God created sin - Change my mind

When it comes to religions. There is no proof of anything. It's all 100% pure belief.

The silly part of religions, is thinking theirs and theirs only is the correct one. And not a single one of them can prove anything.

 

You are correct. There is no need to prove anything to me....as long as you aren't using those beliefs to make rules or legislation that affects others.

 

I do not make laws, and nor am I in business of trying to convince die hard atheists that God exists.

 

It is you that isn't getting it. Allah and the Christian God are not the same. You can think of them as two different people. One is directing its followers to destroy Israel. One is teaching the followers to stand by Israel. One teaches that the only way to eternal life is through accepting Jesus, the son of God as savior and Lord. The other teaches that Jesus was simply a prophet--a man. One teaches the concept of free will. The other demands submission. One is a personal God. The other judges from afar.

By your logic, I could think up a religion, throw in the creation story, add a god named Jack---and its the same god as all the others. Nonsensical.

Different denominations of Christianity have different traditions, some different interpretations of certain verses within the Bible. But Christians worship the same Jesus, God and Holy spirit.

 

With the exception of the Israel aspect, you're pretty much describing the Jewish God. Are you of the opinion that the Jewish God and the Christian God are different God's also?

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There are those out there that hold that there is only one deity and They present Themselves differently as needed to try to bring the person or people back to them.

Oh really? Remember when some Christians claimed we couldn't legalize interracial marriage, yet alone same sex marriage, because they they were against the Bible. Or all the Christians who decided they were good Christians by putting on robes and hoods to put blacks back in their place, even if it meant killing them? Yeah, no. We do not all worship the same Jesus and God if that's what they mean by being Christian. And before you try the weak argument that they are not true Christians, remember that they are saying the same thing about you for.not believing as they do.

 

In this sense, sin is disobedience to ultimate power.

The Christian conflation of moral goodness with obedience to power always rubbed me the wrong way.

 

Yes, exactly. Not sure why anyone who rejects Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit would insist on calling oneself Christian.

 

The Jewish God and the Christian God is the same. Jews don't believe in Jesus as a rule. Jews often don't believe in any god. But God made a promise to stay with them and keep the Jewish nation together even when they are scattered across the world. A Christian can live in Israel and a Jew can live in a Christian majority nation because the values that come from the same God intertwine into society.

Its really fascinating actually that a nomadic people, not all THAT advanced even in the height of their power thousands of years ago, can be scattered across the world, experience intense persecution (even from misguided Christians) and retain their identity, and culture enough to come together as a nation after almost 2000 years. A divine act. But I digress. That should be another thread.

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We were created to worship something. People have created idols and made them revolve around their wants and desires since the beginning of time. This sounds like a god with multiple personalities, no values to uphold and anything goes. The God I worship is a God that personally guides me, leads me and answers my prayers. This God values free will, upholding what is righteous even when its hard, courage. This God has given us the gift of salvation through Jesus, the 10 commandments to live by and the Bible to know him by. I will take a loving, guiding God over an "anything goes" type of god.

People are corrupt. Not the Bible. Some tried to use the Bible by twisting verses to separate the races. While others were the head of the Abolition movement using the Bible as their guide to end segregation and race slavery. Nothing in the bible rates people by the color of their skin. All are in the image of God. But people are sinful and can cherry pick verses out of context to make sure it aligns with their wants. Atheists do it all the time.

Same sex marriage and sexual relations, fornication, and other deviant behaviors go against God's plan. Anything against God turns into chaos eventually as we are seeing in our world today. But I suppose if you don't want to be obedient to God--you have the free will in our Christian value grounded country to decide not to. No free will of that nature with Islam because they worship a different god that doesn't allow free will.

 

OH, I am the one who's getting it. You are not. Unless you want to claim the christian god is not the god of abraham.

...
Allah, the one and only God in Islam.

Etymologically, the name Allah is probably a contraction of the Arabic al-Ilāh, “the God.” The name’s origin can be traced to the earliest Semitic writings in which the word for god was il, el, or eloah, the latter two used in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Allah is the standard Arabic word for God and is used by Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews as well as by Muslims...
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Allah

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All 3 religions are based from the god of Abraham.
All 3 religions are based off of the Adam and Eve creation story.
Issac line from Abraham went to Judaism
Ishmael line from Abraham went to Arabs/Muslims.

It's not that hard to see. In fact, most of the world knows all about this.
Even Muslim Christians refer to god of Abralam as Allah.

Just as you said, different denominations believe the word of Jesus differently and act differently according to the belief.
Just like Muslim believe the word of god differently and act accordingly.
But according to you, believing differently can still be correlated to the same entity.

That's true for all the 1000s of christianity and the 3 major religions of the god of abraham.

 

I think that you mean Arabic Christians. Only Jewish is both "race" and faith, and that former is getting pretty thin. One isn't Muslim by genetics, but by faith. Unless you want to claim that somehow being Catholic is also genetic.

 

Sins like stealing, spreading lies about people and such apply universally to morality.

 

Sure. And morality and obedience to power should be recognized as different concepts.

 

So do you steal? If not that's obedience to power.

I don't think you can differentiate the concepts

 

You certainly can differentiate the concepts. If morality is just obedience to power, that's tyranny. It is often very moral to stand up against and speak truth to power. If an authority figure ordered you to kill your innocent brother or son or neighbour, I hope you would say no.

 

I don't know that you can morality has to be obedience to something. You either have the principle of don't cause any needless harm and your morality is obedience to that, or it's the same thing in any other religion

There has to be an authoritative concept that dictates what morality is otherwise you just make up your own morality and if you're all be different.

If it's not obedience to principles such as not causing me this harm or needless pain to somebody what is it?

 

I think that obedience to God begins with loving God.

 

Moral foundations do vary from person to person, but also have a lot in common between people too.
It's usually based on concepts of empathy, fairness and social contract. Add to that some sense of purity and tradition (mostly for conservatives). Jon Haidt has done excellent work on this and I recommend his books.

I do agree with you that your moral foundations may be presented as something you obey, but that's semantics and a far cry from obedience to power and authority as I was referring to (ie, a master or King or God).

One of the most troublesome things I find in the Bible (and many other religious holy books of other religions) is the equating of morality to obedience to the God (or those who claim to speak for said God). That kind of authoritarian thinking (which can also happen absent religious context) can get people to subdue their moral compass and embrace atrocity, as we have seen numerous times throughout history.

This theme of obedience over morality pops up many times in the Bible, ranging from Adam and Eve being called immoral for disobeying God and eating the fruit of knowledge of good and evil (meaning they can't have known it was good to obey God and this is purely about blind obedience) to the Abraham and Isaac story, with God testing Abraham to see if he will kill his son as an obedience test (which should have ended with Abraham refusing and God saying he passed the test by doing so).

 

It sounds like an abusive husband when the framework becomes love him or be punished; obey everything he demands regardless of if it's right or wrong, or be punished. And the demand that anything he says, no matter how bad, is good because merely he says it.

It's the old question of if God is good because he is good or if good is good because God says it is.

It leads me to wonder in the cases of some believers if there is anything they would refuse to do if convinced their God commanded them to do it. This is how planes fly into buildings.

 

Stealing is wrong. That's the truth. If you love the truth, you won't steal. So it isn't so much obedience to power as it is love for the truth. People who don't love the truth, and who steal, get punished and possibly counseled as to the damage that stealing causes to others. Maybe they get it, maybe they don't. There's only so much that men can do about it.

 

Then it is obedience to some sort of authoritative source.

Valuing certain concepts over others like personal gain is obedience to authority. You have to first accept that concepts of empathy and fairness are what to base morality on over concepts of personal gain or something opposed to it

Saying you co m should obey concepts of empathy and fairness is different than obedience to God is splitting definitely small hairs.

But obedience to empathy and fairness is the same thing. So I'm a bit puzzled as to why it's a problem when it personifies those values as a deity.

Show me one atrocity caused by following Christ's commands?

Morality is obedience. Whether it's too a social contract or a social contract involving a deity. You have to over certain guidelines in order to be in a society that is peaceful.

A lot of people miss the metaphor here which is silly to me because we are talking about magical talking snakes and something you eat that makes you know things.

This is to establish mankind that's an independent being that is more evolved than birds and butterflies. Keep in mind from the bronze age. I think they did a decent job explaining why humans are a species apart from the others. You completely missed up the point of the story

No you have that wrong. Abraham wasn't going to kill Isaac and God stopped him. This is also a lesson taught through story telling. I didn't know why that goes out the window with biblical stories.

Someone tells me that the Earth didn't really flood and two of every species wouldn't have been able to repopulate the Earth. As if that debunks the religion. I didn't think a princess ever kissed a frog that actually became a handsome prince and I don't need that to be true to understand the message of the story.

 

Yes, Arab speaking.
Same language. Same god. Allah is Arabic word for god, El, Elohim, etc.
No matter the religion.

 

There's no universal morals. It's all subjective.

 

No one should have to be obedient to a loving thing. Ever.

Obedience is control and fear.
Love is kindness and wants.

 

Sure it's subject to culture, but I can point to cultures and say they are immoral on an objective basis.

If I can't than it isn't subjective it's relative.

 

Ideally, if you know God and love him, then your fidelity to him is driven by love and honor for him, not fear. As for people who do evil in Gods name, who can say. That sounds like a nightmare scenario. You are not wrong in keeping tabs on your motivation. There is a heap of evil done, having nothing to do with God. But do we reason then that mankind is inherently evil and should be done away? That would fall under the heading of a God complex.