like a wife who is beaten by her husband, and he says "This hurts me more than it hurts you! I love you!".
The ideas simply aren't compatible.

Alright, your explanation here satisfies my ability to comprehend.

It doesn't make sense to me, because the NT God doesn't force faith, and doesn't punish us...but requires no sacrifices.
You'll say that Christ made the difference in being sacrificed himself, but that only makes sense according to the conditions of the archaic sacrificial system...the question remains why God needed any sacrifices in the first place in order to keep his own wrath at bay?

Say a professor of mathematics reads aloud the qualifications for a mathematical proof after he has presented one to a class during a lecture. The qualifications of a mathematical proof are not a prophecy, yet he could say "Today this set of requirements is fulfilled in your hearing". The Isaiah passage is really just that; a list of qualifications.

Maybe they interpreted, as you have...lol

Okay, so Christ and God and the Spirit have different wills that simply cooperate? If they have separate wills, how can they not be divided against each other in any circumstance? It would make more sense to have a single Will that was common to all three....or perhaps one Will that was the Father's, and then the Son and the Spirit act according to the Father's Will, not knowing what that is until they find time to have a discourse with the Father...
...that'd be fine and dandy, except it only satisfies the requirements of the distinctions of the trinity, not their union as one God in 3 forms.

I'm not sure why God wouldn't have just sent the Spirit in the first place.....why kill everyone with a flood? Also, Since every hair on my head is counted, I trust that God isn't literally 'searching' for people willing to believe...All is already known to God. The apostle was asked by Jesus "Do you love me?" to which he replied, "yes, Lord"...Jesus asked again, and gets the same answer...and again and again, and the apostle finally gives up and says, "Why do you keep asking? You know better than I do anyway!".

Well, dare I prolong this further, would you care to explain what intolerance means? If nonbelievers choose the absence of God for themselves, what has God's intolerance got to do with anything? He tolerates their choice by giving them the absence of God.
I wonder what happens if, when in Hell, the person says, oh wait, choosing God seems like a way better idea now. Is the God that deals with him the forgiving sort, or the spiteful, OT sort? "You dug your grave, now you better lay in it!". Surely he'd plead, 'forgive me! I didn't know what I was doing!".

That God would have such an absurd sacrificial system in place in the first places confuses me...why require sacrifices if he knew the faithful already?

You mean to say that intolerance and tolerance are the same? That jealousy is the same as accepting despite flaws? 

I think I need you to thoroughly define the following terms, because as I understand them, they mean different things from what you seem to be saying...:
sin
forgiveness
love
jealousy
intolerance
tolerance
judgement
free will

So why introduce other factors like punishments? If atheists are content to live without belief in God, why send them to a hell that is worse than their life on earth? That way it's pretty free...you can continue to opt out for mediocrity, and never experience me.
As you've got it, it's freely choosing not God, and then BAM! worst case scenario ever: Hell.
If you're gonna say that the luxuries of the earthly life are God, then everyone chooses God in at least some capacity.
The reincarnation model doesn't have these problems.

Exactly. How do you get past your own perceptions and access real Truth?

What explanation does the bible give about what heaven actually is?

What is the difference between a Godly event that takes place on earth an an earthbound event?

Hmm, this sounds an awful lot like the experience of nonduality...at least when you think of the term marriage as 'union'...I mean, I don't expect that it means we'll be husbands and wives of God...it means we'll be One with God, as per teachings of nonduality.

That's rather vague. Would a person with multiple personalities have two personhoods? or one personhood with two personalities? What makes an individuality distinct is what I'm asking here...a body?

I'm not sure I see the relevance of John 5 to the indistinguishability og Jesus and God.

Um, you have the choice to stay eternally ignorant...it doesn't usurp free will.
Basically, anything that occurs over eternity presents the same problem. How about the concept of hell? does it not present the same problem, only in a less loving way? Basically, in both cases, one chooses how crappy their existence is going to be. With reincarnation though, you have the opportunity to choose differently once you learn.

Only if faith, devotion and belief are work. Surrender to God/Truth at whatever the cost, even if it is one's own life, is the quickest path. Self-glorifying ensures failure.
I think i shared the parable of the master and 2 students once...where the master asks them how they'd respond if they came to the gates of enlightenment and God said that they would not be allowed enlightenment. The one student says he'd be disappointed for giving up so much fun and luxury by spending life in the monastery. The master sends him away. The second student says, "well, if God didn't want me to be enlightened, that'd be the best thing". Instantly he became enlightened and the master revealed himself to be God.

You know what else is like an eternity in Hell? A eternity in Hell!

You should note that reincarnation is not imposed. Lotus Land Buddhism/Pure Land Buddhism offers an alternative, where instead of reincarnating, the Buddha of that school advocates for his followers to go to a celestial/heavenly realm where enlightenment comes more easily due to the absence of distractions and the temptation of sinful things.

Is it the consciousness?

They taught Salvation and Enlightenment respectively, and the aspects of reality that were most pertinent to the respective objectives....there is a lot of overlap between their teachings though, with respect to the nature of the relationship between man, enlightened man(i.e., Jesus), and God, and Spirit. They both talked about the impermanence of things in the world of form. Buddha just went into greater detail concerning the reality of nonform, as that is more relevant to the path of enlightenment.

Is MY nature sinful? or is the nature of something else sinful, and I am to battle against it? What is sin but ignorance?

Some is true. Some is false. Some may be true that I do not yet understand. Some may be false that I think I understand. etc. etc. There are all sorts of configurations. Some of it I certainly take to be false.

Bring up what you like...I'm not big on history or dogma, and I don't believe in so called 'end times' or apocalyptic prophecy. I think this post might have some ideas to ignite your thinking if you'd be willing though.

I don't have a position on this one way or the other...it doesn't seem particularly important...but then that may just be my naivety speaking.

-Rob

If you say "I think George Bush is a moron" and I say "I think that's all based on a misunderstanding", we're talking about the same George Bush.
You're saying "God is Jealous" and I'm saying "I think that's a misunderstanding". We're talking about the same God. Of course the foundation of your belief is different from mine...that doesn't mean we're talking about different Gods....only that we're talking based on different foundations for belief.
If you say that your foundation for belief is the bible, and I say that my foundation for belief is experience, we can still be talking about the same God, because the God we're talking about is both biblical and experiential.
This thread definitely began with an emphasis on religion, but that does not mean that it must unfold as a battle between belief systems/religions. Your denial of the possibility of religious pluralism as an acceptable mode of belief precludes you from seeing that. You take a hard-line Christian view of everything, even at the expense of understanding. You keep insisting upon the faults of other belief systems without understanding the purpose behind the view...without looking deeper, an emanating universe might seem like a threatening idea concerning a created universe...but really, the views are a matter of context, not of the surface appearance that they're different.

Synchronously, I came across a good explanation in a favourite book of mine yesterday:

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Q: Is the problem then the misidentification of Creation as causation?
A: It is even more subtle and important than that, for to make this basic error precludes an understanding of the ongoing Presence of God as the ever present source of All That Is, and its ongoing, ever present Essence as continuous Creator. The world thinks that if a sequence of events is observed, each element in the sequence now becomes the source or the cause of the next event. The world imputes a causal sequence of A -> B -> C. The apparent sequence is actually due to the invisible thought form of ABC in consciousness that unfolds in the visible domain thusly:

(the dvd image was added by me, just to help with clarity)
The important and critical point to understand clearly is that if the thought form, ABC, should suddenly disappear in the middle of the perceptual appearance of A -> B -> C, the sequence would stop at 'B' and not complete the 'C' at all. Therefore, the cause of 'A' appearing in the world is the thought form 'ABC'. The cause of 'B' appearing in the world is still 'ABC', and the cause of 'C' appearing in the world is also 'ABC'.
   This perceptual illusion is like a prism that breaks up a beam of sunlight into a color spectrum, but then it would be like the ego's assuming that the color of the spectrum is the cause of the next. Appearance is not causation; that is the error.
   Although this understanding may sound academic, it is actually critical to understanding the ever ongoing presence and absolute continuity of God, who is the never ending source of every instant of Creation.
   The mind sees God as 'first cause', shown in the arguments for proof of the existence of God from theology, such as that of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. This concept creates the limitation of the conceiving of God as the great 'roller of the dice', subsequent to which everything has been a linear succession of sequential causes, like endless billiard balls. Thus, God gets projected backward into the long-distant past. This limitation loses sight of God as the Ultimate Reality and Source of every instant of Existence. It is obvious that the Source of Existence is not transferred from God only to 'A', which then assumes a God-like capacity to cause 'B', which then transmits the God-like power of causation to 'C', and so on.
   The limitation of the intellectual proof for the existence of God as first cause is this: The proof starts with the presumption that in a series of causes, there would have to be an irreducible first or primary cause, namely, God. God is thus implied to be the necessary 'First Cause'. However, this fails to discern that the explanation for a class originates from outside the class.
   The primary in a sequence of causes is therefore not a cause, but it changes class, that is, to Source or Creator. Seeing 'causes' in the paradigm of form is an epistemological error. A self-existent, verifiable reality, a 'First Cause' God, would be an effect, and not a source. (As an example, one cannot trace back all existent matter to a 'First Matter' that is the 'cause' of all the rest of the universe's matter.) The conundrum is resolved by the realization that the source of the linear is the onlinear, that is, a different intrinsic quality. Reductionist explanations lead one to epistemological positionalities wherein lies the fallacy.
   The truth is that the totality of the expression of God as the entire universe is what creates 'A'. God manifest as the entire universe is what creates 'B', and again, it is the Presence of the Reality of God that accounts for the appearance of 'C', that is, every seeming event in the universe has exactly the same Ultimate Source.
   Thus, there is only the same sunlight behind the appearance of each color in the spectrum. It is the continuous presence of God that is the Source of the continuous presence of life in all its expressions. To rephrase the statement, Creation is the continuous and ongoing expression of the unfolding Reality as manifestation in timelessness, which is only perceived by the ego as 'this instant'.
   The common misconceptions about the existence of God are that (1) He appears briefly as a mysterious creator who sets the dice rolling somewhere back in distant, ancient time; (2) God then disappears and the world unfolds according to biological reductionism on its own, for better or worse; and (3) while all this is occurring, God waits elsewhere (in the human mind, heaven is 'up there') and appears again only in some very distant future as the great, feared judge of woeful Judgment Day.
   All that occurs between his brief appearance as Creator in the long-distant past and his reappearance again on Judgment Day is assumed to be a sequence of dependent causes to account for all the phenomena of the universe. During all the ensuing eons, God apparently is assumed to have disappeared to an invisible 'elsewhere' (up there in heaven) where he sits on a throne, awaiting the arrival of souls that tremble and fear at their wickedness and sins that were caused by the fall of man in the Garden of Eden long, long ago. The fate of man is then seen as blighted from its very onset, and this event then runs through an endless chain of assumed causes down to the present time.
   The basis for sin is thus ascribed to the inability of the human mind to discern truth from falsehood. blinded by ignorance, man was vulnerable to the temptation of curiosity. He then bit into the apple of dualistic perception (the polarity of the opposites of good and evil).
   Having lost the innocence of the Oneness of nonduality, the human was then saddled with a defective ego/mind that was without protection from error due to its inability to recognize the presence of the absence of Truth. The mind's limitation of dualistic perception marked the nature of the fall from Grace.
   Instantly, the birth of the ego ws labeled as sin since it marked the loss of the innocence of nondualistic vision, which is represented by the innocence of the Garden of Eden. The basis for human suffering is seen to be the birth of the ego via the onset of dualistic perception that operates with the impairment of positionalities. This results in the illusion of the pairs of opposites that culminates in suffering, sickness and death.

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If we agree that there is only One True God, then it should follow that discrepancies in our views/beliefs are just that: discrepancies in our understandings of the One True God. It seems childish to insist that we're talking about different Gods as it would be silly to say that my description of apples was offensive to your description of oranges...
The descriptions are different, but the object of description is the same.
Standing in the desert, I might say that the world is sandy...while you, floating on the ocean, might say the world is watery. These views are only at odds due to the limitation of perception...they are not descriptions of two different worlds.

Here is a cartoon illustrating my explanation:

Why are we unable to accomplish it? hmmmmmm.....could it be.....ignorance? If we knew how to, we would...but we don't, so we can't.
What you're saying is that we can have something that we know is the highest truth(say like a blueprint), and knowing that it is the highest truth, we're not ignorant of that. The problem is that we aren't especially good at following the blueprint.
However, what I'm saying is that our inability to follow the blueprint also arises due to ignorance...maybe we're not great readers...maybe we're distracted by other things that we temporarily think are more interesting....all these limitations arise from ignorance. There is no good justification for not following the blueprint, yet occasionally something happens, and for some ignorant reason, we choose not to follow the blueprint.
All sin arises due to ignorance.

Information is not the same as knowledge, and knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Consider these (information, knowledge, and wisdom) on a progressive scale...information is truth without context or meaning.....knowledge is truth without implementing it effectively....wisdom is truth that is understood and used correctly.
Like a thermometer for testing the temperature of truth (vs. the absence of truth: ignorance)

If you've broken one law, you might as well have broken them all, because if you're breaking any laws, you're still ignorant of something.
Also, replacing ignorance with wisdom/truth happens according to Grace alone, because if you could, by your own volition, correct your own mistaken views/behaviors, you couldn't rightly be considered ignorant.

Everything is experiential...including your biblical understanding of God. Your experience tells you that in knowing the bible, you're free from any sort of ignorance that might lead to sin. How deceptive does that have the potential to be? As deceptive as experiences may be, they are the only thing against which you can verify anything.

see the cartoon above. you've thrown out the possibility that your view is constrained by the limitations of your experience.

Yes, and when i look at the world through a particular lens, the world reflects what that lens is supposed to show as well.

And the only testimony that you have saying that that is so is written by the hands of so-called 'fallen' people.
If the fallen are fallible, then what is written may contain faults.
If what is written was appointed directly by God, then it contains no faults.
Therefore, you must consider this: if it is found to not be fallible, then we can assume that it was divinely dictated, appointed and inspired by God.
If it is found to be fallible, then it was not entirely dictated, appointed and inspired by God.
There is nothing within the scripture itself that eliminates the possibility that it is fallible. The veracity of the claim that it is infallible can only be verified via honest discernment, and not according simply to what the book has to say about itself.

You can't be morally right an fail. If you know that murder is wrong, and then in a burst of rage, you commit murder, then during that burst of rage you did not think that murder was wrong; you thought it was justified, at least in that circumstance, even if immediately following you regretted the decision.
Again, I would say that one's personal morality is how they actually act, and perfect morality is how they aspire to act. How deeply engrained would my morals be if I could disobey them? If you can disobey your morals, they are not something you have completely adopted yet. They are something you consider, but not yet a reflection of what you are.
Light and darkness cannot occupy the same space...again, it's a gradation:
Blindingly light
Bright light
Well lit
averagely bright
visible
somewhat visible
barely visible
dark
darker
very dark
pitch black
absolute black

...these are degrees of the presence of light...not oppositional presences of light and dark.

I'm just saying, he calls people his brothers, and he projects himself into the essence of mankind by insisting that doing good to anyone is doing good to Christ. In the transfiguration, the disciples can see only Christ...not even each other...only Christ. It is possible that where they once saw their own individual selves, they now saw Christ...that they understood truly that he was not just a physical body, but the essence of all that existed...that he was truly God. Doing good to the physical form of Christ was one thing...but doing good to everyone was what was truly good to Christ, for he is in everything...he's not just an isolated man, separate and distant from us...he dwells in everyone/everything.

In the NIV it doesn't say that Moses and Elijah had 'gone back', only that the disciples could see only Christ, and Christ alone...and it is described as a 'sudden' thing that occured to them...not something that happens after Moses and Elijah leave...they suddenly can see only Christ, everywhere.

Luke 17:20-21?
20 Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, 21nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."

I am a bit confused by this, since a vine is entirely branches. I don't want to get all self-deifying on you, but I'm curious whether you view the metaphor of the vine as a sort of network or society with Christ, or as more of an organism where the life force of Christ is indwelling in the entire organism, including the branches...

I can see why you interpret it that way. Personally I think the Father's commands are more likely the direct experience of Christ in His union with God the Father, and not the instruction of the OT. Where those overlap, great...but ultimately the indwelling of the Father in the Son would have been the source of any commandments. When he says 'remain in his love', I get the sense of that love being present in that instant...not something that occurs in remembrance of some old prophecy.

I see this as an elaborate way of saying "thy will be done". God chose Christ, and Christ was given what he wanted, namely, God's Will.
If God/Christ is our source, what could we possibly want other than the Will of God/Christ to prevail? Everything I ask God for, I ask for in the name of the highest good; "thy Will be done". 

Derivative? why not concurrent/simultaneous/synonymous?
What does 'first fruits of a future glory' mean? one grape on a tree that will eventually be filled with many grapes? i don't know...you sort of imply that the first grape is not as good as any of the grapes to come....
please clarify this. I'm not sure why glory is projected into the future. Is not the entirety of Creation glorious?

Luke 17:20-21...the Kingdom is inside us...the so called 'second coming' could very well be the realization of God's nature as it occurs in any circumstance, whether here on earth, or later in heaven. Now, I don't think that the kingdom is n my stomach...or even in my mind....my mind and my stomach are both inside me....I think it calls for a redefining of the self/Self.

I think that belief in Christ and being set right before God are synonyms....not an 'if/then' condition. Christ is not a name any more than the word 'chair' is an actual chair.
I also think the 'second coming' is the recognition of the kingdom of God (within) as God's ever presence...also, synonymous with belief in the True Christ(not the physicality of him, but the True Christ within whom the kingdom of God literally dwells); synonymous with being set right before God.

That's not an answer at all actually. Saying that air is distinct from this clear stuff that we breathe does not satisfy an understanding of what could possibly make those two distinct from one another. you keep dodging the question: what makes one personhood distinct from another?

I believe in the singularity of Christ and God as though Christ is water and God is the ocean. I think the distinctness of a 'personhood' is not a distinction at all, but the limitation of perception and the inability of language to convey the essence of nonduality.

The vine and the branches are like the ocean and water...branches make up the vine....water fills the ocean....distinct, and yet not.

That's simply not true at all. It does nothing to render any of those claims inert.
How would Buddha, in being One with God, refute the notion that Christ was One with God? The nonduality of avatars such as Buddha and Krishna and Zoroaster does away with the presumed distinction of 'personhoods' that you keep inferring. What Christ is, not 'who' Christ is...what Christ is is sovereign over All things.

The so-called 'personhood' of Christ IS gone. The 'personhood' that you continue to develop a relationship with can only be metaphysical, because you can't see him or feel him or touch him or isolate him in any way that you can share with me in terms of evidence. The bible is like a book about quantum mechanics...it talks about Christ, but since you're not on the actual level of Christ(or on the level of quantum mechanics), at best your understanding is a metaphysical construct of what Christ truly is.

If you continue to ignore the arguments I've made that refute this claim, that's for you to believe. If one sentence is true, and another false, it is the duty of the responsible person to discard the false statement, and to adhere to the validity of the true one. Picking and choosing does nothing to affect one's integrity if the picking and choosing is done with integrity.

You don't understand what Buddha and Krishna are, so naturally you misunderstand their relation to the sovereignty of God/Christ. In being One with all of Creation, as Buddha is/was, he is also One with that which is sovereign over Creation. Buddha isn't a distinct 'personhood' with a mood and views that are contrary to God's...there is one Divine Will, and whatever is in Oneness with that Will is sovereign over all which that will is sovereign over.

Not at all.
Christ isn't a 'being'...Christ is an essence. That essence has served may purposes throughout history. In the time and culture of Christ, people were frankly, pretty naive and uneducated on spiritual matters...they did not have the spiritual resources to successfully experience enlightenment...so Christ taught them Salvation. The same essence, as expressed earlier in the time of Buddha, taught enlightenment...because there was already a very rich understanding of the highest nature of God as recorded in the ancient Vedas, and for the devoted aspirant, via the Grace of understanding, higher experiences of Truth were possible.
The views were not opposing at all...they merely served different purposes. Perception/ignorance is the main block, yet only through perception could one be directed....thusly, teachings were given in accord with what best suited the skewed perceptions of the followers. If you examine the teachings of Buddha/Buddhism and of Hinduism, you will find that they contextualize the teaching and purposes of salvation so that they may be understood in light of spiritual development. They do not actually oppose or refute teachings of salvation, they merely encourage followers to aspire to greater spiritual heights once they have been set upon the spiritual path by the Grace of the saviour(and the understanding of what the saviour is is recontextualized too....this is not a refutation of what Christ claimed he was, but again, a recontextualization).

So when you sin, does God dwell in your heart then? If you truly want to do God's Will, why doesn't God enable you to completely steer clear of sinfulness and live perfectly as Christ did?

Reincarnation is not incompatible with any of the views that you have presented. You are opposed to it because it is not explicitly taught in the bible, not because it actually bears any burden whatsoever.
Also, you keep using the term 'emanating universe' without having made any arguments against it..you have argued 'for' your worldview, but you have not successfully argued against this idea of an emanating universe.
The foundation of my worldview though, if you must know, is not one where apples can be argued against oranges. I think that recognizing God as 'Source' of the universe as opposed to a 'Cause' of the univese is a stage in a series of progressive realizations that eventually amount to the recognition of Oneself in true nondual union with God...which is not self-deification, because God is recognized as the Only God...the individual self disappears/dissolves into the fullness of God, and is not rightly considered separate...not self-deified, but one with that which is Divine.

The disciples do mention it...Christ says "who do they say that I am?" and they list off a bunch of possibilities, including that he's a reincarnation. Though Christ did not have any previous incarnations, he does not scoff at the idea that people actually believe in reincarnation.
With Buddhism, Buddha didn't even talk a lot about reincarnation. It really isn't as central to Buddhism as you seem to think. It only actually appears as reality until one understands that the appearances of consecutive lives occurs before that which does not have successive lives...before the True Self, which has one eternal existence. Reincarnation is actually a cultural belief that was common at the time of Buddha, and he both recontextualized the way it was understood, and pointed to the fact that even reincarnation had to be transcended on the path to enlightenment...for reincarnation was but another earthly thing, and it is better to store one's treasures in heaven, so to speak. He advocated for pursuing highest truths.
There's a somewhat dogmatic, but otherwise decent explanation of the teaching here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirth_(B … ncarnation

Even if you insist on keeping the personhood of Christ, I would still like to know just what Christ is, besides a personality...

No need to make a case...that's obvious. However, my passion is not for the belief system, but for God Himself. The belief system changes as, by Grace, I grow toward God.

When God speaks to me I listen. Let the word of God be true absolutely. Let me be vigilant in discerning what is and is not the word of God when it does not come as a thunderous booming voice from the heavens though.

Certainly, it's not surrender to a belief system.

And when I ask, "God, do you want me to take the entirety of the Bible to be absolute fact?" what is that? Surely the answer cannot lie in the bible itself, for therein lies too great a possibility for deception.
I submit to that which confirms itself experientially as divine. The authority is entirely in God, but if not experientially, how else could I experience the Truth of God? I'm not seeking for an understanding of God that is akin to a character description in some book! I want to experience God directly.

As a matter of logic, that which has only one Will ought not to have anything to discourse about except with that which has a different will from it.

again and again, these are not foundational to me. They are qualitative phenomena that are experienced as reality to a limited mind. The One True God is ineffable...beyond description. Let the word of God be true, and every man a liar....no words can describe God aptly...they are all, at least to some extent, lies, as they are subject to the descriptive limitations of language, and God is not limited...so all language fails to accurately describe God.

I'd very much enjoy that, though I expect that we'll probably agree too much for it to be all that interesting.

If it is not jealousy in the context of longing or lacking something and pettily yearning for it, then what you call 'jealousy' is really just strictness...if you don't abide by these conditions, you don't get this reward. Jealousy is a bad word for it.

And what prompts your choices if not for deterministic causes? This model is filled with gaping holes....

Pride, Anger, Desire, Fear, Grief, Apathy, Guilt and Shame...progressive qualities of hell-states of consciousness....
Of Pride, the God-view is indifference, of Anger, that God is vengeful, of Desire God is denying, of Fear God is punitive, of Grief God is disdainful, of Apathy God is viewed as condemning, of Guilt He is vindictive, and of Shame God seems despising...
...these are contrary to accurate views of God that are not hellish: Permitting, enabling, inspiring, merciful, wise, loving, all-encompassing...the heavenly aspects of God.

4Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,
5does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,  6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

So Corinthians is right, when it's convenient to your world view...and now you'll have to employ some eisegesis?

Scripture can be just as deceiving as experiences. I do not take my experiences to be absolute any more than I take the scriptures to be absolute. Everything must be taken into account. Love believes all things...including the possible authenticity of experiences, and the possible miscommunication of God's complete nature as expressed by the bible.

Your motivation for not doing what is right stems from ignorance. If you think you know all that has to be known, and yet you can't make perfect sense of it, it follows that there is more to be known/understood. You aren't ignorant to everything...but you are ignorant to the things that make you vulnerable to sin...you are ignorant of the things that will prevent you from choosing sin. Sin stems from ignorance...ignorance is the absence of truth/God.

If God's law is not capable of being obeyed, then it is an irrational law. That sort of a God could be considered to be 'fixing the game', which is not very integrous. That we are fallen and sinful is a cop-out for accountability.
Through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we should be able to live sinlessly....if God could indwell within the authors of the bible such that they coud not make errors, then surely if we submit to God in the same way, sinlessness should be possible for us too....unless God just doesn't care as much about us as he did of the Gospel writers...

and when we choose to do that, we choose ignorance, and not God. Ignorance = thinking that something sinful is impossible to turn away from. For as many addictions and habits as there are in this world, every single one of them is possible to leave behind.

Let me get this straight....trying to live sinlessly is futile, and you can just believe in Jesus and give up on trying to live sinlessly? What incentive does one have to employ any sort of integrity then?

Honestly, your understanding of God comes across to me as being more political than spiritual...where God is like a leader who says, "it's impossible for you all to pay your taxes, but as long as you all vote for me, I won't bring punishment upon you."
...it's a pretty silly model.

moral knowledge is more than just information. You can have all the information in the world, but if you don't know what it means or how to use it, you're ignorant. It is impossible for you to knowingly choose that which you do not prefer. If you choose to punch someone in the face, at that moment you think that there is justification for doing that. Whatever you try to pass off as justification is ignorance.
Ignorance is not just a lack of information...you can have all the information, but still be ignorant....like a snail with a copy of the bible...he's got it, but he can't use it because he's too ignorant to know how to read it.

-Rob

You know, just like 'Love', 'relevance' is something that isn't quantifiable...so I understand that you continually dismiss my argument that different views can be held concerning the same object of perception...you don't consider it relevant.
I'll reiterate though: Pluralism is logically fallacious from a particular perspective. You hold that perspective, and thus, it is logically fallacious to you. You have done nothing close to proving anything about the supposed logical fallacy of religious pluralism as you have simply neglected to answer to criticisms of your explanation.
If one person can think George Bush is intelligent, and another can think he's a moron, it does not follow that they are talking about different George Bushes.
Now, if one persepective must be correct, that's different...however, you have not demonstrated how or why any religion undoubtedly has a claim to exclusivity. You have personal reasons for believing that about Christianity, but not the concrete sorts of reasons that you request concerning other matters of debate.

It transcends science; it does not refute science.
There are plenty of things that transcend science...love, creativity, the miraculous...
If you take the view that anything which does not fit within the current paradigm of science is refuting science, then any of Jesus' 30+ miracles is a refutation of science too... I would disagree with that though. Newton himself understood that just because things behaved 'as though' they were behaving according to the laws of physics, did not mean that that was necessarily so. He doubted his own work a lot, and even considered giving up on it because he was not able to determine whether an invisible omnipotent force(God) could be 'puppeting the universe' such that it appeared as though causality were in effect, or not. In fact, some of his calculations even led him to consider that in order for anything to occur, it actually required an infinitely large source(God?).

In any case, the theory of the Big Bang remains intact...the context merely changes with the explanation. The Big Bang event becomes the 'A' of the 'ABC' of the universe. While the linear mind still understands it in the pragmatic terms of linear causality, it does so in the way that locality occurs upon a stage of nonlocality(for example, everything exists locally within the universe, but the universe doesn't have a locality within something even larger). Linear causality appears upon the stage of nonlinear Divinity. Sound appears upon a stage of silence. The limited and finite appears upon a stage of unlimited infinity(God).
So yeah, it is a different paradigm of understanding, but not a refutation.

Thou shall not test God :-)
lol, joking aside, Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega...the beginning and the end...the ABC....not the A then the B then the C.(lol, I use that not as an admission of the validity of Revelation, but as an appeal to your own belief system to at least consider).

Blinding from the truth = not seeing God, because God IS the Truth. 

So, when Jesus said "forgive them Father, for they know not what they do", were they fully realized in their sinfulness, or were they actually ignorant? Was Jesus right, that they knew not? or wrong?
Why must it even be realization vs. concealment? Experiencing an illusion (i.e., separateness from God) is an experiential realization, but in actuality it is a concealment of Truth. Could we just say that sin is separation from God, by whatever means?

You make it out as though Salvation is in opposition to enlightenment...or as though one explanation of God is in opposition to another...you argue apples against oranges...one metaphysical idea against a categorically different metaphysical idea. Arguing apples against oranges isn't talking about things seen vs. unseen...it is an expression used to indicate that you're arguing of categorically different things against each other. It's like one person saying that hockey is competitive and another who says it's about working together...opposite claims that are categorically referring to different aspects.
I hold that there is, and must be, a context/category/class within which conflict dissolves.

And I'm making the claim that the bible ALONE is deceptive too...that anything, separate from the Allness of God, is potentially deceptive, because God is Infinite context...He is the context of all Existence, and thus, all existence has meaning only in Him.

You talk about doing things in the heat of the moment as though that is a spontaneous happening that requires no explanation. 'In the heat of the moment', there is some explanation for why one decides that 'even though' murder and lying are wrong, they're gonna do it anyway. The explanation for the 'even though' is that there remains some level of ignorance about a situation...perhaps one doesn't view the person they're murdering as being worthy of Love (you gotta love your enemies...a lot of people are too ignorant to understand what that means or how to do it)...perhaps the person they're lying to isn't worthy of the truth...or perhaps there's the ignorance that this white lie might go unaccunted for by God....these are all types of ignorance.
People can knowingly act against what they consider to be morally right, but what one considers, and what one knows are categorically different. You can't act against Truth when you know it. You can act against what you merely suppose to be truth though.

At this point I'm thinking that a discourse on things such as 'Causality', and 'What is Knowledge?' and 'What is a person/self/individual?' might be preferrable to carrying on as we have been, as these seem to be the main factors that stand in the way of progressing further.

In a literal cloud = fog...and in fog, brightness enables more clear vision of one's surroundings.
I can't say it's the simple and obvious explanation to me.

If Christ was in direct discourse with the Father, then he could take direction straight from God without having to rely on the OT for direction. Why would God take direction from his own creation? It'd be something like my girlfriend who leaves notes everywhere to remind herself of things...except I don't think God is the forgetful sort. It's not inconsistent...God could have put teachings from the OT directly in Christ's mouth.
Personally, I believe very very strongly in the unity of Christ and God...what's inconsistent to me is that Christ would take direction from anything save the direct word of His Father. From what I understand, he used the OT to substantiate himself to the people, who were aligned with the OT...however, for Christ to do what the father wanted was no matter of study for him, as he was in direct communion with God right from the start.

You hope for what you do not already have...that sounds an awful lot like Buddha. Of course you hope for what you do not have...this is why desires are to be transcended...because they foster a sense of lacking.
Matthew 18:19 “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. "
A sense of lacking is not necessary under God...
Now, I'm sure you'll argue earthly vs. spiritual lacking...but even so...I'm not sure I know any specific passages that are very clear that we will be glorified at the second coming of Christ...
...I'm sure you can provide.

Well, I just want to know what you think it means "the kingdom of God is inside you"
i think it would be really interesting in the context of a discussion about just what the 'Self' actually is.

What does 'remain IN him' mean? There is a lot of confusion concerning that, as at times it would seem more appropriate to say 'remain WITH him'. Even so, the branches that fall decompose and become the soil...which, etc.

I have my reservations about believing in 'personhoods' as you neglect over and over to distinguish what that actually means. You say it's what makes one individual distinct from another...but what makes them distinct? Does a will make them distinct? no, because the trinity has one Will, correct? A body doesn't indicate a personhood, otherwise if you chopped off someone's leg, they'd lose part of their personhood...
I want to know what you believe in if you do indeed believe in personhoods. I might just believe in the same thing, only I would probably call it by a different name. (again, a discussion on 'what is the Self?' would be interesting.

Well, that's a simplistic dismissal. None of them happened to live on earth at the same time, thus there might still be only 3 centers, lol. In any case, I don't define Christ, Buddha or Krishna as 'selves' per se....in appearance they look like centers of consciousness...but that depends whether you consider a body to be a self. The appearance of a distinct self does not mean that there is indeed a distinct self. Like 2 robots controlled by the same computer...they look distinct, but they really operate according to one 'mind' or consciousness...

In a sense yes, in a sense no. Christ was under the sovereignty of Truth...and Christ is Truth...same goes for the 'others'.

Salvation = the first step...Enlightenment = what to do after salvation.
Like this...
first, people are wandering aimlessly, with no direction, killing each other, being miserable, anxious, and not really having any purpose to their existence.
second, a saviour says: "hey, follow me! I know God, and I will set you on the path to God"
thirdly, one sets about walking that path, and being as perfect an expression of God's love as possible.

Oblivion/Ignorance
Salvation
Enlightenment

Buddha's followers were already seeking God in every aspect of their existence, and were familiar with high spiritual teachings....they were morally upright people, who were just to one another, and not politically driven(they were a select few, as the rest of the culture and society at that time was even more violent, greedy, and morally corrupt than at the time and place of Jesus). The Buddha's followers had given up all attachment to worldly things in order to pursue enlightenment.
Teaching enlightenment was not the objective of Jesus, since the people that he was ministering to were very wrapped up in worldly affairs...in order for them to pursue enlightenment, they'd first need to be set upon the path to righteousness(and don't get me wrong, lots of people thought they were on the path to righteousness....but they were still storing their treasures on earth, and not in heaven).

Jesus wasn't preaching enlightenment...I never said he was. And fulfilling the prophecies or not, doesn't interfere with my explanation at all. Fulfilling prophecies was necessary for the people. He could just as well have said "Here I am, the Son of God. Believe in me and you will find heaven." The prophecies weren't for the sake of God, but for the sake of the people, so that they would believe.
It's not about making 'more sense'...it's about a bigger picture, that explains the occurences, and adds even greater meaning to them.

The kingdom of God is inside you. Christ does rule over the entire planet. There is only suffering in perception...people thinking that they are their personalities...that they are their bodies. Life is perception...and we must die unto ourselves so as to truly live.
Buddha taught that life is suffering...but that once you accept that, it no longer matters...you thus become free of it. The absence of God/Christ is perception...and in perception there is much sin/suffering...
In reality, there is no opposite to God.

The self/ego is a survival mechanism, inherited from the animal brains that we evolved from. It is necessary to have, in order to keep your body alive, so that you have an opportunity to grow in the first place...it is the programming that wards off threats and keeps us nourished. What happens, is that we get attached to it...we think that it is us...that this survival mechanism amounts to the 'I' that I am. It's not...it's more like a pet, and eventually the spirit within evolves such that the guard dog is no longer necessary, and it dissolves into the greater self. The sense of individuality is inside you...just as the ego is inside you, and all your perceptions are inside you....indeed, the entire Kingdom of God is inside you....

It is already the case. As the Zen saying goes, "Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water."
It is not the appearance of the self, but the essence of the self that dissolves into the wholeness of God.

Yes, I apply discernment with the spiritual teachings of all that I encounter. For example, Buddha spoke about the space between thoughts with regard to meditation, when it makes more sense to think that he meant to be in touch with the state that is a priori to thought. Similar, but a subtle difference.
Also, I pray often and almost constantly, "Lord, I pray that I am living your will, whether I am able to know what that is or not." Only God has authority. I honestly do not invest confidence in my beliefs at all...my confidence is in Truth, and that it reigns over falsity...where I am wrong, I will inevitably be corrected when I encounter Truth, because I have nothing at my disposal which is more powerful than it.
I suppose if you wanted to know a belief that I do invest in, it's that truth is verifiable only by identity with it, not by knowing about it. What can be said about Truth is not truth. Only truth is truth. What can be said may approach upon it, but only truth is truth.

As with everything else, it must be weighed against experience, and logic, and other spiritual teachings...truth is truth, in whatever form....but can hardly be considered relevant if it lays inert as an experience. Theoretical knowledge is only useful in service of authentic experience...it cannot replace it.

On the same faith that God made you defective and incapable of purity apart from earning it through repentance, I have faith of God's inherent Presence within all of Creation. It's just faith...and fallible as yours...but I honestly can't help it! All men live by faith alone.

lol, okay, and your fallible explanations of what it means too then. It must only mean what it actually means...and your explanations are not that...

That's a big cop-out of an answer. Basically summarized thusly: We have free choice to an extent(who knows what extent), but every discernable reason for doing anything that we do can only be attributed to the world we were created into.
You need to make a better case for free choice...because it is so far, not compatible with a world subject to deterministic causation.

same thing. Love trusts all things. 'Believes'(or believeth) is from the KJV, which was translated from the greek too...
In any case, I think of someone who was unconditionally loving, like Socrates(not Plato)....in every acount of Socrates, he first trusts/believes what is presented, then proceeds to honestly examine it until it falls on its own sword, so to speak. Love is not threatened by falsity, because falsity is the absence of Love/Truth.

Well, always trusts, or always believes the best of every person...doesn't matter...same thing going on. Are you willing to believe the best of me? to trust me well enough to give honest reflection on the validity of the ideas presented, or will you dismiss them on accord of your own bias?

No debate concerning aramaic primacy? hmm. Jesus spoke aramaic...and the apostles did too...I wonder why they would have written the gospel in greek? Surely their translations could not possibly have included errors too!

Any manuscript which requires that much decoding...oi. Let's just say that if knowing what the bible means is mandatory, we're pretty much all screwed, lol.
I mean, the NASB says 'believes'
and the English Standard Version
KJV and NewKJV and 21st Century KJV
American Standard Version
young's Literal Translation
Darby Translation
Holman Christian Standard Bible
Wycliffe New Testament
and the Lamsa bible(purportedly translated from the Aramaic Peshitta).

There seems to be a rather large margin of error to take note of.

how so?

If it is God's perfection momentarily speaking through the sinful writer, then it is like the sun momentarily shining through a piece of glass. Even if the glass is minimally flawed, it distorts the light at least a little. If it were God's direct perfection speaking, it would have been like you say the 10 commandments were written.

When I know 100% of the answers, I get 100% 100% of the time. Where I am ignorant, I make mistakes.
If you get 90% it doesn't mean you know 100% of the answers and were compelled to answer wrongly by some inner sinfulness...you make mistakes due to ignorance.

I agree...sin is the 1% on that one test where you didn't get 100%....it is ignorance manifest.

Is it possible that it neither glorifies us nor condemns us, but merely acknowledges credit where credit is due, and debt where debt is due? Where I have erred, I am lacking...there's no shame in that unless I refuse to correct it. He who errs is not the same as he who corrects the error....one is ignorant, the other learned.

See, you start by calling it un-earned...and then you make it conditional by saying that it's only for those who believe. For those who fail to have the requirements for belief satisfied, they're screwed....selectively.

Regardless of whether everyone is a sinner or not, we still aspire to be sinless. It's a very twisted view...because you say that integrity is available only through surrender to the Spirit...which I agree with...but then you say that we can't be sinless 100% of the time. I say we can, if we are surrendered to the Spirit 100% of the time. Everything good that we ever do is by the Grace of the Spirit...so what if I've been a sinner? there's not a damn thing I could do about that since I was born defective. Why repent, when all good comes from God, and goes back to God? If you think it was you that got 100 or 99%, you're wrong...because you couldn't do that without God/the Spirit. Salvation happens when we commit our lives to Truth...not years and years and years after that. Fighting against Truth is a losing battle...and from that we need to be saved. Once we are aligned with Truth, we're already saved...and enlightenment is the perfecting of that.

Actually, I think your view diminishes the work of God. Your view demonizes the teachings of Buddha and Krishna, who were servants of God...your view reduces our access to God to a legal agreement. Your view holds God to be a physical body that nobody has seen for 2000 some odd years...your view holds that we cannot actually even experience God in our earthly form because we are hopeless sinners. I say God is everywhere Present, and both transcendent and immanent...not holding out on us pending some universal judgement event...but with us, in us, around us, and sustaining us, constantly...the ever Present Source of Existence in every moment.

example?

That reason is the core of your ignorance. As concrete as you think your knowledge of 'thou shalt not lie' is, that knowledge is greyed by the ignorance that pervades the reason behind your choosing to lie. You think that, for some reason, in this instant, the decision to lie is more appealing than telling the truth...and yet, if you knew the Truth, really, you'd know that there is nothing appealing about hell...nothing appealing about sin...nothing that makes it a better decision to lie than to tell the truth.
Your reasoning is based on ignorance. You are unaware/uninformed at that instant, of the consequences of your actions in the big picture. It is because you are ignorant of the big picture, and only aware of the immediate benefits of lying(which, ignorant as you are, you don't realize to not be benefits at all in the long run) that you lie at all.

Here's an example...an obese person...they know they're fat, and they know that over eating is why they're fat. Now, they aren't ignorant of the fact that they shouldn't be eating(they know that they shouldn't lie)...that's not what they're ignorant of...what they're ignorant of is why they are unable to, by sheer force of will, stop eating and being self destructive. They are ignorant to the deep seated core of their own motivation...they don't want to be fat...they don't want to lie...they don't want to sin...
The ignorance is not of the surface stuff...the things that morality consists of...it's of something deeper.
There's an example from philosophy concerning wants...
Suppose you are writing a multiple choice exam...you think the correct answer is A when in fact the correct answer is D. Which answer do you want to pick? Ultimately, you want to pick D, but you THINK you want to pick A.
If you knew the error driving your motivation, you could correct it, but you don't...you're ignorant, and uninformed. People continue to make mistakes due to factors that they are ignorant of...not for lacking a knowledge of what the better choice is.
Knowing that lying is wrong is not ignorance...lying despite knowing that happens due to ignorance.

perfect knowledge is not the same as having all the necessary information. Having information is not the same as having knowledge. My computer isn't knowledgable.
It's not black and white....it's a series of gradations.
This article from the Chuang Tsu (a taoist scripture) explains it well, and with a lot of beauty:
http://www.taoism.net/chuang/butcher.htm
The good butcher is not ignorant, though he is not as knowledgable as the butcher of the parable.

well, perhaps because my nature is not sinful...my nature is to grow, and to appreciate purity and truth. Knowing what is morally right is a matter of expanding context. For the ignorant fool, it is integrous for him to protect his own life...for if he is dead, he cannot grow spiritually to learn that killing is not desirable. Once he becomes a learned man, integrity comes in the form of diplomacy...killing is not a good way for him to participate in life. Eventually, he becomes a wise man, as he learns where compromise is desirable, and where it is not. Eventually, he becomes a saint, as he has realized that integrity is participation only in that which is not fleeting...what is compromisable, he has no interest in. Eventually, he sees that all which is not constant is illusion..and he is enlightened.
Integrity is totally dependent upon context. By some, it has been termed 'situational ethics'.
You ask, "what is the standard?", well, the standard is determined by one's relationship to the absolute. The absolute is the standard, but the appearance of the standard is maintained by one's individual growth.
You say that it is against your moral standard to lie, and yet, you lie...the standard is the absolute...but until either of us is encroaching upon the perfection of the absolute, the standard is your subjective, experiential reality.

-Rob

more like braindamage