Re: Bored already ? But also a Thursday spoiler thoughts

On Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:47:27 GMT, "Steve Hague"
<steve.hague1@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

(lff wrote:)

Yes, that's what I mean. But you've also said sin consists of choosing
to do wrong when you know what's right. The baby hasn't chosen this.

Sorry, I thought that's what I said. It was what I meant.

Then I'm afraid I think you've been inconsistent. When I asked you
what sin was, you said doing wrong when you knew what was right. Now,
I know that at birth we have the _potential_ to sin, but we also have
the potential to do almost everything, some of it very wonderful, but
we don't necessarily accomplish most of it. So I ask again, if a
newborn baby is born with the potential but not the actuality, how
does the sacrifice make any difference to this, eother in terms of the
original baby or in terms of mankind as a whole? It hasn't done away
with the sinful nature of mankind. Should we hear, if we listen
carefully, God saying "Ah well, it was worth a try"?

Look what happens in societies where there is no effective rule of law.

What?

Kosovo, Rwanda, etc. etc.

Sorry, I wasn't clear, I didn't mean "what societies?" I mean "what
happens?" Your sentence above came after "A baby inherits a sinful
nature but has not sinned
until knowing right from wrong chooses wrong." I can't see the
connection.

But it was a sacrifice only Jesus could have made, and it's clear from what
he said in Gethsemane that he
would not have chosen that path if there had been any other which would have
worked.

Chosen? Are you saying is was Jesus' idea that this should happen? I
thought it was God's plan. Unless you are saying that the two are one
and the same, in which case, as I said, it's hardly a sacrifice.

The creed says "et homo _factus_ est". Do you not hold
with this part?

Crikey, I'm expected to speak Latin now!

I'm sure you know it's "and was _made_ man" - God taking human flesh.

What's an atheist doing listening to
sermons?

I used to sneak in wearing a big hat and a false moustache and dark
glasses, just spying on the opposition... no, I was brought up in the
CofE mainly because my father was a church organist so I spent years
and years listening to all sorts of preachers. That's when I wasn't
reading the various indexes to the hymn book and giggling over tune
names like Schwing Dich and Schmucke Dich, or the juxtaposition of
Felix and Felix Dies.

I've never heard that sort of thing preached and would have had
words with the preacher if I had.

There are, as you have hinted, all shades.

But the one making the sacrifice had to be without sin, which is why only
Jesus could make it. The relationship between God the father and God the son
is a much closer one than that between human father and son.

But Jesus had to be specially created without sin. He couldn't have
chosen to be. Custom built for the job, as it were, which is what I
said before.

Scream, shout, to Heck with you. We Christians don't like anyone who
disagrees with us :)

OK, that's your Turning The Other Cheek box ticked for another day :o)

There is no gambit. The loss and the gift are both on God's side.

A gift isn't a loss, surely? How can God suffer a "loss"? Sounds like
"Aw heck, God's only human, y'know"

And it hasn't done anything about sin. As you've said in your
description of it, the sinful nature is still there. It hasn't made
any difference to mankind.

Well no, not unless you accept that we now have the possibility of eternal
life.

Well, I wouldn't remotely be the first and I won't be the last to say
what about all those who went before?* You just typed the word "now".
Are you saying that eternal life was invented in c30AD? And what's the
alternative?

*With, AIUI the sole exception of Elijah, the inspiration for that
well known rugby song Swing Low Sweet Chariot. Who slaughtered all the
worshippers of Baal, didn't he?

You can see Jesus as a role model without accepting his claims, as I believe
Gandhi did, but there is an impartation of something more than that when you
come to believe in him.

Other than the eternal life bit?

But, you know, depending on what a person's individual understanding
is of "faith", that can apply to _any_ person's personal creed,
religious or unbeliever.

To an extent, yes.

Limited by what?

From our society, whose morals are based on Christian teaching.

That sounds dangerously like you're saying only Christians can be
unselfish. If you're not, it sounds meaningless, to me anyway.

I'm not saying that at all, dangerous or not. Why meaningless?

Because you just attributed our societal good behaviour to _Christian_
values. Either you're saying that it's Christianity, specifically,
that makes us kind or you're not. If you are, then my first conjecture
above stands. If you're not, then the Christianity part is irrelevant,
and should be substituted with "the teaching of many different creeds,
among them Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Socratism" (is that a
word? Socrates-ism?)

Then where do we know this "truth" from? The thing about original sin
comes from Genesis. Anything else in Christianity is based on
knowledge of Genesis.

That is absolutely untrue. Christianity is based on the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus. Why do you think that the Christian faith requires
knowledge of the first part of the first book of the OT?

Because the notion of the birth and resurrection of Jesus is about
atoning for the original sin, isn't it? And without acceptance of
Genesis this cannot be absorbed. Without knowling Genesis, you have to
take the word of those who do (those who taught those who taught those
who taught you)

Why pick that particular aspect and say "much of
it might be false but this bit's true"?

I'm not saying it's false, just that it doesn't have to be literally true to
convey truth. The concept of original sin is a construct based on the early
part of Genesis, but all it means is that mankind tends to have a sinful
nature, which is something you and me have already agreed on.

Why does mankind tend to have a sinful nature? If I asked why we have
a nature that tends to love, or to learn, or even to create (arguably
at second hand) would you say, or would you deny, that God created us
that way?

If we have free will, we have choices. The choices we make matter to God.

That's making him sound human again

The reconciliation was necessary because of the barrier created between
God and Man by sin.

Barrier? Oh, c'mon, Steve, are you saying that it's not the way the
all-powerful had meant, had wanted it to be?

I don't think it's what God wanted, but it may be the only way it could be.
You refer to God as all- powerful, but that's not quite how I see it. He is
restricted by the bounds he has put upon himself by the nature of creation.

"I can do this, but it would be too easy, no fun. Tell you what, I'll
do it with one hand tied behind my back"

Why on _earth_ need God put restrictions upon himself?

Just as there are physical laws which we have gained a partial understanding
of, there are laws which operate on a spiritual (for want of a better word)
basis. These laws demanded the death of Jesus and no other.

And these laws were made by...?

Do you see yet why I say most Christian debate eventually becomes
recursive?

I mean that without the Resurrection we Christians might as well be
Muslims,
Jews,
Atheists etc, all of whom are obviously capable of living decent lives.

So what difference would that make?

Hope.

This is the eternal life bit again? Tell me, what do you understand as
the alternative? (a)Just stopping (b)Reincarnation (c)Devils with
pitchforks etc (d)the spiritual equivalent of an eternal departure
lounge until you finally agree to believe, at which point you get your
boarding card checked (e)none of the above but something else again of
which we have no knowledge

<snip eloquent account of Steve's conversion>

I'll tell you in return what turned me round the other way. I don't
think my faith had been particularly strong; I had resisted being
confirmed into the church at the age when I should have, because I
didn't want to put aside that time for confirmation classes, and I
reasoned that if I didn't want to go to the classes I wasn't ready to
be confirmed (I thought I knew it all anyway, what they were going to
teach us, having been to church since I was about four). I did get
confirmed off my own bat just before I went to university, for a lot
of the wrong reasons - entirely practical, in fact - I was likely to
be singing in assorted church choirs and when it came to taking
communion I would be sitting or kneeling there with everyone else
having to step over me and possibly getting frequent probing questions
from clergy about why I wasn't taking communion. My ex still doesn't,
even though he sings in a cathedral choir (in fact in Liverpool the
cathedral singers prostitute their art and sing at both ends of the
street whenever the need arises) and will sing musical settings of the
creed but remain silent if the service requires that he just speak it.
(Why do they tolerate this? Some of you will understand immediately
when I tell you he's a *tenor* (Kate B alert!). B****y good tenor too
at 60, I've heard him as a soloist on the radio twice over the past
couple of months)

Anyway, as far as the faith is concerned, it was something I had just
taken for granted. Then one day at the age of about 19-20 I was
shopping in Smiths and I read the sleeve note of some rock LP - I
would have said something like Iron Maiden, but this was the late 60s
so it was some precursor of that idiom - and it started "In the
beginning, man created god in his own image". Fury seized me, I felt
the writer of those words should immediately be cast into eternal
damnation with no chance of appeal. This lasted for about 5 seconds.
Then suddenly - just like you, Steve, in your car - it dawned upon me,
and I thought "no, y'right, of course that's it". And strange as it
may sound, I felt the same kind of revelatory lightness. Everything
started to make sense and has done since then.

So you're saying that faith is an advantage during tough times. Again we
agree!

Faith, yes. Not the object of our faith. You can have a faith even as
an atheist (I would tend to describe myself, rather like Marjorie and
Ray, as a humanist, except that many people take this as not being the
same as atheism, whereas I think it's included within it). In those
tough times you mention, the faith of a humanist in the human "spirit"
can be every bit as sustaining.

The Bible doesn't tell us that Christians
will be exempt from the bad things of life,but it does say that Jesus will
be with us through those times. This I can affirm.

I would assert that you can't. Your _faith_ in Jesus during those
times would be beyond doubt. The rest is just your perception. To say
more would need, for anyone, proof positive. Now of course, we're on
the Thomas story. And what happened there? Did he fall by the wayside,
as it were? No indeed, if the account is to be believed, Jesus did
actually appear and give him tangible proof. He was not expected to
rely on blind faith alone. Does make you wonder why it's never
happened since.

The main ingredient I perceive, in the ability to believe, is human
emotion, plus the receptivity of the subject when certain stories
become plain to them.

I think we all have the ability to believe. I used to be far too clever to
believe.

We all have the emotional receptivity. Some of us have the emotional
receptivity to believe that Diana was murdered.

It's interesting, isn't it?

lff
.

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