Pangloss, nobody is ever going to 'argue' you into believing that Christianity is true. But here's an idea. Since this forum is about McLean Bible Church, why don't you offer a critique of a sermon by Lon Solomon. For example, this recent one about the Return of Christ? http://www.mcleanbible.org/media_player.asp?messageID=23883
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Pangloss, Christians would all agree with your statement that "morality on the most powerful being/entity in the universe." Absent the God of the Bible, you talk about "a government that capable of exerting its control over all the denizens of the planet." The Bible certainly foresees such a horrible future government ... and its destruction by Jesus upon his return. Ultimately the Christia
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Pangloss wrote: "I'm agnostic in terms of whether or not Jesus actually existed. If he did, then I have serious doubts that much of the New Testament can actually be attributed to his deeds and words."Ness replies: I understand, because supernatural events are inextricably woven into every bit of the New Testament, including not just Jesus' miracles but his awareness of what his opponents were t
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psychotic, or merely narcissistic? Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe." "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the
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Pangloss asks: 1. "Jesus said that he was not here to do away with the law."Read Acts and Hebrews. Clearly the OT ceremonial law, temple, and priesthood are fulfilled by Jesus and done away with. 2. "The logic of your statement would be that we would have to ignore Paul's writings then, since he heard the lord's voice in his head."Paul claimed authority as an Apostle, but what makes you think tha
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Pangloss asks: "Let's say that today you start hearing god's voice. He informs you that you are a prophet and that you must kill a family. The last in a line of Amorites who managed to some how survive the earlier slaughter. ... Would you do that?"Ness replies: Nonsense again. The Old Covenant is over, replaced by the New Covenant at the Last Supper. The foundation of the Apostles and the Proph
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Pangloss asks: "Are you trying to suggest that since another group of religious believers decided killing babies is holy that means that you can as well?"Ness replies: Nonsense again. More than a dozen times in the OT, God forbids his people to sacrifice their children as the pagans routinely did. The LORD your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But w
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Pangloss wrote: "Lon ... tells us ... that he doesn't feel there is anything morally wrong with killing people."Ness replies: Nonsense. Lon was saying that when God commanded his OT covenant people, they had to obey regardless of personal feelings. God gave Moses the commandment: "You shall not commit murder." Yet God commanded his covenant people to administer the death sentence for certain act
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Pangloss, another point: "Infant-sacrifice was a significant part of the cult of Baal, a Phoenician or Canaanite fertility god. Infant children were sacrificed to Baal as 'first-fruit' offerings, in performance of vows, and to secure prosperity." "This practice continually reappeared in Israel's history, such as under king Ahab. The prophet Jeremiah cites this practice as an example of
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Pangloss, I once asked Lon Solomon about the PTSD aspect of the "Joshua Question" -- having to kill men, women, and children upon God's command -- and his measured response was: "I'm glad I was not born a Hebrew warrior."Certainly, a point-of-contact between 'Darwinists' and Christians is the recognition that we are ALL already under a death sentence.The question is: "Why?"The 'Darwinist' must pa
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Pangloss write: "... all throughout the new testament, the Jews are blamed for a whole manner of things - including the killing of Jesus. This is clear racism if you ask me."Racist? The New Testament clearly states that the Jewish religious leadership of Jesus' time did indeed engineer the killing of Jesus. And they paid for it dearly when Jerusalem was was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.The N
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Pangloss, Clearly women are excluded from some NT church offices (such as elder). And the Apostles were all men (though Jesus had a substantial number of female friends throughout the NT). So what if women are not 'equal' in every respect to men? In Genesis, God subordinates Eve to Adam immediately after the Fall, because she had been deceived and then enticed him. So what?
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Pangloss ... the 'Man on the Street' is a naive 'Darwinist' who has not a clue what 'Eco-devo' means. Like it or not, 'Darwinism' is our contemporary secular religion. The 'Origin of Species' in the past is popularly understood to be a God-free happenstance from impersonal matter/energy in a mysterious 'Big Bang' The ultimate fate of the universe is popularly understood be a 'Big Chill' despite
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Pangloss stated: "The bible doesn't seem to suggest that everyone is created equal - it says stuff like 'do not suffer a witch to live', and takes pains to suggest that unbelievers be stoned.Ness notes: You are talking about the Old Testament Israeli covenant theocracy. We do not live under that theocracy; it ceased to exist at the Crucifixion. (Indeed, to a large degree it had ceased to exist
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Pangloss wrote: "Darwinism is not a worldview."Ness notes: The latest issue of Discover magazine positively drools over Darwinism, even offering adaptive explanations for art and religion. Darwinism has in fact become a 'world-view' whose underlying vibe is the 'uncreatedness' of the cosmos.
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Vince(1) wrote: "Eliot..you must be a lot of fun at a party!" My family has a perverse sense of humor , but this forum isn't a party. It's a discussion of hugely significant issues, and an inappropriate forum for some of the sarcasm in evidence.
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Nutters wrote: "It's easy to argue that the civil lot of the average American has improved as religion's hold has weakened. I'm sure that the vast majority of 19th C slave-owners were god-fearing Christians attending fire and brimstone sermons every weekend."Ness asks: You have stated on this bulletin board that there is no "absolute objective morality" ... so why do you preach against slavery ex
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Pangloss asks: "Why 'ought' we do such and such? Because god says so? Why ought we listen to god? " "I've been critical on god-centered notions of morality because I do not believe that appealing to god answers anything. It seems to me that when one wants warrant for believing that the holocaust was wrong, appealing to god is not the correct way to do it. This is because when you appeal to god,
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Nutters writes: a) "The evidence against religion is so clear cut that it's an untenable intellectual position."Ness notes that: 1) "Religion" is as nebulous a term as 'science.' I take you to mean any belief system that is not purely 'materialist.' 2) 'Science' is always in turmoil. It's a jungle out there. (E.g., Karl Popper's view of 'deductive testing of hypotheses' offended inductionists.
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Asshat told More-Than-A-Believer that "The only reason you are a Christian and not a Muslim, is because you were born in America. Religion is nothing more than a social habbit, everyone has questions about God etc, but we indoctrinate ourselves and children with things that I believe are more harmful than good."There's a lot of generalization here. What if More-Than-A-Believer were a convert from
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Pangloss: "This sounds like your experience was akin to lecturing. Is this correct?" Ness: No. It was hugely interactive and resulted in telephone calls and the release, by insider whistle-blowers, of incriminating material (written by a now VP of Kodak) to me. I say again ... the discussion would be improved by diminished personal attacks. I'll also say again, that you're looking to be argued i
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Pangloss asks: "Is this your first time on message boards." Ness replies: No amigo. I've in fact whistle-blogged a $250 million dot-con securities fraud, providing the public and the FBI with smoking-gun documentation (the officers and directors settled a class action lawsuit rather than go to court) ... furthermore, in part because of that whistle-blogging, Lehman Bros. then-CEO Fuld pulled the
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Pangloss your charm offensive is certainly energetic: "More lies." "You are making up this bilge." "You need a scapegoat your position is not rational." "You aren't very rational." "Utterly pathetic." "BE HONEST WITH US."
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Nutters, why are you here, participating in a forum intended to disparage McLean Bible Church ... an organization whose members live in a completely different cosmology than you do? Is the Christian world-view offensive to you because, for example, its adherents tell their children that death is not annihilation?You've written that "the taxonomy of those who push religion in the face of the evide
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Sure it's dark out there ... if you look ahead for yourself, your children, and even the 10,000 stars that you can see in the sky at night.
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Pangloss: "I'm wanting to discuss these issues with believers, not just 'Roman Catholics'."Ness: No, you are slinging epithets at Protestants who will not engage in Roman Catholic scholasticism ... for example, you say:"You are dishonestly twisting my context and you know it. The context, as I've repeated said and you've ignored, is a rebuttal to your presuppositional treatment of the bible. In s
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Pangloss: 1) you're on the wrong forum ... you want to be argued into Roman Catholicism, 2) (BTW, you're the one who brought up Elijah's miracle in the context of 'evidence' ... not me), 3) the "tradition of Aquinas" that you are asking for assumes the fallen man can reason his way from Nature as he sees it, to the God of the Bible, 4) therefore you might as well pull up stakes and go to a Roman
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Pangloss wants evidential arguments and tangible evidence :"Christian thinkers should go back to evidential arguments.""I should note at this time that I've been asking for evidence/argumentation for god's existence.""Throughout the bible, god provides people with more than the 'holy spirit'. He supposedly provides evidence.""God did not infuse these people with the holy spirit - he empirically d
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Pangloss fulminates:You can't argue (or won't) your way out of a paper bag.I've just shown this presupposition of yours to be false.The trouble is that you and Lon (and presupper's in general) pick and choose which parts of the bible you want to believe.Your worldview is contradictory and actually presupposes naturalism. It should be tossed into the waste bin of intellectually bankrupt failures a
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Pangloss my friend, give it a rest. Academia is rife with visiting professors and fellows; my family lived on the Continent for years precisely because our father was invited to implement specific Harvard teaching methodologies in some European post-graduate programs. That's why I speak French and Italian. But this is all ad hominem ... so who cares?Q: What "logical proofs" would ever convince yo
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