So today marks 8 years that I’ve been doing this blog. That’s a pretty big milestone! I had two posts on November 14, 2006, and I thought it would be fun to repost them here (along with a little commentary).
Here’s the first:
Wish me luck… 🙂
So that was innocuous enough. Now here’s post number 2:
I think 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 best explains the way in which Christ’s gospel was/is a mystery. As vs 18 says:
18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
We can see from this passage that God’s plan of salvation makes no sense to those who refuse to believe it, but to those of us who accept it, it’s brilliant! Verse 21 goes on to say:
21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
See, because the world is so “wise,” it views the concept of God as foolishness. They have been blinded by their own pretensions. For the Jews and Greeks of the day, it wasn’t that they didn’t believe in the supernatural; it wasn’t that they didn’t believe in deities. Their problem was that they thought they already knew what God would do. The Jews already had a fixed idea of what the Messiah would be, so when Christ appeared and didn’t lead them to victory against the Romans, they refused to accept him. The Greeks didn’t accept Christ because they couldn’t conceive of a god allowing himself to be put to death by his own creation. And because they already had things “figured out,” they missed their chance.
Today, people do the same thing. They would rather put faith in scientific theories that have not been proven. They would rather believe that all of the order we see in our universe (the fragile food chain, vast differences throughout the animal and plant kingdoms, the very specific orbits of planets, etc) was created through a giant explosion (something that, in all practical applications, has only been shown to destroy, not create). Have they been blinded by their own “wisdom?”
Too often, even those who profess to be religious only listen to their own ideas about what God wants. Many times they view the Bible as a collection of stories or suggestions, and not the “wisdom of God that leads to salvation” that 1 Corinthians purports it to be. How is that different from what the Jews and Greeks were condemned for?
Throughout the Bible, passages talk about truth and understanding. I firmly believe that God gave us understanding and intellect for a reason. We are supposed to be able to understand God’s message for us. It’s not supposed to be “mysterious” any longer. It’s not supposed to be some “better felt than told” experience. No, God’s word is supposed to be powerful and undeniable. It’s supposed to move us and touch us in a way that nothing else can. But for it to do that, we have to read it, study it, know it.
It’s a little painful to read through that. I cringe when I read how badly I understood things about evolution and the Big Bang back then, or when I alluded to non-Christians as just being those who “refuse to believe it”. It’s kind of funny, but I was guilty of the same thing I was accusing others of. I thought I had the answers, but I had never taken time to really examine any other point of view.
The one decent thing from the post that serves as a bit of foreshadowing about where I would eventually wind up is the last paragraph. You can see that while I was firmly ensnared in Christianity, I believed that it was not supposed to be utterly mysterious. It was supposed to be consistent and “undeniable.” It took a while, but I finally realized that Christianity just didn’t deliver in that regard.
Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little jaunt down memory lane. Someone suggested to me recently that I should think about doing this kind of review with more of my old posts. I’ve been considering it… Thoughts?
Finding Truth 
And the dance goes on, jiggity-jig —
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Kathy, when I wrote:
I have mad respect for your vigour. Why do you believe?
I wasn’t taking a jab at you or making light of you. I think my question was a bit blunt though, sorry if it came off that way.
Asking why someone believes is a pretty broad question, and your conversations here have probably answered this.
And by “vigour” I meant that I respect that you stand up for your convictions in believing in Jesus.
Personally, one reason I’m open to God is because I still feel in my heart that we are created with direction. And I do find it strange that humanity are the only animals that have exponentially built, designed and organised, as if we were made in the image of someone else,
No other animal seems to congregate and ask these questions, let alone on a online forum.
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“You’ve completely lost sight of your place Nate.. God doesn’t “owe” you ANY proof.” – kathy
how do you know the authors of the bible were telling the truth when they claimed to speak for god?
that’s the question after you boil it all down, kathy.
god may not owe anyone proof, but mere men who claim that they speak for god, do owe proof to back up their grand claims. dont you owe it to god to rightly divide the words of truth, to try the spirits in order to determine if they really are from god? why do you prefer to just accept these words of men?
I answered your questions that you gave to nate, which could be one reason he didnt bother repeating them. address them if you will, but dont act as if your questions went unanswered.
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“Old Tyre was destroyed, never to be rebuilt and in the sea.. just as the prophecy said.” – kathy
that’s incorrect and I cannot tell if you’re lying or just mistaken.
the prophecy said tyre, not “old tyre.”
at the time of ezekiel’s prophecy, the city was island with mainland suburbs. http://www.ancient.eu/Tyre/
The island was never completely destroyed, hence tyre was never completely destroyed. Neither the island nor the mainland were permanently destroyed as the prophecy said, but both were rebuilt and both exist today.
even the causway that alexander built to sack teh island is now built up and populated. this prophecy fails in so many ways it is insane that you continue to declair otherwise.
and even in you refforts you’re forced to pretend that ezekiel meant “old tyre” (a greek name, not the original name), when he simply said tyre – which at that time was both island and mainland.
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“As with the Tyre prophecy.. 99% of the prophecy was amazingly fulfilled.” – kathy
also false
why dont you break it down for everyone, verse by verse, fulfillment by fulfillment, and failure by failure. 99% is just bogus.
but even if it were 99%, you’re saying that your god is so powerful that he’s almost perfect. he’s almost perfectly dependable… just not quite 100%.
you’re god is nearly an awesome god. dont question him, that may make the authors who told everyone about him think that you may not trust them.
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you make zero sense in your defense of the differing genealogies.
if it’s so clear, which one of the extra-biblical explanations is the right one and how can you be sure?
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“No other animal seems to congregate and ask these questions, let alone on a online forum.” – True, we’re the most technologically-advanced ape on the planet, I suppose that’s something – I hardly see a god in that though.
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and again, the evidence for the two genealogies being contradictions is actually very good, since the main evidence to support this is that they are different and each paint conflicting pictures of joseph and jesus’ linage.
now, all the different ways people have tried to reconcile the two are baseless and are pure conjecture. could they be true? I guess, but you know what is undeniably true? the bible, as it reads for itself, has two opposing genealogies.
not only do you hope that the the men who wrote the bible and claimed that they speak for god are right, you also hope that the other guys, who dont claim to speak for god, are right about they contrived “fix” to this problem.
all that faith, and it’s really only in man.
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I am not certain that there is no creator, but I am certain the god of the bible is man made.
But if there is a creator, why must it be just one, and why must it/they be perfect or eternal? And if eternal does exist, why could matter fill that ticket as good as anything else? Why couldn’t our creators be more advanced versions of us?
there are so many possibilities that range beyond our imaginations that it seems unlikely that this question will ever be answered with uncertainty as long as the creator(s) stay hidden and silent. If they rely on men to speak for them, then is it any wonder that the many people only see talking men and not the hidden creators?
if we could harness our brain powers that we use to wonder about gods and turn that into finding cures for cancer and so on, think of how much better things could be…
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Well said, William, well said!
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Kathy, if you honestly want to talk about Tyre, you can start here:
https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/an-examination-of-ezekiels-prophecy-of-tyre-part-1/
I did 6 posts about it recently, and they go into quite a lot of detail. Feel free to comment on any of those.
And if you want to talk in detail about any of the other contradictions, etc, then I direct you again to my About page which has links to all the posts I’ve written on those subjects. Or you can refer to my earlier comment where I linked to some of them. But until you decide to actually engage with the details of these issues, you’re really just wasting time.
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Nate, why are you trying to redirect me? I’m here and willing to engage, with details. Why can’t you address my points? This is game playing. It doesn’t matter where we debate the points, the points themselves matter. Sometimes it’s good for a “fresh” start.. I was over there on those posts, and nothing was accomplished (apparently).
And I gave you direct questions here that aren’t answered in those hundreds of other pages/ comments.. but you claiming that they were gets you off the hook.. keeps me busy for a while at least.
Sorry Nate, but you failed to answer my question about the “contradictions” being left in the Bible. Your answer was not reasonable and you know it. And this is why you are trying to redirect me.
And you failed to address my point about your insistence that the 1% being “wrong” (in your opinion) is enough to discard the 99% that is more than compelling.. that beats the odds.
Instead you try to redirect me away from the crowd so to speak. Liberals/ atheists/ the liberal minded constantly use these tactics. This is the dishonesty that I keep going on about. Because it KEEPS GOING ON.
“What “evidence” do you require here? ..WHY do you require evidence here?? Why can’t you just accept that any of those could be the correct explanation and move on? There’s no real reason to not do so except that you don’t WANT to. My point is that you have NO evidence to prove it’s false. ”
You: “The real issue is that they’ve completely lost sight of “burden of proof.”
It doesn’t matter if you can come up with a thousand possible explanations for why Jesus is given two different genealogies. None of those explanations is given within the Bible, so there’s no need to believe it.”
You’ve completely lost sight of your place Nate.. God doesn’t “owe” you ANY proof. The burden is certainly NOT on Him. He will pay no consequences if you choose to reject the proof He HAS given you.. that which HE decides to give, not you. You repeatedly, in every situation, set the standards that need to be met before you will believe. You try to claim that the standards are in scripture, but as I’ve shown, they are not.. not according to the actual scripture. ”
Why don’t you want to answer these questions/ points Nate?
They allude to your level of objectivity. Did you ever answer my question about whether you
believe honest objectivity is important? Probably not.
We do NOT have empirical proof one way or the other on the issue of God’s existence. So, you have to know/ understand how important OBJECTIVITY is. Yet, every time I want to address your objectivity with questions, you want to run away. This is yet MORE proof of your lack of honest objectivity. “Finding Truth.. wherever it may lead”… this is the title of your blog Nate.. and it’s a big giant claim of “OBJECTIVITY” by you. But when I challenge you on this, you don’t want to take the challenge even though it’s the supposed platform of your blog.
““Say you’re at a party and you ask for cake. The host says “we ate the cake.” Do you assume there’s still cake left? He didn’t say “all”…”
Again, “the” establishes the entirety of the cake. What word in the Tyre prophecy establishes “all” of Tyre?”
See, you engage here about Tyre but when I present a question/ counter point that you can’t answer you THEN try to redirect me/ employ “rules”.. anything to avoid answering the actual points. Again, this is NOT objectivity.. or honesty.. it’s deception.
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Not trying to redirect you as an effort to avoid anything Kathy, it’s just that all those arguments are already laid out in detail in those posts.
But fine, if you want to discuss it here, I guess we can try.
There are lots of reasons why those passages were left in there. First of all, the problem with your argument is that you’re saying the problems are so obvious, they wouldn’t have been left in. Since they were left in, they must not be problems, since they’re such obvious problems. That’s a little nonsensical. Nevertheless, others have made similar arguments before, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of those who were selecting the canon thought along the same lines, which would explain why they weren’t jettisoned.
As William has said, the different books were voted on. Many of these books had been in circulation for quite some time too, so they were already thought to be divine by a number of men on the council. And the main criteria for selection was in how the books presented Christ and the gospel — not on whether or not all the details were in agreement.
Ultimately, I don’t know all the reasons why these specific books were selected, but I don’t really need to. All I need to determine for myself is whether or not they’re believable, and I don’t think they are. Furthermore, your argument for accepting them is simply that they were the ones selected. You don’t appear to be using any kind of criteria in determining how genuine they are — you’ve already accepted them, regardless.
If you want to talk about the prophecy of Tyre, you need to go to the posts I wrote on it recently. It’s too detailed a topic to get into here. And if you would read them, you’d see that your “99% vs 1%” claim is utterly ridiculous and not based in any way on fact.
Maybe you live this way, Kathy, but I don’t. I don’t believe in bigfoot just because someone says he’s real. I don’t believe in alien abduction just because some people claim it’s true. I don’t believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories just because someone says I should. Ultimately, for any claim, especially an unlikely one, evidence is required.
You’re right, Kathy. And as soon as God says something to me, I’ll believe him. The thing you continually fail to grasp is that GOD IS NOT SPEAKING TO ANY OF US! The Bible is not simply God’s word — it’s a collection of writings from many different people, most of whom were anonymous. Why should anyone accept their claims with no evidence?
YES!!! That’s why evidence is so important!
Again, see my posts on Tyre.
And since you're demanding answers to your questions, let me demand an answer to one of mine. Here it is again:
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You really are pure, unadulterated, bat-shit crazy, aren’t you Kathy? No wonder you get banned left and right.
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“You’ve completely lost sight of your place Nate.. God doesn’t “owe” you ANY proof. The burden is certainly NOT on Him.”” — Kathy
Kathy, it’s apparent from everything you’ve written on Nate’s blog that you choose to believe this one thing (as do nearly all Christians): whatever one reads in the bible is true. It came from “God” and thus there should be no argument. Period. The end.
Other people have chosen not to be so gullible, which is why they continue to address issues that simply don’t make sense to the human mind. This may seem at odds with your philosophy, but it your “God” did create us, why did he/she/it give us our ability to reason, to question, to think? It would have been just as easy for this “super being” to create a species that simply lived our their lives on this planet without ever questioning their existence..
And don’t give me that “free will” blather. That’s just used by Christians to excuse/overlook the things in the bible that don’t make sense (even to them).
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Well said, Nan!
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kathy makes a real habit of skipping over points and then harping on others when they dont answer her questions (that have usually been answered). seems like there’s a word for that…
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nate, stop trying to cloud the issue and confuse kathy by supplying more details and to links to even more details in subject specific threads!
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NOT “well said” Nan.. it was incredibly incorrect. It shows how truly closed minded
you and Nate are to other views.
“..that you choose to believe this one thing (as do nearly all Christians): whatever one reads in the bible is true. It came from “God” and thus there should be no argument. Period. The end.”
I’ve NEVER said or implied that there should be no argument. I’ve been practically begging for actual debates over the points (instead of personal attacks).. and that can’t happen unless you “argue”. I challenge you to prove me wrong using my own words.. which I know this challenge will be ignored like all the rest.
If you were right, then what have I been typing all this time?? You should have no problem finding words that back up this claim. But all you WILL find are my REASONED arguments for why I believe God exists and the Bible is His word. You’ll find NOTHING that says anything close to “there should be no argument, period, the end”.
“This may seem at odds with your philosophy, but it your “God” did create us, why did he/she/it give us our ability to reason, to question, to think? It would have been just as easy for this “super being” to create a species that simply lived our their lives on this planet without ever questioning their existence.. ”
My question to you would be where does your mind go when reading my comments?? Where did it go while reading these comments? (No reason to believe things have changed.)
It’s truly astounding. All I’ve been doing here, when not defending myself from personal attacks, is put forth my reasoning which again, includes nothing about “you should believe because it’s God’s word”… I’ve NEVER stated that, never implied or insinuated that.. ever. I FULLY understand that the debate is if it is God’s word or not. Why I’m even having to explain this is mind boggling.
Again, Nan, please state my “philosophy”.. using MY own words.. not your distorted belief about what I think.
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Nate,
“There are lots of reasons why those passages were left in there. First of all, the problem with your argument is that you’re saying the problems are so obvious, they wouldn’t have been left in. Since they were left in, they must not be problems, since they’re such obvious problems. That’s a little nonsensical. Nevertheless, others have made similar arguments before, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of those who were selecting the canon thought along the same lines, which would explain why they weren’t jettisoned.”
Nice try but it’s not “nonsensical” at all.. it’s a very valid point. Now you’ve come up with another argument, so you realize yourself that your first argument was a fail. At least you admitted it.. oh wait, no you didn’t.
“As William has said, the different books were voted on. Many of these books had been in circulation for quite some time too, so they were already thought to be divine by a number of men on the council. And the main criteria for selection was in how the books presented Christ and the gospel — not on whether or not all the details were in agreement.”
How do you know that the main criteria for selection was how the books presented Christ and the Gospel?? What do you base this claim on?
The objective was to determine which books were divinely inspired and which weren’t. Your assumption or your wording just further shows your bias.
The Gospels that were chosen obviously met all the criteria that showed them to be inspired.. so they included them DESPITE the seeming contradictions.
“Ultimately, I don’t know all the reasons why these specific books were selected, but I don’t really need to. All I need to determine for myself is whether or not they’re believable, and I don’t think they are. Furthermore, your argument for accepting them is simply that they were the ones selected. You don’t appear to be using any kind of criteria in determining how genuine they are — you’ve already accepted them, regardless.”
You now say there were “lots’ of reasons” for why those contradictions were left in but you only gave one, and then you contradicted it.. you’re claiming that they believed the books with the contradictions were divine so they included them but then you say they selected the books based on how they represented Jesus and the Gospel.
And again, my argument for accepting the Gospel accounts is that there isn’t anything in them to cause me to believe they are false. I’ve never stated or implied it was because they were the ones selected. Those few “contradictions” that you hold so tightly to aren’t enough to discount all the other things that line up and especially the witnesses and martyrs and other compelling evidence. And when you see that there are possible, reasonable explanations for those seeming contradictions there really is no reasonable argument left … just a desire.
It’s about weighing the evidence with honest objectivity. And that’s based on actual math.. weighing.. which evidence (and reasoning) weighs more.
And as for Tyre, you tried to discount a lot of it.. but again, the overwhelming majority of it
is not in dispute by everyone except you. And again, like the genealogy.. 99% of it lines up, but you choose to focus on the 1% that doesn’t. You’re like the defense attorney getting the murderer off on a technicality. It doesn’t change the truth one bit.
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“Maybe you live this way, Kathy, but I don’t. I don’t believe in bigfoot just because someone says he’s real. I don’t believe in alien abduction just because some people claim it’s true. I don’t believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories just because someone says I should. Ultimately, for any claim, especially an unlikely one, evidence is required.”
Lots and lots of evidence Nate.. and that’s what I’ve been arguing on your blog all this time.. I give you the same challenge I gave Nan.. post my words that support your assertion up above.. that I’ve been telling you all this time that you “should” believe because the Bible or Christians or whomever says so. It’s an absurd assertion and I have no idea where you get it from other than your own mind.. (and Nan’s).
“You’re right, Kathy. And as soon as God says something to me, I’ll believe him. The thing you continually fail to grasp is that GOD IS NOT SPEAKING TO ANY OF US! The Bible is not simply God’s word — it’s a collection of writings from many different people, most of whom were anonymous. Why should anyone accept their claims with no evidence?”
1) The Bible gives plenty of evidence.. prophecies, witnesses and martyrs, along with archeological and other evidence.
2) Why can’t God speak to us THROUGH the authors?
You continue to fail to grasp that a Creator might have REASONS for not speaking to us
directly. Again, you are “demanding” a certain kind of proof.. EMPIRICAL proof. And that’s your prerogative. But what you really need to understand or at least honestly consider.. is that God ALSO has HIS prerogative that He is entitled to. You should try to consider that you COULD be a created being and that your Creator has chosen not to give you empirical proof of His existence.
If God gave you empirical proof of His existence, you, all of us, would obey Him out of pure fear. He might as well have created us without free will. Or.. He could create us with free will and given us the opportunity to SEEK Him and GENUINELY love Him. If you were in His place, what would you do? What value is there in people worshipping you out of fear, not love? This makes me think of when the leader of N. Korea died and the people were pretending to cry and mourn because they were terrified they’d be jailed or worse if they didn’t. Would you want those kinds of followers or would you want to have people truly love you?
We do NOT have empirical proof one way or the other on the issue of God’s existence.
YES!!! That’s why evidence is so important!
And I agree!
““Say you’re at a party and you ask for cake. The host says “we ate the cake.” Do you assume there’s still cake left? He didn’t say “all”…”
Again, “the” establishes the entirety of the cake. What word in the Tyre prophecy establishes “all” of Tyre?”
Again, see my posts on Tyre.
Why do I have to go to your post for this answer? Just post the part of the prophecy that claims all of Tyre.
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The formation of the canon was nebulous, and it lasted over centuries. If you want to know more about it, you can start with links like these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_Christian_biblical_canon
You talk about evidence, but you’re only considering the evidence from one side of the ledger. No one denies that the Bible contains some reliable information. The real issue comes when trying to decide what to do about the wrong information it contains. You think that since it got some things right, we can just give it the benefit of the doubt in places where it got it wrong. And that’s fine if you want to look at it that way, but it’s not going to resonate with people like me.
Unfortunately, the Bible doesn’t support your claim here. Pharaoh had no doubt about who God was by the end, but that didn’t make him obey. Moses absolutely knew who God was and what he wanted, but he still disobeyed God when bringing the water from the rock. Solomon knew who God was but fell away. Saul did the same thing.
Furthermore, Hebrews refers to the heroes of the OT as people of faith — but according to you, they couldn’t have had faith, since they had actual knowledge of God.
Kathy, what’s your goal here? We’re never going to agree with one another, because we simply look at this too differently. There’s no common ground for us to even begin a discussion, much less come to a conclusion about anything. I don’t get satisfaction from endless wrangling — if a discussion isn’t going to go anywhere, I’d prefer not to have it. This is why I don’t track you down on Twitter. Why do you continue to hang around here?
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“I’ve been practically begging for actual debates” – But you don’t know HOW to debate, Kathy, we established that MONTHS ago —
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Kathy, I had responses written to everything else you type as well, but desided to discard them for a couple of reasons. One), we’ve been through each of the before and if you ignored them then, I’m sure you’ll do it now, and two) I didn’t want to detract from the below.
You said,
“It’s about weighing the evidence with honest objectivity. And that’s based on actual math.. weighing.. which evidence (and reasoning) weighs more.
And as for Tyre, you tried to discount a lot of it.. but again, the overwhelming majority of it
is not in dispute by everyone except you. And again, like the genealogy.. 99% of it lines up, but you choose to focus on the 1% that doesn’t. You’re like the defense attorney getting the murderer off on a technicality. It doesn’t change the truth one bit.” – Kathy
LOL… you actually said those two things together. Have you ever laid the genealogies side by side? How can they be 99% in alignment? And if you think the tyre prophecy is 99% fulfilled, you’re afflicted by a mental disorder or you simply haven’t really and objectively looked at the prophecy and history.
Interestingly, both of these issues have been covered in detail in posts nate has made. If you’re unwilling to address them in detail, then why even pretend to discuss them?
We all grew up in religious families and we were all active members of our congregations and churches as adults, and now our study and devotion has led us from the bible. Our sincerity does not mean that we’re right, but it does show that we’ve considered both sides in detail and to for you, a person who obviously hasn’t studied as much, to suggest that we’re close minded is just absurd and shows your lack of open mindedness and overall objectivity.
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“Why do I have to go to your post for this answer? Just post the part of the prophecy that claims all of Tyre.” – Kathy
Why are you against going to a spot devoted to talking about tyre of you really want to discuss tyre?
But okay, when Ezekiel said that tyre would be destroyed and never rebuilt – that means the whole. How could that mean part? Again, was NYC destroyed on 9/11 or was NYC attacked 9/11? You cant destroy something if there are parts not destroyed, just like you wouldn’t say that Ted was killed if his hand was cut off and he didn’t die.
Tyre wasn’t completely destroyed and tyre was rebuilt it can be found and it is inhabited today – all contrary to what Ezekiel predicted. Ezekiel gave no date. And if you’re trying to say that Ezekiel was right and literal when he said “scraped like a bare rock,” then that would be mistaken as there is zero evidence that Alexander too all existing building materials, as there only just enough to make his causeway, and then took all topsoil down to bare rock and cast it all into the sea – that didn’t happen.
But even if you suggest that part of the prophecy was just right, that’s about all you have. Read the prophecy. Read your history and stop making these ridiculous assertions when you clearly don’t know much about either.
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