That's your choice and I respect that but I think you're making it on a false basis. You are basing it on an intellectual assessment.

The God I believe in says "fear me" which I translate as "give me reverence" which is an attitude.

I don't think people on this board should even be tampering with judgment questions because judgment is reserved to God alone. He's the only one that knows a person's innermost thoughts, intentions and actions in addition to his outwardly manifested ones.

I feel Gandhi's status is completely open and up to God. I hope Gandhi made it to heaven but I can't say definitely nor do I even want to because the interplay of theology is too complicated here and only God can call the shots.

But the more I study the bible the more I sense a hierarchy even in judgment. Sort of like the angels. There is a hierarchy to the status of angels and there could be a hierarchy status to beliefs. But we won't know definitively til we get there.

In the meantime the bible repeatedly points out the surest way which is through Jesus.

I think with Gandhi it's unlikely he's in heaven. He knew the Gospel, I think. If he rejected Christ the Bible says he can't be saved. I can't say he didn't convert but there's no evidence he did. But remember, he heard of Christ and probably knew as much of the Bible as you do.

The people Jesus criticized the most were the religious leaders of the day. They not only knew of Christ, they knew HIM and saw His miracles. And though they lived outwardly good lives Jesus called them whitewashed tombstones, full of dead men's bones. They had to be converted, to give up the quest for righeousness according to works, to admit they were sinners and deserved God's wrath, and to trust Him for salvation. If they were in danger of being lost, so are all who reject Christ, including Gandhi.

I don't understand, how does the universe having a beginning necessitate that it is caused? Cause and effect don't make sense without time, and time is a construct of this universe.

Agreed.

You've lost me here. I have no idea what rational means in the context you are using it. The statement, "If that explanation is irrational then everything is irrational," means nothing to me. I'll be glad to continue on if you elaborate on what you mean by this paragraph.

You totally mischaracterized Christianity. Salvation isn't about believing a set of propositions, though it includes that. It's about repenting of your sin, recognizing and admitting you don't deserve heaven, and trusting in Christ for salvation. It isn't for a privileged few, it's for anyone ("For God so loved the WORLD that He gave His only begotten Son). And as I said in another post, Gandhi certainly knew a lot about Christ or he couldn't have said Christians are not like Him.

No, but I can talk to them, and the failures of their ideology are massive and transparent. In short: a Christian must believe that "things are as they seem." But things aren't "as they seem." Falsification and simplification are the building blocks of human perception.

Or, put another way: no Christian can offer a working (i.e. non-trivial) definition of 'truth.'

Why is a working definition of truth so important?

Isn't a living definition of truth more important and if its a living definition shouldn't it be somewhat flexible to meet the needs of all people. The way that the Spirit is flexible.

(Sometimes I think that things can be 2 ways at the same time...but I can't prove it...like free will and predestination both existing concurrently...now we can't grasp it but God if he's God could do it. I think this is why science can't grasp faith because it will have to falsify one of them. I think Winston Groome said something similar at the end of Forrest Gump...so someone else in the world thinks this thank God.)

If the universe didn't have a cause it must either be eternal (not a real option today) or it began uncaused. Some say this. It just popped into being for no reason. That's pretty much the definition of irrational. So you are still stuck with ultimate irrationality.

I stopped believing when I realized there was nothing to differentiate the truth of the Christian bible from the truth of any of the other hundreds of creation myths that humans have believed for the last few millennia.

Also the fact that science has contradicted so much from any religion has helped. Religion is full of ridiculous nonsense that I can't believe just because someone told me to believe it in a book. Take Jews and pork for example. Does God really care if I eat some bacon? No, but people were dying from trichinosis so in unenlightened times there was plenty of reason to think pork was sinful or evil or whatever the books actually say.

Repenting of your sin, recognizing you don't deserve heaven, and trusting Christ for salvation are all things that you need to believe the Bible to do. Not only that, but they're things that anyone in their right mind would do, given belief in the inerrancy of the Bible. So if you don't believe the claims of the Bible are true, then you cannot be saved. Given what you just said, I have no idea how the below quote is a mischaracterization of Christianity.

"That's an ugly set of beliefs that only the privileged few who happen to believe certain propositions from an old book get to go to heaven by God's grace, while people like Gandhi go to hell."

I've already explained why but I'll add an illustration.

A murderer probably believes the proposition: "I am a murderer." Even while committing his next murder.

Here's Gump. See someone else thinks it but of course, he's a certifiable moron based on IQ alone....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAV-Ogaq12A

If you care to understand reality, you need a way to talk about it.

This doesn't mean anything, since you don't have any definition of 'truth.' See the problem?

'Free will' and 'predestination' are just interpretative stances. So, sure, you can claim them both if you want. Or neither. Or just one. It doesn't matter; none of these claims are any more explicit than silence.

But it does take away the confusion that results from having to falsify one of them doesn't it?

They can't be falsified because they don't say anything in particular. The most you can get out of these ideas is something like this:

Free will: the feeling of being unable to know what I'll do/think/feel next.
Predestination: the feeling that I can't change some of my beliefs.

If you're inclined to focus mostly on one of these feelings, then...well, you're inclined that way. But there's nothing to falsify.

Of course, it's also possible to let go of both of these feelings.

Hmmm....but haven't a lot of people said that God's divine omniscience is contrary to free will on here? I don't argue about free will a lot so I haven't paid much attention to it.

Not to derail the thread, but this reason for the Jewish (and Muslim) prohibition on pork is almost certainly an urban legend. As long as pork is cooked properly, there's very little risk of trichinosis. Plenty of non-Jewish societies at the time were eating pork with no (or little) ill effects.

As an interesting side-note, the total lack of pig bones is one of the ways that archaeologists are able to distinguish between ancient Jewish and non-Jewish settlements. They can also pinpoint the timeframe where Islam spread to various areas, due to the sudden disappearance of pig bones at a certain level in an archaelogical dig.

The most likely reason for the prohibition against pork is that for a desert-dwelling people whose resources are scarce, pigs are not an ideal animal to keep around. Pigs will eat just about anything that comes near their snouts, but aren't ruminants like cows and sheep so they end up competing against humans for seeds and grain.

For whatever reason, a lot of people think they can imagine an omniscient being. (Or, more precisely, people think they can imagine the logical consequences of 'omniscience'.)

But they can't, because our idea of 'knowing' is constituted by our experiences of knowledge. And (loosely) all these experiences entail an exclusive 'locality': knowing something MEANS not-knowing something ELSE.

So omniscience (i.e. 'knowing everything') is indefinable in the strongest possible sense. Ergo, it has no logical consequences.

That is wrong. Paul, Augustine, Aquinas and many others made significant innovations in Christian theology. On a smaller level, many Christians have their own interpretations of the Bible. Christians don't all believe the same thing and don't all live the same lives.

This is almost a parody of circular reasoning. What do you mean by 'design' except 'the product of a designer'? And what do you mean by 'designer' except 'something that produces design'?

What do you even mean by 'rational'? It's incredibly unclear.

Correctly stated, which it would be if this wasn't and internet forum but a Ph.D. thesis, it should read "It's rational to believe in a designer if there is an APPEARANCE of design". Circularity managed.

Already defined rational for you.

"Theological innovations"? Not sure what that means.

But, in any case, I wasn't referring to anecdotal differences in what individual Christians say. It's what they're ALL unable to say that matters.

You haven't defined either 'designer' OR 'design.' (There's the circularity.) And I have the sinking feeling that you're not even going to try. Or are you?

Repeat it, then.

Like what, exactly? LOL at "innovations in Christian theology." That's like saying, "innovations of canine architecture."

Wadda boring concept. Design: Everything could easily be said to be designed, but that does not necessarily say anything about the designer (it could be some random or stochastic process) - only about the observer.