Baptist Church Excludes Democrats

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perfessor
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Baptist Church Excludes Democrats

Post #1

Post by perfessor »

http://www.wlos.com/

I don't get it. Didn't Jesus ply his trade among tax collectors, prostitutes, and other "sinners"?
East Waynesville Baptist asked nine members to leave. Now 40 more have left the church in protest. Former members say Pastor Chan Chandler gave them the ultimatum, saying if they didn't support George Bush, they should resign or repent. The minister declined an interview with News 13. But he did say "the actions were not politically motivated." There are questions about whether the bi-laws were followed when the members were thrown out.
So my question for debate: Should the East Waynesville Baptist Church lose its tax-exempt status?

I say they should, since the pastor has turned the church into an arm of the Republican party.
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."

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Post #351

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AlAyeti wrote:McC, "Most historians agree, Pilate and Caiaphas were who the New Testament said they were. They agree, not because the New Testament is a good source of historical knowledge, but because there is adequate reliable historical data to support that view. Just because the NT writers include a few accurate historical bits does not make the NT a reliable source of historical information."
The stuff I put in bold, what does it mean? It seems a little convoluted. They agree why then? Becuase . . . the NT is written in pure historical setting. And, it was proved to be accurate.
I thought it was clear. Oh well. The NT makes reference to the historical characters Pilate and Caiaphas. Historians agree that these two people are, in fact, real. Do they agree with the NT on this one point? Yes. Do they agree with the NT on this point because they think that the NT is a reliable historical record? No. They agree with the NT on this one point because there is further evidence that the NT is correct on this point. The NT also refers to a massive resurrection
Matthew 27 wrote:The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they entered into the holy city and appeared to many.
Historians generally do not agree with the NT about this resurrection. The NT has not been proven to be a completely reliable historical record. If AlAyeti has evidence that shows that the NT is a reliable record, then we can look at it and debate it.
AlAyeti wrote:Christians have always said the NT is accurate and science proves it time and again.
Now science and history prove the NT. I will wait with great anticipation for the scientific evidence to back up AlAyeti's claim that science proves time and time again that the NT is accurate.
AlAyeti wrote:I'm sure that "adequate reliable historical data," uh, is a good place to find validation "OUTSIDE" of Biblical sources, for Biblical sources to be reliable.
I am sure that AlAyeti will enlighten us as to how one determines if a biblical source is reliable.
AlAyeti wrote:It's what you call empiricism.
It may be what AlAyeti calls empiricism, but most people call it faith.
AlAyeti wrote:Like Jesus, truth cannot be changed for personal "opinion." There is no doubt, archeaologically, that the first Christians worshipped Jesus as God. What was argued later is only that.
Someone found some archeological remains of the first Christians?! I must have missed that edition of Biblical Archaeology. What did they find? How was it dated to the first Christians? How did it show that the first Christians worshipped Jesus as God? What a break-through!

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Jose
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Post #352

Post by Jose »

McCulloch wrote:
AlAyeti wrote:Christians have always said the NT is accurate and science proves it time and again.
Now science and history prove the NT. I will wait with great anticipation for the scientific evidence to back up AlAyeti's claim that science proves time and time again that the NT is accurate.
It is fairly clear (at least from numerous discussions here at DC&R) that many people have a rather different understanding of "scientific evidence" or "proof." We see this over and over in the "scientific proof" of the flood, or of other aspects of scripture. One observation that can be interpreted favorably with respect to scripture is enough to be "scientific proof."

Of course, these same people don't use the same yardstick when looking at evolution. There, they find one observation that can be interpreted negatively, and conclude that evolution has been disproven.

This comparison suggests that "scientific evidence" seems to be regarded rather flexibly in some quarters. I suspect, McC, that you are thinking more of a set of data for which only one explanation is warranted. That is, alternative explanations have been considered, and ruled out on the basis of even more data. That's what makes the explanation (or "proof" if there could ever be such a thing in science) scientific. It's not just "using science words," or finding an observation that can be made to fit the hypothesis, but ruling out alternative hypotheses on the basis of multiple observations.

Thus, AlAyeti may give us some of this "scientific proof," but it will not be what scientists call "scientific" because alternative explanations will abound. Unfortunately, the general rule among literalists is that where scripture and empirical observation disagree, scripture always wins. After all, it's god's word, and god's word cannot be wrong. (Heaven forbid considering the possibility that, being a mere fallible human, one might be interpreting god's word incorrectly.)
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Post #353

Post by The Persnickety Platypus »

Archaeology validated and verified Pilate and Caiaphas. They were where the New Testament said they were.

Objective, as you want it.
I was under the impression that the underlying issue here was whether Jesus was the son of God. Was this not what you were asserting all along?


You claim to be able to prove Jesus' divinity, correct? Whether Pilate and Caiaphas were where they were said to be is irrelevant to the main issue. I never really disagreed with that anyway, although my post may seem to suggest that.
Your statement that the Gospels are "random books" makes it hard to believe that you are a Christian.
Just to clear things up, I did not refer to the Gospels as random books. Re-read the statement carefully. I stated that if the Bible may be used as unquestionable fact, any other book may as well.
I have no desire to be nice to people that denigrate Chistians.
But don't you see the irony in this? How can you expect them to be tolerant of your views if you are not tolerant of theirs? In the end you will probably not succeed in softening anyone's opinions, much less converting them. All you accomplish is the continuation of this everlasting cycle of hate.

Galatians 6:1
Ephesians 4:2
Collosians 3:12
2 Timothy 2:25
I am chided by my assertion of what evolution is, but the math is perfect. Just follow the theory backwards. All good detective work finds the answers the same way. It is Origins right?

God is not a bumbler needing mutations somehow somewhere bumping into each other in random chance meetings.

Believe that if you like. But Jesus doesn't fit the math.
Even following the theory backwards does not necissarily come to 0x1. There are a number of factors to consider.

Personally I think God would show great power in making his creations evolve. Consider it, the simplest of lifeforms such as ameoba (sp?) somehow mutating into complex organisms. In essence, he creates lifeforms that create themselves. Pretty impressive.

Why shouldn't God create his world out of random genetic changes? Is this not yet another testement to his great power? Taking into account the massive evidence in support of the theory (empiricism, I might go as far to call it), I would say that I am perfectly justified in my belief, especially considering there is nothing in the Bible to suggest I am wrong.

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Post #354

Post by AlAyeti »

"Someone found some archeological remains of the first Christians?! I must have missed that edition of Biblical Archaeology. What did they find? How was it dated to the first Christians? How did it show that the first Christians worshipped Jesus as God? What a break-through!"

///

The catacombs are not studied by archaeologists?

What does "ology" denote?

There is indeed no evidience that the first Christians didn't worship Jesus as God.

Just a little googling: A little lengthy. Sorry.

http://www.tektonics.org/jesusclaims/je ... mshub.html



Jesus as the Wisdom of God
The Son of Man Title
Use of "Abba"
Use of "I Say Unto You"
The "I Am" claims
Miscellaneous Claims


Creative Followers?
If Jesus never claimed to be divine, and never claimed it in the sense that is indicated in the Gospels, it is reasonable to expect that:

The enemies of Christianity and the early church would have declared that Jesus never made such claims, or was misunderstood. Some did indeed do this, but wrote quite some time after the fact. There is no record contemporary or closely contemporary with Jesus (first century AD) that indicates that He never made any special claims for Himself, or that the church invented the claims. Even after that time, however, the major skeptics of the first several centuries never argued this point. Celsus, for example, said that Jesus called Himself the Son of God, but wrongly. Porphyry, one of the most-feared skeptics in the early church, did not deny Jesus' claims to divinity, but instead tried to 'downgrade' Jesus into a hero-type deity (a third-class deity in the Roman hierarchy!). This adds up to strong evidence that (a) the Jesus-never-claimed-divinity argument had not been advanced by skeptics of the time, and (b) if it was used, perhaps by some skeptic whose works we have totally lost, it was so easily dismissed or so lacked adequate credibility that it could not be used by the best anti-Christian skeptics.
A parallel movement, that acclaimed Jesus as merely a good teacher, would have emerged alongside Christianity. To be sure, there are those such as Burton L. Mack, author of The Lost Gospel, who would have us believe that a such a movement did exist; but conveniently enough, he tells us, it came and went too quickly to leave behind any concrete physical evidence for us to know what happened to them!
As it is, there are no extant texts from the first century, or even from the century thereafter, that represent Jesus as claiming to be only human or only a prophet--He is ALWAYS portrayed as making exalted claims to a super-human status. Later heresies of the church, such as Gnosticism, involved paganistic and/or mystical additions upon what Jesus meant in the Gospels when He claimed to be God; they never denied that He made any special claims about Himself. As we noted previously, the earliest known pagan critic of Christianity to address the issue, Celsus, argued that Jesus did apply the title "Son of God" to Himself, but wrongly [Wilk.ChrRom, 109]; only much later did those critics deny that Jesus made such claims. The argument that Jesus never claimed to be divine is in fact nothing more than an unsupportable conjecture, an argument from silence competing against the scream of the available data. Each of the above claims, and every known document of the church, even the heretical ones, acknowledge that Jesus claimed divinity. There is absolutely no evidence to the contrary that can be cited. Saying that there is no evidence that Jesus claimed divinity can only be managed by ignoring reams of evidence, or by facile dismissal.

And now the final point, which will lead into our essay on the trilemma. If we allow that Jesus' claims were manufactured by His followers, or that His claims were misunderstood by them, we do nothing more than create a different sort of trilemma! Jesus' followers were either:

A.Telling the truth, and they knew it;

B.Telling a lie, and they knew it; or,

C.Telling a lie, and they didn't know it because they misunderstood.

If we choose B), we are left to wonder what motivated Jesus' followers to begin lying and maintain that lie. They did not benefit at all by claiming that their Master was God incarnate: They were ostracized, criticized, rejected, persecuted, and in many cases martyred. Nor did they make loads of money by claiming what they did - no Jim Bakkers in this crowd! This being the case, we may ask why none of Jesus' followers cracked under pressure, or got fed up with persecutions and inconveniences, and admitted that the divinity claims by Jesus were a fabrication. We may, of course, speculate that it is possible that Jesus' followers lied, but there are no signed confessions, no counterclaims by the Pharisees trumpeting the recanting of a disciple of Jesus - nothing. To argue this, we must argue from silence. More than that, we must argue AGAINST the data of their lives and the witness of history. To raise it as a MERE possibility does not constitute advancing evidence for the speculation.

Choosing C) offers a slightly more hopeful refuge for the skeptic. It may be objected that Jesus spoke rather cryptically at times, so that perhaps He truly was misunderstood. But as we have shown in the linked essays, it is hardly plausible that Jesus' claims were misunderstood; they are too clear-cut when understood in the context of the time and place they were made. Moreover, are there not also degrees of metaphorical difficulty? Some metaphors are easier to understand than others, and some people understand and interpret metaphor better than others! So, how can we be sure that Jesus' followers didn't at some point correctly grasp what He was saying? It is only in our modern-day arrogance that we say that they were incorrect, and we, looking down the tunnel of 2000 years, are better qualified to understand (and contrary to evidence!) what Jesus actually said!

Finally, we are told that Jesus DID explain things to His disciples privately after the crowds were gone: "He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything." (Mark 4:34 - this was standard practice for an inner circle of disciples. For a practical example of this, see the Parable of the Sower in Matt. 13.) These, of course, represent the people who wrote (Matthew, John) or else supplied information for (Mark, Luke) the Gospels. And at any rate, many of the claims to divinity are quite direct, and not in the least metaphorical.



Conclusion
Jesus claimed to be God the Son. No matter how hard we try to dissect it or explain it away, the evidence points directly to that most special claim made by Jesus. One must now answer His question: "Who do you say that I am?"

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Post #355

Post by AlAyeti »

Jose,

Thus, AlAyeti may give us some of this "scientific proof," but it will not be what scientists call "scientific" because alternative explanations will abound."

///

We are on opposite sides of issues.

I looked at the evidence for Christian beliefs and found little faith to rely on. The New Testament is not presented as a hopeful tale to make ones life better for "goodness' sake." It is written as fact.

The death of Jesus is not passed off as a light little execution of a Roman law breaker. A very coomon occurence. The details are excruciating are very accurately detailed. Not many crucified criminals passed away so quickly.

The tales of Jesus are not written as a happy go lucky divinity that makes all of the bad stuff go away. The actions and statements of Jesus are heavy. Not an open invitation for diversity club members.

Science agrees with the New Testament. Where does it not?

Resurrection?

Virgin birth?

Both can be observed in today's world. Done by ordinary med school grads. Even I am trained to bring someone back that has no heartbeat. I know people that were conceived without their parents even touching. Now, the knowledge of how to do both came from somewhere. Evolution hasn't a clue. People that have weak hearts are supposed to die and those that can't conceive "naturally" (I know the word is subjective/objective to you) are not designed to do so by the evidence. Ask Darwin.

The NT goes out of its way to put its neck on the line with people and places. That is to say, facts. Only goofballs say that what is written in its pages didn't happen.

Of course, a resurrection after three days dead, says a bit about the authority held by Jesus. Yet, there are "Christians" that think they are folowing Christ, that claim the resurrection never happened. In my studies, I have found many Christians that don't believe Christianity. Uh, yeah . . .

And the science of archaeology have shown the words are not fairy tales in the New Testament. Now, without the Old Testament being accurate, there can be no New Testament.

I have many scientist friends, and they have not corrected me or had issue with my use of "empiricism."

It boils down to submission to the facts.

Now, human nature, observable in a three-year old to a grey bearded PhD, shows that the condition of not wanting to follow the leader is born in us.

Seems "original sin" is empirical too.

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Post #356

Post by AlAyeti »

Does anyone know if any of those Liberals repented and were let back into the Baptist Church?

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Post #357

Post by MagusYanam »

Repented of what? Looking back at the original post, their only supposed wrongdoing was not supporting George W. Bush.

So the question here is, not supporting Bush is wrong in what way?

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Post #358

Post by AlAyeti »

By supporting the slaughter of children for convenience, attacking the family, and taking money from good people to pay for the crack addictions of those on goverment programs.

And anyone with a conscience knows that Kerry lied his butt off about supporting marriage as between a man and a woman. He'd have sold that out five minutes into office to the LGBT activists his extremely rich wife courted during the campaign.

I'm thinking that some of these Democrats had to have repented.

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Post #359

Post by MagusYanam »

AlAyeti wrote:By supporting the slaughter of children for convenience
We've been over this. No Democrat supports slaughter of children for convenience. No one supports slaughter of children for convenience.

Logical failure: opposing Bush doesn't imply support of abortion.
AlAyeti wrote:attacking the family
Epistemological failure: my family isn't under attack by Democrats or anyone else. No one I know has a family which is being attacked or torn apart by Democrats.

Ergo, this generalisation is false. Do the math for yourself.
AlAyeti wrote:and taking money from good people to pay for the crack addictions of those on goverment programs
Conceptual failure: taxation is necessary under any form of government. Republicans may say otherwise in their campaign slogans, but they're just talking out their backsides. If the government isn't taxing us properly, it's only putting us into debt.

You pay for every government service you use - the roads, the schools, the banks, the parks, what have you. That's just the way life is: nothing's a free lunch. Get used to it.
AlAyeti wrote:And anyone with a conscience knows that Kerry lied his butt off about supporting marriage as between a man and a woman. He'd have sold that out five minutes into office to the LGBT activists his extremely rich wife courted during the campaign.

I'm thinking that some of these Democrats had to have repented.
'Swhat politicians do. And don't lie to yourself: Bush lied his own butt off about far more important things, like, I don't know, maybe OUR ENTIRE FOREIGN POLICY which strikes me as being just a little more important than whether 8% of the population has the right to marry.

War is more destructive of our national morality than gay marriage is, and the neocons should have been repenting of that long ago. Period. Do the %&@%!ing math.

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Post #360

Post by AlAyeti »

Did we learn some big words and concepts in our time off?

Democrats are not honest people. They want taxes in such gluttonous amounts and use it to fund criminals and degenerates to stay criminals and degenerates. Good families suffer when paychecks are gutted by high taxes. paying for roads and utilities is a far cry from sending money to drug addicts to get drugs.

I've told you before, I'm no major fan of the GOP but Democrats are disgusting. They allow Unions to sickening business and have an agenda of pure anti-American socialism crossing the line to communism. I was a union member, They are as dishonest as it gets.

NARAL is a Democrat fundraising machine. Your not thinking honestly if abortion for convenience is not what IS abortion. No where are the Democrats mentioning moral choices instead of condoms and killing. Morality is the right choice. Democrats don't give up on people because they don't even care enough to give them good moral choices.

Logical failure is a Christian voting for a pro-abortion politician. Usually a Democrat or Liberal Republican.
Epistemological failure: my family isn't under attack by Democrats or anyone else. No one I know has a family which is being attacked or torn apart by Democrats.

Ergo, this generalisation is false. Do the math for yourself.
The failure of knowledge is in your views. The concept and fact of what a family is and always has been is man-woman-children.

The redefinition of family and marriage to accommodate an extreme fringe faction of the population logically opens the doors for any group calling themselves a minority culture or community to sue for some other redefinition of marriage. Is that also to be tolerated by the populace?

The labeling of this train of thought as "generalization," when the world is facing the assault of homosexuals to force the redefinition of family to accomodate them, leads a rationally thinking person to see the destruction of all other norms as well.
AlAyeti wrote:
and taking money from good people to pay for the crack addictions of those on goverment programs


Conceptual failure: taxation is necessary under any form of government. Republicans may say otherwise in their campaign slogans, but they're just talking out their backsides. If the government isn't taxing us properly, it's only putting us into debt.
Conceptual failure does not exist where facts are present. The famous failures of Liberal and Democrat legislative acts to literally pay for clean needles for drug addicts to obtain cleaner drugs, failed to stop disease and new addicts being created. No decent law abiding citizen should have their money taken from them by high taxation so prevalent in Democrat policy to pay for the miscreant to stay in that sorry state. Good families should be rewarded continually the way tax policies of George Bush has helped.

In fact, permissiveness that underlies all Liberalism, only promotes new degenerates joining the ranks of those that initiate new degenerates. It impossible to put the genie back into the bottle once he is out. Democrats fail to recognize this fact.
AlAyeti wrote:
And anyone with a conscience knows that Kerry lied his butt off about supporting marriage as between a man and a woman. He'd have sold that out five minutes into office to the LGBT activists his extremely rich wife courted during the campaign.
I'm thinking that some of these Democrats had to have repented.


'Swhat politicians do. And don't lie to yourself: Bush lied his own butt off about far more important things, like, I don't know, maybe OUR ENTIRE FOREIGN POLICY which strikes me as being just a little more important than whether 8% of the population has the right to marry.

War is more destructive of our national morality than gay marriage is, and the neocons should have been repenting of that long ago. Period. Do the %&@%!ing math.
Our morality has always helped other countries by the wars we fought for them. Our foreign policy is a reflection of the morality inherent in the American way of life. While the Democrats fail to support the concept of family and redefine further the immutable concept of marriage, our country is becoming more and more violent on our very streets. The fatherless children that live the consequences of Liberalism are indeed resulting in the loss of more American lives than our wars.

That math is easy to do.

No Christian should have anything to do with Democrats that allow funding to come from war protesters that denigrate our very country by protesting on its land. No Christian can or should support Democrats that completely oppose the teachings of Jesus in the guise of secularism.

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