Let's talk a little about the importance of context, shall we.

Many on this site like to pull a verse here and a verse there from the Bible to support their views on God/the Trinity/Christ/the Bible/Christianity/Christians... etc. These same people seem to resent when the proper meaning of the passage is pointed out to them when the passage/verse is considered within its proper context, as if requiring someone to consider context is wrong or some sort of scheme.

If someone visiting this site for the first time somehow happened upon any of the posts above as their first exposure to hyperactive, they would certainly get an impression that hyperactive was some sort of super Bible-thumping Christian; and who could blame them. However, those of you who know hyper, know that that impression could not be a more incorrect and distorted view of our friend.

Those of you who know hyper and me, and therefore have a context in which to put these posts, look at those posts and know they are waaaaaay off, and must be some crazy thing Iams is cooking up.
CONTEXT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!!!

Amen to that



You know you give the Bible too much credit. It's nothing more than a historical book made for the guiding of the church so that they know what has happened, and why they believe. Once they know their history they should move on into the spiritual...Too many Christians are religious, not enough are spiritual...

DOn't forget intent.

Very little of the bible (OT or NT) is historical. Very little of it can be verified by outside sources, it seems to be a piecemeat novel set in various historical periods...

Judge Christianity by Jesus's own standards: "You will judge a tree by the fruit it bears."
1700 years of torture, mutilation and murder is enough.

Misuse? Fruit is fruit.

Ugh, you and your verification. ************x

If you have knowledge, it is your duty to share it....if that is having a pole up my nether regions, then so be it. If Christianity is the truth, then it can be verified, otherwise it is no more than the mythology that it shuns and ridicules. If you have any evidence that can be verified by contemporary second sources, then submit it for examination....

Anyone have any comments on william law or sebastian castellio???

this is very nice, iams....

but you are again showing how you as the observer are using judgement of a context to justify a behavior.

Like I already said, admit your idol was but a man and the point is moot. Otherwise, no matter the context, why does a god need your excuses for his behavior?

As gideon said: "judge the tree by the fruit it bears".

Jesus set the example all those good christians justified and followed. What a lovely role model! Or is this where the old "do as i say, not as i do" axiom comes into play? Sounds ALL TOO HUMAN.....

Hyper would you agree, 'Self reference' leads automatically to paradoxes in logic , after all human beings are masters of self reference(some humans seem capable of no other form of reference) such as our 'son' here.. and are most certainly subject to paradoxes.......

The judgement of a context? What are you talking about?

It is not the judgment of a context that is the issue here, hyper, it's your complete lack of regard for context which is the issue.

You will note that I took portions of two lines from your post. Does the message those two lines by themselves seem to express have anything in common with what you were actually trying to say? Of course not! Why not? Didn't I take them directly word for word from your previous post? How is it possible that they then would seem to express almost the opposite from what you were actually trying to say?

By your standard I have just proven that you believe Jesus to have set a wonderful example. So, am I right? Are you saying Jesus set a wonderful example? Are you now going to make excuses for yourself by pointing out that what I quoted is not what you said because it's taken out of context?

iams....

if we go back to where this context conversation began with us, I said something to the tune of "the old context card" in reference to how that card is played so often.

Now the point of that was you were using it to say, in this context jesus did this, which according to you is justified and does not display him to be what I stated he was.

However, the point was that he did act as I stated, and I don't care about your justifications for his choices. If this MAN was more than a man than he should be ACTING in a manner displaying his enlightened state, not condoning the stoning of children to death, for example.

Actions speak louder than words. Evaluate how enlightened mr jesus was by his recorded actions, not by his surmons. Or are you going to now say it is only the words that matter? I would agree if you admit he was only a man. Entities proclaiming some paradigm of goodness in their very existance don't get a pass for having a bad day.

hyper, you are either purposefully ignoring the fallacy of what you did just so you can maintain that you made a valid point or you are completely failing to realize that by having taken what Jesus said or did out of context you made a point which was as invalid as me making you out to be praising Jesus by taking lines from a post YOU WROTE, but which was actually not in any way positive about Jesus.

Either way your logic is faulty and so your point is completely invalid.

actually iams,

it is your foundation that is invalid!

either jesus was but a man, thus a relativistic viewpoint is valid
or jesus was the personification of the christian virtues making for an absolutist viewpoint.

since he behaved as a man, and you jusify his actions via a relativistic framework, you are saying there are no absolutes since your paradigm of good operates in a relativistic framework.

You have done a service in showing one of the fallacies of the framework of christianity.

Actually hyper, I am not justifying anything or anyone.

I'm simply pointing out that your point is invalid since the examples you are using are out of context, making them false and invalid.

The fact you keep ignoring that your point is invalid shows that you are so intent on making a point that it doesn't matter to you that you're basically lying in order to make it.

iams, i never said context does not play a role. I said "the old context argument".

The point is that by playing the context argument you are showing that context does matter, making the world relativistic!

If your "absolute model of goodness" is relativistic, meaning that jesus is NOT an absolute model of goodness, then you have discredited a fundamental part of your religion.

Is jesus absolutely good? If yes, then the context is irrelevant because he would be absolutely good, i.e. independent of context.

You are justifying him via context in human terms, showing him to be but of human character. in other words, not a god, or an absolute measure of anything.

Much like his followers later did, his goodness is measured relative to the surroundings. Thus the most grusome of killings under christianity become measured as good via context. Human justification. Here we see how easy it becomes when your idol is measured this way as well.

Keep it coming. The more you go on with this the more you show christianity to be faulty in its claims.

hyper, you are using whatever kind of ridiculous argument you can to obscure the fact that you lied.

no... i am using the same valid argument i have from the beginning.

you can't seem to come to terms with the difference between being the paradagm and offering a paradigm.

let me give you a non-jesus example so you can look at it more objectively:

case 1) i am a fast runner. I claim i represent the absolute ideal of a runner. I can run X distance in Y time. I am the model for people to follow.

case 2) I am a fast runner. I claim that running X distance in Y time is the measure of a good runner.

Now in case 2, my performance is irrelevant to my statement. I am merely giving a model.
In case 1 however, i am defining myself as the model. If I do not deliver as I proclaim, then I am invalidating my own model.

The same is true of jesus. If he is the perfect model of goodness christians put forth, then he must at all times, in all scenarios display this behavior. To do less discredits the claims of his "status".

If you want to say jesus was just a man delivering a message, and thus his personal actions are not relevant to his message, then you can make all the claims you want about the context of his behaviors, or just ignore them entirely since they are irrelevent to the message.

If you want to claim jesus was the embodiment of his message, and his message is of absolute goodness, then every action must be measured UNIVERSALLY, not relative to a localized context. If you want to localize it, then you are saying that good is relative (your model of good is relative), which discredits any further claims made by christianity of an absolute good or an absolute evil.

hyper this is one of 'sons' indications he has lost the debate, he has doen this to me also on more than one occassion, the catch phrase for me is 'intolerant'....nice try Son, why not debate instead of bow out by name calling.......

i would be interested in your flow of logic on the debate that hyper has presented.....

I understand the excuse you are trying to make to cover up your horrible logic, but this is not what you did.

Let's use your example that you're a fast runner to show what you actually did with those passages:

You tell someone that running X distance in Y time is the measure of a good runner. You also tell this person that it is your goal to run that X distance in Y time, because you strive to be competitive with the runner you consider to be the ideal for all runners someone you model yourself after. This person the goes to someone else and tells them you said you are the ideal for all runners because you can run X distance in Y time. This person uses words you actually said, some of them even verbatim. But what you said and what they say you said only have words in common, the actual message is completely different. This is what you have done. You've taken words from the Bible, spoken by or about Jesus/God, and completely changed the message by only taking selective parts. That is at best bad logic, at worst outright lying.

your favorite drama eh son the liar one...son you have lost the debate , its okay... no one cares....

Supra to the rescue! hyper is obviously on the ropes as far as being able to use logic or being able to admit an error, so you come in and do the thing you're accusing me of. Wouldn't expect any less of you... or any more.

Supra, I'm far from having lost a debate, there really isn't much of one here. hyper committed a horrible act of logic and is now throwing up ridiculous stuff to try to hide the fact that he either used faulty logic or outright lied to make a point. I've called hyper a liar because that is what you call someone who distorts things.



hyper has not really presented a debate, Supra, so it's kinda impossible for me to discuss the flow of my logic in the debate. All he has done since I pointed out the importance of context is throw up one ridiculous illogical argument after another.

But I can present the flow of my logic in my attempt to get hyper to either correct his mistake or admit he used faulty logic:

• Things which are said or written as part of a speech or document cannot simply be taken out of that speech or document in an indiscriminate way.
• Taking words or phrases from a speech or document indiscriminately can lead to incorrect interpretation of those words/phrases
• Using words or phrases taken from a speech or document indiscriminately to bolster a point you're trying to make can lead you to make a point which is not truly supported by those words/phrases.

Instead of supporting your buddy's lies/faulty logic you should help him improve his ability to use logic, or to stop lying whichever it is.

Relying on your old favorite, huh, Supra. Saying something that has absolutely nothing to do with the post you're quoting from.

incorrect iams....

you would be correct that the exact context is important if you are working in a relative framework. However, when your premis is that jesus is mr. all loving, perfect, only good character that is beyond reproach, etc etc, then in the cases I gave you, they demonstate he is NOT what the universal framework spells out.

If we have a set A
and a subeset of set A, B
and we have defined that B is a complete subset of A,
then we can say that all the properties of B are inherited by A.

You are creating exceptions to the universal sets rules within the subset as a way to explain away the differences between your man-god claims, and your conflicting human behaviours within the character.

You can't have both, iams.
Stop making excuses for your idol.

hyper, you took passages out of context. You stated they proved something. However, when studied in context (as anything needs to be to be studied correctly.) it was obvious that your statements were wrong. You can talk about relative frameworks all you want. The fact is you took something out of context and used it to support a false point. Simple as that.

Your logical explanation has one fallacy that is easy to see

You used a fallacious argument to define B as a complete subset of A, therefore your argument is fallacious. Your logic is faulty because you have used an improper argument to establish the point which will prove your conclusion.

Given that the "conflicting human behaviors" you keep pointing out are only there BECAUSE you took the passage out of context, you really have no evidence.

take it in context than iams.....

it is YOU that is saying that in said context, the behaviour is acceptable and consistant with a "perfect doer of good - god", which I say it is not.
I have said this several times, admit your character is not a god, not a manifestation of good, etc, and you are correct, we can dismiss the behaviour.

You WON't, so you just justify the behaviour. I wouldn't expect any less from such a devotee.....

Doesn't fly.... go back and read it over again, asking you to decide which condition it is is getting redundant and boring. The short is your man-god does not measure up to your religion's own definitions of what this perfect being should be.

So unless you want to address the man or god, messenger or message incarnate issue lets just end this peacefully and walk away.

Supra couldn't save you so we walk away.

no, it is just a why go back and forth over the same concepts time and time again?

we can summize this entire exchange as follows:
i say that the actions of jesus contradict his message, and contradict the expected behavior of one that would be what christians claim this man to have been.
you say the context justifies his actions and does not contradict the status his followers have elevated him to.

i have different standards for the behavior of "perfect goodness, peace, love, etc" incarnate than you.

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it." (Matthew 10:34-39 NASB)


this is the scrip in its entirety son, and it looks as if hyper included a breakdown of a in depth understanding in relations to this scripture too...

it supports his point which is that jesus was far from perfect, he has allowed for many ways to look at it too...


I truly do not see where you are getting he is a liar and illogical, I have known this man for a long time one of his closest friends, illogical wouldnt describe him, I say this with the utmost confidnece, but he has other freinds on here to 101 she is a christian in all fairness, ask her too......hyper searches out ways to make all points applyable he has done that for you, from your persepctive he is saying he sees how you have arrived at your conclusion hyper more than anyone would factor in that you are defending your faith and appreciate that and consider it......His intent is not to humiliate you jsut look at this through a bigger lens, If you are gonna claim jesus as perfection in form you have to be able to support it...that is all...

Drop the name calling follks. There's no need to derail a thread with attacks and pointless statements. I honestly don't remember - was the context actually discussed, or was the phrase "out of context" simply thrown out. I'm not going back to check it out (I can't remember that far back), so for hyperactive and IamsSon, I guess it's up to you. If the context has been discussed and not just alluded to, perhaps you might want to consider going back to that and examining whether the situation merited the actions. If the context has not been discussed, maybe you should start now and then decide whether the situation merits the action. If this has been done and you are both just arguing for the sake of trying to prove yourselves right, then this discussion is not going to go anywhere and I or another moderator will be forced to close the thread because right now we are so far off topic, I barely remember what the topic is.

Regards, PA

.
i still think this is a humanism problem and possibly would ahve happend anyway. think of what might of happend if there was no god in our history to fear? i mean america isnt a christian nation its an american nation. and are racking up on the torture and murder. and so is almost every other country.

so these fruits are fruits of human nature. what about all the true practicioners who werent involved in these things?

christianity is beautiful. most beautiful thing in my life. maybe ... too beautiful.



all this means to me is he who loves his family more than the progression of his internal ego with the will of the father is not worthy of having the thought adjuster his life is providing. i think. he who is abandoned or life ruined by fallowing this path in his name will find his place otherwhere. maybe not in his life but in the after. and he who says i am content with myself and my life will still die. and other stuff. i just have leads to what he might be jesting at.

and if not perfect, then who was greater?

i mean everyone is a unique and beautiful snowflake... but common everyone is not a unique and beautiful snowflake. if jusgement is reserved to one omni thing alone then who is to say that jesus christ isnt the favorite of humanity? goes back to faith. and quite possibly.. though i doubt it, can be argued.

just playing the holy advocate.

^Also the context (heh, there's that word again ) in which Jesus said to judge a tree by its fruit was that Jesus was speaking to individual people and not about religions. In other words, judge each individual according to their actions (the fruit they bear).

Pa people give rise to the meaning of religion without the person/people relgion would have no meaning...... not to infer that all christaians are the same certainly in australia its entirely differnet, but i think we are talking western relgion.......oy vey have you heard oral roberts or pat robertson, or jimmy swaggart, benny hinn, jim baker tammy faye baker... david koresh etc...???? these are the individuals that are defining relgion...

there are snakes on the plane.

lol..

In the states these are the reliogious leaders........

I find your constant naming of our good faith a mythology quite disturbing.





Since he has lost....I shall take it up....


Context though important in this case is irrelevant..... The Bible Iams, is nothing more than a book written by men. it is not holy, and does not say it is....the Bible is a book for example, not for living off of. It is for historical purposes within the Christian church....nothing more... Sherri, and Hyper...you two seem bent on disproving Iams, however neither of you replyed to his posts....you quoted him and typed something completely different in most cases, but please when you reply to someone try to adress what they're talking about instead of something else....I read this, and it sounded like a dog trying to talk to a fish...

Vis, that is what this is all about the skeptics and the religious, yes its challenging and not for the faint of heart.......son disproved himself basically himself... we simply offered a perspective....


Why do you find that relgion is called a mythology so disturbing???? everything is a cultural story.... made up basically.....

welcome to UM

A couple of those names I've never heard of. Of those I have heard of, I've never heard speeches from any of them (though I have heard snippets here and there from this website). And of course I know a little about Koresh. Of those tele-evangelists (i'll guess that's what all the rest are, even though I don't know all the names), from the snippets I have read, I shudder that this is the message many americans are bombarded with about my faith. I guess maybe america is probably different to australia, but i still have to think that there are a lot of good christians over there (heck, I've met enough on these boards to show me that). It's interesting to note that none of these good Christians make it onto the front page of the news. Why? Because it's not sensational enough. It's the radicals and sensationalists that make it into the mass media, not the regular, loving, beautiful Christian men and women.

Let's say for a moment that you walk home one day. In the street you pass a man with a wooden sign over his chest, saying "REPENT - THE END IS NIGH. JOHN 3:16", and he's yelling and foaming at the mouth, cursing your mother for bearing you into this cesspool of sin. Now imagine that you pass a hundred normal people all looking at this guy funny. Now imagine that ten of these hundred that you see would consider themselves Christian. When you get home what is your impression of Christianity going to be - would it be of the ten nameless faces in the crowd that you could not discern their belief, or of that one individual of questionable sanity?

I know that the impression of Christianity is largely decided by those vocal few. It's not possible for most normal Christians to distance themselves from these guys, all we can do is show you through our actions (our fruits) that we as individuals are not like that (just as Jesus teaches - judge us by our fruits).

Yes but then offer it without quoting him.

Religion I care nothing about..if you reread my post it said my faith...I don't believe in religious dribble.

I, Lord Vicera, Thank you.

Any comments anyone about William Law or Sebastion Castellio???

you have to adjust to many different styles of thinking, I would not be offended at all if you passed over our posts , we can get a bit intense ....

You are right about the dark side of religion. But is it really the religion or the way people interpret some of the commands/expectations?

" i read all the posts son, i replyed to you, have you ever just responded in love jsut becasue its who you are????? A little question for you ...


For example, is there anything in the message of "Love God with all that you are and love people" which gives anyone permission to go around attacking those who don't want to accept that belief and/or have different beliefs?

son the whole entire bible is very clear on this point ...god is anything but loving and kind...

If there is I don't see it, but somehow throughout history many have used "Christianity" as the justification for what would otherwise be easily perceived as xenophobia.

its a case of calling conditional love inthe bible that can throw you off,

i just put my thoughts down, son , you have to sort out the flow I can tell you its often based on the whole converstation...many things were said re read them and mine will make sense or not..not to worry i won't be offended if "you don't get me"

What Bible do you read?

God is quite loveing indeed. Of course he is also supreme....I do not see why the Creator cannot kill of the created...if you create a document on MS word, you have just the same right to delete it because you created it....how would you feel if the other programs would not allow you to delete the document because they didn't like it?

No the better question is what bible are you reading lol????
why am i getting the vibe this is Mr P?????

I am sorry, but who? disguise...hmm...I suppose that my disguise as Lord Catarak has been prevailed, tell not the order <<<sarcasm.....who is this Mr. P?


EDIT:
Haha, yes Sheri, I do know Mr. P...however I am not him...merely a student of his...he has a name and it's Dan....he's taught me and others quite a bit....but he is extreme and I learned that the hard way in my studies under him....

Supra Sheri - last time we had this issue, you were asked to keep these comments off the board and asked instead to contact a moderator or SaRuMaN. As it is, we're on top of this matter and are already looking into this possibility. Thanks for your cooperation.

haha.....he calls me his greatest work of art....lol....oh my looking into the possibility....interesting.

is it bad that I learned from him? Is it bad that he opened my eyes to the truth? A few days ago I recieved an email from him...asking me to go here. He begged me and pleaded that I do it as his most cherished student...I willfully agreed. And I figured i could get Chakra help while here....it that bad?

I hate it how people get too politically correct over Jesus instead of just appreciating the core and essence of his message. He is so similar to Buddha and Lao tzu and other mystics and what have you. What I can't stand about most christians I know is that they cannot accept the idea that Jesus was just one of many great sages, messiahs or avatars to walk to earth and help man out of spiritual darkness. They believe that jesus was the only one and can be the only one. And then the true message gets lost because they are so busy with events in either a real or fabricated time that they forget that Jesus wants us to love god with all our hearts and our neighbours as ourselves. I do not believe Jesus was the only chosen son of God because we are all gods children and even more so we are God. Jesus taught us not to believe in him but believe his message which will get us to the same level as him. A hindu puts it best: ..The real God is not to be sought in idols and symbols, in temples or churches.
The truth of the matter is that the purified man is God himself, for he has become one with universal life. The purified man is the self-realised man. He has not to await answers from God, for he has no questions to ask. He himself is the answer to all questions; his life itself is a benediction. (Sudhakar S.D, 1988.
p55)


Even if you dont want to believe the mentioned quote above most christians are still delusional. They don't realize that God is unconditional love itself which rises the sun on the evil as much as it does the good. How ignorant for a so called professed christian to say " God loves you unconditionally but only if you ask for forgiveness and his love, if you don't you'll end up in hell" , this is a plain contradiction. God loves us unconditionally and hence God understands us better than we do ourselves and will never ever forsake us.

This is where buddhism and hinduism have it better than christianity (and I am a devout christian by the way), they have a Reality or God (some buddhists call it universal mind and others refuse to name it god but call it nirvana) that has unconditional love and mercy on us which has a patience to match hence the unlimited incarnations we experience until we learn to perfect ourselves and be perfect "even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect". Also the fact that Hindus and Buddhists admit that there has been many messiahs, enlightened sages, prophets and avatars and that there will be many more. There will be as many as man and other sentient beings need spiritual assistance. Because Christianity believes that there has been only one and will only ever be one they have done more bloody persecutions, mass proselytizing and religious wars than any other religion. Islam is the same in a sense because they believe that Muhammad is the last prophet of God. So Islam too has quite a dark record of religious war and conflict.

Anyway this is my say on the matter. Allah bless Christianity!@!

The best way I can put it is that Jesus died for our salvation. He was part of God's plan to snuff out sin. Jesus was given authority over the Earth and its people as their savior and judge by God. He is God's "right hand man." A good mediphore would be this.

Lets say your an employee at some business(Christian religion). You have co-workers(others of the faith), foremans(religous leaders), the general manager(Jesus Christ), and the big boss/owner(God). Now the workers do their job acordingly to how the boss wants it and the GM relays what the workers will do on their shift(Life) . The manager appoints foremans to keep the workers on the right track. The workers go through the foremans to understand the job but can still go to the manager and receive guidance from him themselves. But to speak with the big boss you gotta go through the manager.

Problem I see is that too many people think they know how Christ will judge mankind during the Revalation's judgement day. My point is know one knows and know one will until the time comes. But then again you have people who argue who will be judged by Christ and how they'll be judged. The Revalation does not exactly state how Christ will Judge people individually, which I believe he will. Most Christains have the Idea that the whole judgement will be simillar to- Christ points his finger at the Antichrist followers and casts them to hell. Then he throws the non-believers into hell. Then he flies all the Christian beleivers to Heaven to happly ever after.

But if thats the case why does it state that all the souls previously in hell before the judgement are risen before him to be judged? Why not just leave them in hell? Because I beleive that Christ will one by one, sinner or saint and judge us accordingly as he sees fit not how we think we should be judged. Kinda like how a GM will give his 90 day evaluation to both foreman and worker and judge or evaluate their work habits and ethics and judge them accordingly.