His4Ever wrote:
Jesus said:
[slight hijack, perhaps tangentially relevent]
I think it is worth pointing out to His4Ever, and others who are hopeful of making converts, that faith-based conversions happen only, only, ONLY if the subject individual has an emotional need that is not currently being fulfilled. That is, if an individual is unhappy, feeling badly treated by life and suffering from low self-esteem, then he is ready for someone to come along and offer to him a way to–hopefully–be happier and think better of himself.
Conversely, if you pitch a faith-based conversion toward people who are moderately happy, successful and feel moderately fulfilled, you are not going to be successful in that endeavor as you have nothing to offer them that they don’t already have. If your target audience is also experienced in rational debate, you might as well be pounding your head against a brick wall.
Therefore, I might suggest that those seeking to make conversions will have more success if they choose their audience more carefully: The homeless. The terminally ill. The poor. The illiterate unemployable. While there might be a few such frequenting the SDMB, your chances are not good here.
On the other hand, if you want to better understand your faith and perhaps make it stronger, hang around…and think…rather than preach. 
[/sh,ptr]
Reading back through my previous post, I wonder if the following analogy to my suggestion occurred to anyone else: Muggers would be well-advised to limit their crime targets to the physically handicapped, as they will have a much better chance of success.
Alright, alright, so I don’t have a high opinion of evangelists. 
Yeah, but not worth the vitriol. Save that for the knowing haters.
Monty, I have to give you fair credit. You are truly the biggest imbecile on the boards. Granted, there are some great and giant idiots here, but the way you climb on their backs to triumph over them is simply brilliant. Kudos, you deserve it.
Paraphrase of Madeleine L’Engle “We do not convert by condemning others, but by showing them a light so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”
Granted, I’m awful at it, but there are others here who are quite amazing. Ending every sentence with, “And you’re going to Hell!” isn’t effective evangelism.
“I hope you enjoy the cookies I made you and you’re going to Hell!”
His4Ever, you are allowed to be both Christian and rational. Our reason is part of us, and therefore created good.
**Monty, ** thank you for the kind words. I’m no Bible scholar, though, just a guy who calls H4E on her thoroughly mistaken notions of Biblical exegesis.
Anya Marie, the Torah is not, as your post seems to suggest, an alternative to the Bible; it’s part of the Bible, to wit, the first five books, Genesis through Deuteronomy.
Princhester, you miss the point. It is not H4e’s simple-minded interpretation of the Bible nor her bloody-minded emphasis on hellfire and brimstone, but her persistence in telling falsehoods about Mormons, Catholics, and others that is getting her branded as a big, fat liar. Here’s my paraphrase of the multiple threads on the subject:
H4E: Mormons believe X.
Mormons: No, that’s wrong. We believe in Y.
H4E No, Mormons believe in X because I read one book with a wildly biased distortion of LDS teachings, and I uncritically spout the contents of a badly written book over the first person account of actual Mormons.
It’s obvious that H4E isn’t very bright. When several posters questioned why she believes Levitical proscriptions against homosexual behavior should be enforced, but identical bans on eating shellfish and wearing wool/cotton blends should not, she floundered helplessly until Shodan offered a suggestion that the bans were rooted in the difference between ceremonial and civil, which H4E then parroted as her own view.
She’s been told several times that her views on Mormons and Catholics are rooted in error, and that she should at least get facts right, yet she continues to spout mistake-ridden rubbish. When more compassionate Christians have attempted to engage her in dialogue, she attempts to scuttle away as she clouds the water with the ink of excuses why she “isn’t very good at arguing.”
H4E’s defect is that she doesn’t talk TO people, she talks AT them. In the creationism thread, she popped in to say, “The Bible says God made the world in seven days, so there!” (sticks out tongue). She didn’t return to engage in a serious debate on the facts; she never does. Mind, I don’t think she could hold up her end in a debate on Biblical creation as fact vs. myth versus because, as I said, she strikes me as being unintelligent or uneducated, or possibly both. But it would give the impression that she is posting in good faith if she would at least make the effort.
Moreover, she is failing miserably at her professed goal of witnessing. She has never mentioned the peace of God, the forgiveness of sins, the infinite compassion of Christ, or any positve aspect of Christian belief. Her sole selling point is that if you don’t knuckle under to God, you’ll burn in Hell. Her religion is one of fear, bigotry, and hate. That’s not a very good technique to use on an audience like this.
You’re missing the point about what a lie is, Princhester.
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary provides this definition (bolding mine):
What the deal with H4E involves is her lemming-like following of Chick’s lies regarding other faiths, even after it’s been shown to her that Chick’s tracts are filled with falsehoods. It doesn’t matter, at the outset, that she believed those lies to be true–they were lies then. Now that it’s been shown to her that Chick has lied, her willful (i.e., intentional) ignorance is, in fact, intentional.
Two things:
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Dr. Wen: you evidently have no mirror in your abode.
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Princhester: Besides what gobear posted above, the other thing that proves H4E a liar is her continual habit of making assertions (which others prove false) and when challenged on those assertions, her response is of the type: “Well, I just don’t have time to discuss this.”
Note also that, in the follow-up questioning to her adoption of the ceremonial/civil distinction, she never managed to articulate a basis for determining which Old Testament prohibitions belonged to which category. So basically, even though she claimed to have found a basis for following some rules and abandoning others, it still apparently came down entirely to picking and choosing based on her own personal preferences: lobster good, homosexuality bad.
Nevertheless, I still don’t see the point of this thread. Yeah, yeah, she’s a Chick fan, and she doesn’t make any bones about it. But unless she’s trolling (which I do not believe to be the case), I don’t see any intentional lies, and her beliefs–as silly as they undoubtedly are–reflect the beliefs of a hell of a lot of Americans. I’d rather just debtate her in the appropriate threads to expose the underlying ignorance (religious and otherwise) of her positions. A smackdown in the Pit serves little but to feed her martyrdom.
Methinks H4E is kooked up with a cult.
Um, gobear, teeny little nitpick: the Torah is the Old Testament Bible for the Jews. The first five books are the Pentatauch (sp?), IIRC.
It’s the martyr thing that gets to me. I think she LIKES it. She gets a thrill out of us “picking on her.”
Finally, something else for His4ever:
Sirach 7:5-6
James 4:11-12
And finally:
Matthew 7:1-6
Guinastasia:
Well, dear, the Wisdom of Jeshua ben Sirach, along with about thirteen other books of the Bible, is not considered part of the Bible by the Protestants – you know, the guys who make a big deal out of the passage about neither adding anything nor removing anything from it, under penalty of God’s wrath.
Princhester:
You know, you have a definite point. What pisses off me, and Monty, and virtually every other Christian on this board (along with effectively all the non-Christians, is not that she is witnessing to what her God has to say – but that she insists that her particular take is what the same God we all claim to follow has to say – and, by implication, that none of the rest of us have any handle on His teachings.
I’m sorry – even if I were firmly convinced that God intends to send gobear to Hell for having looked lustfully on another male, much less acted on it, my job is to love him as my brother, and to try to explain to him that God loves him nonetheless. It’s not to force-feed him a set of commandments as though they constituted the whole of Christian ethics – even though Jesus explicitly said that they weren’t.
And, supposing that her witness somehow worked here, and that every gay person on this board said, in essence, “Gosh, I didn’t know that! I’d better stay totally celibate, in act and in thought, in order not to tick God off,” – the fact of the matter is that, unless His4Ever belongs to some particular branch of fundamentalist thought that I haven’t run into – they’re still going to Hell – because they “haven’t accepted Jesus as their Savior and Lord” – apparently by reciting that formulary with intent.
In short, she has not proclaimed the Good News to them, nor has she shown the love of God or of Christ to them – she’s stuck in the mythos of God the Bad-Ass Deity who will smite every one who doesn’t toady to Him – kind of a WWF god, if you will.
The idea that God might love every single one of you reading this just as much as he loves me or His4Ever, a key point of Christian teaching – because it was a key point of Christ’s teaching – seems to have totally escaped her, insofar as her posts have anything to say about it.
Jersey Diamond and I have differed before on some very critical issues, and I’m certain we’ll differ again – but I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her on proclaiming that key point – and, based on performance to date, His4Ever does not.
(Hint to the latter: That wasn’t a flame; it was a challenge to prove me wrong.)
Sorry about that, you guys, it is just when I read this and I get so mad…and it just seemed to fit with my post.
anya"Cheerful Heathen" marie
Yes, why don’t you do this. We’d all be better for it.
Guinastasia:
Nope, the Torah and the Pentateuch are the same thing: the first five books. The Pentateuch is just a Greek translation of the Torah, and the basis for a lot of early Christian Bibles into Latin. I think today most Christian Bibles are based on the original Hebrew, in an effort to be as close to the source as possible.
The rest of the Jewish Bible is the Tanakh. I believe it’s similar to the Protestant Bible, but arranged differently. Tanakh is an acronym for Torah (first five books), Nevi’im (Prophets, like Isaiah, Nehemiah, etc.), and Ketuvim (Writings; everything else, like Psalms, Esther and Song of Songs). The books go in that order. Obviously, the New Testament is of no religious interest to Jews. As a side note, the only Bible that considers to the Book of Maccabees to be canonical is the Catholic Bible. So Jews don’t consider Hanukkah to have a Biblical basis!
As for His4Ever, I have nothing new to say about her.
Actually the Orthodox Bible also includes the two Books of Maccabees (and Three Maccabees and 4 Maccabees, if I recall correctly), as well as an extra Psalm.
Kirk
Did someone forget Tobit and Judith?
I am constantly amazed at the sheer ignorance on this board.
I am also constantly amazed at the fight. Keep up the good work guys!
His, I too am His. I am ashamed of your behaviour and agast at your consistant lack of backbone. I assertain that folks just like yourself are who Jesus and John consistantly warned of being hypocrates. You seem no better than the Pharasees who demanded obidence.
I’m not as good as others on this board on remembering chapter/verse but, perhaps this will apply.
Jesus teaching of the ending times, and some coming to him claiming to have healed and cast out deamons in Jesus’ name
“Go back into the darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. I know you not.”
In the mean time I beseech you all to pray for His4Ever. It’s the most Christian thing you can do.
Are you sure about that, gobear? I heard that they’re not the same?
Oh well.
Gobear and Monty the examples you give continue to fall into the category of proving that His4ever is a stubborn blockhead with perverse beliefs. They do not prove that she does not believe what she says.
Monty, the second definition you provide from the Merriam-Webster is somewhat ambiguous. But I don’t think it is saying that a “lie” is an inaccurate statement that is believed by the speaker. What it is saying is that a “lie” can be an inaccurate statement about which the speaker is ambivalent (ie may or may not believe). I don’t think there is sufficient space in His4ever’s brain for ambivalence.
Anyhow, I don’t want to get into a definitional argument. Suffice to say that my comments were based on definitions of “lie” from the OED and the Macquarie, which both require an element of intent.
If you think the word “lie” simply means a false statement made by someone who has been given good reason to know it to be false but who nonetheless believes their statement to be true due to wilful ignorance, stupidity or whatever, then fine. I don’t think that is how the term is used, generally. But whatever.
Polycarp I can imagine how His4ever’s bombastic, presumptious style gets up your nose. It would get up mine too, if I was Christian. But it doesn’t make her a liar.
Finally Monty I think you ought to think about this: if you were to relate to me all the key supernatural elements of your religious beliefs, and if you were to press myself and other sceptical atheists to give their frank views, we would have to tell you that we considered some or perhaps all of those key elements to be laughable, wrong, against all rational interpretation of the evidence, or (at the very least) that it is somewhat perverse of you to believe what you do in the absence of better evidence.
But I assume that you would continue to maintain your religious beliefs nonetheless. And I would respect that, and I certainly would not call you a liar for doing so.