Witch

Why not celebrate during the Jewish Passover, when the event supposedly took place? Why steal a Pagan holiday to do it, which is calculated completely differently?

What if Lugh is real as described in the Tain Bo Culaigne and you have to stand before him and give an account for your life? Do you have a list of reasons for why you never accepted Him? Under close scrutiny, will those reasons betray the fact that you dont want to believe and will stick with anything that sounds good rather than look into it too seriously.

I already have a personal relationship with God. God is happy with me, and my eternity is secure. Yet Christians tell me I have to believe in this Jesus guy. God tells me I don't need any Jesus.

So what should I do?

Should I ignore what God tells me, and believe the Christians, or trust in God and ignore the Christians?

Why do Christians insist that the US was founded upon Christianity?

Most of the founding Father's were Deists, not Christians. Even Congress and Senate (including all the founding fathers) declared publically and unanimously in 1797, just a few years after independance, that...

"the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion". (treaty of Tripoli)"

Notice the wording NOT IN ANY SENSE founded on the Christian religion.

So why do some Christian lie and say that it was? Isn't false witness supposed to be forbidden?

Are Christians forbidden to commit false witness or not?

In another Question recently, Mark (a Christian) wrote:

"a man who wants to torture animals to death in sacrifice to his gods for various dark rituals. The man's religion is Santeria which you may have heard of in the news lately or seen depicted in dramas. This religion has been known to not only involve the torture of animals but also the injury of human life."

Now this is clearly a blatant example of false witness. Santeria do not torture animals, nor do they do injury to humans.

Yet this "Christian" feels the need to fabricate lies about this religion. And such fabrications and outright lies are rife in this forum, and throughout Christianity. For some reason, many Christian feel the need to lie about what other religions do and beleive.

So is it OK with the Christian God to lie, so long as you're only lying about other religions?

Or do Christians only follow "God's LAw" when it's convenient; when it doesn't interfere with juicy gossip?

I mistakenly put this in mythology and folklore when I meant to post it to religion and spirituality. So I'm re-posting it here. It may be interesting, actually, to see if the answers I get are different.

Here's a small story, adapted from the original ancient folk myth.. Based on this story, would you consider the deity involved to be evil, based on his actions? I'm particularly interested in hearing answers from fundamentalist Christians.

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In a land far away, in a small village by the sea, a group of children are playing. Off in the distance they see a Shaman from a neighboring village coming for a visit.

Now this Shaman has a bad case of psoriasis on his knees, and the children find this rather funny, as children will. They dance around the Shaman, calling him "Shingle knees, shingle knees" for a while before they run off, laughing at their joke, and begin playing in the warm surf again.

The Shaman watches them running back to the swimming area, seething with anger at the insult. How dare they! He begins mouthing the ancient words that form the curse... the curse that will make them pay. Somewhere a sleeping god hears the prayer of the Shaman, and that ancient god stirs, and answers.

Suddenly a child screams. Blood stains the foamy surf as a shark fin circles a mangled little body. Another child cries out, and another, and another. More fins, more teeth, more screams, more blood. The women of the village rush toward shore desperately trying to find their children, adding their cries to the fury of blood and agony that the playground has become. The cries of the children grow fainter, but the thrashing continues. the sound of teeth tearing tender flesh, and the blood... the blood.

Eventually all is quiet on the shore, all is quiet but the sounds of gentle surf, and the exhausted weeping of mothers who find their arms empty. All is quiet, where once children laughed and played. Eventually the sun begins to set, adding red hues of sky to the red stains of the sea on sand that will never be white again.

The Shaman utters his prayer of thanks to the ancient god of sea and land and sharks and all things, and goes on his way.

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So there is the story. The question, once again...

Based on the actions in the story, would you consider the ancient tribal god described to be a just and loving god, or an evil god?

Preamble:

I often hear Christians refer to "fulfilled prophecies" as proof of the veracity of the Bible, or of Christ as the Messiah, etc.

The problem is, if you cannot verify that the prophecy has been fulfilled, you can't reasonably claim it as evidence, let alone proof. So I propose to give Christians a fair chance to show some verifiably fulfilled prophecies.

However, some reasonable perameters are in order. For a prophecy to be verifiablle as having been fulfilled, it must meet the following criteria (if you think these are unreasonable, please explain why).

1. The the event which is the fulfillment, must be verifiable as having happened, in the way that the story relates. It must be verifiable that the story of the event has not been altered to fit the prophecy. It must be shown that the event was not engineered to fit a known prophecy.

2. The prophecy must be verifiable as to authorship, age, and integrity. It must be verifiable that the prophecy was made, in the current form, before the event prophesied. It must be shown that the prophesy has not been altered to fit the event.

3. The prophecy must be specific enough to only apply to the event prophesied. it must be unambiguous enough that it could not apply to any other event, or eventuality.

4. The prophecy must be extraordinary. Prophesies that apply to things that nobody would doubt, such as the sun rising in the east, or some nation coming to power by the sword, are not prophesies. Good guesses do not count.

5. The prophesy, and it's fulfillment, must conform to ALL four preceeding parameters. Failure on any one disqualifies any candidate.

Therefore:

Given the reasonable parameters, can anyone give us an example of a biblical prophecy about Christ, or indeed about anything, that has been fulfilled?

Just a question...

Why do all the homophobes insist they are not homophobes, and then go on to tell us what an abomination homosexuality is... when that's exactly what the definition of a homophobe is?

American Heritage Dictionary -

ho·mo·pho·bi·a (hō'mə-fō'bē-ə) Pronunciation Key

n.

1. Fear of OR CONTEMPT FOR lesbians and gay men.

2. Behavior based on such a feeling.

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ho·mo·phobe /ˈhoʊməˌfoʊb/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[hoh-muh-fohb] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun

a person who fears OR HATES homosexuals and homosexuality.

[Origin: homo(sexual) + -phobe]

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)

Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc

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So as we see, by definition, if you hate homosexuality, or hold homosexuals in contempt (which pretty much covers the lame "hate the sin, love the sinner" excuse as well) or both, you are, in fact a homophobe.

So thoser of you who fit the definition to a "t", please tell us why you resist being called homophobes?

Why is the Bible so fundamentally different between the Old Testament and the New Testament? For instance, the OT describes a monotheistic God, and the NT describes a polytheistic God.

That's just one example but it's obvious that there is a fundamental change in the nature of God and Man between the two sections, yet Christians insist there is none.

So how can one reconcile the change of an unchanging God?