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AS you know that there is no need to explain a binary question, and you know better than to try to assume my presumptions. You don't get it - not moving anything - there are no goalposts to move.

I'm going to quote you here: "If you can't define it, there's not good reason to believe it exist." The primary problem with that statement is the "you". If instead you had said "If AS can't define it, there's not good reason for AS to believe it exist", I could understand and accept that.

It appears that you are missing, or very dramatically discounting, an important dimension. Paul Tillich wrote very well about the dynamics.

Regardless of how many books he wrote, Paul Tillich is still just a presuppositionalist.

A philosophy build upon a fallacy is not more stable than a 100 story skyscraper built on swampland.

A couple of things for you to consider: to your first question, "yes." Have you not heard of the father of all lies, the great deceiver, Satan, who can appear as an angel of light and deceive us into believing that which is untrue?

Have you not read 2 Timothy 3:16 -- "all scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, correcting, and reproof..." (paraphrase mine).

Much of even the NT was written before the fourth century and do you realize what "God-breathed" means?

You, my friend, are woefully ignorant of what you so freely respond about.

A final friendly but very serious warning from Proverbs 14:12 -- "there is a way which seems right to a man but the end thereof is death.." (again paraphrase mine).

Please consider.

fascinating territory we'll all progressing through, as a group, and in our own individual ways of understanding.

AS, i do enjoy reading mythology. the greeks had so much of it, and seemed to align at least somewhat w/the egyptian cosmology. the hebrews were a bit different, and of course their language was totally different than the greek. and in their language resided so much of their particular cosmology.

joseph campbell has written a bunch on said subject. i think he's gone on now. his masks of god does fair justice to the thinking of early man as they struggled to find their place on earth as a separate species, the Naked Ape as it were.

some of the current good news is that there's some 1.3 billion humans in populated india, and most are hindu's. been around a long time with a ton of religious literature from 4500 plus years ago. i'm not going to say they're right, but i'm not about to claim they're wrong either.

i understand curdog's position. god speaks to whomever he wishes, and says what ever he wants to say. and book can be followed by rote memory, and just step over the contradictions, if any. nobody said a book on it's own had to be perfect to be usable.

I am reading the latest " Words" on this thread while watching jews and muslims fight it out in Jerusalem w/ the same certainty exhibited here. It is nearly as enlightening and educational as the debates on Sasquatch and alien abductions.

A quick scan of the world we live in today tells me that god has a stranger sense of humor than me. Intellectual/theological certainty is somewhat narcisistic perhaps?


mike r

George, I've been quoted that passage of scripture, recieved the same warning, and been the recipient of the same plea literally countless times on this forum over the last seventeen years. You are not original.

You would do well not to even mention Satan as the source of my peace. Some legalistic types such as you appear to be claimed Satan might be the force behind the miracles that Jesus wrought.

Pissed Him right off.

FYI, following the Jesus of my childhood whom I learned about in Sunday School and listening to people like yourself, I wound up hopeless. Then I cried out to whatever God there was for help. I recieved that help and it continues to this day, thirty two plus years later.

Over time that God I found revealed Himself to be Jesus of Nazareth. Upon reading the Bible with a newly opened mind, I found plenty of scriptural validation for the beliefs I hold, but I would be a hypocrite if I tried to preach to you about it.

You can rest assured that a man such as myself is not going to have his faith shaken by words from strangers on the internet.

But, in the future, if a man tells you that God is working in his life you should just wish him well and keep your ideas to yourself.

Unless you have a hankering for a millstone around your neck.😀

Science will never be able to explain Creation. By its nature it is not a fit subject for science and there will never be a consensus among scientists as far as the origin of the Universe.

Funny how the only thing that a lot of scientist agree on is that "it wasn't done by a God".

"We don't know how it came about, and we can't make it come about again ourselves,but since there is no evidence that we accept, we know that creation did not require a creator."

Imagine that I said last year;"I'm not voting for Trump unless he personally comes to my house and asks me to".

Your position regarding the God that made you is sillier than that by several orders of magnitude.

I'm partial to some of the Hindu writings.

"The whole world is the garment of the Lord. Reject it and recieve it back as a gift from God."

Sounds like something you might post, Gus.

Sir, I didn't claim to be "original" here but simply responded to what you said.

I didn't claim Satan was the source of your peace; I only claimed what he can be and what he can do.

People "like myself??" I don't believe you really know me or my motivation and it's much safer for you to not presume too much.

As to "a stranger on the internet," in that, I agree you are mostly correct; although, without looking, I think I've been here since '04. And my desire was to not "shake your faith" but to hope it was well-placed.

Your rebuff is well-taken in that as a mailman I am now already down the street.

Thats not really how all this works...

"some are saved while currently on the earth, and a third group will be saved later on as the process continues to unfold. i guess we'll find out sooner or later, or maybe not."

I agree with the last 3 words of this statement.

It works for Calvin.

Who are you to say it doesn't?

[quote=George_De_Vries_3rd
Have you not read 2 Timothy 3:16
Please consider.[/quote]

Quoting one of the Pastoral epistles? Gene is wise to ignore that forgery.

Forgery? By whose a claim AS?

It's strange that a preacher, teacher, or wannabe teacher will loudly proclaim that there is but one God, but in private conversation they become concerned that you found the wrong one.

God gives me all the direction I need to live a good life, but He has NEVER revealed to me what someone else should believe or do.

As far as Satan is concerned God revealed him to me then let me know that he was no concern of mine....... I've given no thought to Satan since that day.

Let's presume for a moment that science cannot provide sufficient prof regarding the origins of the universe, the default position does not become your favorite god or fairy tale, it becomes "We don't know".

However I seen no reason to accept your assertion that through the methods of science we can NEVER be able to explain the origins of the universe and planck time, and beyond this universe. In less then 100 years, we've gone from determining there were objects beyond our galaxy, to understand the universe is expanding to an understanding of this universe to within 10 to the negative 43 of a second of it's beginning. How can you claim to know what we will, or will not be able to understand in 100, 200, or a 1000 years from now?

The name for the specific fallacy your are committing is an "argument from ignorance". I'm not saying your are ignorant, just that you can't claim your position is true due to a lack of knowledge.

I also find it interesting how you, the guy who hates to be misquoted, misrepresented my quote from Laplace. "There is No Need for God as a Hypothesis.", is not the same as "it wasn't done by a God".

As for Trump, I have much better evidence for his existence then I do for your God, Heck, I have photographs of Trump. Can you provide any independently verifiable photographs of your God?

Here's a nice introduction for you, complete with footnotes:

Pastoral epistles[edit]
The First Epistle to Timothy, the Second Epistle to Timothy, and the Epistle to Titus are often referred to as the Pastoral Epistles and are the most disputed of all the epistles ascribed to Paul.[41]

Despite this, these epistles were accepted as genuine by many, perhaps most of the ante-Nicene Church Fathers.[42][43] Some scholars have argued that the letters were certainly accepted as Pauline by the time of Irenaeus.[44] They were also included in the Muratorian fragment. According to Jerome, the gnostic Christian Basilides also rejected these epistles, and Tatian, while accepting Titus, rejected other Pauline epistles.[45] Marcion (c. 140) excluded all three, along with Hebrews, from his otherwise complete Pauline corpus, and it is impossible to determine whether or not he knew of them. Donald Guthrie, for instance, argues that the epistles' theology would have been cause to reject the letters since it was incompatible with certain passages, such as 1 Tim 1:8 and 1 Tim 6:20,[45] while Ehrman suggests that 2nd-century proto-orthodox Christians had motivation to forge the Pastorals to combat the Gnostic use of other Pauline epistles.[46] Even the ancient writer Tertullian (c. 220), in Adv. Marc. V.21, expresses confusion as to why these epistles had not been included in Marcion's canon. Modern scholars postulate that the Pauline Epistles originally circulated in three forms, for example, from The Canon Debate,[47] attributed to Harry Y. Gamble:

"Marcion's collection that begins with Galatians and ends with Philemon;"
"Papyrus 46, dated about 200, that follows the order that became established except for reversing Ephesians and Galatians;"
"[T]he letters to seven churches, treating those to the same church as one letter and basing the order on length, so that Corinthians is first and Colossians (perhaps including Philemon) is last."
Beginning in the early 19th century, many German biblical scholars began to question the traditional attribution of these letters to Paul. The vocabulary and phraseology used in the Pastorals is often at variance with that of the other epistles. Over 1/3 of the vocabulary is not used anywhere else in the Pauline epistles, and over 1/5 is not used anywhere else in the New Testament, while 2/3 of the non-Pauline vocabulary are used by 2nd-century Christian writers.[48] For this reason, and because of a claimed precedence of 1 Clement, some scholars have associated these works with later 2nd-century Christian writings.[49] The precedence of 1 Clement was challenged by R. Falconer,[50] while L. T. Johnson challenged the linguistic analysis as based on the arbitrary grouping of the three epistles together: he argued that this obscures the alleged similarities between 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians, between Titus and the other travel letters, and between 2 Timothy and Philippians.

Norman Perrin argued that Paul's travels to Crete (Titus 1:5-6), again to Ephesus (1 Tim 1:3), Nicopolis (Titus 3:12), and Troas (2 Tim 1:15, 4:13) cannot be fit into any reconstruction of Paul's life or works as determined from the other epistles or from Acts. In this he was preceded by several scholars who rejected Pauline authorship.[51] Robinson argued against this analysis,[52] while others have debated whether this should be grounds for rejection of Pauline authorship, as Acts concludes while Paul is still alive. Harnack, Lightfoot and other scholars have suggested hypothetical scenarios that would have these epistles written near the end of Paul's life without contradicting biographical information in the other epistles or Acts. Scholars arguing for the authenticity of the pastorals posit a "second career" of Paul to explain the occasion for the visits mentioned in these letters, though contemporary scholars generally consider the "second career" of Paul to be a creation of later Christian communities.[53]

Other reasons for a 2nd-century date have been argued. The Pastoral Epistles lay out church organisation concerning the character and requirements for bishops, elders, deacons, and widows. Some scholars have claimed that these offices could not have appeared during Paul's lifetime.[54] In terms of theology, some scholars claim that the Pastorals reflect more the characteristics of 2nd century (Proto-orthodox) church thought, than those of the 1st century.[46] In particular, whilst in the 1st century the idea of Christ's return being immediate was current (see parousia, as also described in the non-pastoral epistles), in the 2nd century it was seen as more distant, matching the choice of the pastorals to lay down instructions for a long time after the passing away of the apostles.[54] Lastly, some have argued that the Pastorals condemn forms of Hellenic mysticism and gnosticism, which were seen as not significant in the 1st century;[55] however, recent scholarship into 1st century Gnosticism has suggested an earlier dominance of Gnostic views.[56]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Pauline_epistles#Pastoral_epistles

You don't remember Jesus commands to preach the Gospel?

I preached it earlier in this thread......, "All you need to know is Me".

I'm afraid to ask YOUR version of the Gospel.

Holy Bible.