| DélioPT said: "So not believing is evil? So you are telling me that hindus, muslims, buddhists... and possibly other christian denominations are evil for not believing?" |
But he is still the one who chose to setup the system so that people who do not believe are punished in a similar manner to those that are evil. If what you do is not evil but you get punished in the same or very similar manner to those that are doing evil then there isn't that much difference is there?
He is the one who chose to be so restrictive in his acceptance and he is the one who chose to punish a finite crime with an infinite punishment, an odiously immoral and disproportionate thing to do that is much much worse than a lifetime imprisonment in guantanamo with hourly waterboarding as a punishment for Jaywalking.
Either disbelief is evil (including belief in other religions), which I disagree with or god is punishing with eternal torture something that is not evil, which is evil.
| It`s not a looser standard |
Let's see, in our standard murder is immoral; in the standard you apply to god murder is moral because he is god and everything he does is moral because he defines morality. How is that not a looser moral standard? It is in fact the loosest moral standard as no matter how ignoble an act god does it is still considered moral.
| and it`s not even special pleading as God does not need both. |
For it not to be special pleading you would need to properly justify the application of a different standard but all you managed to come up with is "but he is different" or "but he is god" which is as poor a justification as saying "When the President does it, that means it is not illegal".
If something is immoral then it is immoral even when done by god otherwise moral and immoral have no meaning.
| All i´m trying to show is that seeing the world only from morality and (only) actions gives you a partial/incomplete view of God. |
You keep talking about taking a complete view of god but you do not do it yourself as you steadfastly refuse to consider the immoral acts of god. You say that it is because we cannot know his thought process and thus we cannot judge him when he does seemingly immoral things but if you cannot judge his seemingly immoral acts for that reason then we cannot judge his seemingly moral acts either as to do so we would need the kind of understanding of his mind that you say we lack to judge him negatively.
All you can say is that you trust that that entity who commited or ordered murder, mass murder, genocide... is a benevolent entity because they told you they were.
| Killing is immoral but in self-defense or in defense of others is not. Even for human justice things can be seen in a different light. Call it preservation of human life, with God is like preservation of grace and purity/calling for judgment. |
The difference is that the situation changes, not the actor. It is the different situation (self-defense) that makes it moral, not the person doing it. Saying god can do anything to preserve grace/purity is like saying that white people can murder black people marrying white people to conserve the purity of white people. Does that sound repulsive to you? Good, because that's what your assertion sounds to me.
| "everybody starts at the same standard" WE start at the same standard or same common ground, not God. God is not human to be put in the same level. |
Again, to apply a different standard you must first show good cause that such a different standard is warranted even if he is not human. I can do it with the non-humans that are animals and plants by virtue if their lack of mental ability ot reason about what is right and wrong but god has no such excuse.
Saying we cannot understand him doesn't help either as these acts of immorality are found in the bible which is supposed to be (possibly among other things) a moral guide which means that god should have explained in it why such actions where not immoral so we would be able to understand and not get the wrong idea that mass murder is moral. Simply saying that "Thou shall not kill" is not enough as it only sends mixed signals and confuses as to when murder is moral and when it is not.
| "And pushing someone in front of a car also put them in the face of a choice and that's it too, no difference" Thing is, independently of where you stand in your life, everytime life presents you with a choice, whatever the way of that happening, you choose based on two outcomes. Before this choice is actively made/followed you did not move an inch from where you were. If you go left or right it`s because you went left or right, not because someone told you about left or right. It`s not how things happen. If only you choose your path, then a choice cannot do it for you. And that`s the illusion: you only attribute faith the pushing in front of a car, but not every single choice people go trough in their lives, because with faith it seems different than everything else. |
This is a false premise as by telling them of god you are choosing their path to be that of going to hell. They may afterwards be able to go back to the path to heaven but it doesn't change that the simple telling puts them in a different path than they were prior to it.
You also are not addressing my point that if you really believed your claim that "god defines morality" then you would not need to argue that it is not like pushing someone in front of a car but you would be arguing that even if god asked you to literally throw unbelievers in front of vehicles then it would be moral as he would be the one ordering it.
| ""And in Lord Jesus Christ, [...], begotten of the Father before all worlds, [...], begotten, not made..."" Yes it is true. The problem is people can`t guess. God revealed Himself to humanity and in the same way, prophets revealed the coming of Christ. remember how John the Baptist welcomed Christ. Jesus always existed but only from a certain period of time, was His existance revealed. |
This contradicts Romans 1:19 which says: "since what may be known about god is plain to them". If Jesus existed before his incarnation then he was always a part of god and thus is part of what may be known about god even before his birth.
You say people can't guess but Romans 1:19 says that it is plain to them.
| "By opening your heart you are already displaying belief in god" As much as it seems like that, it`s not exactly like that. When people open themselves it`s more in the sense of giving it a chance - as vague as this expression may seem. To some it may mean putting their fears away first. Doesn`t necessarily mean faith because there is no true love, trust and belief. |
Reread what you quoted, I only mentioned belief, not trust, love or faith. To give it a chance you need to believe first, maybe not as strongly as someone who also has love and trust (and thus faith) but you still need to believe. You wouldn't give a chance and put your fears away for the invisible pink unicorn because you don't believe in it. Putting your fears away and giving a god a chance proves that you believe he exists, even if that belief is not as strong as a believers' belief.
| "And when was that sign made public?" The sign in the sky told by Mary, an "unknown light", as the beggining of a new war, was what Lucia understood as being the aurora in the night of Januray 25th 1938. Two monts before Hitler started his conquests. |
That doesn't answer the question of when it was made public, only the question of what Lucia took the sign to be. The earliest mention of the sign was after its appearance which means that barring further evidence it was made public after its appearance.
| The term break-out, i don`t find it fitting. In portuguese is written by Lucia as "começará" which means "will start". |
Thanks for that. That's one of the problems with translations (including with the bible). It is indeed less precise than "break out" which evokes visions of battles.
However...
| And in fact it did. The birth of WW2 was there. Had not Hitler started his conquests and there would not be a WW2. |
... you insist on putting the start of the war before the war started. The Anschluss may have been Hitler's first conquest and thus one of the causes of WW2 but it wasn't itself part of WW2 any more than the assassination of archduke Ferdinand was part of WW1, instead both where causes of their respective WW.
Indeed, the Anschluss was completed way before the start of the war and while it was one of the events that preceded the war it is not even as clearly a cause of the war as the assassination of archduke Ferdinand was, that would be the invasion of Poland that has this place. Had Hitler been satisfied with the Anschluss, the Sudetenland, the rest of Czekoslovakia and Memelland there would not have been a WW2 as the other nations did not declare war over those. Instead it was the invasion of Poland which was the straw that broke the camel's back and while the other straws (the Anschluss...) were necessary to have WW2 they were not sufficient.
Also, you want to include political events in the war on the basis of "Had not Hitler started his conquests and there would not be a WW2" but this can be said of other events too:
"Had not Hitler been elected in 1933 and there would not be a WW2"
"Had not Germany been imposed the Versailles treaty and there would not be a WW2"
"Had not Germany been in WW1 and there would not be a WW2"
...
It obviously doesn't make sense to include all these events in WW2 jsut because they were events that lead to WW2 but the only reason not to include them while including the Anschluss and subsequent events is to make it fit with the Pius XI part of the prophecy, in other word the only reason to do so is to make the facts fit the prophecy.
| I can`t find explicit references to this action or others, i can only find references to a letter in 1929 where it`s described the request for the reparation. Which the Church only made it public in 1939, so i correct myself in saying it did so too late! Thank you. |
But unless that letter also contained the relevant part of the prophecy then its predictive power rests on the belief that Lucia did not make it all up after the fact. If that letter did contain the prophecy then it is much stronger as you are not talking of possibly one person lying but about a conspiracy that would include many people in the church which, while not impossible, would be a lot less likely as it rests on none of the members of the conspiracy spilling the bean (which is also why conspiracy theories like the moon landing being a hoax and 9/11 being a government con job are not credible as they require dozens if not hundreds of people not spilling the beans, which is very unlikely).
| But Mary did spoke about those who believed: the martyrs. |
She spoke in the context of Russia spreading her errors, which could possibly account for the Stalinist purges but cannot account for the murder of millions of Jews at the hands of the Nazis.
|
"It wouldn't make sense for god (either directly or in the form of Jesus or through Mary) to instruct Lucia to reveal" No one understands God to be able to really explain it. Ony God really knows why exactly it chose Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco for receiving the message. |
You are missing half of the sentence and thus the whole point. I don't have too much of a problem with him saying it to 3 kids instead of the pope, who is better able to spread the message. I have a problem with Jesus appearing to Lucia and authorising her to reveal the second secret but not doing the same or similar to the pope to make sure that the secret that Lucia could then reveal got wide distribution. Presumably the pope must be frequently praying to god and thus could have easily have had an inspiration to spread the message instead of waiting until it was too late. It is the juxtaposition of telling Lucia and not telling the pope that I find illogical.
Of course I am assuming that god did not tell the pope instead of having the pope not following god's instructions but if god told him to spread the second secret wide like he told Lucia to reveal it then why wouldn't he do it?
| The consecration was for Russia, not for the world, and so, peace would only come after that. But only for a period of time. |
Maybe but there still hasn't been peace since said consecration. For the prophecy to have any value there needs to be a way to diferentiate between the promised peace and the lack of it and have it correspond with the consecration but none of them correspond as WW2 ended decades before, the cold war ended many years after and war in general did not end at all after the consecration either.
| And if you look back, the world was at peace after that, not complete peace because humanity won`t go away. Before the consecration you had the spread of communism with it`s hatred for religion, the cold war. It all ended and Russia did convert by embracing religion once again, and with that, God. |
Except that the cold war ended more than half a decade after the consecration. If you want long enough any government will change so all you have to do is predict their fall following a given event, repeat the event once in a while (1942, 1952, 1984) and then say "well the one that didn't work were not done properly, only the one that worked counts". That seems too easy to me.
| As far as i know, the letter Lucia wrote predated 1960, it seems that it was she who asked for it to be opened at this date because she believed the world would better understand it at this time (the part of the secret about Russia). |
That letter concerned the third secret whereas the secret about Russia was the second secret.
| Those who don`t forgive and hate is not the same person. An actions always gets a reaction. If you don`t forgive, hate, not trust, etc., won`t live in harmony withing your self and with God. |
I don't automatically give forgiveness to people because they need to ask for it first but that doesn't mean that I don't leave in harmony with myself as I do not go around spending my time thinking about people that did things to me that require my forgiveness.
As for living in harmony with god, I cannot say that I care to live in harmony with an unrepentant mass murderer just because he chose to forgive us for making us in a way that is unable to follow his laws and did so in a flashy way. Especially when the flashy way he chose was human sacrifice.
As for trust, it has to be earned, not given, tough when meeting a new person you need to give them a modicum of trust upon which to build further trust.
| God`s punishment is also the same as saying: "So, you don`t want ME, so i`ll leave in your own troubles". |
No it is quite literally: "So, you don`t want ME, so i`ll get you tortured" (except for those versions of christianity that do not believe in hell).
| Different meanings doesn`t mean you can`t find the true one. |
Sure, just like i could have found the true meaning when my dad punished me and said "you know why you are punished" but it does mean that it is not explicit, which is what I have a problem with.
| If somebody does something against, why did this happen? It`s never random, so you got to read into it because sometime it actually has more than one interpretation. When your father punished you it´s not only because of the action, but also because of the reason behind it. |
But given that he wouldn't tell me the reason behind it (sometimes) then I couldn't improve on it. Same with god, given that he doesn't explicitely tell us the reason behind any given action that might be taken as punishment/guidance we cannot improve upon it unless we chance upon the correct reason.
| "The passage talks about false prophets" It is about prophets but not only. It`s showing how one can discover how someone is good by not just looking at what they say, but also at what they do. You can say you love God but if your heart and actions show something else, you know that that love isn´t honest. And actually the same applies at faith. |
I know, it is how I used it (except applying it directly to god and his actions). YOU are the one who said that it pertained to the people Jesus met after being arrested which I pointed out doesn't fit as those were not prophets.
But as you say and as I did "It`s showing how one can discover how someone is good by not just looking at what they say, but also at what they do" and when applied to god's actions it shows that god is not good as he is willing to have men, women and children killed for no reason other than to steal their land for the Israelites. It shows a god willing to torture people for eternity, which would be immoral even for the most heinous act imaginable as it is a cruel and infinite punishment for a finite crime but it is even more evil when applied to such actions as lack of belief or belief in the wrong god, which is determined more by birth in a given family than anything else. It is even more odious when he is perfectly willing to reduce that sentence from an eternity in hell for one's lifetime to just 3 days for the combined lifetimes of all those who accepted Jesus.
Indeed, if my lifetime of sins warrants an eternity in hell, don't the combined lifetimes of sins of all saved warrant the same punishment? And if Jesus paid that punishment for you then shouldn't Jesus be spending an eternity in hell instead of the three days between his crucifixion and his resurrection?
So Jesus did not so much pay for your sins as get a slap on the wrist for your sins, not exactly the selfless sacrifice that christianity claims it to be.
| About false prophets and false Christs: "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus, that spirit is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world" |
By that standard then Mohammed and Joseph Smith are true prophets as they acknowledge Jesus as the Christ. Does that mean that you are a muslim and a mormon as well as a catholic?
Of course the problem with such a definition is that it is circular "if they recognise our religion then they are true prophets, if they do not recognise it then they are not". Not exactly a useful definition.
| And Matthew 24-25: "For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible. 25See, I have told you ahead of time" |
This also undermines Lucia Santos' prophecy as it recognises that false prophets can perform great miracles so if she is a false prophets, as other denominations of christianity that do not accept that prophecy as true would see her, then she still could make miracles (though not much of one as it necessitate fitting a lot of square pegs in round holes as I have argued earlier).
| Acts of the Apostles: Acts 13 4-12 |
So the proconsul believed because of the miracle Paul did even though the bible says that false prophets can perform great miracles? The only thing that remains is the requirement of accepting Jesus as Christ which muslims and mormons do.
| "but your belief definitely lowers its [morality] importance with respect to faith" It honestly doesn`t. You can`t just honor Jesus with your lips, your heart needs to do the same. The love for Jesus needs, absolutely, to be within as outside of you. |
It does because immorality can be washed away by faith through the sacrifice of Jesus whereas unbelief cannot be washed away by morality through the sacrifice of Jesus, which shows that god puts faith front and center and you can live a life of immorality as long as in your heart you are really sorry that you did.
| "but when you look at the old testament it is bad fruit after bad fruit (mass murders, wars, genocides...) and thus according to the standard given by Jesus o recognise bad trees the old testament is such a bad tree" Depends on how you read God and prophets. It`s the same as those who claim to love God, but they do it only with their lips, not their hearts and gestures. They speak one thing and show another. With God, you always read and see the same thing. But you need to know how to read Him because he`s not human and He is the basis of everything good. |
You are beggin the question. you start with "god is good" and unsurprisingly you finish with "god is good" even when there are mass murders, wars and genocides on the way. To use the standard set by Jesus you must first stop to beg the question "x is good" as if you do then that standard is meaningless:
"But you need to know how to read allah because he`s not human and He is the basis of everything good."
Would you accept that or would you read the koran critically and decide if it is a moral book or not on its own merit? If not then why do you do it for your god (beside having been indoctrinated to do so by your parents and your priests).
| For example, it`s not because God punishes that He is less good. |
And what exactly were Job's children punished for? The bible is quite clear that the reason they were killed was because god authorised satan to do so in order to win a bet.
The bible also says that: "God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden" Romans 9:16-18
So his punishment is indeed arbitrary and thus not due to him being good but capricious.
| Our goodness comes from God |
No it doesn't. It comes from the fact that any society that is full of murder and violence against other members of that society is self destructive so that after a time only those societies without those attributes being dominant survive.
If our goodness came from god then god would not have ordered the Israelites to wipe out so many different peoples as that has nothing to do with goodness and everything to do with conquest.
| But the fact is, all this happens during your lifetime. Not after. And it is in this life that everything is decided. |
Again, I am not claiming that it is not so in you system of belief, I am claiming that it is stupid and immoral.
| "If christianity was a true religion it would not need to rely on faith but on truth only" Isn`t Jesus the truth, path, life? Faith is also love for the truth. |
No he is not. He claims to be but his reliance on faith proves otherwise.
First, the bible claiming that Jesus is the truth doesn't make it so any more than islam claiming to be a religion of peace makes it so. You also have to look at what they do, not just what they claim and in the case of the history of islam and its many conquest we can say that having the name of the religion sharing a root with the arabic word for peace does not necessarily make it so*.
Second, just looking at the verse saying that Jesus is "the way and the truth and the life" you see that it also says "No one comes to the Father except through me" which means that belief in Jesus is what matters, not the truth, and tries to link himself to the truth by claiming that he is it. If he really was the truth he would say something like "I am the truth but do not take my word for it but search for the truth yourself for in doing so you will find me". He doesn't rely on truth but tries to dictate what he claims to be the truth through faith.
The fact is that truth does not need faith for truth is regardless of anybody's faith in it andwhen you look for it and find it you do not need to have faith in the truth for you then have evidence of it.
* on the other hand I know at least one muslim that I can say if all muslim were like him it would be reasonably close to be as much a religion of peace as jainism is.
| "seek the truth and you will find me" or in other words, open yourself to God - ask for the living water - and you shall receive it. Love and you shall receive God. That is the truth of life. |
That's not seeking truth but seeking belief. The truth would not need belief to be sought as it would be just as true even without belief. That one must first believe in a certain "truth" to find it is actually a good hint that it is not a truth but a lie that some try to pass off as truth by using your gullibility.
If someone tried to sell you a pig in a poke he would need to rely on your faith in his righteousness in order to sell it to you but if he really had such a great pig in his poke then he would not need to rely on your faith but would show the pig to you without any need to ask you to believe and/or trust him.
This is why I see religions with claims of rewards after death as the ultimate pig in the ultimate poke.
It is the ultimate pig in that it is the most wonderful pig you can think of (heaven) and it is in the ultimate poke in that you cannot open it and see the pig until you are dead and by then it is too late to ask for a refund.
It is actually doubly so in that it threatens you with the ultimate punishment in the same poke if you do not buy the pig.
| "They have no remorse and thus can't repent. Do you know what happens to people who do not repent?" Do you think God is blind to that? God is fair. |
No he is not: "God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden" Romans 9:16-18
That is anything but fair.
| "When people follow hate and silence the pain of others or morality, they "decided" to follow a path" I was speaking only from a point of view. When you follow hate in every action despite seeing the bad consequences, you do silence something. |
Like when the Israelites followed god's hate for the various inhabitants of the middle east despite seeing the bad consequences of their genocides?
Like when god sends good people to be tortured because they do not believe in him? An action that is claimed to be in in accord with his perfect love.
What is silenced in those cases are justice, morality and compassion, things that your god claims to be full of but seems always to come up short with, except for his followers.
| "But they might shut it off and refuse to use it" You see, it`s not really a question of religion. It`s seeing how people love their lives. Some do repent what they do, others don`t, but then again, in this case, they longer follow hate. |
It is a question of religion as if it wasn't for your religion why would you shut off your mind to the atrocities committed by your god?
I wish nobody would let their religion shut their mind off and rationally assess the moral worth of their religion; it would result in a much better world overall.
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I'm afraid this will be my last response to you as life is intruding more strongly upon my time now.
To summarise you hold the rather strange belief that an entity that ordered mass murders, genocides (with the occasional exception of the virgins that were to be divided as spoils of war between the Israelites), human sacrifices (even if he recanted on at least one occasion)... an entity that calls eternal punishment by torture for a finite crime just, no matter how big or small the crime is. An entity that believes that blasphemy and fornications are the worst possible crimes, which means that they are worse than murder or slavery (which said entity condones); an entity that believes in punishing a whole species for the crime of their great great great... granparents (Adam and Eve). You hold the belief that such an entity is the best source of moral guidance we can ever have and is worthy of worship.
I am afraid that I must strongly disagree with such an absurd assessment, regardless of whether said entity exists or not and I can only hope that you will one day open your eyes to the lack of morality inherent in your religious beliefs.
"I do not suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it"
