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kaziglu bey

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Jesus tells his apostles to follow ALL the old laws in Matthew 5 17-46, when his apostles question the Roman laws that conflict with the Talmud. Jesus tells them to follow all the laws or retribution will not happen. Seems your FB respondent didn't remember that one.

I am sort of glad that the guy who rebutted you DID actually answer some questions you asked, which is so rare of any fucking xtian on the planet. But, yes, he still sort of runs away with the fingers in his ears thing.

I have made this same objection. Jesus very clearly says that he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. He repeated reminds people that they are NOT above the OT law.

The response I get is that Jesus' death is the fulfillment he was talking about. Where does it say this in the Bible? Nowhere. I have asked to be shown where this is said in the Bible and have gotten nothing. Its all down to having the correct interpretation, which of course any given Christian is confident that their interpretation is the only correct one. How convenient!

I am also often accused of being no different than a fundamentalist, because I take the Bible at face value rather than trying to give it a warm, fuzzy twist that suits my fragile emotional needs. Yet believers have no problem taking accounts of Jesus' miracles as nothing less than absolute fact, and of course the resurrection of Jesus is taken entirely literally as well. Anything that a believer themselves is not down with is relegated by them to the status of "just a metaphor" or "a relic from an older time" or some other piffle. It never ceases to amaze me hoe Christians can say that the Bible is the inerrant word of the one true God, and yet look for so many reasons to ignore most of its contents!

I realize that there is certainly plenty of Christians who are this way, who see Jesus as the ultimate Good Guy, and base their worldview on the kindest, gentlest parts of the Bible. While these folks would certainly make better neighbors than the WBC, their belief system is still just as untrue and subject to the same bias as any hardline fundamentalist. Personally I think that neither the fundamentalists and the hippie Jesus Christians use a literal interpretation of the Bible, even though the kinder gentler ones insist that the fundamentalists take it literally. Again, it's only the parts of the Bible that they agree with that they take literally, like hating gays, hating non-believers, etc. They don't take "Turn the other cheek" or "love thy neighbor as thyself" seriously or literally at all.

And there's always this: Why should I NOT take the Bible at face value? With so many possible "interpretations", all of which, according to any other Christian are wrong, why not go with WHAT THE EFFING BOOK ACTUALLY SAYS!?!? Why is already having a close personal relationship with God, so that he can whisper the true meaning of his Book into your ear, a pre-requisite to them for being able to make a sound interpretation of the Bible? Nobody says "Oh well you didn't know Tolkien, so what do you REALLY know about Middle Earth?" NO! No one ever says that. No one ever says "You didn't know Orwell, so you can't possibly understand 1984"  THIS NEVER HAPPENS! Yet, in order to take anything meaningful, at all, out of the Bible, we are expected to get to know the author (who is EFFING INVISIBLE) before we can properly comprehend what the author intended! I submit that if "The Lord of the Rings" was so unintelligible and incoherent as to require a close personal relationship with the author in order to properly understand it, it wouldn't have sold many copies!

But no, as usual, entirely different and biased standards are used for religion and God. The standard of evidence and honesty is LESS for the divine ruler of the cosmos than it is for a scientist or a fiction author. Very revealing, if you ask me.

Additionally, what is up with Paul? Even as a kid in church I couldn't help but noticing that what Paul says sometimes is not in line with what Jesus said. Jesus, allegedly, is the human incarnation of divine perfection, all wise, all powerful, all knowing, all merciful, God's Final Solution to the Human Problem. Why is it then that we need Paul to get the last word in? Why take Paul's word over Jesus? Jesus often said that not by faith alone, but also by BEING A GOOD PERSON, can one get eternal reward. Paul says "Nah, don't matter what you've done, all you need is faith and boom! You are saved!" Awfully convenient message coming from a guy who had previously lived a rotten, godless life. OF COURSE HE WOULD EFFING SAY THAT!

And most so called "Followers Of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ" take Paul's teachings over Jesus! If I had been nailed to a cross to save these people only to have my advice ignored in favor of some hallucinating heathen, I would be pretty pissed. Just saying. I mean, we often hear fanatics saying things like "Hurricane Katrina/Sandy/Whatever natural disaster you want is God's punishment for homosexuality". I submit that if it is God's punishment for anything, it's for ignoring his son's message that you have to be good people too, blind devotion won't cut it. And strangely enough, it's ALWAYS secular society that has to put religion in time out because it isn't behaving nicely. Religion didn't abolish slavery in America, the secular President Lincoln did. Lincoln, who very well might have been a non-believer himself! It isn't religious people setting the example in charity, it's Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, both non-believers, who together have given ~$60 billion to charities that will actually make a difference, as opposed to handing out a food basket with a Bible, or a first aid kid with a prayer book attached. Think about it. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation sponsors a wide variety of programs, that provide water treatment, purification, desalinization and infrastructure in impoverished areas. They also promote agricultural programs that help develop land to be used for growing crops. They provide educational services, establish schools, hospitals, women's clinics, provide health and AIDS prevention education, provide scholarships and grants for higher learning, I mean the list of stuff they do is really unbelievable, and that's just the international stuff!

Compare that to the shameless self promotion and proselytizing done by religious missionaries and charities, and the preaching and degradation and manipulation of people who are at their most desperate, darkest moments, all done in the name of the Lord, and to spread his "Good News". People handing out Bibles, kidnapping babies to convert them to their faith, Scientologists probably scaring the living hell out of helpless people with their utterly insane worldview, the Pope telling people in Africa that condoms don't prevent AIDS, this is the kind of "Good Work" religion does. JEsus said that if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat the rest of his life." Who is teaching people to fish here, the secular atheists charity or the religious ones? Christians ought to be ashamed that godless uber rich guys like Gates and Buffet are setting a much better example as far as actually doing the work that Christ set them out to do than the Christians themselves.

A local example: The poverty level in the City of Erie is something like 25 to 30%. There are probably hundreds of homeless, and the winters here are no effing joke, we average over 100 inches of snow per year, often with subzero windchills coming off of the lake. Can you imagine being stranded outside in that?!? St. Patricks cathedral, which is in the heart of the city where many of the homeless roam, just completed a 1.2 million restoration! The Catholic diocese has that kind of money to blow on its own opulence while scores of people are outside in the bitter cold. How is that living a Christian life? They are no different than those who supposedly turned away a heavily pregnant mother of Jesus on Christmas eve!. There have got to be nearly 100 churches in the city, maybe more. If each one were to take in just one or two of the homeless and provide for them until they could get back on their feet, THERE WOULD BE NO HOMELESS! Isn't this Jesus' message? Isn't that what he would do? Isn't that what he would expect his followers to do? If a single church can waste 1.2 mill on a palace for a guy who for obvious reasons doesn't even need it, they ought to be able to take in a few wandering vagrants. After all, wasn't Jesus a homeless wandering vagrant who pretty much relied entirely on others charity to go about his way? Why does a non-believer have to be the one to point this stuff out?

Wow this has turned into a bit of another rant. I'll think I'll cut it off here. But yeah, screw religion, is pretty much what I'm saying.
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