I believe in the creeps (having had the experience), but the creeps is a response in humans to particular situations which at some relevant point in our evolution threatened particular danger, almost certainly connected with human or animal enemies in the night. It implies that there are...
I'm naturally apprehensive about the process of my dying ─ there are better and worse ends to life ─ but I have no fear of being dead.
As Ecclesiastes 9:4-6 puts it:
He who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.
For the living know that they will...
Other way round. If mind is not produced by the (purely material) functions of the brain THEN you need to imagine a total category distinction between human thought &c and the brain without which there is no human thought,. As it stands, clearly thought / mind/ sensory input processing /...
I've always used the pronoun [him] when referring to God, the square brackets indicating that the biological sex implied by the pronoun is not to be taken too seriously. It's no less suitable in this post, where I'm speaking from within the story.
The problem is this. On the one hand, God is...
I think that the world would be a better place if people behaved towards each other with decency, respect, inclusion and common sense.
It doesn't really matter what they do or don't believe.
The central feature of the life of any living thing, humans included, is to live long enough to reproduce.
The interesting thing with humans is that with the development of the contraceptive pill in the 70s, reproduction for women has become optional, and feminism, while not opposing...
Whichever way you look at it, three distinct persons mean three distinct wills hence mean three distinct gods. If the Father is God and the Son is God and the Son is not the Father then you have two gods. Add the Ghost and you have three.
If they don't have three distinct wills, if they only...
Oh come now! I've taken you through the very sharp distinctions between the three basic models of Jesus ─ Mark's Jewish male adopted by God as [his] son, not descended from David, Matthew's and Luke's half-Jewish male born of a virgin and said to be descended from David by two ludicrous pretend...
None of your quotes addressed the point I made, which is that they speak of 'elect' people in the sense of 'chosen' but NONE of them speaks of the Elect, to which you claim to belong, and as I said, there's no distinction there between believers in Jesus and the lower case elect.
So your claim...
By all means enjoy your beliefs, and the sense of superiority that they very clearly give you.
Were I a betting man, I'd put up chunky bucks ─ on behalf of my heirs, of course ─ that after we respectively die, no one will be able to distinguish how dead you are from how dead I am.
There is no...
I'm not the one doing the wiggling here.
Notice, first, how the word 'elect' (upper or lower case) is never used. Note, second, that no limit is placed on the number of those chosen. Note third how that's all in the past tense, has already happened before this was written.
just as He chose us...
Your citing of Matthew's mention of the (lower case) elect does nothing to justify your claims. Instead it says that the identity of the (lower-case) elect is unknowable until God makes [his] decisions after the Tribulation (which, as I also pointed out, is running two thousand years or so late...
Having been asked on numerous occasions for some biblical authority to back your "Elect" claims, you finally offered Matthew 24:31 (#258).
In #267 I pointed out to you that Matthew 24:31 refers to the elect of God, not the Elect of God, and that no one can predict who'll be elect (let alone...
The judge mentioned the extraordinary security and logistical problems that would be involved in jailing an ex-president (who has personal security for life as part of his perks of office). The costs and bureaucracy involved are daunting to contemplate.
I suspect the other concern is not...
Your habit of attributing words to the bible without identifying the relevant passages is unhelpful. So I ask, what passages from the bible do you rely on when you make you assertions above?
That simply means that when the Tribulation has come and gone, God will then make a selection of those [he] approves of.
No qualifications for receiving that approval are mentioned, so we won't know who the [lower-case] elect are until the Tribulation has come and gone.
I see no basis there...