You know, I was trying to treat your inquiry as non-troll until now. You’ve rewritten my statement. I clearly stated that you don’t take the premise of the Christian God seriously. If you can’t take the premise of a debate seriously, then what is the purpose of the debate? I guess it’s just a rant. Very well then. As long as it’s clear that you’re ranting, not debating.
I would certainly be impressed! But it comes from a nearly 2000-year-old document, most likely not written by eye-witnesses. Give me something more than hearsay.
“Well, the disciples believed”. Hell, so would I if I saw them! I’d even go so far as to say everyone on earth would believe if they saw a man do those things today (properly tested, of course).
But, no, we’re asked to be impressed that these things might’ve happened 2000 years ago. An extremely unreliable way for an omniscient God to get this all-important message across.
Even Thomas asked for tangible proof after it was all said and done… and he apparently was an eye-witness to all his earlier miracles.
I wish I could say that I was optimistic that he’ll get around to answering them. But from my other experiences with Lolo he tends to write things that he might not necessarily believe just to piss of Christians. I think he is being deliberately obtuse right now, just to get a rise out of folks. Doing a good job, too.
The only reason I keep coming back is that they are, unfortunately, pretty amusing in a perverse masochistic sort of way.
It seems that we are unable to “impress” you Lolo. Sorry. It also seems that from the time that you opened this thread you did not want your mind to change, just to open a thread. I have not seen any valid questions besides “Impress me, I’m still not impressed”. I’m impressed by Buddah, I’m not Buddhist, but I’m impressed by him because there are a lot of people that follow his teachings, just like there are a lot of people that follow Jesus’ teachings. Thats fine if it doesn’t impress you, but then tell us all what does.
Also, you have yet to answer valid questions asking for cites and specifics. Do you actually want to know more about Jesus and his teachings and/or why so many people believe what was written about him is true, or do you just want to see how many replies you can get?
Lolo says he ain’t impressed, but this was radical. It is STILL a radical sentiment. I bet we could start a seriously intense Great Debate right here on this message board about whether or not an encoded set of behavioral restrictions (such as our current body of law) should or should not receive more of our respect as the definition of “morality” than the abstract sense of “what is good” that that body of law attempts to delineate and describe.
There is room to ask, here, if judges and juries ought to look beyond “yes the defendant did” or “no the defendant didn’t” do something that was prohibited by the law, and instead ask about whether it was good or evil in that particular case. There is room to ask whether or not Jesus of Nazareth intended that we suspend rigid adherence to the letter of the law (any law, by logical derivation, including our secular systems of today) and instead try to interpret the underlying intentions that went into the writing of the law, even as jury members and as citizens considering the advisability of a given act.
The Sermon on the Plains / Mount stuff is inherently radical too. Is institutionalized punishment wrong? (Could we omit the enforcement of law and exist as a societ?) And how about the implementation of unquantified and unlimited sharing? (Is there any meaning or use for currency or an economic system as we know it if we are to share all resources and refrain from keeping track of debts altogether?) Was Jesus of Nazareth an anarchist? Can there exist a system of hierarchical authority in the absence of punishment for law violators and in the absence of control and distribution of resources by those in charge?
And let us not omit a consideration of strategy. Did Jesus of Nazareth perhaps conspire in creating a situation in which the fundies had to consider doing him in as a law violator or else tacitly acknowledge the truth of what he was saying about the spirit versus the letter of the law? Did he bet his life on the notion that they couldn’t to it to him, only to die because they found a way of doing him in indirectly?
Usually when one is unimpressed by something, one doesn’t dwell on the thing with which one is unimpressed. Spending so much time defending how unimpressed one is by something seems a little contradictory, or at least an attempt to convince yourself that you are, in fact, unimpressed.
Personally, though I’m not a believer and I don’t buy all that miracle crap, I’m very impressed with Jesus. His fan club irritates me sometimes, but I think he was cool. Taken in context, what he said made sense. Of course he tended to speak in parables, which his friends took literally. The apostles were probably decent folks, but not necessarily the cream of the intellectual crop.
Taking the Christian God seriously? You are simply pissed b/c I am unimpressed by Jesus Cristo, and that’s all.
What exactly is the premise of the Christian God?
If it’s something I missed please let me know. If you’re going to say it’s a loving God, save it. I’ve got plenty of bible quotes to refute that one.
Seriously, emarkp, I have no idea what you’re talking about when you suggest I’m not taking your invisible supernatural inconceiveable indefinable God seriously.