Your questions about Christian doctrine are all legitimate and necessary.Faith arises from doubt.

Your question about prophets being locked up today is spot on, and this goes to much of what is wrong in our world, our romantic sentimentality about science and what answers it provides, logic it appears to me resides firmly with Christianity. Jesus would be medicated and locked up today. And God is the one with the case to answer?!!

Hume's induction and radical empiricism. A good start in the philosophy of miracles. How could Mary miraculously conceive? Why do we worry so much about truth and justice, why are our consciences so inflamed over them? If everything is random how to explain it? How can meat (our brains) think? A liver can't love, attach meaning, dream, believe etc. Why is there a universe anyway? Why does love demand the infinite 'for ever' and 'only this particular person'? Why should the only valid knowledge be of the scientific kind? The statement itself can't be proved in any scientific way, its adoption as a worldview is purely arbitrary. Besides no one lives their life this according to this principle (used though to explain away miracles)

Homosexuals are loved like all sinners, just as I musn't fornicate a person should not indulge their homosexual tendencies.

The answers to all your questions are at your fingertips if you are willing. "Ask and you shall receive, knock and the door will be opened to you".

You wouldn't allow your son to be nailed to a tree, but you would sacrifice your life to save his life. God didn't hold anything back, he was who he was and we didn't like it and killed him. Trying to hold back a little bit of who he was keeping it private is not what infinite love does. It gives and gives, and Jesus being fully human went to the source of this infinite love time and again in prayer so that he could keep giving.

We should too.

Cont'd

Martin in your last post you talked about the atonement of Christ. Let’s examine it shall we?
The atonement of Christ may be defined as “The sacrificial death of Christ as some kind of payment for the sins of mankind.” The only problem is people die every day so why does the death of one person take away anyone’s sins?

The Christian churches have taught several theories:
1) Ransom Theory (Early Church Fathers) The idea that the atonement was some kind of ransom to the devil. But since Christ has been raised from the dead the devil has been cheated of his ransom. Now cheating ANYONE [even someone evil] is itself an evil act then this theory would imply that God performs evil deeds. So let’s look elsewhere.
2) The Satisfaction Theory (Anselm) The theory that the atonement restores God’s honour, insulted by sin. But why should a death restore God’s honour? Especially since the insult goes on. This idea is obviously illogical.
3) The Acceptance Theory (Duns Scotus) God freely decided to accept the death of Christ as a repayment of our dues to Him. But then why not freely accept something less bloody – like the sacrifice of a flower? So if this theory is true God could have picked the sacrifice of a flower but chose the death of Christ as repayment. Implication – God is a bloodthirsty maniac.
4) Substitution theory – Jesus suffers as a substitute or scapegoat for us. But punishing a scapegoat for another’s crimes is immoral & unjust. Since God arranged this then it implies that He must be immoral & unjust.

As you can see Martin either the doctrine of the atonement is illogical or immoral. There’s no getting around it. So how does the atonement imply God’s love for us? Especially since God was saving us from Himself & according to this doctrine he required blood to do this [His son’s or someone else’s He wasn’t fussy]. Does that sound like love to you?

To be continued.

Martin
Now let’s look at your last argument shall we?
You compare the American civil war with genocide & conclude they are both the same. Ludicrous. War may be defined as an amed struggle between nations or states. Once one side surrenders the war is over. Is that what we find Lincoln doing? Lincoln told Sherman & Grant in 1844 “If the confederate armies lay down their arms they shall be welcome back into the union.” .

Genocide on the other hand is the systematic slaughter of men women & children whether they are armed or not. Not exactly the same is it?

Let me put it this way. Let us say Allah had declared that all the citizens who opposed the Islamic faith were to be butchered. Men, women, children & infants. They were all to be put to the sword. “Leave alive nothing that breathes, neither man nor woman nor child nor ox nor ass” Would you condemn this genocide? Of course you would!

Let us consider another story. If when an Islamic army was about to break into a city & a Muslim general turned to Muhammad & asked “the city contains both Muslims & Christians. How will we know one from the other?” & Muhammad replied “Kill them all. God will know His own” Would you condemn such an act of genocide? Of course you would!

If Muslims persecuted & killed any who deviated from the teachings of Muhammad would you condemn such religios bigotry? Of course you would!

But the Catholic Church, & God as portrayed in the Hebrew testament, have said & done all these things. Will you condemn them as well? Will you be consistent? Well, will you Martin?

Bosk,
Christians turn negative events into positive outcomes. What seemed like a waste of a good life at the hands of evil men, demonstrated forgivness for sinners that he prayed for while they crucified him. In that his death atoned for the most evil of sinners. For evil to be overcome forgivness must be offered rather than revenge.

The death of Jesus demonstrated the nature and evil intent of men whose actions and attitudes actually demonstrated they did not love God. That is they rejected Jesus as demonstrating the very heart of God. As Peter the apostle said this same Jesus whom you have crucified [speaking to those that rejected Jesus] God has exhalted as Lord.

They were putting him to death for breaking their laws and views of morality and being the person in character and attitudes that they believed did not reflect the very nature and image of God. Christians believe he is the very character that God intended for each one of us. Sin is the violation of ideal character, of purity and right attitudes and behaviour.

From above posts we recognise the ignorance some have of Church schools. I can tell you, parents are leaving the Public school system in droves because they reject the indoctrination they are receiving at the hands of the PC left wing of the Education Department. They want their chidren brought up with an open mind to good values rather than the immoral behaviour practised and espused by a godless society.

The parents of the Children in Church schools pay the same level of taxes as everyone else; beside they pay school fees to develop the school. Currently my daughter pays $4,000.00 per term for each child. So do not raise the fact that Church schools get a free load from tax payers. It is a non argument.

That Churches should pay taxes because they are charatable organisations is also a non argument. All ministers and staff pay taxes. That they run services for the benifit of the community is as relavent as expecting hospitals or welfare agencies to pay taxes.

Bosk, witty questions! I didn’t know about the 4 theories; interesting also to see that your view on God matches mine quite closely, even though you have a lot of knowledge about God/religion and I know next to nothing about the contents of the bible.

Martin, thanks for being patient. Hope you take no offense but I am afraid that your effort of passing on your knowledge is wasted on me- I really do not believe that there is a God; I am too skeptical and and have no faith, just as you probably do not believe in and have no faith in someone else’s God. So we’re not all that different- just a matter of one God.
It’s nice to say that my baptism is important, but it doesn’t mean anything to me- anyone can help anyone in life, do we become better at it if we’ve been baptised? I doubt that.
I came across a quote once and was able to track it down. This quote says very much what I mean:
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
-- Stephen Roberts

“I'm sure future generations will see much of what we did as unbelievably stupid. But they will have the benefit of hindsight and their own lights.”
True; history is just the total of all the stupid things humankind could have avoided.
The greater our history becomes, the more past mistakes we could prevent- but do we, as humans, really act as if we’ve learnt from it? Wars and violence always seem to be happening, for instance.

Philo, you say: “Sin is the violation of ideal character, of purity and right attitudes and behaviour.” In that regard one would think that nobody has an ideal character, nobody is pure, so we are all sinners.
The odd person who claims to be sinless might not have found the sin yet that is right for him/her, LOL.

And relating that to this topic of judgemental language used in churches toward homosexuals, does that mean that one sinner judges and verbally abuses the other sinner for a sin? Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?