I know a few religious folks who would fully develop the irony in your statement.
I was about to be snarky about you not bringing up the actual quotes yourself to prove it - especially when you castigate those who fail to quote it yourself - but I realised i’d be amiss if I didn’t do so myself. So;
It seems accurate to me to say that Jesus did not tell the Centurion to leave the army. You could make a point that Jesus wasn’t actually with the Centurion to tell him, but it is a correct point.
I don’t really want to quote the entirety of Acts 10, but I think it’s worth pointing out that Cornelius as well as a “devout soldier”, so it would not appear that the writer feels any problem with being both in the military and properly devout. In fact Peter brings up the point (and it is also talked about in Acts 11) that Jews and Gentiles should not technically associate with Gentiles, which he’s electing (on behalf of God) to ignore; since he brings up one problem with their meeting, it’s reasonable in my mind to suggest he would have brought up others if he saw them.
John does seem to say what davidw claims he does; and while this is in the context of giving general orders to which that’s merely an addition for the soldiers, he does not tell them to leave the military at any point.
So I would say in fact that you are incorrect; davidw quotes the Bible correctly. His conclusions may be wrong, if you have other quotes where military service is looked down upon, but he does not “put words in the bible that it simply does not say”, egregiously or otherwise. His quotes, to my eyes, appear accurate.
Lobohan, please help me to understand what you’re saying here. No Christian has ever believed that God tortures otherwise good people who don’t kneel down and submit to Him? Hence your second sentenced obviously has nothing to do with Christianity, which is the topic of this thread. What, then, is it referring to? Please be as specific as possible.
Millions of Christians have believed exactly that; probably the majority throughout history. Millions still do believe that. “Everyone who doesn’t believe burns forever” has been a very popular belief for Christians.
Plenty have done the torturing themselves, for that matter.
The best-known argument comes from St. Thomas Aquinas in The Summa Theologica:
In response to the quote from 10 Matthew, St. Thomas says:
In response to Matthew 5, St. Thomas says:
Are you able to provide any evidence to support this statement? I searched on google for the words “Everyone who doesn’t believe burns forever” and found no hits. Do you have a reason for why none of the Christians who supposedly believe this have ever posted it on the internet?
Huh? Kneeling down and submitting is my fiery prose for becoming a Christian. Because they kneel in church… well the Catholics anyway. And getting tortured forever is going to hell… is what happens when you don’t do the kneeling part.
10 don’t kneel
20 goto 30
30 hell
Get it? You may say that god doesn’t throw otherwise good people in hell, but an awful lot of Christians disagree. John says:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
So don’t believeth and don’t getith the everlastingith life. Is hell just for sinners? Is denying Christ a sin? I’m not understanding what you aren’t understanding.
Is what I said clear enough now?
:rolleyes: What do you think that the concept that unbelievers go to Hell means ? Are you actually claiming that every single non-Christian is evil and deserves to burn ? And who do you think is buying those millions of copies of the Christian religio-sadist Left behind books ? Muslims ? And then there’s the Inquisition - oh, let me guess, they don’t count either.
Some do; some don’t. The requirements for calling yourself a Christian are surprisingly lax.
Emphasis mine. This isn’t a dig, but you need to remove the quotes. I got 2.4 million hits.
You want me to find a christian that believes that non believers burn forever?
http://www.westborobaptistchurch.com/
Okay, what now?
But Romans 13 claims that there is no authority except that which God has established. Either the writer of Romans is claiming that, overall, there is no authority ever that is not the result of God’s choosing, in which case we equally should not war against an external authority as we should not war against our own; or that the current authorities, or specific authorities, are established by God, meaning that others are not and that therefore their permission is not necessary. Aquinas later mentions the existence of "legitimate authority’; he himself seemingly agrees to the idea that there are illegitimate authorities, and presumably we can take from that that his first situation is not always necessary.
Yet later on in his response to 10 Matthew, he across the board suggests that those that "take the sword’ are those who do so without the permission of a legitimate authority, suggesting on the other hand that those who do so are “punished eternally” (which as an aside seems a somewhat interesting point to have quoted, apparently believing as you do that no Christians believe non-believers will be so punished; I can only assume you don’t consider T.A. a Christian). So I suppose I have to ask you a question. Either there are no illegitimate authorities - in which case those that take up the sword on either side on their authorities’ behalf are equally in accord with God’s wishes, and Aquinas’ first rule is unnecessary; or there are illegitimate authorities, in which case though Aquinas’ first rule may be followed it is no guarantee of justness. IOW, that rule is either not always right or superfluous, as I understand it. Have I misunderstood, and if I have where?
No.
You claimed that Christians believe that God tortures people. Now suddenly you’re changing the subject to Hell. Hell is the domain of Satan, the archenemy of God. God has done everything possible to avoid having people go to Hell. To blame God for people being tortured in Hell is like blaming Martin Luther King for KKK lynchings.
It looks like you’re commting a classic example of the logical fallacy known as converse error. A=>B is not the same as Not A=>Not B. “I eat carrots” is not the same as “I do not eat what is not a carrot.”
It is abundantly clear, just not correct or logical.
Is God, theoretically, capable of destroying Hell or Satan? Is this something that is within his power? I tend to ask because generally when one has an archenemy, it implies there’s a battle going on there. Is Satan’s power a match for God’s?
If MLK could, causing no problems to himself, simply will the KKK out of existence, yet elects not to, I would feel eminently comfortable in allowing him to share that blame. The story of the Good Samaritan teaches that we should go out of our way to help people even if it should cause us problems; how much more wrong of us is it not to help if it would cause us no problems at all?
Well, I’d love to answer this, but won’t be able to for a day or 2. At any rate, I think you have this mistaken, but in any event, I’d like to discuss it. Give me a day or so and I’ll continue the discussion.
As I understand it, Saint Thomas believed that government was established on Earth in accordance with God’s will, because human existence with government is better than human existence without it. (However this was only true because of the sinful nature of the human race. After sin is cleansed away and God’s Kingdom is established, there is no more government of one human being by another.) Hence all of the governments of the nations are “legitimate”, as long as they don’t make life worse than it would be under anarchy.
However, since the governments are composed of human beings and human beings are not perfect, governments are not perfect. Hence it is sometimes permissible and necessary to have a war, in order to protect people against the abuses of a bad government. The bottom line is that if every person were allowed to start a war at any time, then the result would be functional anarchy. Hence the necessity of authority and, sometimes, warfare.
(I readily admit that I’ve only read an abridged version of the works of Saint Thomas, and it will probably remain that way, given that The Summa Theologica is six thousand pages long.)
If God had actually done everything possible to avoid having people go to Hell, then nobody would go there. This is God we’re talking about here. He can forgive sins effortlessly. (Jesus makes a regular habit of it.) That God chooses not to forgive some people is his choice, and that he makes that choice proves that all the people he sends to hell, he wants to be there.
Also, it’s clear from the bible that the satan character is utterly incapable of resisting God’s or Jesus’s will for even a second. One “Get the behind me” and he’s gone. Not much of an adversary. (An excellent scapegoat, though.)
In short, God made hell and allows satan to rule there and torture there, much the same way your average james bond villian keeps a pool full of pirhanas. Of course, when the bond villian lets his victims fall into the pool, we don’t blame the fish.
You’re overlooking the word “that” in the original quote, which is short for “so that”. As in, “I open the door so that I can go outside.” This strongly implies that if you didn’t open the door, you couldn’t go outside. The only weakness to the implication is that there might be alternative ways to go outside. Are there alternative ways to get everlasting life besides believing in Jesus? No? Then the logic was fine as originally given.
Wrong and wrong.
Now, this doesn’t mean that the flavor of christianity you believe in includes a God who damns people to the torture of hell; I don’t know what you believe. But the vast majority of christains do believe in Hell, whether or not you do.
When I fought in the first Persian Gulf War, I prayed like a mother at night, but when daylight hit and we had to round 'em up and head on out, I put my Christianity aside, so to speak (I’m not very devout anyway, raised Catholic by Italians, fell away, you get the idea).
You have to. You simply cannot be troubled by moral and spiritual conflicts on a battlefield or you will get yourself or your comrades-in-arms into potential lethal danger. That’s what the priest back at the base camp is for, after-the-fact consolation and blessings.
There is no way around the fact that killing someone you do not know is incongruous with the teachings of Jesus Christ. You basically have to console yourself with the fact that you have sinned and through repentance can expect forgiveness.
At least, that’s what this non-practicing Christian believes. At least, I hope so.
Fair dos. 
Hey, the sum total of what i’ve read of it is the parts you’ve quoted, so if you could point me over to an abridged version on the net i’d be quite obliged.
Anyway, I would say your ideas seem reasonable to me (in that if I thought what you did, I think i’d agree with you), but i’m not so sure that’s an accurate conclusion from what Aquinas has written. He doesn’t mention cases of illegitmate authority; and indeed he doesn’t mention cases of legitimate inauthority, either, which leads me to the conclusion that he thought even uprising against an illegitimate authority is still unjust, as the common people are taking up the sword themselves, when that is “not the business of a private individual”. If there’s some quotes afterwards along the lines of “In such-and-such cases, it is the purview of the people to take up arms of their own initiative”, fair enough, but I don’t see it in what you’ve posted so far. And that’s laying aside the point that that would mean Aquinas accepts his rule has exceptions which he does not mention, leading to the points both that sometimes that particular rule is unrequired, and that since he puts it on equal merit to his others (indeed, it’s his** first** point), we can’t be sure he doesn’t see exceptions in his other two rules which he doesn’t point out either.
No it’s like if MLK created the KKK, set up the south as a hotbed for racism, and specifically painted people black.
Please, you’re spouting rubbish.
Stupid comment. If you honestly are suggesting that the devil is to blame when god set up the system, gave satan his power, created hell and concocted the ignorant rules that send people who disagree with Him to get tortured forever, it’s laughable. Your argument is drivel. You’re just like a beaten spouse, pathetically making up excuses for the monster she sleeps with.
No, I’m really not.
If you want to live with a bunch of fairy stories as your moral compass, more power to you, just don’t try to pretend that you’re actually *thinking *about this stuff.
Can you explain how it is like that, with specifics?
That’s an interesting comment, but not relevant, since I am suggesting no such thing. (Honestly or otherwise.) I am suggesting the mainstream Christian doctrine, which has no relationship to what you described in this sentence. If you’d like to address what I’m saying, rather than making up fictional arguments and then countering them, I’d be interested in hearing what you have to say.
I like debates bu dislike insults. If you offer another post devoted to insults, I’ll assume that you have nothing but insults to offer, and will treat that as your admission that you were wrong and I was right.
If I ever start doing so in the future, I’ll keep that in find.
I am actually thinking, hence there’s no need to pretend.
Good day.