Posts by flamegrilled

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

You witter on enlessly about gentle Jesus, meek and mild and how loving and compasisonate he was. According to you he was moved with pity at the sight of a leper, a cripple or a widow - a real visceral reaction to human suffering and he took action to stop the grief. Cofty

It truly amazes me how you make these many assertions that I've said certain things that I haven't even come close to saying.

Where did I say this even once, never mind about "endlessly"?

We are probably getting into double digits as to the number of times that you have accused me of saying things when I most certainly have not. What is the point of doing that? Any reader can check back and see that you are presenting verifyably false accusations. How does that strengthen your position? It just exposes that you are prepared to make things up without a second thought.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

Flamegrilled I invited you twice yesterday to lay out the big picture. I said "the stage is yours". The only thing I asked is that you be succint and don't use it as an excuse to preach.

It's an unreasonable request. The big picture is not succinct, and if I give it to you I would be preaching.

If a Christian went to Dawkins and said - I don't believe in evolution, but I'm prepared to hear you out. The only thing I ask is that you prove it in less than 100 words, and don't use a tone that offends my Christian sensibilities.

Do you think he'd give them the time of day?

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

Most of your evasive posts appear to be an attempt to take the thread off-topic.

Well an unbiased reader can be the judge of that.

PS: Simon has pointed out the error in your view of how the bible portrays the Israelite/Christian god.

You mean where he says the bible describes a ...

phsycotic xenophobic murdering monster.

It's just Hitchens/Harris rhetoric with added vitriol. Again, an unbiased reader of the Bible can easily see for themselves that it's not the case.

33

Morris in Italy

by Achille in

morris in italy, january 5, 2014. http://forum.infotdgeova.it/viewtopic.php?p=281371#p281371.

flamegrilled

BH - thanks for taking the time to relay some of that. I'd be interested to hear more on the rest if you have time later.

FG

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

The snag is that the bible portrays this god as unloving and vengeful. The Gladiator

I simply disagree of course.

I don't think it's difficult for someone who knows their Bible to cherry pick passages to present God in this way. But it is not a fair or accurate reflection of God as presented in the Bible as a whole.

The Watchtower Society's, with all its faults, does at least have answers as to why the Christian god acts as it does, why it does not intervene in disasters, and what it wants from humans. You have typed so many words, yet arrived nowhere.

I find the WT answers to be incomplete. Therefore as a logical argument to theism I don't choose to use them. As far as where I've personally arrived you have no way of knowing since that was not what this thread was about. I simply have pointed out the logical flaws in Cofty's assertions. If I turn this thread into why I personally believe in the God of the Bible then I would (rightly) be accused of taking the thread off-topic.

24

World's Greatest Music: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, voted # 1

by compound complex in

jw
friends

now playing at kdfc.com.

interesting that dvorak's symphony no.

9 was voted to the number two spot .

flamegrilled

My favorite is Bach's St. Matthew's Passion. It's very moving emotionally. Oubliette

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

If the tsunami is an act of love how do we determine what love is? Cofty

I already dealt with this multiple times. You are the one trying to logically conclude that the tsunami must be an act of love, not me.

Not every action or inaction taken in isolation should be used to interpret the characteristics of a person.

Again you are all very excited about the 250K figure. But whether it is 250 trillion, or it is only 1, the question remains the same. Collectively all of God's perceived inaction to natural disasters over millenia form a single question, not multiple questions. Either there is a reason for it, or there is not.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

So why did he drown a quarter of a million innocent people?

The god of christian theism knew about the earthquake in advance

He observed the wave rise from 19 miles below the Indian Ocean.

He watched it for another hour as it rushed towards the countries around the pacific Rim

He knew for a certainty what the death toll would be.

He knew that the lives of a further 5 million would be devastated

He only had to say the word to stop it in its tracks

He did not.

For an omniscient, omnipotent god, to send the tsunami or passively observe the tsuanmi is morally equivalent.

If the tsunami is an act of love how do we determine what love is? This is not a non sequitur or a trivial question and you don't get to dismiss it so easily.

Cofty

As I already stated, you are making no allowance for the information you may be missing. Yes, He only had to say the word to stop it in its tracks. No, we do not know what the consequence of that would have been except to prevent one "natural" disaster.

I accept that you are not obliged to make allowance for the information you may be missing. Obviously if you've predetermined an atheistic position and you are just looking for a club to bash theists, then the missing information is just a convenience for now.

But one thing is for certain. If there is a Christian God then He DOES have information that we do not have. Therefore there is no reason to conclude with certainly that his apparent inaction must be contradictory to a loving nature.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

But none of those things would directly contradict things that the christian god had previously revealed to humans.

God explained what love means and commanded us to follow the example of Jesus.

We can be certain that perfect love does not mean drowning a quarter of a million innocent people.

I can agree with all of that.

If we can't be certain of that fact then christians have no way to follow Jesus' command to love.

Non-sequitur.

Should they give generously to the poor or drown the poor? Who knows? Both are perfectly loving acts.

Silly.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

The real problem with the difficulties you have explaining and making sense of everything is because of the start:

1) If the Christian God exists

So my open mindedness and application of logic without a fixed starting premise is the real problem.