and if God wanted this revealed he would have. He gave us what we needed.   This is no excuse for RCC tradition.  This is taking the scripture out of context and making tradition out of nothing.....just like the Pharisees did.  Christ called them on it many times.  I'm doing the same here. 

No.   That's scary.  You're going to tell God that his revelation to us is incomplete?  Good luck with that.  The bible says both in the OT and the NT for good measure that if you add or take away from the book you will be in serious trouble. 

God would never ever leave us here with the word of man like that. The bible fully contradicts such nonesense.  The word of man supplementing the Word of God????  Are you kidding????   He knows how man corrupts everything he touches and the tongue has some serious issues.  To me it reminds me of the childish game called gossip.  And you know the outcome of that don't you? 

I absolutely see the Pharisees when I think about the RCC and their traditions and have so since I was a kid.  I can't see any diff.  They are very comparable. 

Hate to tell you Lula but Catholics are having abortions all over the place.  I've known alot of Catholics who go for abortions.  The only diff is the world doesn't know because they quietly go and take care of the problem.  I'll bet you dollars to donuts you sit next to one or two every week when you go to church. 

I agree. 

If a woman is raped and becomes pregnant she is out of luck so to speak. Either she is pregnant while not married, which is frowned upon in a lot of places still, or she has a child out of wedlock which is sin in most cultures and religon. This does not mention the traumatic experience, the humiliation, shame and also guilt that many feel. It is a very difficult situation and no easy solution is possible. If they abort they are not only a sinner once because they had a child out of wedlock but twice because they killed. It is no wonder why many despair and do not find a good solution. But rape is a extreme scenario.

I find it difficult to classify people into religious denominations and then automatically assume a certain sort of behaviour. (Except for some really weird cults and sects that indoctrinate and brainwash their followers that is) I am sure there are evangelical christians who have had abortions as well. This is what I mean with polarizing. Catholics and the Catholic Church in the Vatican are not synonymes either. Everybody is still a individual person after all who makes individual choices. We are not living in a collective.

There was a huge debate about this a few years ago in regard to pregnancy counsel offered by the catholic church in germany. German criminal law requires going to this counsel if you want to have a penalty free abortion. In this counseling they try to show other options that are available, talk about available financial aid and and the emotional situation those woman are in their life right now, adoption and so forth - the general reasoning behind that is to dissuade the woman from having an abortion. The catholic church in Germany had been offering this counsel and attending it could be used as "have a penalty free abortion" card. That is why the vatican prohibited it. There are other organizations who offer this though, also the protestant church.

My friend from Ireland, her mum has 8 or 9 siblings, they were very poor and barely survived. Another baby was a problem and could make survival problematic as there was already not enough to go around. She said that it was a reality that men wanted to consumate their marriage but that children could not be always supported. Some nuns helped out with herbs and advice on how to end a pregnancy. Abortion does not have to happen in a clinic after all.. wise woman were a necessity in societies that were largely poor and were families had more children than they could support.

I think the pregnancy counsel the catholic church offered was generally a good thing, even though using it as a get an abortion for free card was wrong. But counsel in general is very good, and I read that several states in the US have also made it a requirement before having an abortion. Many woman don't even know that they have other options, so it is good to show them that their situation does not have to be totally hopeless. Instead of condemning them one should show that there are other ways, adoption for example.

The conversation has clearly taken a different spin since when I last left, but I'll make another post. I no longer have the time to get too deeply into discussions; the difficult part of school is done with (4.0 gpa thus far; made the honour roll and took one of the 5 remaining open places in the RN program) for a couple months but life, without getting into details, always manages to find ways to keep you busy.

Regarding Job: Ok, if I was mistaken about Jobs wife, I was mistaken, but his children all died. Your response to that is that god doubly blessed him for it later... that might work with material posessions but can you look at your children and say "yeah it's fine if I lose the ones I have now, as long as the ones I get later are even better"? They had nothing to do with Jobs peity, but god ultimately killed them off to prove a point. That's really not something that sits comfortably with me. I don't take Job as a literal story though; rather merely as an attempt to address the problem of evil existing in such a theological setting.

ok, if I don't see it, send me a link.  I'll come over.  I enjoy our conversations.  I think you have very good questions. 

congratulations!!!!   Well done.  You should be proud.  I'm sure you are quite busy. 

I understand but you're looking at this from a physical standpoint not a spiritual one.  The whole reason Job was picked for this duty in the first place was because he was a spiritual giant.  He could and did take it exactly as God said he would.  God knew him inside and knew he was able to withstand this tragedy above all others.  God never gives us more than we can handle....sometimes we take on more than we can handle but he never dishes it out. 

Job understood he would see his children later.  He understood God had them in his care.  He also knew, as I do, that our children are not ours to keep.  We are just managers of them.  They don't belong to us.   We will be judged according to how we brought them up and what we did with them, much like the parable of the talents.  What did we do with what God gave us and that includes our children.  It's a job and responsiblilty we are to take seriously. 

I do take this story as literal, because I don't see any reason not to.  It's not unreasonable to do so. 

But did Job really know he'll see them again? By the arguments within the bible itself, Heaven is a notoriously difficult place to get into, nor is Jobs virtue inherently virtue they themselves bear. From a human perspective, yes, it is easy to say "Death can come at any time, and that's just how it works", but in this case God literally, intentionally arranged for their deaths, to prove that Job is great. I still can't see why an omnipotent god would feel he would have to prove anything to anyone, but he does anyway in Job.

I don't take it literally because it is from a set of oral traditions passed down from generation to generation, and I see no reason to take group x's oral stories as true when group y has stories too. To me it holds as much weight as Greek myth (though funnily enough the entire Prometheus story is in some ways a humanist story, where intellect is liberating, not damning).

And thank you I'd say I'm more pleased than I am proud; to me it means the real hard work is still to come.

now where are you getting that from?  The RCC has oral traditions but the bible doesn't.  The bible is not based on tradition but the written word of many diff writers over the 1500 years it took to piece this book together.  They were all eyewittnesses and wrote down what they expereienced, what they saw, what they heard etc. 

Some wrote of history, some prophecy, some poetry but it has nothing to do with oral traditions at all.  It was all written down for our benefit by the men who expereienced what we're reading.    As a Christian who is a bible believer,I believer they were all inspired by the Holy Spirit for our benefit today. 

But in some religions it is that way.  Like Buddha and Mohaummad.  Their writings came together hundreds of years later by those  who never met them and a religion was made. 

So while many religions have their traditions the bible isn't based on oral traditions but on written facts and experiences. 

so you're saying that intellect in the scriptures is damning? 

Where are you getting that from? 

Did you not know that Paul who wrote almost the whole NT was one of the most learned man of his time?  How about Moses?  He was educated in the best of the Egyptian schools.  He too was very learned and wrote the first five books of the OT called the Torah. 

Also, did you not know the first commandment is to love God with our whole heart, MIND and soul? 

No, God doesn't wish for us to leave out intellect at the door.  But he also doesn't say we have to be a brainiac to believe in him either.  He made the gospel so simple a child can understand, but he left behind his relevation so deep that a Professor can spend a lifetime searching it out.   Something for everyone. 

Sometimes tho, our intellect can get in the way.  We can be so shiny smart we have no common sense.  Sometimes the smarter we get the stupider we get as well.   Seen that a whole bunch around me for years. 

Some need the start at THe Beginning.....................................so to better understand...

Of course I'm saying intellect in the scripture is worth damning. The very tree god told adam and eve not to eat from was the tree of knowledge. That was the start of it all. There is, through history and in present day as well, distinctly anti-intellectual movements within many religious communities. Consider, even, how many peoples counter to evolution is that it's "just" a theory. Putting aside the fact that theory doesn't mean what these people think it means, I wonder what they think of things such as germ theory.

...And yes, the Bible is (partially) based on oral histories. The Old Testament specifically.

As an aside, would you know off-hand why so many people in the States are so gung-ho for home schooling?  This has always perplexed me. The majority of pro-home schooling people I've encountered are religiously rooted, yet if I had to comment on the weaknesses of current North American education (as both Canadian and American systems suffer from many of the same issues, although home schooling movements here in the north are much fewer in number), it would be that political and science education is utterly abysmal (as witnessed both by the number of people, even within my own government, who didn't understand or intentionally misrepresented the legality of the events of late last year, and the fact that one individual in my biology class genuinely believed that all women held one less set of ribs; while some people do have one extra or one less pair of ribs, this is unrelated to gender and is an anomaly). I find it absolutely terrifying how many people to this day take astrology seriously, even when it clashes with their professed faith, for example.

.........................There are many who have these forms of questions,  there is a blog that will even guide its writer back to a mental path; that allows

us the room to understand these sort of "math" problems.... http://mind.impulsedriven.net   

read from THe Beginning......take your time.....and then approach these same topics... but from a different angle.....peace on your travels...

bless

p.s..........here is a frame of thought......just for con vo sa tion........God did not want ADAM and Eve to know evil by doing evil..... God wanted them to know

evil as God did, by being  separate from it..............."Think about it".....how many parents tell, warn, or show their children about evil in advance in hope of

their child avoiding danger???...Is this such a new topic?........................."who has said to a kid don't walk in the street now...or you might get hit.... was that

our intentions??.no .......we who care take pride in sharing....more importantly with those left in our charge.... An "I " say that any story from any religion, that

teaches us strong moral lessons.....is maybe a story that should be given more consideration.....

I think you were wise in saying "professed" faith because that's all it might be.  I have yet in my years of ministry come into contact with one born again believer who takes astrology seriously.  I think any who do either have a very weak faith not understanding the diff between the two or have made a choice of astrology over their "professed" faith. 

Because the schools are teaching the kids more about humanism and against Christianity  than ever before.  I'm still in my 40's.  When I was a child we sang songs in school like God Bless America,, When the Saint's Go Marching In etc.  Everyday we sang some sort of song that invoked God.  Christmas time was all about Christ and his birth and the celebrations were all about the baby Jesus.  When my parents and grandparents went to school they had a bible reading every morning as well as prayer.  I remember times of silence and an occasional prayer or invocation at certain events like graduations and such. 

Our schools were all about the bible and the heritage of Christianity until about the 1960's when it all started to unwavel.  When the public schools first got started bible reading was part of their learning.  Their first reading primers came straight out of the bible.   I've seen these old primers.  In the 1960's they took prayer out of school and then the schools started to take more and more Christian based teachings out.  Little bit by little bit things started to change and not for the better in my opinion.  If I were raising kids today, home schooling is the only way to be able to teach with freedom.  The teachers are NOT allowed to even talk about God anymore.  They can lose their jobs. 

Today, that's all been wiped out and instead replaced with heavy doses of evolution and humanism and looking at the kids today, I don't think that's been beneficial one iota.    When my sons went to H.S. they encountered alot of Christian bashing from the teachers even.  What a difference 20 years makes.  So about 20 years or so ago, home schooling started to take hold.   When my eldest was in kindergarten there were about 400 homeschoolers in our state.  By the time he graduated at 17 there were about 4,000.    I'm sure today, that's just exploded even more. 

can you give me an example of what you're thinking?  What oral histories are you referring to? 

........................

"I think you were wise in saying "professed" faith because that's all it might be.  I have yet in my years of ministry come into contact with one born again believer who takes astrology seriously.  I think any who do either have a very weak faith not understanding the diff between the two or have made a choice of astrology over their "professed" faith. "

..............everything has a place.....but for the unready.... that point has not been reached....most who can not see the

line..........should start there trainning at THe Beginning.... so as to have a level surface in which to

draft......http://mind.impulsedriven.net                      for what is serious should be taking seriously.......but not out of context...

Dude, what's wrong with your keyboard?

The seemingly random collection of dots and spaces make your comments annoying to read.

Also, could you use somewhat correct punctuation?

Thank you.