For All Those Who Do Not Believe In GOD?

[Wildest_Bill]

*Originally posted by Freyr *

Please be careful how you label other people’s religion or faith. No one likes to have their religion labeled a fantasy or “make-believe”. Doing so is highly insulting.

I see what your saying but in all fairness I have seen people poking fun at the Christian faith also around here. I don’t take it so personally. I have not had a lot of time to research on Odin but I can see it is a “real” type religion for people around the Norwegian area. If I wrong on that, I am almost positive someone will correct me. So I take back my comment I made about it at the time I really thought it was like “the force” or something ok?

As for what would happen should events in Revelations come to pass, as I said before, I’m Wiccan and therefore outside the rules and jurisdiction of the Judeo/Christian god. My gods would protect me from any retribution of the J/C God or his followers.

Who are your “gods”? And how come you don’t capitalize them when you refer to them? I am not being a smart alec I really want to know why and who they are? And what happens to the Wiccas when you die?

Other religions generally out there trying to prove themselves to you. This seems to be a major problem with monotheism; either a religion is right or wrong, there’s no other choice. Try understanding that each religion is right for the people that practice it. Xianity is right for you, Wicca is right for me. Saying that Xianity is the only right religion is like saying that 10 - 3 CAN’T equal 7 because 4 + 3 already does. Do you see my point?

I don’t follow you. Either your right and I am wrong. Or vice versa. Either my God is real or yours. It doesn’t really matter who is right or wrong until we die. Then we know what God was real or not. Right?

Regarding Revelations you said: Just a mere Christian that has read Revelation in the Bible and asked the Holy Spirit too help me understand it. And I ask questions to other Christians I know and respect too.

[quote]
Glad to hear you’re trying to understand it. The point I’m trying to make is that St. John the Divine wrote and interpreted his vision in terms of his time and place in history. You seem to be ripping it completley out of context and pasting it onto late 20th cent. culture. You need to understand the language and culture of his time before you can start interpreting it for OUR time.

[quote]

I hear what you saying but how do you figure I am not understanding right?

Then regarding interpretation of the J/C Bible, you wrote:
In all due respect how do you know you interpreted right? In otherwords come to the right conclusion. I am not perfect you are not perfect Goboy is not perfect even though he thinks he is.(sorry Goboy I just couldn’t help myself) so your conclusions could be wrong. The Bible is God’s love letter to Christians and the Holy Spirit helps Christians understand what God is telling them. If you are not a Christian the Bible would not make as much sense to you. I never said my viewpoint was superior (matter of fact many of you told me that). I am just a normal guy with a Superior God.

My interpretation of the Bible doesn’t matter, I’m not the one trying to convince people here of its correctness. You on the other hand are trying to do just that but have yet to give any qualifications of your ability to do so.

I am a Christian. What other qualification is needed? And btw I wasn’t trying to prove anything I just asked a question if you would take the mark of the anti-christ. I don’t think I need to be scholar to ask that do I? It is a simple question yes or no.

As for your Superior God, that is the biggest crock of shit I’ve heard since Nixon said “I’m not a crook.” Your superior god put men, women and children to death simply for being in the way of his chosen people. Your superior god drowned the population of the planet for simply not listening to him. Your superior god tortured one of his most devout followers to simply win a bet. Your superior god has the personality of a spoilt brat. Need I go on?

Hey I am not God and you’re not God so how can we judge what he did and why? Lets assume God is real and made everything. Don’t you think he has the right to make the rules. I might not like the rules he has and you might not like them but they are the His rules. Well the people did not follows his rules. And he punished them for it. I am not sure you have children but if they broke your rules would you not punish them? And God did not punish Job(I guess you were refering to him?) I believe the devil did. And why God did that I don’t know either and have wondered about it too. My guess would be to try to make Job stronger in his faith. A guess that is all it is.

[Lucky]

Wildest Bill,

I checked out the link you provided, but it doesn’t show any evidence that beheadings in Turkey have increased. It only sites some recent beheadings in Turkey. If you’re going to claim that beheadings are on the rise, you need to show satistics of the number of beheadings at sometime in the past, and another statistic showing the number of beheadings today. Nice try, though.

As to my comment about whether or not an increase in beheadings would make any difference…I was thinking more along the lines of “why would you see that as an indication of impending apocalypse?” There have been many times in history when beheadings were quite popular, and the apocalypse did not follow on those occasions. Why would you think an increase in beheadings in Turkey would be a sign?

[gobear]

Either my God is real or yours.

Or possibly neither. Bill, where’s a cite for the rate of beheadings in Muslim countries?

Goboy is not perfect even though he thinks he is.(sorry Goboy I just couldn’t help myself)

Where did I say I was perfect? I said that you lack the education and the vocabulary to argue persuasively. I stand by that statement.

[gobear]

On second thought, I take that back and I apologize for being rude. You’re doing just fine. Please ignore my intemperate ranting.

[Lucky]

OOps, my bad. I just read the whole article at http://www.turkey.net?org?com?---anyway, the beheadings are taking place in Saudi Arabia. Those being beheaded are Turks.

Not that it makes any difference, but I didn’t want to look like a total idiot.

Tip: to find the articles, go to the Turkey site and do a search for “beheading”.

[andros]

Either your right and I am wrong. Or vice versa. Either my God is real or yours.

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGHH!!!

NO!

Bill . . . He’s GOD!

Why do you insist on placing your human limitations on God? Why do you box Him in? Why do you pretend he’s finite?

Why? Why? Why?

[SkeptiJess]

Ah, Satan… Believe it or not, I read about kissing Hank’s ass while I was eating lunch – a weiner on a bun, without condiments! Apparently, I am a closet kisser of Hank’s ass. Who knew? Thanks for my best laugh of the week!

BTW, Wildest Bill – I’m still waiting for a cite on your signs of the end-times. What books have you read? With authors please.

[Polycarp]

It’s more complicated than we thought. --Richard Leakey

Nice clearcut picture you drew, Billy, and I hope you won’t be upset with me for pointing out a flaw – it may help the understanding of participants in this thread.

First, “either my God or yours” (or, as goboy noted, none) doesn’t quite make it. We have two devout Orthodox Jews, keeping kosher and shabbat, here. I think you’d be one of the first to say that you and they worship the same God – but your understanding of Him differs from theirs in the “minor matter” of one Jesus of Nazareth. Then consider the following fictitious-but-accurate quote:

I and my people believe that God truly spoke to Moses and the Prophets whose work resides in the Bible of the Jews. [OK so far.] And His Word was set forth by Jesus of Nazareth. We do not believe He was God or the Son of God, but we honor Him as a great prophet. [Hmmm… heretical Christian cult, right?]

Six hundred years later, God sent his word through the Archangel Gabriel to Mohammed of Yathrib, who proclaimed the True Faith. [Ooops…this guy’s a Mohammedan!]

Now where if at all in that sequence has he stopped believing in “your god”? We’d both agree that he’s wrong on some of the points he says, but what god is he talking about? Do you happen to know the Arabic for “El” or “Elohim”? Right the first time!

Then you’ve got the Baha’is. They would agree with the two paragraphs spoken by our hypothetical Moslem. But then they’d add two prophets from Iran in the 1800s. And according to their doctrine, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, the Bab, and Baha’ullah (those two prophets), along with a few others, were “mirrors” reflecting God to people. Just as, for us, Jesus was the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets, and for Moslems Mohammed was the “seal of the prophets,” for a Baha’i Baha’ullah was “the flawless mirror” who reflected God more clearly than anyone who had gone before.

When you get into India, it gets even more confusing. Not only do we have Orthodox Christians who date their church to St. Thomas’s missionary journey (and think the rest of us have doctrines corrupted by Western history, while they preserved the pure teaching of St. Thomas), but you have Jains and Sikhs who find ways to incorporate the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition into their own, and Hinduism, which resembles a sponge – it absorbs everything, and is shapeless; pick and choose your object of worship and religious philosophy; it’ll fit with them.

'Tis, as Yul Brynner said, a pozzlement!

From what little I know of modern Heathenism, they do not want to be equated with Neopaganism – they’re two very disparate pre-Christian traditions brought down to the present. Almost no Heathens remain in Germany or most of Scandinavia, although there are a few in scattered spots. A small percentage (1-2%) of Icelanders are Heathen, and there are small groups of them scattered through North America, with a concentration in Missouri. Their doctrine focuses in Tiw (AKA Tyr) – the original supreme god of the Norse, though by the time of the recorded myths he had been reduced to a wargod under Odin, god of wisdom and judgment. They accept and honor the other Aesir and Vanir as a sort of supporting cast to Tyr, and their morality, which is quite conservative and patriarchal (women are definitely second-class in their system), is based on a warrior ethic and achieving “worthiness” through study of wisdom and physical ordeals. Probably the closest modern parallel would be the Japanese Bushido ethic.

Freyr, from your name choice you clearly know more than you have posted so far. I’ve gotten all this second- and thirdhand from a Heathen friend where we used to live, so it may have some errors of fact or emphasis. Can you add or correct anything?

[jmullaney]

*Originally posted by Polycarp *
First, “either my God or yours” (or, as goboy noted, none) doesn’t quite make it.

Makes sense here.

I think you’d be one of the first to say that you and they worship the same God

That is basically a myth – or maybe an urban legend.

… We do not believe He was God or the Son of God, but we honor Him as a great prophet. …

Now where if at all in that sequence has he stopped believing in “your god”?

I think it is fairly clear at what point this ceases to be about the Christian God, but I highlighted it for you anyway.

[andros]

While incidents of capital punishment worldwide continue to decline in number, in Saudi at least they are increasing in frequency a bit. Not all executions are by beheading, but then not all in the US are from Old Sparky. The chair, not the poster.

From http://www.amnesty.org:

The death penalty [in Saudi Arabia] is frequently imposed following summary and secret trials. . . Saudi Arabia has one of the highest rates of executions in the world. At least 103 people were executed in 1999, as recorded by Amnesty International. In the past 20 years 1,163 people are known to have been executed. The true figure is probably much higher.

I’m still looking for some numbers on beheadings, but so far there’s no evidence of increase at all. Bill, do you remember where you heard that? Mmaybe we can track the numbers down from that direction.

[John_Kentzel-Griffin]

*Originally posted by ***Lucky **
Wildbill, I’d like a cite for the increase in the number of beheadings in the Middle East.
<snip>

*Originally posted by ***Wildest Bill **
But I like your style so I will provide a cite anyway. http://www.turkey.org .

Ummm… I went to your link. There is a lot of great stuff there about Turkey. Where exactly do they discuss beheading everyone who doesn’t have 666 tatooed on their head?

People have been saying that the end-times are nigh ever since John ate those mushrooms and wrote about the experience.

You and all the people through history who see the signs have more imagination than I.

[jmullaney]

*Originally posted by DrMatrix *
Where exactly do they discuss beheading everyone who doesn’t have 666 tatooed on their head?

Hmmm. Maybe if I get bored over the long weekend I’ll start a “Revelations is false and here’s proof” thread.

[andros]

That [Jews and Christians worship the same god] is basically a myth – or maybe an urban legend.

Joel, see my scream of frustration to Billy above.

[Polycarp]

It has been the 2,000-year-long tradition of every branch of Christianity I’ve ever heard of that the God they worship is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Aaron, Moses, and Elijah. Nonetheless no Jew worships the Holy Trinity. This suggests a subliminal equivalence of God-in-the-strict-sense with the Father person of the Holy Trinity, equated with YHWH. By your reading of my hypothetical Moslem’s words, Joel, you deny that tradition. Given the tradition, however, in what way does the view of Allah held by the Moslem differ from the view of El Shaddai held by the Jew? Does he become a different God owing to the teachings of Mohammed? At what point, and why?

You know, Joel, it annoys me when you spend your time here just picking apart other people’s sincerely felt thoughts and arguments. Do you have any thoughts of your own that are suitable for posting? Why don’t you? It saddens me that I have far more in common with a pagan bear cub who is sincere in what he believes than an erudite scholar trained in Jesuitic reasoning who insists on playing word games with everybody else’s posts instead of arguing a point of view himself. Go reread Gaudere’s dissection of you in the Pit again. Then come back, and let’s talk about something serious – what you think, and why.

[Wildest_Bill]

This board is a challenge. Y’all are really tough. Y’all make me work. But oh well here is something else I found.
Now while I don’t take everything this guy says to be fact he does have some pretty good points. It is little bit a reading(for some reasone I think y’all can deal with that). The cite is http://www.beastwatch.com/beast2.htm I hope did that right. If not, go to beastwatch site and then go to the beast to read about the hostility from the Shariah muslims towards Christians and how it relates to the end times. Also read about what these Shariahs teach their young suicide bombers what a trip.

Andros, thanks for the help that was very nice of you.

Polycarp, I am hungry I’ll be back to really read you said and respond to it.

[jmullaney]

*Originally posted by Polycarp *
what you think, and why.

They are different Gods because their different followers believe different things. QED.

[gobear]

I checked out the web site bill linked to, and it is clear
that the author hasn’t the faintest clue about Islam or modern Middle Eastern geopolitics or Islam.

This growing movement is Islamic fundamentalism. Islamic fundamentalism is nothing less than an attempt to restore the Abbasid Muslim Empire of 750 A.D.

The modern day Muslim nations that are encompassed in the area of the ancient Abbasid Muslim Empire are Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia,
Jordan, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

how does he account for the Mulim insurgents in Indonesia,
Nigeria, and the Philippines? How does he account for Turkey, a moderate Muslim nation with secular rule? how does he account for the wars fought by Muslim nationas against each other, like Iraq and Kuwaait and Iraq and Iran? Is he aware that there are different sects within Islam?

In February of 1998, Osama bin Laden and his associates published a “fatwa” (an Islamic judicial ruling) in a London Arabic newspaper; this fatwa declared that it is the religious duty of every good Muslim to kill all Americans wherever they can be found, making no distinction between military personnel and noncombatant men, women and children.

Bin Laden has no religious authority and no Muslim has to follow his fatwa. It’s as if Bill Gates issued a papal encyclical.

In short, once the radical Muslims acquire nuclear weapons, there is nothing the USA can do to stop them from using them, and they will do so.

Pakistan, a Muslim nation, has the Bomb, but India has a lot more to worry about than we do.

Really, this is laughable.

[John_Kentzel-Griffin]

I went to you new link. It’s every bit as convincing as your previous link and certainly more imaginative.

from your link
First, the Beast utterly destroys the USA, as we saw in the last chapter.

Golly, I must have missed that on the 10 o’clock news!

However, I still did not see where they discuss beheading everyone who does not have 666 tatooed on their head. (There is a lot of stuff there, I prolly just missed it.)

[gobear]

I checked out the Web site Bill linked to, and it is clear
that the author hasn’t the faintest clue about Islam or modern Middle Eastern geopolitics.

This growing movement is Islamic fundamentalism. Islamic fundamentalism is nothing less than an attempt to restore the Abbasid Muslim Empire of 750 A.D.

The modern day Muslim nations that are encompassed in the area of the ancient Abbasid Muslim Empire are Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia,
Jordan, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

How does he account for the Muslim insurgents in Indonesia, Nigeria, and the Philippines, none of which were part of the Abbasid Caliphate? How does he account for Turkey, a moderate Muslim nation with secular rule? How does he account for the wars fought by Muslim nations against each other, like Iraq and Kuwait in 1990 and Iraq and Iran from 1980 to 1988? Is he aware that there are different sects within Islam which disagree with one another?

In February of 1998, Osama bin Laden and his associates published a “fatwa” (an Islamic judicial ruling) in a London Arabic newspaper; this fatwa declared that it is the religious duty of every good Muslim to kill all Americans wherever they can be found, making no distinction between military personnel and noncombatant men, women and children.

Bin Laden has no religious authority and no Muslim has to follow his fatwa. It’s as if Bill Gates issued a papal encyclical.

In short, once the radical Muslims acquire nuclear weapons, there is nothing the USA can do to stop them from using them, and they will do so.

Pakistan, a Muslim nation, has the Bomb, but India has a lot more to worry about than we do.

Really, this is laughable.

[Polycarp]

It’s as if Bill Gates issued a papal encyclical.

Good grief, don’t give him ideas!!!