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To: DreamsofPolycarp
God's revelation is self authenticating...

Then the part that is authenticated is not the part that conflicts with reality.

At the risk of oversimplifying, I see two kinds of believers: those who think the message of God is to love others as we love ourselves, and those who enjoy threatening others with hellfire if they deviate from doctrine. And of course, the threateners have the one true doctrine.

446 posted on 06/11/2007 11:48:24 AM PDT by js1138
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To: js1138
Then the part that is authenticated is not the part that conflicts with reality.

Of course not. But then one would have to define "part(s) that are authenticated" and "conflicts with reality." I believe that God, who is that author of all reality, cannot make or speak something which conflicts with that, because "God is truth, and in him is no darkness...."

At the risk of oversimplifying, I see two kinds of believers: those who think the message of God is to love others as we love ourselves, and those who enjoy threatening others with hellfire if they deviate from doctrine. And of course, the threateners have the one true doctrine.

There is a lot of truth in that. I prefer to let God threaten with hellfire (and He does). I try to remind the threateners (and myself) that GOD, not me, has the "true doctrine." I believe in propositional truth in a book, but as I have grown older, I am convinced that there are fewer things I know with certainty, and yet those things I do know are the core and most important.

The definition of loving truth is hating lies. I believe in a God who is love, but not love which is God. In other words, God is a God of justice, truth, righteousness, and is committed to drive evil completely out of His presence. He began that by suffering the penalty for it (If you could wrap hell up into a pill, then Christ swallowed that pill on the cross). The rest is mopping up (no matter how excruciating that "mopping up" appears to us) and will result in a great division of creation between those who say "thy will be done" and "my will be done." May we both be on the right side of that divide on that happy and awful day.

450 posted on 06/11/2007 12:03:55 PM PDT by DreamsofPolycarp (Libertarianism: u can run your life better than government can, and should be left alone to do it)
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To: js1138
What you are describing is inherent in human nature. There are a lot of people who can really threatening even though they are in some way correct. (The best liars are 99% correct). There are many other people who are wrong and yet wouldn't hurt a fly.

So, nobody has a monopoly on dogmatism. Count me in with the respectable posters here who recognize that religious dogmatism and scientific dogmatism are equally stifling. And since we are not surprised that both shows up, I’m not ready to use dogmatism as a cudgel against either religion or science.

451 posted on 06/11/2007 12:03:57 PM PDT by cornelis
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