If Jesus died to forgive us, then why is there a Hell?

RR, FYI: That chart was created by man, not god.

". . . All the randomness of nature. . . "

Is random really the word you wish to use?

". . . Modern science came from the minds of Newton, Galileo . . . "

Both of whom were serious Bible believers.

RR, Many planets and destroyed in all the galaxies. Here's how it happens: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0904/0904.1170.pdf

I doubt of the seriousness of such assertion.

Galileo said: Eppur si muove (And yet it moves).

Social/religious adjustment to avoid punishment?

The lord giveth and the lord taketh away.

Funny how you swam around that one! LOL

Can we really blame "God" for the way pious religious zealots behave? Just because they pretend to speak in God's stead does not make their will harmonize ultimately with God's will. Why blame God for human error? Is that no like blaming God for allowing us to be free and think freely? If there is a God we can thank God for allowing us the dignity of thinking for ourselves.

I note your acknowledgement that the bible is not the word of god, but the one of religious zealots..


And if there isn't any god I don't have to thank anybody for the freedom of thinking by myself..

Freedom from sin is like being in prison for a long time and someone opens the door and say you are free to leave. Yet some people are afraid to leave and simply remain in their prisons.

We are told we are cleansed from all unrighteousness yet some choose to carry their sin with them even though they are not bound by it in God's eyes.

Mental prisons can be much worse than physical prisons.

Newton spent a great deal of time analyzing the Bible, but kept his personal beliefs to himself as he would have been considered a heretic if it became public. He was born into an Anglican family and did not believe Jesus was the son of God nor in the immaculate conception. He had a mental breakdown in 1693 ending his scientific research -- many historic scholars attribute this to a conflict in his mind between what science was revealing and the Bible, but it could also be the chemicals he consistently worked with. I don't believe from all I've read that he really had reconciled the Bible with his scientific discoveries and his preoccupation with alchemy was a non-Christian pursuit in the occult. Of course, most religious sites are going to give a biased viewpoint.

I suppose yours is quite comfortable...

What is that supposed to mean? My spirit is free... is yours?

I thought I saw it flying over my house recently. Oh, sorry, that was the little bird.

Consider this, the Bible is either the perfect word of God and EVERY SINGLE scripture is God inspired or it is only filled with half truths. The HOLY Bible must have every word to be perfect to be divine. If the Bible is only full of half truths then it can join the other half a billion books written by humans that are also filled with half truths. If it is full of half truths then nothing distinguishes it from any other book written by fallible humans.

I tend to believe the Bible is filled with half truths. Yet, there was a time in my life when I too believed it was the sole and only rule for faith and practice. I cannot in good conscience believe that now... I believe that Bible has political, social and religious undertones often devious that were written by a bunch of fakes trying to masquerade as God inspired men.

That does not mean that the Bible does not contain truth but as a whole it is simply another broken cistern than can hold no water. No book written by humans can be perfectly true of false, someone is going to eventually slip up and either lie or tell the truth by accident somewhere within its pages. If the Bible did not contain SOME truths no one would read it and it would not have hung on as long as it has.

People are attracted by this seeming wealth of truth and by the 250 some promises "from God" given in the Bible. Promises of eternal life, heaven, and riches that only its particular God can give. Is this the truth? Perhaps some of it is the truth. Yet the rest you can just chuck in the trash along with all the other faith based books claiming to be the one and only pure and perfect word of God.

An example of a half truth is, take your first right at the stop light, then take a left, then an immediate right. If any one of those directives are wrong will one reach their destination?

Spiritual truth must be complete or we will never reach perfect understanding of the true God of creation...

Be suspicious of any book that starts with a man of woe "Job" and a snake in a garden of paradise...

Though the Bible does contain many great truths it is also filled with many great and terrible lies... my advice? BELIEVE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

You don't know your history.

"I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily." (Isaac Newton, quoted here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_religious_views )

"Since two truths can obviously never contradict each other, . . . I think it would be the part of wisdom not to allow any one to apply passages of Scripture in such a way as to force them to support, as true, conclusions concerning nature the contrary of which may afterwards be revealed by the evidence of our senses or by necessary demonstration. . . "
(Galileo's Letter to Cardinal Castelli; December, 1613)

Newton was smart enough to keep his mouth shut, given the prevailing apostasy of the 17th century religious establishment.

He was correct in his rejection of the trinitarian heresy and in his understanding of God's purpose for mankind to dwell on earth rather than to populate heaven.

But, Rex, you simply pick and choose what fits in with your inclinations, forgetting " . . . that to earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step. . ." (Jeremiah 10:23)

The Old Testament is tantamount to Aesop's Fables, sometimes reading more like Grimm's Fairy Tales. Everything is written to make a point of morality but, in the process, spills out all the "sins" like something in a very racy novel. The syntax is a mixed bag of ancient cut-and-paste. All myths have some root in fact, however, but we seldom find enough proof in historical accounts, much of which was burned in the conflagration of the Library of Alexandria. There was a reason for those who believe in Gods to burn the library.

It's like the world flood; it was a "localized" flood that got enlarged into a world flood to show the imagined power of their god.