by markt4death on Mon Aug 08, 2011 11:28 pm
([msg=60696]see Re: The "proof" of the Christian God being fake[/msg])
You all have interesting ideas but your assumptions may need to be based on fairly general Bible knowledge that lacks the necessary specifics needed to stay solid.
First, the perfection question about God not being perfect because stuff isn't done (although already shot down quite well) is actually explainable in the fact that God is infinite in both directions. He always was, is, and always will be. In fact, when Gen 1:1 says "In the beginning..." It means at the start of Creation; and since the start or change of something is the only way to define time, and God is unchanging Himself, it follows that when God created... he created time too.
Next, "all scripture is God breathed" means that even though it is true that men wrote the Bible, they did it by the inspiration of God, and since God is perfect, so is the Bible. In fact it is called the living word of God and is "sharper than any two edged sword. The so-called errors in the Bible have been punctuation marks, disproved, or are remnants of rewritings done by an offshoot cult created in Egypt soon after the early Church was established. They decided that they only wanted to believe what fit into their personal ideas and logic so they changed parts of their copies of the Bible to fit those ideals. The died off in a few hundred years and the vast majority of all Bibles used today come from the original churches, however the first person who conclusively proves the Bible is false gets fame like none have ever seen; and with that motivation, archeologists in Egypt and the surrounding area have been using those rewritten texts for years as "proof" that the Christianity is crap. God has protected the integrity of His Word for a long time and no one has come close to that fame.
Next comes the idea of Paul being forced by God to join Him. Paul was on his way to Damascus because he believed he was doing God's work by killing Christians. Jesus met him on the road, blinded him, and asked him why he was persecuting Him. He then directs Paul to a Christian in Damascus so he might be healed from his blindness and told the truth about the Messiah and why what he was doing was counterproductive to God. In no way did God force Paul to switch sides. He simply helped Paul connect the dots that allowed him to realize whose side was really right.
As for Jesus choosing the disciples, God has always been quite clear on the fact that He has a plan for everyone's life should we choose to answer His call. It is always about choice and I personally think the fact he chose common laborers instead of religious leaders says a lot about who God intends to spread His message. Another thing you might want to consider is that every disciple was persecuted for their beliefs and all of them save John was martyred for his faith (John was exiled on the island of Patmus where he ended up writing Revelations). If these eye witnesses didn't believe Jesus performed the miracles recorded by them in the first 4 books of the New Testament (I didn't include Luke on purpose) or that He didn't raise Himself up from the dead and present Himself to, not only the disciples that spent years with Him but thousands of others who later formed the early Church, does anyone really believe they would be willing to be tortured, beaten, and killed in order to defend that belief?
Finally, the disciples and Paul were not the only ones to help write the New Testament. Luke, a doctor, researched first person accounts when he wrote the 5th book and I don't think anyone really knows who wrote Hebrews.
If you actually made it this far, congratulations. I wrote a lot, I know. I respect all your opinions but realize that debating very rarely leads to any sort of change of opinion
) That would be interesting for me big time!
This is going to be fun to write! It should be up in like 20 minutes or less.
