How would your account be different?

[Inigo Montoya]

I've been tossing around the question as to why it is we believe written accounts of officers or soldiers in past wars, or why we believe the stories of famous men and women throughout history prior to the advent of cameras and film.


For the sake of argument, I'd ask you -- IF you were witness to the life and death of Jesus in the first century, and we assume the miracles and resurrection are true, how do YOU record your accounting of it in such a way it is believed in future generations?

Is this possible? Do we believe the events of the War of 1812 took place the way they did because there's no mention of supernatural occurrences?

If we assume for discussion the events in the gospels actually occurred, how would you have captured them in such a way as to stand up to future scrutiny?

[Jax Agnesson]

I don't think God's moral laws are confusing at all, as Paul writes in Galatians 5:14 'The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbour as yourself".' And again when describing what a Christian life is meant to look like, 'But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law'.Gal.5:22

And of course the splendid 1 Corinthians 13. So Paul, claiming to represent the message of Jesus, who is supposed to be the Son of the God of the Canaan genocides, the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah etc, tells us love is the whole of the law. Unless God has told you to slaughter every man woman and child in a series of tribes. In which case vengeance is the very thing that will get God smiling his blessings upon you.

Incidentally; Although I have been atheist for over 40 years now, I still hold 1Corinthians13 as an excellent piece of work, a beautiful guide to meaningful communal life. But if God had written it, He wouldn't have also written all the genocidal stuff, would He?

There are many denominations in Christianity, but as a recent convert and with no special allegiance to any single one, they seem to have a great deal more in common than their differences. Roman Catholics, and all the major Protestant denominations agree on the Apostle, Nicene and Athanasian Creed. And I haven't come across a denomination yet that teaches we should hate our neighbour and treat our enemies with spite and revenge.

Except for all the denominations that did precisely that throughout several centuries of European history. Catholic inquisitions, Protestant witch-trials, massacres of dissenters and gnostics and mystics, on and on, generation after generation. Read you martyrs, dbohm.
Not to mention (I wish I didn't have to mention) the routine pogroms against the Jews.
Oh, and the Crusades.
And then there are the two thirds of the world who are not Christian, many of whom are still slitting throats and bombing each other's mosques and temples, in an argument about which God is supposed to have given which laws to which tribe..
What exactly has this allegedly wise and omnipotent God managed to convey clearly to all His beloved creatures?

[dbohm]

But the point is that they are only inadequacies to some people. What some posters on this thread seem to be arguing is that there is some obligation on God to make it compelling to everybody.

That's kind of an unfair criticism. Since God is literally responsible for the whole system, technically he's under no obligations whatsoever. However, we're told both that God wants everyone to come to believe rightly and that no one can do so without God's help. If that's so, who else could possibly have a greater obligation, especially when the source material is so far removed from modern humanity?

The evidence is there. Gullible and uninformed people believe it, but also highly intelligent, inquisitive and investigative minds.

A discussion about election would involve a deep study of Romans. There is a Biblical case for a weak pluralism in Christianity and loop holes as it were for the salvation of non-Christians.

I will say this much and that is if the evidence for God were the same as a dictionary definition or that 2 x 2=4, then God would be like a dictionary or like a multiplication table. We could put God then on a bookshelf or on the wall and forget about it. In fact what we would have would be an idol not God. Bonhoeffer once wrote that "A God who who let us prove his existence, would be an idol".

[dbohm]

[Replying to post 51 by Jax Agnesson]

I understand what you say about the genocides and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. I don't won't to gloss over the terror and suffering of these events. But there is also complexity in these events and there are issues of justice and judgement in them too.

I certainly would not want to gloss over the crimes that have been committed under the name of Christianity. The church has made mistakes not just in allowing and actively carrying out horrors such as the inquisition, but also in not speaking up for the voiceless and opposing evil where it could.

[Jax Agnesson]

[Replying to post 51 by Jax Agnesson]

I understand what you say about the genocides and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. I don't won't to gloss over the terror and suffering of these events. But there is also complexity in these events and there are issues of justice and judgement in them too.

But the bit about God's message being all about love didn't get through to Saul when he tried to spare the life of king Agag, did it?

I certainly would not want to gloss over the crimes that have been committed under the name of Christianity. The church has made mistakes not just in allowing and actively carrying out horrors such as the inquisition, but also in not speaking up for the voiceless and opposing evil where it could.

If a motorist takes a corner too fast and knocks down a pedestrian, a generous judge might call that a 'mistake', rather than manslaughter. When a powerful and wealthy church carries out massacres going on for years at a time, or when self-righteous Puritans carry out torturing and murder of millions of 'witches' across many decades, these are hardly 'mistakes', are they? They are carefully considered policy.
Do you suppose the Christian perpetrators of these horrors understood that God's message was really all about love, but it just slipped their minds for a decade or two? Or a century or three. Or did they read the OT, understand that God's message was about vengeance and the punishment of 'sinners', and act according to that understanding?

[scourge99]

[Replying to post 51 by Jax Agnesson]

I understand what you say about the genocides and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. I don't won't to gloss over the terror and suffering of these events. But there is also complexity in these events and there are issues of justice and judgement in them too.

But the bit about God's message being all about love didn't get through to Saul when he tried to spare the life of king Agag, did it?

I certainly would not want to gloss over the crimes that have been committed under the name of Christianity. The church has made mistakes not just in allowing and actively carrying out horrors such as the inquisition, but also in not speaking up for the voiceless and opposing evil where it could.

If a motorist takes a corner too fast and knocks down a pedestrian, a generous judge might call that a 'mistake', rather than manslaughter. When a powerful and wealthy church carries out massacres going on for years at a time, or when self-righteous Puritans carry out torturing and murder of millions of 'witches' across many decades, these are hardly 'mistakes', are they? They are carefully considered policy.
Do you suppose the Christian perpetrators of these horrors understood that God's message was really all about love, but it just slipped their minds for a decade or two? Or a century or three. Or did they read the OT, understand that God's message was about vengeance and the punishment of 'sinners', and act according to that understanding?

How does a Christian reconcile loving their neighbor with such scripture as "though shalt not suffer a witch to live."? Exodus 22:18.

[charles_hamm]

This is where the problem comes in. I believe God did communicate what He wants and some people for whatever reason

Do you have any ideas what reasons there might have been?

It could be that a person doesn't like living under His authority. A person may not think that he/she has to believe to get into Heaven. I'm sure there are many more but I only thought of those two off the top of my head.

don't believe what He says. He didn't fail to communicate with us. Everyone has the same information available to them.The only difference is what they do with it.

You think so? How could the Aztecs have known God didn't want them to sacrifice their children to Him?

The Aztecs chose to believe in other "Gods" so they probably didn't listen to what God had to say. They also saw examples of other tribes who didn't sacrifice their children which easily could have served as an example for them.

So in your example a person creates a communication system, teaches the students and then tries to use it. If the students can't use it there is more than one possible reason. First the teacher may not have taught it well enough. Second students may not have paid attention. Third students may have forgotten what the teacher taught them. Fourth students don't pay attention when the message is sent. So three out of the four can reasonably be considered the students fault. How would the teacher be lousy if options two, three or four are what happened? BTW, this is how children have been tested for many years. Teachers teaches and you either learn it or you don't but either way the responsibility for knowing the subject was always on the child.

Yes. Fair enough, Charles. My analogy falls down at some point. But at what point?
The fact is, a school teacher doesn't have any power over what kind of brains the kids are born with, how they are reared in their first years, Whether they get a decent breakfast before coming to school, etc. So the teacher isn't entirely to blame if they can't concentrate. But, I would argue, neither asre the children deserving of punishment for that.

The problem is that even children who do get all those things sometimes just don't want to pay attention. It breaks down because the teacher isn't to blame if the children don't get all the things you mentioned at home either. I am not sure how you would grade a child then. If a teacher taught the subject matter to where the child should understand it and he/she doesn't then how does the teacher get the blame?

Unlike our powerless schoolteacher, however, an Almighty Creator God would have total control over how much capacity for understanding His creatures will have. He has, even allowing for free will, total knowledge of what kinds of things His creatures would be able to make sense of. And He appears to have chosen to leave a minority of His creatures with a jumbled set of mutually contradictory stories, and the rest of us with not even that.
If the proposition is that an omnipotent, omniscient, wise and loving God tried to tell us what He wants of us, then a coherent way of matching that proposition with the observable state of human ignorance has yet to be presented.

What He doesn't control (He could, but He doesn't) is our choice to learn and to listen to him. The fact that some, maybe all, people don't understand something does not make it incoherent. It can also mean that we lack sufficient intelligence to understand it. The choice is ours to either learn more about the subject or to stay at whatever level of knowledge we do have on it.

[charles_hamm]

This is where the problem comes in. I believe God did communicate what He wants and some people for whatever reason don't believe what He says. He didn't fail to communicate with us. Everyone has the same information available to them. The only difference is what they do with it.

So in your example a person creates a communication system, teaches the students and then tries to use it. If the students can't use it there is more than one possible reason. First the teacher may not have taught it well enough. Second students may not have paid attention. Third students may have forgotten what the teacher taught them. Fourth students don't pay attention when the message is sent. So three out of the four can reasonably be considered the students fault. How would the teacher be lousy if options two, three or four are what happened? BTW, this is how children have been tested for many years. Teachers teaches and you either learn it or you don't but either way the responsibility for knowing the subject was always on the child.

Teachers did not create the students. God, it is said, created humans. Is God such a bad teacher that most of us do not get the message correctly? When most of the students in a teacher's class fail, year after year, that teacher's ability to teach will be brought into question.

I think there is a problem with your statement here. While it's true that none of truly get the entire message of the Bible, some do aspire to learn and understand it more and more. I would say that means some students, if you will, are passing the class. It is fair to bring it into question. It is also fair to look at the students to see if the fault for failing lies with them as well. As long as the information is given to each and every student and it is the same information, the ultimate responsibility for learning it as well as he/she can lies on the student.

[PhiloKGB]

The evidence is there. Gullible and uninformed people believe it, but also highly intelligent, inquisitive and investigative minds.

And? God has made it so that X(dumb people) and Y(smart people) believe. How does that remove his responsibility for Z(everyone else)? Why did God provide any evidence at all if not out of some obligation?

A discussion about election would involve a deep study of Romans. There is a Biblical case for a weak pluralism in Christianity and loop holes as it were for the salvation of non-Christians.

I will say this much and that is if the evidence for God were the same as a dictionary definition or that 2 x 2=4, then God would be like a dictionary or like a multiplication table. We could put God then on a bookshelf or on the wall and forget about it. In fact what we would have would be an idol not God. Bonhoeffer once wrote that "A God who who let us prove his existence, would be an idol".

That's interesting. What do many of the "intelligent, inquisitive and investigative minds" -- who throw about proofs of God like so much confetti -- have to say about Bonhoeffer's convenient excuse? Did Cornelius van Til or BB Warfield -- contemporaries of Bonhoeffer -- agree with him?

[PhiloKGB]

As long as the information is given to each and every student and it is the same information, the ultimate responsibility for learning it as well as he/she can lies on the student.

Can you explain why this is necessarily so? The US public school system certainly does not agree with you.

[charles_hamm]

As long as the information is given to each and every student and it is the same information, the ultimate responsibility for learning it as well as he/she can lies on the student.

Can you explain why this is necessarily so? The US public school system certainly does not agree with you.

Our school system is based on no child left behind. Instead of trying to raise all students to the highest level of excellence we can, we lower the standard to where the largest majority of students will pass. We don't do our children any favors by doing this. If a teacher does try to make kids think critically or challenges them and they fail to pass the challenge the teacher is held at fault. Mediocrity is what our school system accepts these days. Our public school system is not a shining example of how to teach right now.