According to the Bible, God is loving:
1 John 4 (NIV)
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
1 John 4 (NIV)
16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
... as well as j...
@Jez But inconsistencies are just that: inconcistencies. If the Bible says "God is Love, God will never hurt you, blah blah blah" in one place, and later says "God will kill you, torture you, etc" in another place, how does that disprove anything? It just shows that the Bible is inconsistent.
Some people collected various texts written at various times in the past, then someone else gave doctrinal status to certain parts, and created other traditions to be used as "rules".
@Jez The fundamental idea of "god is love" might be nonsense or, at minimum, not a useful thing to worry about, but it doesn't necessarily disprove anything.
@Jez I wouldn't say that you must believe that "Jesus is love" in any useful way to be a christian. I'd say you must believe "jesus is loving". That doesn't mean "never angry, never hating".
@MattЭллен if you check out the (rather long) conversation i had with Caleb on it, he basically says to me that you're only able to have faith in him if Jesus "makes his offer of salvation effectual"
in other words you don't get to choose whether to have faith in him (which is true, as i don't think you get to choose what you believe)
Jesus is causing you to have faith in him or not, and that's his way of saving you.
ahh. well it's one strain of Christianity. But if you don't adopt Caleb's line, you're back to the problem of how Jesus created a very unfair test for humanity
@Jez The problem is that there are essentially infinite interpretations possible of every single line of the bible. And various people ascribe more or less importance to various lines in the bible. And choose interpretations that they find convenient.
A father loves his children. But the father gives the younger child a candy and none to the older child, and the older child hits the younger child, and the father punishes the older child. Did the father love his older child less?
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It seems to be such an interesting question that John Lawler wrote a freakin' paper on the subject. I hope he sums it up for an answer there.
how badly are the people who voted for Romney going to take Obama's victory? if it's anything like the last 4 years, there will be 4 more years of non-acceptance and filibustering
@Jez The racists and homophobes and misogynists and islamophobes (even though Obama's not muslim) are already bemoaning the decreasing relevance of old white men and proclaiming the end of America.
@Jez Honestly, based on the way the Republicans acted the past few years, I don't think "this would contradict our previous position" is a concern for them.
The tea party is all the crackpots, isn't it? whether their pot be cracked in religious or misogynistic or racist or whatever way...
Or are you saying that there are actually several extremist factions in the Republican party, all dragging the moderates to the right, but for different reasons
Either way, the current republican party is just too extremist.
@Robusto Yeah, but placing the generating in a basement was stupid. But anyway, that was the disaster of the century: you can't be prepared for everything (actually, nuclear plants should be, but that's just different). But you can and should be prepared for disasters that strike regularly, right?
@Robusto Both parties did actually work together at one time in the not-too-recent past — I really think it all fell apart when the Republicans annexed the religious zealots
According to the Bible, God is loving:
1 John 4 (NIV)
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
1 John 4 (NIV)
16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
... as well as j...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…