h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This goes out to the fundamentalists/born agains. Right first, I'm of semitic decent and a christian, so I've got better odds of getting picked for the rapture than you guys.

Anyway as I was going to say. I have studied Theology at college, as well as at church, I have many books on theologocil subjects, my father is a vicar and I once considered becoming one myself. First of all Genesis is alegorical, it is almost entirely metaphore and stories passed down by word of mouth untill one day they were written down. However saying that there are several known similarities to evolutionary theory. In the bible man is expelled from paradise after becoming intelligent, in evolutionary theory man became intelligent after being expelled from paradise. In the bible the expulsion is a direct consequence of becoming intelligent, in evolutionary theory becoming intelligent is a consequence of the expulsion.

Now we get on to the contradiction stuff. In Exodus 20 it quite clearly states 'Thou shalt not kill' this is, if you belive it, known to be the word of God inscribed on tablets of stone. Later in Exodus it says that the punishment for certain crimes is death by stoning. Now if you obey the word of god then stonings cannot involve human interaction, they must be devine. That means that either these laws, which break the ten commandments, are either written by man, or God is hypocritical, which isn't technicaly possible, or God is meant to be the one throwing the stones.

Now we get onto things such as masterbation, contraception and homosexuality. In only one place in the Gospels and the old testament does God or Jesus say that any of these are sins. This is in Leviticus, where it says 'Man shall not lie with man as he does with woman' but a) he can't they don't have the necesary bits, and b) it also states that you can't eat you can't eat Black Pudding, hare, pork, shrimp, shark, squid, lobster, crab, prawns, scampi, oysters, mussels or in fact any shell fish or aquatic crustacians, or eels, octopus, crocodile, or any amphibian. The french are in trouble, because horse is definitely out, as is cammel. All birds of prey are no nos, as are ostriches, cormorants, the ibis, the water hen, the pelican, the carrion vulture, the stork and the heron. Anything with paws is off the menu as are most reptiles, except snake, I think you can eat them. Creatures which swarm are bad, so no honey for you.

The best bit is eating any forbidden food is as bad as 'lying with a man as you would a woman.' I sure am glad I'm a vegetarian.

Also if you want to go on about the word of god, please bear in mind that if you claim the bible is the word of god you should bear in mind that it has passed through The Metatron, whoever first wrote it down, everyone who copied it onto new scrolls, I mean if they made a typo , the people who translated it into Latin, again with the people who copied it into new books/scrolls, and finaly the people who translated it into English, and that's just the old testament in the KJV

<> (Dealer)

Sounds good to me!

Now, which god should we allow ourselves to be chosen by?

As for the alternative wager you suggested, it would seem it does no good at all to believe in God and live an exemplary life since you are headed for the Lake of Fire anyhow unless you happened to be one of the *special chosen few* to win the God Lottery . . .


az

Where do you get a ticket for the God Lottery?

Oh, forget it, as a stenchy Catholic, I've got no chance! I might as well buy a euromillions ticket!

Oh no, that's gambling! Jesus didn't like that either, did he?

Right, I realise my last post may have been a bit too rational for a thread like this, but I'm going to do another one so

However I shall dissect and critique the original post


>>I am sick of these so-called Christians who are prepared to compromise on core aspects of the faith. One must either accept the entire Bible as the infallible Word of God, or else all of it is a lie and God Himself is a liar.<<

I bet you don't. For instance, are you a communist? I refere you to Acts 2:44-45. The bible certainly doesn't support the idea of capitalism, for as it says in 1 Corinthians 6:10, the greedy shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Big cars, big houses, and big meals are a sin, Proverbs 28:7. Jesus even told his followers that there was nothing wrong with taxes and that they should pay them, Mark 12:17. Also see all the banned foodstuffs in my last thread.

Also I'd like to quote the following:-

"God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" - Numbers 23:19

"And Jehovah repented of the evil that he had said he would do to his people." - Exodus 32:14



>>So-called liberal / nominal 'Christians' are increasingly rejecting core Bible truths, the main one of which is six day creation.<<

Look, if you're going to apropriate the holy book of another religion and use it to make up a large proportion of your own then you should have an understanding of how and why that book was written the way it was. For instance C.S. Lewis' Narnia Chonicles are an alegory for chistianity, it contains mainy fundamental truths which are found in Christianity, but it is not a literal truth.

The Lord of the Rings is a combination of Christianity as it is now and north european mythology. It's fundamental message is that wikedness and corruption will lead to your downfall, yet if in two thousand years time if some people belive it to be an account of a time past, which is how it's written, and use it as a religious text, for it could be used as such, then they should remember why it was written, something you're not doing here with reguard to Genesis. The great flood for instance, that actually comes from babylonian mythology/religion, the babylonian texts predate the jewish ones by quite a while. Oh it happened, but the whole world as refered to in the story consisted almost purely of mesopotamia



>>If God had created the world over a longer timeframe, he would said precisely that and would not have told us otherwise in the Bible through some form of coded message, as Christian evolutionists seem to think. There is absolutely ZERO scope in the Bible for intrepreting the creation account in such a way.<<

You see that's the problem with poor translating, it's not 'days' it's more like periods of light and dark. Go to Alaska some time, it could be six montsh of light and six months of darkness, for all we know it means that the earth was created in six years.



>>I use to just feel sorrow for these poor deluded people, and assumed that, in time, the Holy Spirit would have opened their eyes. But I am seriously beginning to wonder now whether they are not, in fact, being used as tools of the devil, to sow the seeds of corruption and disharmony within the Christian faith. True Christians who have been born again must shun these evolutionists. We must not tolerate such beliefs in our midst, and we should drive them from our churches and exclude them from all fellowship until they repent and confess with their mouths that Jesus is Lord and the Bible is true. Otherwise we may as well open our gates to homosexuals, fornicators, liars, theives and murderers. ALL will sow the seeds of corruption.<<

Really? That's naughty, in 1 John 3:8 we're told not to judge others and that's rather judgmental of you.

>>The Word of God clearly says that we are to keep ourselves separate from such people, and grow in Christ with the support of all others who are walking the same path.<<

At this point I feel I should warn you that you're damning yourself here Revelation 22:18 says, that those who add to the word of God/Bible will suffer all the plagues of the bible and you just added a big bit, not only that but you have actually gone against the actions and teachings of Christ



>>I have a feeling that God is in the business of separating the wheat from the chaff during these last days. He wants to see who will stand up for basic, Biblical truths and who will try and twist scripture for their own ends. I know which camp I am sin. Do you?<<

Was that 'sin' a freudian slip? Yes I know which camp I'm in, I follow the teachings of Christ, maybe you should try it some time

tough call...I'm partial to Chthulu myself. The forest guy is also pretty cool I guess.

Look, here's me, trying to have a rational discourse on why this guy's a retard and you two are going on about Cthulhu and the forest guy, I assume you mean the celtis spirit of nature sometimes known as The Green Man, when everyone knows that Yog-Sothoth is the only old god worth worshiping... except for the norse pantheon, they're quite cool

Who was talking about worshipping anybody? We're just trying to decide which god we'd allow to choose US.




az

< He will not see it harmed, and the time is coming when Israel is going to re-establish her rightful Biblical homeland and a mighty war will take place in that region. The Bible tells us the Russians will come to the aid of the Arabs, but that their interventions will be meaningless. Israel will emerge victorious, and in those final days many Jews will repent and turn to Christ!>

This is too good to pass up. In case you've been neglecting history and the news, Isreal has been harmed many, many, many, many times; even if we just look at events since 1948, when Isreal re-established her rightful Biblical homeland through one of many mighty wars involving many many nations, several of which had the USSR aiding the Arabs, and "the Jews" have not repented and turned to Christ [as if that would ever happen]. So where has this "God" of yours been hiding?

< indeed the Bible tells us that He has blessed many of His people with wealth in the past.>

So being poor is not being blessed?

Oh well in that case it would have to be a Valkyre, give me a big bussty germanic bird any day

oooh Norse gods! Great call that.

"Oh no, that's gambling! Jesus didn't like that either, did he?"

Isn't that the quakers, Deakie?

HS
ex-Quaker elder

"Who was talking about worshipping anybody? We're just trying to decide which god we'd allow to choose US."

well, by now, az, you're familiar enough with Math and Jez and I to understand that we're all used to the concept of our gods choosing us, rather than the other way round.

the difference is that we often tell them to p*ss off if we feel they're asking too much!

"This is too good to pass up... when Isreal re-established her rightful Biblical homeland "

indeed it is, Dr J!

"rightful homeland"???? What right had the Jews to drive the Palestinians off their land with the claim that some god or other gave it to them a few millenia previously?

My goodness - if we go down that road where do any of us end up???

"oooh Norse gods! Great call that."

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Anglo Saxon/Jute/Frisian/Germanic/Scandinavian etc etc etc gods. Or Northern European, as someone said. Or, even more PC - the gods of the North Sea cultures.

T.B. Falsename

You were going to be a minister! Well, I am sure glad your dad is not my minister-your knowledge of scripture is utterly shocking. And I don’t care how many theological books you have read or what degrees you have-the Bible is for the everyday person. If you need a degree to understand the Bible then Christ is not for the common man.

Genesis is not a metaphor. If you read the Hebrew, you will see that the language is in such a way that it is written as history. A metaphor makes no sense. Are you one of those people who say that ‘dust to man’ is symbolic of evolution? If so, what does God mean when He says to dust you shall return? Does He mean that when we die we turn back into monkeys? What is the origin of death? The Bible says that man brought death into the world but the theory of evolution teaches that death brought man into the world. How do you explain that? Jesus is called the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45) because He took away the sin of the first Adam. But if you don’t believe in a first Adam who brought sin into the world, how can there be a second Adam? And if you don’t believe in original sin, then would did Jesus die for?

And tell me this. Do you realize how pathetic that sounds to the average person? I have done a bit of evangelism but people always tell me that theory of evolution has proved the Bible wrong. And if you say that Genesis is a metaphor, they call it a cop-out (and they are correct in saying that). Also, pray tell, when does the metaphor end and when does the history begin in Genesis?

And the first 5 books of the Bible were written by Moses.

In Exodus 20 it quite clearly states 'Thou shalt not kill' this is, if you belive it, known to be the word of God inscribed on tablets of stone.’

If you read the Hebrew, it is translated as ‘thou shalt not murder’. That is condemned by the Bible. However, the death penalty for certain crimes is condoned by the Bible. There is no contradiction. Like in the USA, it is a crime to murder people but there is the death penalty for breaking the law. And in Moses time, it was against God’s Law to murder but if somebody broke His Law, they were to be killed.

‘Now we get onto things such as masterbation’

It is not mentioned in the Scripture although lust is condemned.

‘contraception’

Not mentioned either.

‘homosexuality. In only one place in the Gospels and the old testament does God or Jesus say that any of these are sins. This is in Leviticus, where it says 'Man shall not lie with man as he does with woman' but a) he can't they don't have the necesary bits’

Homosexuality is condemned MANY times, both in the Old and the New Testament (Leviticus 18:22-23, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:24-32, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:9-10,)

As for homosexuals not being able to have sex with each other, it is nice that you are so innoncent. Homosexuals have sex by anal intercourse (and it is possible for men and women to do that so men can lie with men as with woman as the verse says).

As for your shocking (I am sorry if this is offensive by your dad is a vicar!) knowledge of food laws, read Acts 10. In that passage, God takes away the food laws. Gentiles are now able to come to Christ and the food laws are done away with. Now name me ONE verse which scraps the laws on homosexual acts. There is none. So your comparison, which most skeptics make, is false.

Now if you want to learn about the Bible, just read it. But if this is what your vicar father has taught you, I’d consider finding a new Church.

And I should have mentioned that I have also read many theological books about Christianity-it is what lead me to eventually become a Christian. But they come second to the Bible.

Why has this thread suddenly become too wide to read? Is it something I can fix or is it down to one of the other contributers?

Someone overstepped the boundaries.. don't worry, it will change on the next page, until someone does it again


lil xx

OK thanks (phew) - how does one overstep the boundaries (feels a bit surreal asking that on this thread)?

It can be when someone transfers from an other format ie word using copy and paste..

Or is someone keeps hold of one button ie --------------------------------------------------------------------------


That can sometimes do it too..