Dear Yuyutsu,

Discussion with you is like walking through warm, chest high treacle.

Dear OzSpen,

We assume a hypothesis is true if we use the available evidence along with logic and reason and find no contradictions. With new evidence showing what we thought was true is not because the new evidence contradicts the hypothesis we must abandon what we thought was true and develop an explanation which accounts for all the facts. That is the scientific method. We should not take the word of an authority whether the authority is a person or a sacred book. Political figures such as Pontius Pilate, prime ministers or presidents may confuse truth with what is politically expedient.

You read the Bible in English, but it was not written in English. The virgin birth prophesy in Isaiah 7:14 is a mistranslation. It came about because the Vulgate translation of Hebrew into Greek translated the Hebrew, almah which means young woman, into parthenos which means virgin. This was possibly done to make Jesus like the many pagan gods which were born of virgins.

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1561/pg1561.txt

“The old Teutonic goddess Hertha (the Earth) was a Virgin, but was impregnated by the heavenly Spirit (the Sky); and her image with a child in her arms was to be seen in the sacred groves of Germany. (1) The Scandinavian Frigga, in much the same way, being caught in the embraces of Odin, the All-father, conceived and bore a son, the blessed Balder, healer and saviour of mankind. Quetzalcoatl, the (crucified) saviour of the Aztecs, was the son of Chimalman, the Virgin Queen of Heaven. (2) Even the Chinese had a mother-goddess and virgin with child in her arms (3); and the ancient Etruscans the same.”

Carpenter gives many other examples.

There is no prophesy of a virgin birth in the original Hebrew

http://biblehub.com/isaiah/7-14.htm

King James Bible

Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

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Jewish Publication Society (JPS)

Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: behold, the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. (English translation from the original Hebrew)

Almah is a Hebrew word for a maiden or woman of childbearing age who may be unmarried or married. It does not, in and of itself, indicate whether she is a virgin, for which a different Hebrew word betulah is used.

There are 26 versions of the Bible in English in biblehub. The Jewish Publication Society (JPS) and 2 Christian versions translate the Hebrew properly as young woman.

Judaism is a monotheistic religion worshiping one God, not a Trinity, and the virgin birth has no place in Judaism. Christians do not worship the God of Israel. There is no need for them to do so since they may worship what they want to. However, Christians claim to worship the God of Israel, and they don’t. The phrase Judeo-Christian is odd because they worship different Gods. The Jewish statement of faith is, “Hear, O, Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is One”. The Islamic statement of faith is, “There is no God but Allah, and Mohamed is his prophet. It would be more reasonable to use the phrase, Judeo-Islamic, than Judeo-Christian. Jews and Christians worship different gods with the same name while Jews and Muslims worship the same god with different names.

Dear David,

Though not a Christian myself, I like Peter Sellick's articles and his fresh approach to Christianity.

However, I do not always completely agree with him, so I comment here about some points of contention between us, in this case, about the issue of "hope".

I had no reason to expect your response to my comment, which out of the blue attacked faith.

Yes, some Christians have faith, but so do many others, including myself and including even Mammonites (for otherwise no stock-market would be viable).

You may well be aware that I am not here to defend Christianity, but your broad-brush attack of faith required my response.

If you feel that discussing with me is "like walking through warm, chest high treacle", then you only have yourself to answer, why you needed your attacks, presumably on Christianity, to be so broad and generalised. Being more specific could improve the accuracy of your arguments as well as prevent you from unintentionally insulting unrelated others by attacking what is very dear to them.

Dear Yuyutsu,

You have commented on hope which you apparently do not feel is a virtue although many people do. I feel one should question, one should not accept authority. To me faith is a vice. I feel the Nazi murder machine which resulted in sending 11,000,000 people to their death, 6,000,000 of them Jews, is an example of faith. I am sure many Germans and others who participated in the slaughter had faith that they were doing a good and righteous thing.

Although I have criticised Christianity I feel some Christians have been most admirable. One thing that bothers me in Australia is the lack of the separation of religion and state, for example, in government subsidies to religious schools. The first person to speak of separation of church and state was the Baptist minister, Roger Williams.

From Barry’s biography of Williams:

“Williams believed that preventing error in religion was impossible, for it required people to interpret God’s law, and people would inevitably err. He therefore concluded that government must remove itself from anything that touched upon human beings’ relationship with God. A society built on the principles Massachusetts espoused would lead at best to hypocrisy, because forced worship, he wrote, ‘stincks [sic] in God’s nostrils.’ At worst, such a society would lead to a foul corruption—not of the state, which was already corrupt, but of the church.”

As a result of his opinions, Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony within a few years. He chose to found a more tolerant, religiously free colony at Providence in what is now the state of Rhode Island. Williams was thus a pioneer for the idea of church-state separation and a Founding Father more than 100 years before the generation of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. He was possibly also the first Abolitionist. He went as a missionary to the Indians but quit when he felt he had nothing to teach them.
I consider John Brown, Martin Luther King jr, Wm Penn, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Franz Jägerstätter, A J Muste, Leo Tolstoy, the Berrigans and Conrad Grebel also admirable Christians.

Dear David,

I share with you the desire to separate state and church, albeit for different reasons. I understand that your motivation is to protect the state from the church, while my motivation is to protect the church from corruption and religious practices from the clutches of the state.

I also agree that forced worship (figuratively) stincks in God's nostrils.

Now I think that you are confusing between belief and faith.
Belief is cheap, anyone can believe, but faith is extremely rare, including among Christians.

For example, suppose you see a snake on the road in the evening twilight, then you refuse to cross the road and climb a tree instead.
Suppose someone then tells you, "this is not really a snake, it is only a rope", you ask: "can you prove it?" and they answer: "Yes, if I shine a torch on it, you will be able to see for yourself that it is a rope".

If you only believe, then you will say "OK", but nevertheless as a precaution you will stay up the tree, perhaps you will also call a shop to deliver you a torch, which would only arrive in the morning at the earliest. But if you have faith, you just climb down without hesitation and cross the road!

In the example you gave, killing unarmed Jews did not require faith, only belief. If a Nazi killed a Jew with his sword even while surrounded by 100 Jews with guns, then I will be prepared to agree that he had faith. We know that in the Warsaw Ghetto, when the Jews shot back, the Nazis scurried away like mice.

Dear Yuyutsu,

That is why I feel that I am walking in chest high treacle when I interact with you. Your distinction between faith and belief is arbitrary and designed to justify your worldview. You apparently wish to define faith as good and belief as something not necessarily so good. Chest high treacle.

The Nazis did not scurry away like frightened mice in the Warsaw Ghetto. They fought back and won. Chest high treacle.