Ungtss

Hinduism Dolphins

Thanks for helping me out on the subjective supernaturalism stuff. It will be interesting to see where this travels as edits come and go. Charlie Turek [email protected] 21 Jan 05

my pleasure -- thanks for adding such an insightful thought to the page:). Ungtss 16:26, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Don't screw another man's wife"

committing adultery isn't just screwing another man's wife, isn't it? isn't it screwing someone you're not married to? why do you take out the whole and leave the part to use the word screw?

actually, adultery is by definition screwing somebody that is married to somebody else -- a violation of the marriage vows. definition of adultery. if you look at exodus 22:16-17, you'll see that there was no punishment for having sex with a girl you weren't married to -- the only issue was that if she was a VIRGIN, then you had to pay her brideprice to her father and marry the girl if the father permitted, because the sex destroyed the woman's bride-price and her attractiveness in the marriage market. sex with women you weren't married to and weren't virgins was not illegal -- on the contrary, it was normal. the only thing that was illegal was having sex with the WIFE of another man -- because that "adulterated" the bloodline -- meaning the woman might have sons that didn't belong to her husband. that's why i reworded it -- because we take adultery to mean something it doesn't. thanks for stopping by -- hope i didn't offend you:). Ungtss 00:59, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

or somebody married screwing someone else. which could be someone they are not married to. ie. married woman with man unmarried to. then i guess i was thinking of fornication which according to definition of adultery is a synonym. Acts 15:20 But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and [from] fornication, and [from] things strangled, and [from] blood.

i see you wrote you don't belong to a church. if you were to, which denomintation would you? or with which denomination do you have similar beliefs? what are your views on the beliefs denominations are divided on? ie. trinity, Sabbath, state of dead, tongues, etc.

hmm ... my views are pretty different from most christians ... i grew up in ecumenical churches in third world countries and went to an evangelical college, but i was always an independent thinker, and i can't really fit myself into ANY of them at this point.

trinity: i can find no basis for the doctrine in scripture -- i think that God is one and only one. When i think of Jesus, I think of a Man that was specially created by God (by immaculate conception -- conceivably adding half the chromosomes to suit his divine purpose!), but i can find no reason to believe he was actually God -- after all, he continually called himself the Son of Man and made that provocative comment, "Why do you call me good? There is only One who is good" -- and he constantly hid his identity as the messiah! I think of the Holy Spirit as the "messenger" God uses to inspire certain people at certain times in certain places to do extraordinary things -- i.e. the tongues of flame, the ability to speak other languages, and the ability to zap from place to place (like phillip). So i definitely believe in all of three, but i can find no basis for a "trinity."

Sabbath: i take jesus to heart when he said, "the sabbath was made for man, man was not made for the sabbath." the sabbath is a day of rest and holiness ... but i think it's been twisted into a tool for legalists (like the pharisees of Jesus' day, who criticized him for healing on the sabbath -- can you IMAGINE that?) i think the sabbath was designed for us -- a day of rest.

State of Dead: hard one for me ... lately i've been thinking that the resurrection, when it comes, will be a BODILY resurrection, where we will have new and tangible bodies just like jesus's resurrection body, not some etherial, spiritual "heaven." i like the idea cs lewis described in his "great divorce" -- that life in the new jerusalem will be more "REAL" and "TANGIBLE" than life here -- but obviously we won't really know until we get there, right:)? for me, thinking about the afterlife is pretty much irrelevent -- all we have now is life here -- if and when we get to the afterlife, we'll figure it out -- but as Modest Mouse said, "you wasted life -- why wouldn't you waste the afterlife?"

tongues: i've never seen it in action, and i don't have the Gift, but i don't doubt it's real -- i take paul to heart, tho, when he said that there should always be interpretters when tongues are spoken in church, to make sure that the message of the spirit is received -- otherwise, i don't see the point, and like paul, i think it could sound pretty crazy:).

i also believe in Open Theism -- that is, the idea that God is not omnipotent, omnscient, or omnibenevolent, but rather is best understood as the MOST powerful, MOST knowing, and MOST loving. i think he is finite, but APPEARS infinite to us because He is so much greater than we (just like the earth appears infinite to us because we're on the surface -- but is actually finite). i can't find any basis for the omnigod in scripture -- instead, i find him always changing his mind, taking advice, getting angry, etc. further, i find the omnigod to be logically untenable, but the open god to make perfect sense. in the end, tho, i punt to job 38 -- theology is really a futile exercise -- god is what he is -- how DARE we try to analyze him:)?

i don't believe that salvation is received by "accepting jesus as lord as savior." on the contrary, i think that the faith described in hebrews 11 is purely and simply "seeking the other country" -- seeking the light described in John 1 and Romans 2 -- and the light is very simply, "Living justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God." i find that hebrews 11 included pagans and prostitutes (Rahab), murderers (Moses), adulterers (David), drunkards (Noah) ... but that the one element they all had was SEEKING THE LIGHT -- SEEKING THE TRUTH -- and that God judges us on the basis -- rather than on the basis of whether we ascribe to a particular creed, or sin along the way. I think that Jesus died and broke open the gates of hell for ALL people, so that ALL people (whether they hear of Jesus or not) are able to enter Life through faith -- and that the muslim who lives justly, loves mercy and walks humbly with God is just as "Christian" as the Lutheran who does so. and in situations where a person is raised in a sick and twisted form of christianity (like a cult) and rejects it in favor of Atheism, I can conceive of a God that would judge that atheism to be an act of faith in rejecting the cult. In the end, tho, I think that the ultimate judgment is in God's hands, not ours, so that we ought only to live by faith and not try to determine who is saved and who isn't.

<<or somebody married screwing someone else. which could be someone they are not married to. ie. married woman with man unmarried to. then i guess i was thinking of fornication which according to definition of adultery is a synonym. Acts 15:20 But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and [from] fornication, and [from] things strangled, and [from] blood.>>

yes, i think that adultery is often used as a synonym for fornication in popular parlance, but in the legal sense they are very different. Georgia sex statutes. check out adultery and fornication -- fornication is non-marital sex while adultery is sex in violation of the marriage covenant. this is the case in our legal codes anyway. but from my reading of exodus + leviticus, it appears to me that "unchastity" in acts and elsewhere refers to the other sexual sins (such as incest, homosexuality, bestiality, temple prostitution and adultery) -- but does NOT apply to non-marital sex. i can find absolutely no scriptural basis for believing that non-marital sex is sinful.

i'm really enjoying this:)! what do you think about those issues? Ungtss 21:09, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, that explains your response to my comments about the "false premises" of Christians. What's your feelings on bibical infailability? crazyeddie 02:41, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

i don't believe it for a second. i think that inerrancy and infallibility were invented by christians in the 19th century (along with papal infallibility) as a reaction against the fact that secular thought was replacing the church -- i think it was a last, desperate appeal to authority at a time that the church had nothing to contribute. however, in reading the bible, i find that it is qualitatively different than any other book i've ever read. i find it to be breathtaking -- the historical scope, the accuracy, the insight of the authors, the objectivity ... and the way it differs from the writings of any of the other religions ... to me it doesn't read like a book that's trying to convince you of something -- it reads like a collection of historical accounts spanning 2000 years that were patched together and collected -- books written by and about men that experienced life and God in profound and personal ways ... and i think the quality of the experience reflects itself in the writing -- there seems to me to be a Truth and Light coming from the writing that i can find nowhere else -- so i find it to have an amazing amount of credibility. but infallible? no way. what in this world is infallible? nothing. why should we expect the bible to be any different? Ungtss 03:39, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You say the Bible is accurate. How can you know this, without correlating it to an external, independent source? I suppose you could say that the Bible is an accurate description of your own experience with God. But somebody else might disagree, and say that the Bible does not accurately describe their experience. Plus, there is some question of how independent your experience is from what the Bible has taught you to expect. Or for that matter, how much your own preconceptions have shaped how you interpret the Bible. (I must say, however, you are more careful about that than most Christians.) But let's leave that aside for now, and treat the Bible as just a historical record. There is no question that the Bible is, to a certain extent, a factual historical record (at least post-Deluge :-)). But I've heard that historians have difficulty correlating it with other, contemporary histories.

For example, our best guess is that the Hebrews came to Egypt when the foreign Hyksos ruled, and served as intellectuals. When the native Egyptians overthrew the Hyksos and set up the New Kingdom, we think they resented the Hewbrews as collaborators. We think that the Exodus happened under Ramses II. Prior to that time, the area that would become Israel was under Egyptian control. About that time, Egypt experienced a lot of troubles (which might have been the basis for the Bibical account of the Plagues), and their sphere of influence shrank. I personally have the sneaking suspicion that the Hebrews were not so much allowed to escape, as forcibly deported by the government in order to save resources, made scarce by the troubles, for the Egyptian citizens.

But all of this is just our best guess. No event described in the Bible during that period can be found in contemporary Egyptian accounts. That doesn't prove anything, because the Egyptians of that period are known to have followed a certain Orwellian method to their histories - not hard when literacy is limited to a select class of scribes, and writing material is expensive.

There are other places where the Bible describes historical events consistant with our knowledge from other sources, but can't be confirmed by those other sources. There are precious few places where there is close enough correlation between other sources and the Bible to determine how closely they match up. I'm not saying the Bible isn't accurate. But how can you prove how accurate it is? crazyeddie 09:38, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

certainly there's no way to prove it -- whatever happened happened like 4,000 years ago, so there's no way to cross-check -- you're right about that. what strikes me is the accuracy of the bible as far as it CAN be cross-checked -- while there are many things that can't be verified, it seems to me that nearly all the things that CAN be verified have been. archaeological "consensus" will determine that the bible was wrong on a particular account, and then 10 years later, they'll find out that archaeological consensus was wrong and the biblical narrative turned out to be accurate -- and it's THAT sort of accuracy that (to me anyway) gives credibility to the rest. i wouldn't be surprised if a lot of it was wrong -- but i CERTAINLY think it's the best guide we've got to ancient middle eastern history.

like you said -- the egyptians and all the others followed an orwellian approach -- telling people what they wanted people to think / exaggerating the powers of their kings and armies beyond realistic levels (the list of kings had their kings living like 24,000 years) -- trying to build a mythology. but exodus? exodus records every single foible of its "heros" -- it shows moses murdering, saying, "i'm not a good speaker -- don't choose me," shows aaron helping the israelites build an idol in the wilderness and moses getting so mad that he disobeyed God so God didn't let him into the promised land ... this was not a book designed to build a mythology around its people and leaders -- this was a book that tried to "tell it like it is." i can't get over that.

but again, i can't prove anything -- i only find it to be a remarkable book -- one that i'm willing to take seriously as a historical account until it's been debunked by science. but in my opinion, genesis and exodus have stood the test so far -- science hasn't even been able to debunk the creation account yet, despite their best efforts. i think genesis is the most reasonable explanation for our origins we have. not perfect, but pretty damn good:). Ungtss 14:42, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)