Movie Nerd wrote:That's not him saying he is God, but him saying that the "true God" is the good we find within ourselves. It's the God of the Conscience, or the God of right over wrong. Which is different from someone thinking they are God, or thinking that they are more than anyone else.

It certainly is very different, but to this agnostic atheist it doesn't make any sense at all. Why call the conscience God? Why not just call the conscience the conscience?

Can one pray to their conscience? Does the conscience reward or punish the individual? If a person lacks a conscience does God suddenly cease to exist? It must because you're saying God is the conscience so if the conscience ends so must God. What sort of a deity is that?

To me a God must be a supernatural entity or it isn't really a God. A God either exists or does not exist and that existence shouldn't be tied to whether the God is perceived, worshiped or believed to exist.

If a being brought life to Earth billions of years ago and allowed it to evolve that being isn't a God unless it operates outside of the laws of physics. If it abides by the same laws we do it is an alien life form.

Chris OConnor wrote:

Movie Nerd wrote:That's not him saying he is God, but him saying that the "true God" is the good we find within ourselves. It's the God of the Conscience, or the God of right over wrong. Which is different from someone thinking they are God, or thinking that they are more than anyone else.

It certainly is very different, but to this agnostic atheist it doesn't make any sense at all. Why call the conscience God? Why not just call the conscience the conscience?

Can one pray to their conscience? Does the conscience reward or punish the individual? If a person lacks a conscience does God suddenly cease to exist? It must because you're saying God is the conscience so if the conscience ends so must God. What sort of a deity is that?

To me a God must be a supernatural entity or it isn't really a God. A God either exists or does not exist and that existence shouldn't be tied to whether the God is perceived, worshiped or believed to exist.

If a being brought life to Earth billions of years ago and allowed it to evolve that being isn't a God unless it operates outside of the laws of physics. If it abides by the same laws we do it is an alien life form.

This of course brings into question what one defines as God. Einstein and Sagan both refered to the laws of physics as God, though they didn't mean God in the supernatural manner.

When we answer the question of God's existence, by what definition are we asking? Are we asking based on religious tradition already established, or without bias?

Gnostic Bishop wrote:

Movie Nerd wrote:

Gnostic Bishop wrote: Rome did take the O. T. genocidal tyrant and turned him into a softer gentler God for sure but I do not agree that Jesus was all that good to women. If you look at his no divorce policy you will see that it is not only immoral it is also anti-love as it forced people to stay married regardless of how bad the marriage is.

I'm not familiar with any passages attributing Jesus' teachings on women or marriage, but I recall the scripture with the adulteress, where he said, "He who is without sin cast the first stone." That alone seems like a decent attitude towards women, but I would like to see what you're getting at, if you have any scripure verses I can look up.

Matthew 19;3 The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,

5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?

6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?

8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

Nowhere in scriptures that I know of does Jesus or God allow women to choose to divorce.

That is quite unjust as it would force women to stay in un-loving situations.

The above quote shows that men were in the same unjust boat except for adultery and if they did divorce for some other reason they would be branded as adulterers if they did find a loving woman.

Jesus seems to favor let no man put asunder which would be totally unjust as it forbids any in a loveless relationship to find love.

You will note that better than 60% of all Christians have been divorced so it seems that they do not like the no divorce option either.

Regards
DL

Thanks for the references. It helps me to better understand.

Gnostic Bishop wrote: Eloquent perfection.

As a rough speaking Frenchman, I would love to have your tongue and temperament.

You seem to understand the concept I sell quite accurately and to my shame can express it better than I can. Full respect to you on this.

Regards
DL

Thanks mate. It was no big deal; I personally understood what you were saying just fine, and I think many other people would have understood you as well. I think Flann might have nitpicked for whatever reason, but I guess we all stumble over some things so I won't bash him on it too hard.

Here are a few simple questions for you Bishop.
Does evil exist? What is it's origin and what is it?

Gnostic Bishop wrote:Justice usually states that only the punishment of the guilty is acceptable to justice and that it would be unjust to punish the innocent.
God’s corruption of this usual justice is what the bribe or sacrifice of Jesus bought. Injustice.

I've already pointed out that Christ's sacrifice was voluntary,and neither coerced or imposed upon him. He chose to do it.
You are simply distorting Christianity.
I expect you will not attempt to answer these questions about evil either.
You believe Christ's teachings are unjust.O.K.
How do you decide what is morally good and evil and to whom are you accountable?
You say Rome turned the old testament tyrant into a softer gentler God.
So you still believe Atwill's cockamamie story that a Caesar got Josephus to write the gospels,even though Tacitus says there were lots of Christians in Rome before the time Josephus supposedly wrote the fictional gospels?

Flann 5 wrote:Here are a few simple questions for you Bishop.
Does evil exist? What is it's origin and what is it?

Gnostic Bishop wrote:Justice usually states that only the punishment of the guilty is acceptable to justice and that it would be unjust to punish the innocent.
God’s corruption of this usual justice is what the bribe or sacrifice of Jesus bought. Injustice.

I've already pointed out that Christ's sacrifice was voluntary,and neither coerced or imposed upon him. He chose to do it.
You are simply distorting Christianity.
I expect you will not attempt to answer these questions about evil either.
You believe Christ's teachings are unjust.O.K.
How do you decide what is morally good and evil and to whom are you accountable?
You say Rome turned the old testament tyrant into a softer gentler God.
So you still believe Atwill's cockamamie story that a Caesar got Josephus to write the gospels,even though Tacitus says there were lots of Christians in Rome before the time Josephus supposedly wrote the fictional gospels?

Whether Jesus "chose" to do it or not, he was born into the world for the explicit purpose of dying for our sins. If he "chose" not to do it, then he wouldn't be what he was supposed to be. Which makes it not so much a free choice.

Chris OConnor wrote:

Movie Nerd wrote:That's not him saying he is God, but him saying that the "true God" is the good we find within ourselves. It's the God of the Conscience, or the God of right over wrong. Which is different from someone thinking they are God, or thinking that they are more than anyone else.

It certainly is very different, but to this agnostic atheist it doesn't make any sense at all. Why call the conscience God? Why not just call the conscience the conscience?

Can one pray to their conscience? Does the conscience reward or punish the individual? If a person lacks a conscience does God suddenly cease to exist? It must because you're saying God is the conscience so if the conscience ends so must God. What sort of a deity is that?

To me a God must be a supernatural entity or it isn't really a God. A God either exists or does not exist and that existence shouldn't be tied to whether the God is perceived, worshiped or believed to exist.

If a being brought life to Earth billions of years ago and allowed it to evolve that being isn't a God unless it operates outside of the laws of physics. If it abides by the same laws we do it is an alien life form.

Hi Chris.

Movie Nerd already answered your question but I am trying to build a small library of explanations for why Gnostic Christians think as they do. I have the attention span of a gnat and think the longer my post, the less coherent it becomes, but I gave your question a try and hope you can understand what I put down. It would help me quite a bit though to have this critiqued so feel free to be brutal. My French does not produce the best English prose and deserves chastisement.

--------------

Why I continue using the word God.

The word God is described as an ideal and the epitome of all attributes. Place no one above me for anything is our basic first commandment.

Gnostic Christianity also has a historic connection to Jewish Kabbala and the Old Testament Divine Council, where a consolidation of Gods is subordinate to a higher elected God. This would make God a human in the oldest Jewish view.

Further, it was the custom of Rome that the emperors would name themselves Gods and their sons, sons of God. So the basic definition before all the Omni (s) were added on was that God meant a powerful man. Most today, from a Gnostic Christian point of view, are forgetting that, --- as above so below, --- demands that we match the divine hierarchy of heaven with our own on earth. On earth as it is in heaven.

These traditions are why our Gnostic Christian basic belief that the only God fit to rule mankind is a glorified man.

It is mankind who elected of created our first Gods and God and our present notions of what our creator God is are all man made and thus wrong. That God, if he ever existed is a mystery and should remain a myth.

Man evolved to be God and the only God we can know is a man. The only God you can know is within you.

The word and office of God, to a Gnostic Christian, means a glorified and exalted human being whose excellence has been decided upon by the elect.

That is the ultimate message of Revelation when all the foolish supernatural aspects are taken out of it.

The Christian distortion of the Jewish God has thus made it impossible for the elect to find their Gods here on earth and have moved our real God from earth to an inaccessible place in heaven.

Jesus urged us to seek God and instead of doing so and glorifying that person, Christianity put him in a book and glorifies it instead of seeking our real Gods and God.

The Jews have an old tradition of striving both for and against God. But Christianity is what has actually killed God and made him or her inaccessible to mankind.

This is just one of the reasons why Gnostic Christianity was decimated the moment Constantine bought the then named Orthodox Catholic Church.

The unruly child of Gnostic Christianity murdered their free thinking side and locked their thinking into literal belief of the God Rome invented for them. Rome became God and the world lost our true and elected God.

Regards
DL

Movie Nerd wrote:[

I'm not familiar with any passages attributing Jesus' teachings on women or marriage, but I recall the scripture with the adulteress, where he said, "He who is without sin cast the first stone." That alone seems like a decent attitude towards women, but I would like to see what you're getting at, if you have any scripure verses I can look up.

Matthew 19;3 The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,

5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?

6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?

8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

Nowhere in scriptures that I know of does Jesus or God allow women to choose to divorce.

That is quite unjust as it would force women to stay in un-loving situations.

The above quote shows that men were in the same unjust boat except for adultery and if they did divorce for some other reason they would be branded as adulterers if they did find a loving woman.

Jesus seems to favor let no man put asunder which would be totally unjust as it forbids any in a loveless relationship to find love.

You will note that better than 60% of all Christians have been divorced so it seems that they do not like the no divorce option either.

Regards
DL[/quote]

Thanks for the references. It helps me to better understand.[/quote]

My pleasure.

Can I push you a bit and ask what you think of the morals of how divorce is handled by Christianity and their Jesus or God?

I think that, like hell, they invented their divorce policy to create guilt in the hearts of their adherents and lock them even deeper to the need for a hierarchical church.

IOW, they saw more money in it than what a more liberal policy would have produced.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF6I5VSZVqc

Regards
DL

Movie Nerd wrote:

Gnostic Bishop wrote: Eloquent perfection.

As a rough speaking Frenchman, I would love to have your tongue and temperament.

You seem to understand the concept I sell quite accurately and to my shame can express it better than I can. Full respect to you on this.

Regards
DL

Thanks mate. It was no big deal; I personally understood what you were saying just fine, and I think many other people would have understood you as well. I think Flann might have nitpicked for whatever reason, but I guess we all stumble over some things so I won't bash him on it too hard.

Thanks. I trust your judgement.

I think I might know a small bit of the psychology of why he nit pick.

This author shows it and other debate anomalies that you are likely aware of but let me put it here in case Flann 5 wants to learn why he likely does what he does.

Regards
DL

Movie Nerd wrote:Whether Jesus "chose" to do it or not, he was born into the world for the explicit purpose of dying for our sins. If he "chose" not to do it, then he wouldn't be what he was supposed to be. Which makes it not so much a free choice.

No, I don't think so Nerd.
Had he chosen not to do it he would not have come into the world in the first place. The fact that he did does not show that he had no choice in the matter.
Here's how Paul puts it. "Christ Jesus who being in the form of God,did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,but made himself of no reputation,taking the form of a bondservant,and coming in the likeness of men.
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death,even the death of the cross." Phil. 2;5-8.
In Christian theology Christ is God co-equal with the Father and Holy Spirit. Our sins are offenses against God and it is God himself in the incarnate Christ who voluntarily takes the just judgement for sins.
This is an act of grace and mercy by God,and salvation is freely offered to all on this basis.
Some feign crocodile tears at the supposed injustice done to Christ while finding fault with him and his teachings in every way they think they can.
So Bishop complains about the duration of punishment for sins whilst rejecting the gracious offer of forgiveness of sins on the just basis of atonement.How can you complain about the punishment of your sins at all, if you reject what God has done to provide a just basis for and free offer of forgiveness?
If you choose justice outside of atonement then that is what you will get.