[quote]Free bashing to the first fundie who makes some absurd blanket statement like "The OT doesn't apply to us" or "Jesus freed us from the old law".[/quote]
I'll wait for you, or for that matter [i]ANYONE[/i] on this forum to demonstrate that the second one, which is what I would use primarily, is an inaccurate answer to your argument.

Please.

Chronicles

16:14 He is the LORD our God; his judgments are in all the earth.
16:15 Be ye mindful always of his covenant; the word which he commanded to a thousand generations

Malachi

4:4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

Matthew
5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
5:19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
5:20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

I think the last one is just about the ten commandments, but the other two would seem to suggest that god is well...he changes his mind if he forgives the old laws. And how can a perfect god change his mind?

Nobody is going to comment on my point that most footballs these days arent made of pig leather?

I'd like to take this time to thank you, AA, for consistently making replies to questions that no one seems to answer.

[quote]Chronicles
16:14 He is the LORD our God; his judgments are in all the earth.
16:15 Be ye mindful always of his covenant; the word which he commanded to a thousand generations
Malachi
4:4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.[/quote]
Indeed, indeed. But these are irrelevant.

[quote]Matthew
5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.[/quote]
These are both correct. But they are also irrelevant now, since Jesus [b]did[/b] fulfill all of the laws, since he broke none of them while he was alive and ultimately became the sacrifice necessary for people breaking the laws.

That's what Christianity's all about.

[quote]5:19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.[/quote]
Do you understand what I meant by the previous statement?

[quote[5:20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.[/quote]
Right. The only way to get into heaven outside of trust in Jesus is to be morally [b]perfect[/b], not breaking any of the laws.

[quote]I think the last one is just about the ten commandments, but the other two would seem to suggest that god is well...he changes his mind if he forgives the old laws. And how can a perfect god change his mind?[/quote]
The Bible only says that God's [b]nature[/b] cannot change, not his mind.

But I think you're merely using weasel words here. If it was God's plan all along to set up laws, and then have Jesus come and fulfill them, then he wouldn't have had to change his mind at all.

[quote]Why are they irrelevant? Because they're old testament?[/quote]
Because they came at a time when the law had not been fulfilled yet. The verses were given to people who still had to follow the law.

[quote]Again, that means that God at one point supported one thing, then supported another. What happened to absolutism?[/quote]
Again, not necessarily. If it was his plan all along, then there was no change at all, really.

[quote]Perfection cannot change. Perfect is perfect and can only potentially have one, or 0 incarnations. Otherwise, it would require perfection.[/quote]
This is very interesting. If atheism is true, then by definition, there is nothing that is perfect in this world. So how in the world do you have this conception of "perfection?" By the way, is your understanding of perfection perfect? And if it isn't, should it be trusted?

Of course, this is too severe of a question to merely brush off with these statements, so I'll go into it even further. Once again I say, God's nature doesn't change if he does "change his mind" if you will. God's nature is the only thing that cannot change, not his mind.

And you're overanalyzing the situation anyway. It's not as if God said, "Okay, this is getting old. I don't want this anymore. That was a bad idea. Here Jesus, you can go now." There was no change in his mind in the first place. The laws of the Old Testament were merely to show humans our need for God, and then Jesus fulfilled the laws so that we could recieve God. It's all one plan from the very beginning, when God initially made the first animal sacrifice as a pattern. It all flows together, and there was never a time where God's plan changed a direction.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

[quote]Yes, that sounds like the crap fortune tellers say when they predict something and it doesn't come exactly true. For example, if you predict that you will be safe from a car without having to move, and I, being compassionate, instead, push you out of the way, that is taken as a fulfillment of the prophecy.[/quote]
I don't really know what you're talking about here. Sounds irrelevant.

[quote]Yup. He sent the world jumping through hoops for a thousand years, when he could have just snapped his fingers, sent down the New Testament, and been done.[/quote]
Hahaha, "sent down the New Testament." Oh look, up in the sky! Falling books! I guess if you cut out the sarcasm, you're right in an exaggerated, hasty sort of way.

I personally believe that God sent Jesus at a time where he knew it would have the most influence. Think about it. He sent him into the middle of the Roman empire, right before Jerusalem gets destroyed by Nero and scribes record all of it. And look how much influence Jesus has today.

[quote]As for Jesus, he could just not sacrifice him and say he did(he is all-powerful, after all)[/quote]
Of course, what good would that do?

That wouldn't provide any legitimate reason to believe in God, much less be a Christian. We would have even less evidence than we have now. Is that what you want? What about love, even? I believe that God sending his son down to be a human shows the utmost amount of love.

[quote]If God's plan is simply redefined as whatever happens and will happen,[/quote]
Well, that's not what I meant to "redefine" it as. I, for one, wouldn't agree with someone who said that "Everything happens for a reason." I personally don't believe that it was God's will for 9/11 to happen, or it was God's will for all the Virginia Tech kids to get shot. I think you're still missing my point.

[quote]'God's plan' simply because mortals aren't big enough to 'see' the full extent of the plan.[/quote]
This part I do agree with. I think it's impossible to fully understand the mind of a being who has an infinite mind.

[quote]As you'll see, I left '0' as an option for perfection. That is what I believe it to be, which rather elimates any contradiction.[/quote]

[quote]I actually think the word perfect is rather a silly, meaningless word, and was only discussing it because it is a rather christian concept. I don't believe there is such a thing as something which is unimprovable, or the best, or the largest, because additions or refinements can always be made. I was then intending to show the problems with perfection, showing that it could not feasibly exist. This is the same as with teh morality issue brought up with Noah's Ark.
Just because I 'adopt' a viewpoint to show how it fails itself, does not mean I accept it myself and am thus subject to the same failures.[/quote]
I fully understand you here.

Do you understand my argument, though?

[quote]You know what would have been even more useful? Just drop a New Testament as a parting gift to Adam and Eve.
That'd make just about....everybody by this point be Christian.
Well, except some atheists. But certainly no confounding religions that steal other people who WOULD be Christians.
love for his son?[/quote]
Think about that for a moment, AA. How would that have been possible?

Let's think. At the time Adam and Eve would have existed, none of the following existed:
- Rome
- Nazareth
- Crucifixion
- Paul
- Peter
- Jerusalem
- John
- Matthew
- Mark
- Luke
- John the Baptist
- etc.

You couldn't have given anyone "The New Testament" when it wasn't written until many years later, and wasn't compiled until after 300 AD. He would have given someone a book written by someone who hadn't been born yet about events that hadn't occured yet in places that didn't exist yet with certain features and tools that didn't exist yet. Great idea, AA.

[quote]I understand your argument, I just think it's rather self-supporting and only works if certain assumptions are allowed[/quote]
Like what?

[quote]Ok, not LITERALLY the new testament(although, since, as far as we know, the New Testament is just stories, he could have simply provided the stories of the New Testament.[/quote]
You are [i]quite[/i] wrong there. Real historians don't consider what's written in the New Testament to be "just stories," much less is that "as far as we know." Historical methods have gone much farther than simply looking at it and taking a stap. That's your Christ Mythicism tainting your view again.

[quote]But the point was that he could provide EVERYTHING(and only exactly everything) he wanted people to obey, in terms of moral imperatives and beliefs he wanted.[/quote]
And apparently, what he did was exactly what he wanted to do.

[quote]sorry this is short, I did the usual wonderfully annoying accidentally hit your touchpad and hit the 'back' and lose everything[/quote]
I've done that many times...It's so annoying.

[quote]But I assume the story of the New Testament is not the important part. It seems quite logical to me that it is the moral messages that ought matter, not the incredibly miniscule details about who did the recording, or who was chosen to start the foundations of the religion. BUt I guess it wouldn't be all that surprising if the biggest western religion was about nothing but silly nuances like that.

Or maybe you were just being intentionally difficult?[/quote]
I actually have no idea what you're talking about anymore.