Please explain something about Christianity

[GoodyGoodyGumdrops]

Before I start, I just want to be quite clear that I'm not trying to be contentious or antagonistic. I'm a person of a different faith, who accepts the plurality of faiths, and wants to live in peace and understanding with others.

My question is about Jesus's death atoning for your sins. Does he not atone for all sins past and future, so that others can believe in him and also receive this atonement? In which case, why do you need to behave ethically?

ACubed I don't actually qualify my belief, in that respect, because I don't know. I take what I can understand from the Bible's message, as I understand it. This is as true for Genesis as any other part of the Bible.

So you're not sure if the universe was created 1ish billion years ago, or a few thousand years ago, you mean?

So what would you take from this passage:
Numbers 31:7-18(NLT)
But Moses was furious with all the military commanders who had returned from the battle. “Why have you let all the women live?” he demanded. “These are the very ones who followed Balaam’s advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the LORD at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the LORD’s people. Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.

There is so much violence in the bible, what positives could come from this? It's so hypocritical saying that one should not kill, but then saying that it's OK for people to kill in god's name. Makes no sense to me.

14ish billion I mean!

ACubed No I'm not sure. I don't know enough about the science or dating the Bible to comment.

So Rockpebblestone what do you think to Gods nasty side? Does he have a nasty side? Do you agree that some of his own acts (not the acts of humans) would be considered really evil by most peoples moral compass? If so could this not be problematic in peoples relationship with such a god?

is left up for consideration*

How is the ark left for consideration?

ACubed, 1DAD, what I take from it, think of it, is that Christ's atonement reconciled, those who have accepted it, to God. If you are reconciled there is peace.

In terms of there being no provable answers to your questions, on this thread, concerning the Ark, head.

Rockpebblestone I get you take that from the bible and from the sounds of it religion gives you great comfort and peace. But surely you can understand my problems with the god as revealed in the bible. I assume the way he has acted is the same reason why you wish not to talk about or really acknowledge the other side of God. No one likes to thing the person they love is a genocidal, jealous, egomaniac. But how can we accept one part of the bibles message and not the others?

In terms of there being no provable answers to your questions, on this thread, concerning the Ark, head.

I'm still none the wiser.

Do you think the flood happened?

1DAD it seems like you want imediate, simple answers. This is not my perspective, at all, I expect there to be complexity, aspects of God that are difficult to understand, paradoxical truths, mystery and accept this.

head, I have no problems in believing there was a flood. I do not know, in terms of provable facts, the extent of this flood, except it covered all of the known world to the people involved, or how, exactly in terms of scientific explanation, it all happened.

Immediate. Typo.

Do you think God caused the flood to wipe out humans?

No, evidently, head - we are still here...

Well no I mean to wipe out all of them apart from those in the ark

Headinhands as promised I've returned with a more clear explanation.

Richard Buckram wrote a book called “Jesus and the eyewitnesses” and one of the things he looked at was, if they were fabricating it, how hard it would be to do and get right. One of the things he looked at was the names used in 1st century Palestine. They found the top 5 were Simon, Joseph, Lazarus, Judas, John. He then compared these (secular) findings to the Gospels and Acts, and found they were: Simon, Joseph, Lazarus, John and Judas.

Then he looked to see if they match in the biblical representation was accurate. He found, for example, 15.6% from secular records bore one of the most popular names – Joseph or Simon. In the bible 18.2% bore one of the most popular names – Joseph or Simon, which is amazingly similar.

41.5% of the population in secular records bore one of the nine most popular names and 40.3% of the biblical names bore one of the nine most popular names. Strikingly similar.

So in other words, the popularity matches what we would see in the popular culture. If you were going to invent characters of a story, first of all, would you even think of the significance of this? And secondly, how could you achieve any accuracy?

If you think of the most popular names of any male name of Britain, not newborns, but across the generations, what would you come up with? Alan? Steve? Joshua? Michael? Do you think you could get all 4? And do you reckon you could get them in the right order?

They are actually John (9%) David (9%) Michael (6%) and Paul (5%).

A church I know looked into their 1000 strong membership to compare this and found the most popular names were an exact match! They were found to be: John (11%) David (9%) Michael (7%) and Paul (4%).

So if you were going to write a real story about today, you would expect it to reflect these findings.And the bible does just that, which adds to its reliability and authenticity.

ChristmasPeace so what has got to do with the price of Fish? Our nation as most of Europe has grown up in shadow of Christianity. Mainly as a result of a Roman Emperor converting to Christianity. If it wasn't for that who knows what religion we would be? Likewise what is the Forces of Islam conquered all of Spain or Captured Vienna later on? What if Islam conquered all of Europe we would all be Muslim and maybe the most popular name would be Mohamed. The point is our religious heritage that still shapes things like names is to do circumstance and the fact we were invaded by Foreign powers rather than evidence of the divine. We could all be Druids.

Rockpebblestone come on Lazy argument. Oh its to complex, you wouldn't understand? Sounds like someone with no argument at all to me. As someone who grew up in the church and read my fair share of the bible I can understand in an age of reasonable enlightenment and reason why it is very hard to defend a Christian position inline with the bible. I believe you Rockpebblestone has completely fobbed me off in light of a position that is near impossible to rationally defend these days. Take what you like from religion and if it makes you feel good fine. But please understand for most people its hard to swallow especially when you can offer not rationalisation of the darker side to the nature of god.

which adds to its reliability and authenticity.

No. It just shows it was written at that time in history. If I wrote a story about a magic unicorn that lived next door the names of the characters would be from people around me now, like Richard and Andy. I wouldn't choose names from a different culture and time in history. And If I told you that the unicorn was actually real the fact that the characters have names that fit the culture wouldn't be evidence for my claim about the unicorns existence. Do you see that?

Back to the bible. The fact that the names of the characters correlate to that time and place in history doesn't in any way make the claims Jesus makes valid.

You feel your holy book is true. Muslims say the same. Say the same about the miracles Mohammed did. But that's wrong but yours is right.

I suspect is no rationalisation you would accept, 1DAD. Faith and belief is not about rationalisation. And the aim of this thread is to discuss the atonement, not justify the whole Christian belief system to you. Lazy argument or not, I have answered your questions truthfully according to my belief and entertained your diversions from the thread topic maybe more than I should have.

If all threads attempting to discuss specific aspects of Christian belief are derailed into Christians being bombarded with questions, requiring them to defend their beliefs, discussion is shut down - as nothing can seriously be discussed in great detail. Why not start a thread of your own if there is a specific subject you wish to discuss? The beauty of this is that you could alert a good range of responses from people who are probably more prepared to answer them than myself.

1DAD - yes totally agree with that argument - it seems like total luck what religion people are born into, which makes the view that any of them are correct even weaker. "I just happened to be born into the one religion which is right"

I think it says a lot that countries with poorer education are generally more religious. People from other countries are keeping the churches going in the UK - not saying that's a negative, just interesting to think about.

One reason I will always favour scientific fact over religious conjecture is that scientists enjoy being wrong as they have then learned something new, and they encourage their peers to find issues with their findings, while most religious leaders can never make any concessions o admit any part of their religion is wrong.

Rockpebblestone - you're right this has gone really off topic, partly down to me! Apologies - I just saw the title come up and have been wanting to discuss various aspects of organised religion so badly with other people. I actually did start a thread about it awhile ago but ironically that went off topic too : )
Don't mean to pick on Christianity, I find religion in general very difficult to get my head around in this day and age.

ACubed, the thing is, if you want a good amount of meaningful responses to new questions, it does not really work unless a new topic is started. I take it, if you want to try and get your 'head round' things a good range of responses would be more beneficial to the process, from people who are prepared to answer them, than asking people ad hoc?

It can be too easy for people to fall into a trap of attempting to answer questions, just out of politeness, when they have not really had enough time to think about these things or decide how they feel themselves. People who actually have answers are also not alerted to the new question.This is not really conducive to seeking greater understanding, I feel.

Ooh, interesting thread!

This part stood out for me

Although interestingly there's more Christians in prison than non-believers.

I wonder how many are new converts? Or those rediscovering lapsed/ childhood faith. That would make complete sense to me as people who know they have done wrong are in much need of forgiveness, and hope of redemption.

This is not the reason there are more Christians than atheists in prison.

Many practice in Christianity or Islam as it enables them to go to the multifaith room, therefore spending less time in their cells.

20-30% of prisoners have learning disabilities and many will have been dependant on religious organisations to feed and clothe them before imprisonment.

The issue is a complex one.

Rockpebblestone we have all gone a bit of topic and you are just as complicit in that as the rest of us. So a little rich to take and start criticising everyone for widening the scope. You were the one who started asking questions of me about how I feel about heaven that started down a slope about the nature of God. Of course to understand the question we must understand the nature of God. A God that gives Jesus as a blood sacrifice for our sins. But that's only half the story. You still have to belive and accept him to go to heaven. So no matter how good you are if you don't you'll be forsaken for an eternity of pain and suffering. What a bugger if your born into a different cultures. So if Jesus dying on the cross didn't save us what was the point?