Part 3 of Post Your Tough Questions Regarding Christianity

Whether god made the sun or stars on the fourth day or the first isnt my question. My question is....how many stars did God make in total at that same time?

 

Quote Posted by dairyair:

So, the canaanites never heard of this God and had no reason to live according to this word.
Thanks for clearing that up.
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What are you talking about? I specifically said they heard of God, but they were disobedient to Him and continued on their sinful ways...I tell ya, some of you atheists have a problem understanding what you read...lol

 

Quote Posted by taikoo:

No rainbows before the flood?
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According to Scripture, rainbows came after the flood. It was God's covenant, in that when you see a rainbow it was a symbolic sign that God would not ever again flood the entire world like the Great Flood during the time of Noah.

 

Can we at least get a deli number on when to expect answers? This is the slowest responding thread I have ever seen. You still havent answered my questions from part 2. Or are you simply refusing to answer?

 

God created many stars;
Genesis 1:14-19
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years,
15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so.
16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.
17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth,
18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.
19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

 

This isnt an answer. I would like the OP to respond. Please read the question again carefully. If you dont know, please say you dont know.

 

How do you reconcile the fact that 1) it is reiterated throughout the Tanakh that God is ONE and indivisible with 2) attempting to say that God is somehow three different entities? In addition, if your response is that they are all one entity, God, how does that not violate the law of identity?

 

Mitt ... so far you have not clarified any "tough" questions. So far all you have done is ignore the tough questions in abject denial.

 

Psalms refers to the Chief God as El http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_144.pdf

Other versions are Enlil, Ellil . .. and Elyon. Genesis uses the term Elohim ... which is derived from El.

It is well recognized by experts that the God of Abraham was El. Biblical Archaeology shows on TV state this.

Elyon is also mentioned as the most high God in Deuteronomy

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/jewish-beliefs-about-god

 

I did read your question very carefully "how many stars did God created?" Answer many stars. If you don't know or don't like the answer then don't don't ask.

 

The early church fathers believe God is three but was not sure how to say it or term it because God never specifically say the word I am Trinity instead many times God imply He is Three. The ignorant is one who claim he is not.

From the day Jesus Christ resurrected the Apostles accepted Jesus is God and for that they were persecuted.

Gospel of Thomas, writings of the Gnostic, Arianism, Nestorians, Islam etc. they are all in the Vatican vault.

 

Yes it is reiterated many times that God is ONE and indivisible at the same time it is mention that God is "us", God the Father, Holy Spirit and Son, Three in One not three divisible or three separate entities. To insist that God is absolutely indivisible is putting limitation to God's Almightiness and His very message of the present of the Son, Holy Spirit and Father.

how does that not violate the law of identity? = it does not, it reveals His identity that is beyond human comprehension, just like the more scientist learn about the universe the more they don't know.

Men have always ask or demand God provide proof of His powers and presence and when God did reveal Himself the more men would demand for more and the more they will doubt or not believe.

 

So you're saying he violates a law of logic?

 

God is beyond logic, that is why atheist do not believe in God because they want God to be something within their limited logic. It took the church fathers years and years to fully understand the Trinity, if logic is what we are relying on then logically God is Three base on the many announcement God has made the only thing missing is directly using the term Trinity. If we want logical acceptance that God is just One not Trinity then the church fathers would have or should have change the Bible, but they did not because they do not want to corrupt the Bible.

 

He's cherry picking. Usual response don't you think?

 

When your math teacher asks you what 9x12= did you answer with "more than 1?

 

So there was a "thick layer of clouds"....but only in "some places"? And in those places where there was the thick layer, you couldn't see the Sun and Moon.....and in those places where there WASN'T a thick layer, you couldn't see the Sun and Moon?!?!?!? Then He cleared up ALL the clouds and the Sun and Moon were visible in the places that had the "thick cover" and the places that had "no cover"????

 

Did God said He created 9x12 = 1? No, God said he created many stars, stars with a letter "s" that means many if your English teacher ask you what is the plural for star? and your answer is 1 then you have a problem.

Genesis 1:16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.

So, what is it that you do not understand about stars? answer; star = one, stars with an s = many.

 

Even in the Bible ... When Jesus refers directly to "the Father", and he does so numerous times, he always refers to God as someone other than himself.

The early Church fathers believed that Jesus was subordinate to the Father... not of the same substance, not homoousios.

If Jesus is not of the same substance as God .. then he is not God. He may be the son of God, or part God .. but he is not the God of Abraham, Creator, the Father . and so forth.

Tertullian was the first to use the term trinity in the modern sense around 200 AD. The early Church Fathers claimed this doctrine was heresy and you can read their comments speaking out against this doctrine.

Eusebius (Constantine's favorite and the fellow who put the first Bible together) was exiled because he would not sign on to "homoousios"

Going against Constantine was essentially a death penalty and so most eventually signed on, including Eusebius.

The Trinity was simply a way for Constantine to settle the debate over the nature of Jesus an implement monotheism. Homoousios was not something the Church at large believed but Constantine was not a fellow to cross. He had killed own wife and son after all.

1) The Vatican did not "keep these writings" from the time of Constantine. These writings .. and anything similar are only around because thy escaped burning by the Church.

Of course the Church of today does not burn these things ... but this has nothing to do with the what the Church was doing in the first 1500 years after Constantine.

Second .. non of the texts you mention were used as source documents for the Bible ?

The Church did not keep any of the source documents that Eusebius used ... not that we know of .. perhaps some are still in hiding deep inside the Vatican vaults.

What is a fact .. when we do find older documents that escaped the burning by the Church ... these documents have been altered numerous times and differ from modern Bibles in many places.

Even the first Bibles are not the same as our modern Bible. The Bible has transformed over time and unfortunately ... much of the original meaning has been obscured lost, or changed.

 

What do you mean "God is beyond logic" This is just a veiled appeal to stupidity (its over our heads so we can not understand)

God created Logic .. we are created in the image of God .. "like US as.. as Genesis states" and with intelligence.

Maybe you want to believe in an irrational, trickster God who rewards stupidity and ignorance rather than intelligence and questioning and you are welcome to this opinion.

Did you ever consider that God might be a rational and sensible being who rewards intelligence and questioning and the pursuit of knowledge rather than favoring blind sheep ?

Does not Proverbs and Ecclesiastes praise pursuit of knowledge and wisdom ?

This appeal to stupidity does not wash with me and it certainly does not wash with "Gods chosen people" . the Israelites/Jews

But they did change/corrupt the Bible... This is why all the source documents were destroyed.

 

But... the Bible puts that limitation on him. In addition, there are other explanations for those verses that contain "us and our" Christians use that aren't related to the Trinity. Hence why every Christian is not a Catholic.

Sorry, just saying it does not doesn't make it so.

It is inconsistent with the fact that identity is a transitive relation - that is, if A is identical with B, and B is identical with C, then A is identical with C. If the Son is identical with God, and God is identical with the Holy Ghost then – by definition – the Son must be identical with the Holy Ghost. They are one and the same thing. But those who assert the Unity of the Trinity deny this last implication; they deny that Jesus is the Holy Ghost.

Explain to me how this doesn't violate the laws of logic instead of just saying "it doesn't," because it clearly does. Three does not equal one.

God is too weak to convince the minds of men? I would disagree. A benevolent God, even if there is a possibility of failure, would still try to save as many people as he can.

 

Origen believed that all souls could be saved ... even if it took a number of lifetimes to do this.

 

"God is beyond logic"...is the response when logic interferes with a literalist interpretation of the Bible or raises theodicy questions about God. It's basically, as the old George Carlin bit goes, the priest saying "Well, Tommy, it's a mystery!"

 

The theory of the Trinity is in existance before the time of Tertullian, as early as mid 1st century Ignatius of Antioch have already been doing serious research about the Trinity. The subject would become more complex with the expansion of three powerful heretical groups they were Adoptionism, Sabellianism, and Arianism. The role of Constantine was mainly to try to unite all these different interpretation in the end he would lean towards more on the Catholic interpretation but after his death his son Constantius II would change that by leaning towards the Arain theology anyone who refuse to accept or embrace the Arian theology were banish and exiled.

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If the Catholic or early church fathers wanted to corrupt the Bible they would have made sure all the writings are change to support their ideology such as the Trinity, they would have doctored and change words or add the word Trinity in the Bible, but no they did not do any of those they stuck with the original and compile all the discovered documents studied them carefully to determine which is real and not. Many documents were found to be fake and those false documents were left out and pronounce as fake or none inspired words.

The church did not burn them, if any burning was done it was done by over zealots secular Christians. Christian monks were the most deligent record keepers up to this date.