Oh yeah i believe they are accurate. Just look through this thread and you see the evidence.

Not "unfathomable" for Christians. We know the implications full well.





It was the rising from the grave and the ascension to Heaven that was the impressive bit, actually.



Welcome to the Mystery of the Trinity. "God in three persons, Holy Trinity," the hymn goes.

Christ is the human presentation of God, where He is joined with a human being. God borne of a woman, mortal and with all the imperfections of blood and sinew - yet still perfection in soul.

So when Jesus is walking, he is literally the Son of God - the deity in another form, as it were - and still God.

The blood sacrifice and redemption from the cruxifiction and resurrection was universal in nature for humanity; Jew and Gentile were granted salvation.



Yep. Matter of faith. In fact, it is the one critical component of faith that determines if one is Christian or not.

I always enjoy conversations about the Devil, as a little study is very enlightning. The devil doesn't run around with a free hand in the Bible; he's allowed or commanded to perform devilish acts most of the time. Yes, there's the odd possession here and there, but it's at God's leisure, and they can be driven out by believers simply by issuing a command in God's name.

For really big destructive acts, God usually sends an angel, not the Devil, to do the work if He doesn't do it himself. The people of the Old Testament had very good reason to become prostrate and tremble at the sight of an angel; they rarely came to do anything nice, and usually had really bad news or a terrible task to make one do.

Indeed, the absolute worst thing to do is to have a little faith. Those of no faith are cast into the void - that is to say, destroyed - after death. All others either wind up in Heaven or Hell.

What's interesting is that if God can make two other facets of Himself that are distinctly different and yet of the same status of himself, is that the limit? Christians say yes - there is only the Trinity.

Islam disagrees; it places Jesus as a prophet, but not the literal Son of God. Muhammed is the true prophet of God. Jews, of course, reject the whole notion of Judeasim 2.0 (Christianity), and are still hanging on to their original operating system (Reformed or Non-Orthodox can be considered Service Pack 1).



How many "faces of God" are there really?

Now to an athiest, the question ranks right up there with angels on a pinhead. They lack all faith in anything but the biological.

And then forget that most of the scientific foundations and basic discoveries in Europe were in the context of the Church. Scientific ideas were actually vetted and "scientific consensus" delivered by the Church. Sometimes they got it wrong (Galileo), it's true; but look at the IPCC and Global Warming. They've made bold statements and predictions about Global Warming that are sufficiently wrong even since they made them that they've backpeddaled to the "Global Climate Change" label.

And certainly any scientist that is a non-believer in Global Warming is castigated and their reputations actively trashed as surely and swiftly as Cardinals issuing an order of ex-communication.

I know that's what you believe, and I have looked through this thread and see no evidence of that.

It's kind of a catch-22. It's only true if you assume that the Bible is right, that there is a God, and the Bible is his work. If you look at it from the perspective that there is no God, those passages are evidence of delusion.

My point is, using quotes from the Bible won't enlighten non-believers, athiest or otherwise.

That's fine, i'm not here to convert anyone as i'll leave that up to pastors etc.

Cool. I didn't think you were trying to convert, just trying to make a point, and I've had several conversations where someone used quotes from the Bible to support their point, not really understanding that it wouldn't really achieve anything with anyone who doesn't already believe.

Doesn't mean the Bible isn't true, it just doesn't usually further the discussion.

You need to re-read the passage of scripture dealing with the Last Supper if you think Jesus was celebrating the blood drinking and flesh eating ritual in the same sense of other gods. What has become known as Communion is a time to remember what Christ did on the cross in symbolic sense, not literally. When I partake of communion I do not think for one moment I am actually eating Christ flesh or drinking his blood - rather, it's remembrance of the sacrifice He made for all of us. And those were His very words: "Do this in remembrance of Me."

And what is the expanse of the universe? Strange irony don't you think?

Something as real as the universe, seemingly infinite even to ol' Hubble's eye. Yet, the distance it measures is beyond comprehension. We can see the numbers of years on paper 15,000,000,000 years old, yet that amount of time is truly incomprehensible.

So how many faces of God are there? Maybe as infinite as the universe, and then some.

And oh, I'm neither trying to convince or force anyone to believe in the christian Bible or God. A true believer has yet to walk the earth who had been forced or convinced. It doesn't work even though it's been tried many times before even under the threat of inquisition or death. A true believer chooses. Jesus said if he be lifted up, he will draw all men to him. No need for forcing, coercing, threatening, or convincing.

The Holy Trinity isn't even referred to in the Bible- it's a post Biblical construction, like purgatory.





The standard of faith is tipped more in the balance of religious faith- it's a sophistry to make religious faith and science equievelant.




Heh- then the religious forget that their beliefs are founded in paganism. The origins of science and learning and even mysticism goes back further to the pagan cultures- the Hellenic Age of Greece: Astronomy, philosophy, trigonometry, geometry, law, biology; through religious scholars such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Averroes, and others, you get a healthy dose of paganism, which still doesn't prevent it from being believed in: Since you mentioned it, the Holy Trinity is developed post-canon starting on upward from the neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus. Plato was a pagan: the favorite choice of Augustine when he was writing up the religion.

Here is a survey view on Plotinus- skip down if you like to The Three Fundamental Principles of Plotinus' Metaphysics for discussion

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plotinus/

There is also a brief summary at the bottom of the page of Neo-platonic influences on Western philosophy and theology.





So there is debate in science about global warming, although I think that is a phony debate, even if I grant you that, consider the debate among religions: at least a disagreement about science doesn't mean your eternal soul is on the line. We should expect better from an instution where so much more is at stake- you expect nothing better from humans, to err is human. When the gods botch their message or lead one half of the world to believe one thing, and the other half to believe in another, or hand down obscure texts which can be interpreted this way or that way, or send their prophets who do naught but rave, then I fall in the balance of science, which is less encumbered of those problems.

What's funny thing is that I was raised Lutheran- I'm not coming into this with no basis or lack of perception in what the religious believe in. Quite the contrary, we knew the Catholics were twisted, we examined their doctrines as heresies, the Pope was a fraud, the arcane rituals, preoccupation with the Virgin Mary and Saints and holidays were little more than the tapestries of the occult.

Then again, what is Lutheranism but another heresy in a long line of heresies- even the sects in the same religions can't agree among themselves and get it straight. I at least admire fundamentalists for trying to practice what they preach; everyone else just arbitrarily takes what they want out of it.

But the idea that this disagreement has similar rank in science isn't true at all- where is the same level of disagreement in science about what cancer is compared to say, what God is among the religions?

All this was written by humans for humans. It is no more or less accurate than Harry Potter.

That won't tell me something I haven't already thought about. A Sunday school lesson merely requires you to commit to rote memory the version they want you to have- they typically don't show you however the origins of the religion; They don't tell you where The Holy Trinty actually comes from, just that there is a Holy Trinity. They certainly won't say, so what do you think of this concept of mutual identity, or at least, seperate but equals? No- thou shalt and thou wilt believe.

The ritual is older than Christianity. The concept is older than Christianity- you can go further and see many similarities with the Egyptian god Osiris: there's something inherently mediterranean in these beliefs and it's probably no accident that it perpetuates, because the Jews came out of Egypt- they weren't Europeans in the image of Charlton Heston or something, and many of these cultures mixed in with one another under the banner of the Roman Empire.