show me the verse that says people didn't get to go to Heaven before Jesus arrived.

the pope is a man. i do not worship men

James 2:14, why did God change his mind when he made the new covenant? He's all knowing so he would of know that he was going to change his mind hence he could of just made the new covenant in the first place. Doesn't make much sense imo.

Also imo your really just defending your faith blindly, you should pause to think "hey does this really make sense?" and if you end up saying yes, then continue. Kinda like when kids get older they begin to question the existence of Santa before their parents told them. Had they blindly listened to their figures of authority they might still believe in Santa had not their parents eventually said "sorry hes not real."

why would God be concerned about anything? He's God. And do you realize how absolutely insane it is to say he wants us to have "faith" in him yet he refuses to show Himself to all of us to remove all doubt?

And yes, I know what's next....free will. But even if God shows Himself to me and I have no doubt he exists, why has that suddenly removed my free will? I can still choose not to accept him.

you do realize, don't you, that according to its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (1964), the Second Vatican Council declared the Pope to be Divinely blessed and infallible:

"And this is the infallibility which the Roman Pontiff, the head of the college of bishops, enjoys in virtue of his office, when, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith, by a definitive act he proclaims a doctrine of faith or morals. And therefore his definitions, of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly styled irreformable, since they are pronounced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, promised to him in blessed Peter, and therefore they need no approval of others, nor do they allow an appeal to any other judgment. For then the Roman Pontiff is not pronouncing judgment as a private person, but as the supreme teacher of the universal Church, in whom the charism of infallibility of the Church itself is individually present, he is expounding or defending a doctrine of Catholic faith. The infallibility promised to the Church resides also in the body of Bishops, when that body exercises the supreme magisterium with the successor of Peter. To these definitions the assent of the Church can never be wanting, on account of the activity of that same Holy Spirit, by which the whole flock of Christ is preserved and progresses in unity of faith."

thats a good question. why does God care about what we think or what i think of him? i have no idea.

Yet you blindly follow his wishes.

thats interesting. no man is infallible. no man has the authority to pass judgement. in the bible, a prophet was chosen by God. an apostle was chosen by Jesus. it seems like men have chosen their Pope, just like how the Jews chose their King.

It's always "the other guys" who pick and choose.

Why would God have anything against homosexuals? Why would God care so much about you worshiping him or believing that his (moral, but immortal) son, who is really him, came to perform physics-defying miracles and then rise from the dead to boot...shouldn't it be enough that you live a decent, moral life without infringing on the rights of others? Why would God care whether you have sex while you're married or not? Why would God have anything against ALL THOSE OTHER PEOPLE who aren't Christians? The list goes on.

It's hard to swallow how someone who is not of this universe could have such petty human emotions.

if i were blind i would not be able to see. maybe i see something you don't

Interesting indeed. THE BIBLE was written by "man"! Find another book.

This would waste my time. Like half of the NT states how Jesus died for our sins so we could enter the kingdom of heaven. The 15 years I went to church, they talked about it every single week.

If you don't think Jesus was sacrificed for us to be able to get into heaven, then tell me why YOU think that whole resurrection thing happened?

maybe you see something that's not there.

we can do this all day.

im not sure if God has anything against homosexuals. in the old testament, the laws of moses prohibited it. the laws of moses were created to keep his people in line. they were to be clean, and homosexuals were consider unclean. homosexuality represented pagan activities and God wanted his chosen clean people to turn away from that.

in the new testament paul spoke against homosexuality, before he evangelized for Jesus he was a zealous Jew. it only makes sense that he would repeat homosexual prohibition.

the other questions you ask, i can only offer speculation. the tone of the bible has always been about human acceptance of God, both in the old and new testament. acceptance of him seems to be crucial.

i agree with you that being a good person in life and treating people fairly should be enough, however, by asking yourself to be saved by Jesus you are asking for acceptance. it is an good act of faith.

but that brings us to the point of how can those people that never had an opportunity to learn about God be punish for lack of exposure. would God punish those that never knew he existed because they never had the opportunity to learn about him? that seems kind of harsh. the answer can only come from 1 source, and it has never been given to me. i personally don't think he would, but i have no authority. like most of the tough question we all have, we can't answer without the authority of God.

you are thinking more about the letter, and less about the spirit. the bible is a book of faith.

you can search but you won't find. i would have found it by now. i've read the bible completely.
Jesus died and resurrected because it was the prophecy that needed to be fulfilled. he was to rebuild the temple in 3 days. when pilate asked Jesus if he was a king, he responded by saying that his kingdom was not of this world. the new temple is with him. to get to the father he said that we needed to go by/thru him. thereinlies the path to salvation

i will continue to believe what i believe until i have a reason to disbelieve.

wat? Science doesn't demonstrate and test for morality. Obvious reason: it deals with data and objective facts, not subjectivity. A person's morality may be a qualitative variable that's accounted for in a social science experiment, for example, but it is not in itself measured/measurable.

- Subjectivity does not imply that something is not observable.
- Subjectivity does not imply that something is not quantifiable.
- An experiment has no value if it is merely qualitative.
- An experiment can not rely on a variable that is not measurable.

Man is merely an animal capable of denying he is one. Elaborate schemes of things one can not find does not constitute a valid argument to the contrary.

I hate the movements around qualitative research as much as anyone, but let's not be too hasty. Measurements need not be quantitative (except in the sense that everything is quantitative), and many phenomena that aren't amenable to quantitative methods are still subject to predictive verification.

I'm not sure, but I've heard that Jesus' death opened the gates of Heaven to those who were deserving to get there from before he died. There's definitely a separate section of the afterlife for "good" people who lived before Jesus died. I think the Christian answer to what actually happened to them depends on who you ask.

Jesus outlined some of it, and the Church (before it split into RCC and Orthodox) had authority over the rest. Later, Martin Luther became frustrated with the ineffectiveness of the RCC. He argued for a Christianity that was based first and foremost on the Bible. The RCC had a lot of problems at the time, and much of Europe agreed with Luther. And that's why there are so many Protestant sects. The Bible is open to interpretation, and if a congregation of people come up with an interpretation that is different from all others, they can start a sect.

The idea is that Jesus' teachings were the underlying meaning of the law of the prophets. So the selling point was, he was the Jewish savior, and his teachings are closer to what God really meant in the Old Testament.

The 2 commandments are the critical ones for Christians. I think the idea is that if you obey the big two, then whatever is right will stem from them.

Welcome to Christianity! Actually, all religions.

Papal infallibility. After the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church held the Council of Trent. Europeans were calling for a less corrupt church, vernacular masses, symbolic (not literal) communion and other things. At the Council of Trent, the RCC basically blew it big time and gave in to none of these demands. The Pope was infallible on Christian matters. This led to the RCC's disapproval of Galileo, Luther and other philosophers and scientists. About 500 years later, the Second Vatican Council decided to take a friendlier stance toward science and ways of explaining the world outside Christianity.

With respect to birth control and stem-cell research, the Pope decided that it would be un-Christian to practice either of those. So Catholics aren't supposed to. I don't know what the Pope's reasoning was. In Fides et Ratio (in 1998), John Paul II approved of science but urged scientists to be humane in their pursuits. So it may have had something to do with the perceived removal of the potential of human life.

BIG difference between Protestants and Catholics on this. The main goal of the Protestant Reformation was to create a Christianity that wasn't dependent on the Pope or the Priests. The Pope has little influence over what Protestants believe or do.

nice answers, Vic, and I appreciate you taking the time - but you do see how your answers also make a non-believer out of me throw my hands up and go, "wtf are these people smoking?" right?

Yeah, definitely. What does the Pope know about sex? He's celibate. There's a ton of things in the Bible that seem to contradict one another. Church theology had to evolve to resolve the complexities of the religion. That same church later turned into an opulent, political organization and failed its followers. Many Christians rejected the church, translated the Bible and began to develop their own interpretations. What it meant to be a "Christian" completely changed.

There's also a lot of unappealing characteristics to most Christian sects. There's little room for gay people who want to be Christian. Catholics aren't supposed to use birth-control even though it's very useful and morally acceptable in most places. Hutterites and the Amish aren't supposed to use modern technology. So there's a lot of negative aspects to being Christian that non-Christians may not have to deal with.

Butcho22 I gotta hand it to you. I normally don't think picture usage is so good, but even if this wasn't so incredibly _funny_ it was nonetheless an excellent retort. A+

I grew up religious my entire life. I wholeheartedly believed in the Bible, believed that belief in God was the way, and the ONLY way into heaven, and laughed at others that tried to argue against me. For 20 years I agreed with just about everything James and Vickrey said. But at some point I started to question and doubt, and actually think about what I was believing instead of just believing it and trying to ignore all the blatant inconsistencies, and more importantly, WHY I was believing in it.

oh and it really irritates me when on ESPN they say "oh, tim tebow/tony dungy is such a moral person and a devout Christian" CLEARLY implicating that the two are hand in hand. Like one can't exist without the other.

lol...exactly what I was thinking when I read this...