Well… I once knew this woman who had a big thing about power-trippers and men in general, and i would tell her that vagueness is a way of playing a power game on people. I don’t care if jesus could put the sun out with his mind, if the guy can’t make simple explicative sentences about how reality works, he’s not my God. I spend my whole life trying to figure out how to explicate things without contradiction, that process is about as close to my God as there is.
Goal post changing nonsense. I did not suggest what you said I said.
I said:" Jesus is saying that a route to heaven can be assisted by the loss of bollocks". I did not say he was exhorting his followers to do likewise. But he is saying that mutilation of the organs of sex is done as a route to heaven.
Christians may have chosen to ignore that advice _(I wonder why), though in rare instances it was practiced right up to the 18thC , and the “castrati” were considered to be pure of heart.
And to follow up on what Lev is saying… the REASON they are seen as pure is because we live in an animal species where mating rivalry is bascially the entire game, so if you take vows of celibacy and chastity and chop your nuts off, you are no longer seen as a mating rival, and people feel less threatened by you and trust you more, thus they consider you “purer”
I think a comedian once said, “Why is it if you want to be taken so damn serious in this world you need to say you’re not going to have sex or children?”
Really? All you have to do is read The Gospels and you will quickly realize that Jesus uses a lot of figurative speech and parables and stories and metaphors etc. To fault Jesus for speaking in this manner is frankly absurd. Indeed, Jesus was required to speak this way in order to fulfill Old Testament prophesy that those who have ears will not hear and those who have eyes will not see. Moreover, Jesus did not come to explain the universe to you. He came to explain what God wants of you and to show you how to obtain salvation. Again, as crazy as this may sound to you, how the universe works is unimportant. What is important is what God wants from you.
Your’s is an incorrect literal reading of the Gospel passage. Indeed, it is abundantly absurd to read this literally demanding that one cut off one’s own testicles. Obviously, you would need help with that! LOL!
Your interpretation being literal is quite wrong. It’s about sexual desires interfering with seeking the Kingdom of God, not about literally cutting your own testicles off.
What a load of crap. “let’s be mysterious about all of this” Like i was saying before and in another thread with Lev, ambiguity is a sign of social dominance. If God really wanted us to know Gods will, we’d all know it, and there’d be no debates. Actually if I remember my Bible correctly, God says about 10 times that he just confuses us all for the hell of it.
Look at it from this perspective… God supposedly wants us to come “home” and we all want to go “home”, how can an omnipotent being not make this happen? Is that part of the “mystery”? You know, when people ask me how I’m doing, I always say, “Tired”, and if they ask me why I’m tired, I say “life” and they usually reply, “that’s all of us”, so if we’re all sick of this shit, and want to join God in perfection bliss and omniscience and God can do this, than why aren’t we there?
It makes no logical sense. This was the argument of evil the Buddha used.
Repeatedly, in the old and new testament it says that God confuses us all, for Gods own whim and joy. It sounds like a psychopathic human writing this book about god rather than really analyzing the concept. As I was saying in the thread about Obama winking as a sign of social dominance, sending mixed signals or being ambiguous is a sign of social dominance… maybe God just likes to be an asshole. If God was truly omnipotent, he could give all of us perfectly, perfect karma in an instant and have us all be in heavenly bliss forever and ever without even trying, because as the Bagavad Gita states, God has perfect or infinite Vigor.
For the majority of the people, God’s plan is marriage and not celibacy. In Matthew 19 verse 12 Jesus enumerates three groups of eunuchs: (1) eunuchs who were born that way, (2) eunuchs who were made eunuchs by others, and (3) those who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of their beliefs. It seems that not all three groups are eunuchs in the literal sense. Obviously, the first group should be understood literally. The second group may also represent real eunuchs, men who by force have been made unfit for marriage. Understanding the term figuratively, referring to divorced persons. The last group may comprise people such as John the Baptist, who choose to remain single, as he had received a respective calling.
The disciples state "If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry. The disciples may be referring back to the question of the Pharisees who had asked if it is possible to divorce one’s wife for any reason. In spite of the exception clause, they understand the radical nature of Jesus’ demand and feel restricted and boxed in. They take sides with the Pharisees, who were looking for ways to get out of marriage and they make a radical suggestion. If there there is no way of out marriage, then it is better not to get married at all. It is not worth it. They cannot think about marriage without thinking also about divorce, and they do not see and do not understand marriage.
John was ordered to worship the emperor and refused and was exiled to the Island of Patmos. This island was where John was inspired and wrote the prophetic Book of Revelation. This Book delivers a profound message about the war between good and evil, it shows how that epic struggle ends and it is more than just symbols, beasts, and prophetic facts, it is a fascinating account of where we are in God’s grand design for the human race.
Depends on the religion. In Hinduism we were never born and never die because we came from god who was never born and never dies and the goal is to join with Krishna. You could make the same argument about the Bible too “made in my own image”. That means even if God didn’t create us, we would be the same. As James snidely said to me in my other thread without thinking through his reply, learn the lingo.
A lot of things are abundantly clear that contradict what’s written in the Bible. If God created us in Gods own image, then we are birthless and deathless and immaterial too. Basic logic. Or God isn’t immaterial is isn’t birthless or deathless.
That depends on how you interpret “made in God’s image and likeness.” Indeed, one could simply respond to you by saying that if the Bible meant for us to believe that we were made of the immaterial, were immortal and were uncaused, the Bible would simply have said so specifically. It did not. So, your whole argument crumbles as unjustified speculative interpretation unworthy of belief.
I don’t think you want to look at the fact that this sentence contradicts itself because you are specifically a Biblical theist. We all know what it means, we were made to be like God. It’s not ambiguous. You didn’t take this to the other thread like i was hoping either, this is a different disproof than the sexual selection disproof. This disproof is about God in every religion creating us to have a “god seed” in us, that we all reflect God, and God is uncaused, so every religion is contradicting itself, or rather they are saying, “We were created to be uncaused.” I always enjoy these discussions with you and James, so thanks for replying. Others as well, but we’ve spent the most time together in them.
