After breaking 1000 comments on the previous thread, I felt it was a good time to start another.
As a reminder, here are some of the most recent outstanding questions for Kathy:
From Laurie:
You said you answered my questions, and wish more questions were asked. Here are some questions that were not addressed.
Matt 23:8 read first
Philemon 1:10
1 Corinthians 4:14-17
1 Corinthians 12:27
2 Timothy 1:11
1 Timothy 2:7
Ephesians 4:11,12Why is it that messiah says not to be called rabbi or father, but Paul it’s not obedient to this command?
Matt 10:7,8
1 Timothy 5:17,18
1 Corinthians 9:11,12Messiah says here that he had given freely, go and freely give. Again, Paul is disobedient.
Matt 18:15
Galatians 2:11-14
Messiah said that if you have a problem with your brother, you should deal with it privately. Here Paul lashes out at Peter “before them all”.
Matt 9:10-12
2 Thessalonians 3:6,7
Yahusha said in the passage above that he came to call the sinner to repentance, not the righteous. Why would Paul want to separate from those that actually need him?
From William:
the “evidences” you listed arent real evidences. And since you refuse to look at things that are counter to your current beliefs, how can you honestly speak to me about evidences?
here’s all I’ve seen you provide:
1) martyrs, even though every religion and many non-religions have them.
2) our very existence – which no one knows how that started, but even if you must land on god(s), you must go back to that book of claims to get to jesus.
3) there were miracles, but as it turns out, those dont happen today, and end up being more claims by the same men who claim they speak for god.
4) the fulfilled prophecies we’ve discussed weren’t really prophecies at all, or had to be viewed so figuratively that it’s difficult to show anything precise about them other than location (maybe) in order to claim they’re actually fulfilled.
5) 40 authors taking 1500 years to write the bible. But there’s nothing miraculous about men writing books, editing books, and being inspired to write a book or letter after reading an older book.
In addition to these, I’d like to ask something of both Kathy and Laurie (Matt or Hayden or portal001 (Ryan) can chime in as well):
The Bible defines God as being all-loving, all-merciful, fair, just, etc. It can also be read as promising an eternity in Hell for those who don’t serve him correctly. As a believer, how do you square those two statements?
Finding Truth 
Nate wrote:
Sure, I’ll roll with this.
Say that said soldier was guilty of treason, fratricide or something like that yes I could. Personally I’m a fan of rules and consequences. I also view harsher punishment in laws as a detriment to certain crime.
Now this act of applying harsh punishment doesn’t negate merciful actions that have happened in the past or prevent me from future merciful actions.
Again I think of God in much the same way.
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Cool, so let’s take it just a little further.
Let’s say this person was actually your son. And yes, he killed someone. Obviously, you’d probably think he deserved consequences for that. Should the consequences be something along the lines of being tortured to death? Kept alive, but only so he could experience as much agony as possible?
Being fair, merciful, and righteous, do you see yourself implementing these kinds of consequences?
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Ahhhh, would I crucify my son. No. But i’m not God, and the, again ‘church’ answer to that you know. That God loves us enough to do that to his son to give us a way of salvation. Which begs the question, well then just how much does he love HIS son
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I’m not necessarily talking about Jesus. If God created everyone and loves us all enough to send his only son, I can only assume his love for us is much like a father’s. In fact, it’s often portrayed that way in the Bible.
Crucifixion is one thing — at least it’s temporary. Hell is something quite different. It says that the penalty for a finite lifetime of sins (most of which are not heinous) is an infinite existence of horrible torture.
As appalling as it sounds, that’s actually far worse than anything Hitler could have done, yet it’s something that will be inflicted by a being who’s described as perfectly loving, infinitely gracious, and completely good.
If those descriptions are accurate, could such a being send anyone to Hell? Especially for something as innocuous as simply not believing he exists?
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Doesn’t that action negate the terms used to describe him?
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The problem of hell is a tough one, no doubt. Especially for the folks that have never heard of Christ and salvation, what to do with them? Doesn’t seem ‘fair’.
Fair, is often a subjective thing, what is fair to one might not be to another. Words like just, often get thrown around when discussing why God must send folks to hell. Not sure if that is better or not.
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Even for those who have heard of Christ, it still isn’t fair.
Now that I’ve been on the non-belief side of the aisle, I see that people who don’t believe aren’t doing it out of rebellion. They simply aren’t convinced. I believe in the Christian god as much as I believe in werewolves. That doesn’t make me a bad person — it just means I’m not convinced. And considering there’s no tangible evidence for God’s existence, is it really “just” to torture people endlessly for a simple and honest mistake? You’d think effort would count for something…
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I agree with you on the motives for most folk’s non belief. I haven’t got to your writings on hell yet, IIRC there are a few bookmarked on here somewhere. I know its now been years since you deconverted but its taken me a while to get comfortable enough to really go through your writings and study over them.
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Yeah, no problem. I have the some of the most important ones linked on my About page.
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“Too bad it seems I’m the only one actually answering the direct questions he asked.”
I have answered Kathy’s question plenty of times, and anyone else who has cared to ask. I can not force someone to see it my way, or make them agree, but when asked my thoughts, I have answered.
“Nope, she keeps avoiding my direct questions.
She hasn’t answered why Jesus’ sacrifice isn’t enough to pay for our sins.”
I didn’t say Yahusha’s sacrifice wasn’t good enough. Please read my posts again.
“She hasn’t answered any of my questions.. she’s only given me information about Jewish practices…and that’s not answering my questions. She says that Jesus’ sacrifice was symbolism for the sacrificial lamb. This makes no sense.”
I did not say Yahusha’s sacrifice was symbolism for the lamb, I said the lamb was symbolic of Yahusha.
I believe I posted things to discuss first, but you won’t answer anything I’ve said until you get an answer that you like. Everyone in your entire Christian church believes that messiah was the lamb of God. Go argue with them about it, cause I am done. You are avoiding the questions at hand.
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Nate,
” I believe in the Christian god as much as I believe in werewolves. That doesn’t make me a bad person — it just means I’m not convinced. And considering there’s no tangible evidence for God’s existence, is it really “just” to torture people endlessly for a simple and honest mistake? You’d think effort would count for something…”
Nate, how do you know that WE are not tangible evidence? We are. Existence IS tangible evidence.. there is no better explanation.
You say you’ve made an effort.. but the question is.. how OBJECTIVE were you when you
made that effort? I’d be less cynical about your personal views / beliefs if I didn’t know about your lack of objectivity. But I have no doubt that this is an issue with you. You still haven’t acknowledged that Christianity has the most compelling evidence to support it’s claimed Truth.
And you haven’t stated which religion does have more compelling evidence if it’s not Christianity. That you failed this proves your lack of honest objectivity.
You are right.. people aren’t “bad” for questioning God’s existence.. it’s a right God has given us
when He gave us free will. But this isn’t what you are doing.. you say you aren’t “convinced”, yet you are ACTIVELY trying to lead people away from God. You have no proof or even a reasonable argument for the God of the Bible not being real. You have no better answers/ explanations if it isn’t God who is our Creator. You can’t even come up with a simple supposition of how existence came to be. That really SHOULD tell the unbeliever SOMETHING. It really should cause people to think really hard about God’s existence since the “argument” against Him is always based on science.. yet, that VERY science argues AGAINST the logic of our existence. Existence and science are not compatible! Yet, we are here.
So, while you can’t see how God could punish you for making an “effort”.. God might see it the way I just explained it.. you are failing to apply honesty and objectivity to your search for the truth.. you are being dishonest.. to yourself and to God. And, oh look.. dishonesty just happens to be a sin… and oh look again… see how destructive, TO US, those sins are that God commands us not to do?
You put yourself in the position your are in Nate.. because you refuse to be honest. It’s not God’s fault.. our very existence is the most compelling evidence of all. Yet, you make it even worse..by trying to blame God because He hasn’t given you the “empirical” evidence that YOU have demanded.. as if it’s you who gets to set the terms of your salvation.
It’s an insane way of thinking.
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Kathy, I agree with what Laurie has said. She did answer your question about the point of Jesus’ sacrifice — like you, she believes it was to atone for sins. But she does not believe the Mosaic law was repealed afterward.
If you want to understand more about that, you should consider researching the passages she listed and thinking through their implications. They’ll likely make you think of further questions, and you can pose them to her one or two at a time. That’s the next logical step if you want to continue your conversation with her.
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Kathy, if I don’t believe God is real, then I’m not really “leading people away from him.”
Existence is just existence. I could say that existence is evidence of Zeus, but what does that prove? Making up an answer gets no one closer to whether or not the answer has any real value. Ultimately, no one knows what came before or caused the Big Bang, so it doesn’t count as evidence for anything other than our existence.
It’s just like the broken window example. If we spotted a broken window and you said, “look, there must have been a robbery!” And I said “huh, I wonder what broke that window?” You aren’t suddenly right just because I didn’t offer a guess. We could just as easily see someone stick their head out the window with a baseball in their hand and call out “Billy, look what you did!”
But this is a merry-go-round we’ve ridden a number of times now. Even if I conceded your point on existence as evidence for God, you still have to show which god it is. So why don’t you just get to that point, so we can actually discuss something specific?
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Whoa, now we are at Kathy 5.
But something piqued my interest when I see that the discussion has now moved to the authenticity/authority of Paul as a divine speaker.
Just wanna ask about 1 Cor 7:25. Paul clearly says that he is talking about his own opinions and not God’s instructions. My questions hence would be do we treat all the other Pauline epistles as “God inspired” or do you guys think that there are other passages in which Paul doing the same – e.g. expressing his own opinions/desires rather just that he is not explicitly saying that it is divinely inspired?
Case in point the Book of Philemon – wouldn’t this be a prime suspect of Paul expressing his own personal opinions on things rather than being inspired by God to write to Philemon? Considering that this is a personal letter to Philemon I don’t think he would have needed to write “Dear Philemon, it is Paul writing to you personally, not God”. If this is indeed true, what does it tell us about the selection criteria of the early church about which books to be part of the Canon? Are there any other parts of Paul letters that are not divinely inspired but are erroneously put into the Canon due to over eager Pauline followers?
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omg my grammar…
Apologies the above sentence should have meant: e.g. expressing his own opinions/desires just that he is not explicitly saying that it is not divinely inspired?
Hope I am making myself clearer and not making it worse haha.
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“…our very existence is the most compelling evidence of all” – as I’ve stated multiple times, Kathy – if our existence is proof of a creator-god, then his/her/its existence is evidence that he/she/it had a creator.
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You know, Powell, that’s an excellent point. I had never thought about that in regard to Philemon before…
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I’ll give a crack at answering this question soon.
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Incidentally, this christian friend of mine once used this point to argue and told me if I truly understood what 1 Cor 7:25 means I would have a whole new understanding to the meaning of “divinely inspired” and about inerrancy/ unfalsifiability *sp of the bible.
Unfortunately he did not teach me the true meaning despite 12 hours conversation as he say that I must believe first then I would see. And since I do not believe there is no need for him to show me this truth.
What do you guys think? Would love to hear your comments and also would be nice to see how Kathy reconcile with this issue.
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Laurie,
“I didn’t say Yahusha’s sacrifice wasn’t good enough. Please read my posts again.”
The practices you adhere to DO imply that Jesus’ sacrifice isn’t enough. I’m waiting for you to explain how I could be wrong but you refuse to. The “answers” you give don’t answer my questions.. but it’s certainly convenient to claim that you “have” answered and that the problem is all on me.
Why are sacrifices still necessary after Jesus’ sacrifice? You and Nate claim it’s symbolic. So, that means God wants animals killed for symbolic reasons? No more blood needs to be shed. I can understand having feasts for symbolic reasons.. but not sacrifices.
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Hi Nate,
If we were to be even more critical, we can throw the same suspicion at all the letters such as Titus and Timothy. It gets even more interesting as 2 Timothy 3:16 Paul says that “All scripture is God-breathed”.
But it is highly unlikely that when Paul wrote 2 Timothy he regarded 2 Timothy as scripture. To him is simply a letter and shouldn’t have attained “scripture” status unlike today. Hence isn’t it wrong to use this verse and claim that all of Paul’s writing is divinely inspired?
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Kathy, even in the OT, the sacrifices were symbolic. So what’s the difference?
You seem to struggle with seeing the difference between questions that aren’t answered and questions that aren’t answered the way you want them to be. Laurie doesn’t believe that her position diminishes the importance of Jesus’ sacrifice. If you do, then you need to demonstrate that better — use actual passages — don’t just make the statement without support.
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@powell
to go even one step further, most scholars today don’t even think Paul wrote 2 Timothy… (or 1 Timothy)
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Before I do though, here are some thoughts I have to add to the discussion. Feeling kind of lucid at the moment.
May we all get as close to understanding reality as we can, as it stands, as it is.
And if we have faith, then to understand What and.or Who we have faith in.
And what I mean by this also includes what the scriptures actually say. Rather than what we want them (or don’t want them) to say. This requires me to read, and not just take what other people say.
For the closer we are to understanding reality as it is, the more effective we can be in practising what benefits ourselves and others. To also consider what is written as it is, the less misinformed we will be.
None of us are perfect, we are all prone to error. All of us can be vulnerable to emotional misdirection and misinformation. Having a more accurate understanding of reality changes peoples lives. Well, it has changed mine at least.
Although many on here have different beliefs, and drawn different conclusions, I admire anyone who strives to admit error, to be honest with themselves and to seek accuracy. I want to be more like that in my life. As a person who has faith, I think this is a decent thing to strive for, whether someone has faith or not.
Discussions like these encourage me to learn more. Even if I disagree with what someone else has asserted, they have prompted me to think. Since discussions and threads develop and flow in many different ways, who knows where this one will go?
Now I better do some washing 🙂
Hope everyone has a productive day/night.
Nate, I’ll give you some thoughts on those questions soon.
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“…the problem is all on me” – it has been so far —
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