The Black Vault

at1with0 wrote:Who invented the concept of sin?

Well, the word sin first appears in Genesis chapter 4, but John said in 1st John,"the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning”
So, its been around for quite awhile.

So John is responsible for planting that idea that humans are bad by default.

Anyways... You said something to the effect that pearls should not be thrown before swine and included sinners in that category. I guess you mean that those who don't practice sin are excluded from the group called swine.

Athiests live by the "doubting Thomas principle" of science. A theory is true only as long as it survives another test. Internet scientists will take this idea even further to scorn and ridicule the tenets of religious faith.

http://online.worldmag.com/2012/03/28/r ... hristians/

Dawkins called on atheists and agnostics to “ridicule and show contempt” for the religious and their doctrines. The example he used was the Roman Catholic belief that the bread and wine of communion turns into the actual body and blood of Christ. He encouraged atheists to mock and ridicule the religious in public.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. If you really wanted to find God, you would set aside some time each day to pray and earnestly seek Him.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... ersion=ERV

Come near to God and he will come near to you. You are sinners, so clean sin out of your lives. You are trying to follow God and the world at the same time. Make your thinking pure.

Militant Atheistism is what that is called Kanster. They even try to spin that Militant only means to be violant.

at1with0 wrote:

humphreys wrote:You guys mention earnest, heartfelt, and profound as if they add to the reality of the experience somehow.

Can you prove the reality of any experience? If we're all gonna go around rejecting testimony outright, then I wish you good luck.

We have been over this I believe, and while one cannot truly prove anything 100%, there are indeed criteria to determining what is likely real and what is merely a product of the brain not grounded in anything external.

Just one of those bits of evidence would be that the experience is shared. And before you go on to say "lots of people have religious experiences", that is not what is meant by shared. Everyone dreams, but we assume those dreams are not real because the reality of the dreams is not shared between multiple people. Now, if a dozen people in a room claim to share the exact same dream reality at the same time we would have good cause to assume that dream reality was external, and not internal, and therefore what we would call "real".

greeney2 wrote:Militant Atheistism is what that is called Kanster. They even try to spin that Militant only means to be violant.

No, I just want the term to be used fairly for both sides. Therefore, if I am militant, then so are you.

How do you like being called a "militant Christian" and having all the negative connotations relating to violence that go with it?

We can play with definitions as much as we like.

For example, I could call Christians like yourself terrorists. If you've ever implied that someone was going to hell unless they believed, then you are technically a terrorist according to this definition:

terrorism - "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion."

How would you like being called a "Christian Terrorist", greeney?

Can I be a terrorist too?

If you all don't become panentheists, then when you die your localized consciousness will dissolve and your essence will be re-absorbed into the ultimate.

That sounds quite pleasant, I'm not feeling terrorized yet