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Anyways, my question is why is there a need for Jesus if the God of the Old Testament didn't require blood for repentance?

Hebrews 9: 22 "We are told in the law that every sin requires the shedding of blood."

Leviticus 5: 11-13 -->describes sin offerings of flour
Psalm 51: 16-17 (JPS) "You do not want me to bring sacrifices; you do not desire burnt offerings. The sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit; God, you will not despise a contrite and crushed heart." Verse 21 later describe how sacrifices are to made only to express outward praise to God.
Daniel 9: 18-19 and 1 Kings 8 show people praying for forgiveness without sacrifices.

My second question is do you consider the Bible to be 100% free from error?

]]> http://www.99chan.org/ph/res/10270.html#10427>>10426
Not the point of his argument. He said that since everyone is just basically you anyway and since they will be reincarnated as another form of you once they die there's nothing wrong with killing them, or starting wars, or blowing up the entire world with nukes. The only one ultimately talking damage is you and thus nothing morally wrong has been undertaken by doing so.

This is not a reason for why this theory is logically wrong (but it is that too) but the reason for why the theory is no better than nihilism or solipsism or other philosophies that with very little to no jumping through hoops can end up promoting anything from genocide to rape to nuclear world war...

]]> http://www.99chan.org/ph/res/10270.html#10426>>10422

It's not quite the same. Everyone isn't just a variation of you, they're all reincarnations of you, and as far as I can tell, when a soul is reincarnated, there's absolutely nothing in common between the two lives.

Shit, sometimes, people get reincarnated as OTHER SPECIES. So everytime I kick a dog, I'm kicking myself, too? What if I dock it's tail, am I docking my own tail? I DON'T HAVE a tail...

Also, I already know that it's impossible for everyone else to be me, because everyone else is so damn stupid.

]]> http://www.99chan.org/ph/res/9968.html#10425>>10339
Not going to debate points with you; just pointing out the facts here:
Fetuses do NOT show response to pain, because they have no thalamus-cortex connections until the 28-30th weeks in a pregnancy. Yeah. That's what? Like 7-8 months in. Source? Journal of the America Medical Association. Just google it. I had to use it in a debate before, and it annoys me much when I see flawed facts about abortion. Your logic is fine; just the facts needed help. It also annoys me that you are getting questions with such misunderstandings about the faith. How wrong Christians must appear to the world in philosophy alone, not only in evidence and facts. Eye opener.
>>10420

I've decided that OP is really one of the only "real "Christians I've ever met before.

]]> http://www.99chan.org/ph/res/10270.html#10424>>10422

Morality is relative to the person, not an objective law like 2+2=4. Also, just because you can, doesn't mean you will. Besides, we have people who kill for the sheer pleasure of it.

It is very much so a variation of solipsism, do not mistake me, but the reasoning "Now you can do anything you want" that you get from "everyone is really just you" is flawed. Do you cut yourself for the fun of it? I get that logic from your idea of hurting others is OK if they're just a variation of you.

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]]> http://www.99chan.org/ph/res/9968.html#10420>>10408
Sorry, I mistook "take for granted" to mean people who don't know how valuable it is. If you're referring to my belief that such things are real, I don't know what to say. I rambled a bit there, sorry about that.

>>10412
What if a belief in a God provides me sufficient meaning to life that nihilism is a thing of the past? I know exactly what I'm doing in life, and that clarity of purpose is something that keeps me going when things aren't going well.

I *am* an existentialist. I am generally not embarrassed about Christianity. If I brought it up on a *chan, it's not a touchy subject. And not just as a side note, "X is a Christfag", but I start this thread.

>>10418
The difference between "imagination" and "belief" lies in actions. People don't do much for flights of fancy, but amazing things happen when people truly believe in them. Both good things and bad.

]]> http://www.99chan.org/ph/res/10389.html#10419>>10409
Someone's been reading David Wong.

Anyhow, while I usually like his articles I do not agree with his monkeysphere thesis. About the religion part, he makes it sound as if though religion was invented by some incredibly smart conspirators solely for the purpose of keeping people in line. While religion does help people to keep in line its sole purpose has never been to enslave people.

I think religion was originally created to help and explain the many unknown forces such as nature, death, disease etc. It is in human nature to seek to understand everything and often times we just make things up that seem plausible to us; in ancient these unknown forces were attributed to Gods. These Gods were later personified into the classical Gods we know today. I don’t think that those Gods were really a metaphor for humanity but were rather personified because it seems comforting to us, or as Protagoras put it, “man is the measure of all things”.

However, after a while Xenophanes stopped by and noticed how it is strange that the Greek Gods all have black curly hair while the Ethiopian Gods all have dark skins and flat noses. So he came up with a theory that there is one God who is abstract, immobile, unchanging and omnipresent.

This, together with Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy later influenced Christian theology. Philosophers such as St. Augustine and Thomas of Aquina also believed that God is something abstract that can take the form of a human but does not have to. Nevertheless, in the Renaissance this personification had a revival, as can for example been seen in Michelangelo’s the creation of Adam. This is probably again because it is more comforting for us to think God as being a human, even a parent if you will, instead of some abstract entity.

So no, I don’t think that God is a metaphor for humanity but rather a personification for all the unknown forces in the world.

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]]> http://www.99chan.org/ph/res/10226.html#10417>>10238
This response is the one I'll most agree with. If life is so meaningless (and I'm not saying that as a slight on you at all, OP), then you wouldn't think about it at all. Or you certainly wouldn't care anyway. True nihilism would be the shut down of any and all thought because what you're doing is still effectively interpreting life based on some kind of cognitive understanding and subsequent attachment of some form of meaning to it. Which you should do. You are a human being and to think is absolutely part of your nature. Still, this is the great catch twenty-two of nihilism. I don't think, frankly, as long as you are conscious, one is able to be a nihilist in strict terms. That isn't to say, though, that I disagree with the idea of nihilism. I just think it's not feasibly workable in its purest sense. In fact, I'd probably go so far as to say most existensialists are just practical nihilists. You don't necessarily have to have some kind of meaning to be an existensialist anyway. For me, some of the best things in life, and having gone through all the process of being disenchanted or dismayed or whatever about it all, are little things like seeing the trees are starting to come to life or the colour of the sky on certain evenings. These things give my life meaning but there's no particular meaning in conscious terms ascribed to them. They are the experience of life in a meaningless sense but they still make me happy and feel life is worth living. That to my mind is meaning without meaning. There are many things I think beyond meaning or no meaning that are still great about living.

Also, I'll just add that I find it interesting that life is often interpreted by people (particularly young people, no offense but that's generally the view and experience I've had) as being quite dreadful beyond meaning - or what is usually considered the acceptable interpretations of meaning. I'm fast starting to think it's the constructs that create that view and that it is order in itself that creates chaos. That the denial of order is not a rejection of it but rather a dissatisfaction with its accepted interpretations. In other words: if you weren't pissed off or dissatisfied with something - or indeed everything, then you wouldn't care to wonder about it either way.

Oh, also, just in terms of your point on the holocaust. I agree with you that the concepts of good and evil are constructs of some form or another but I think it's valid to believe that being "good" has quite a deep practical basis in biological terms. Everything has a purpose. You can ascribe values to it and make it less or more meaningful, or reject those values and make it utterly meaningless (which is still meaning) but with or without consciousness, certain patterns exist even in the most apparently meaningless instances and they do so for a reason. Animals, for example, are not conscious to the extent we are. Or certainly not enough that they would give consideration as to whether or not something were good or evil but there are many recorded instances of them showing compassion for instance. Did they do so because they thought they were being "good"? Not likely.

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]]> http://www.99chan.org/ph/res/10167.html#10414>>10388

I think a soul can be classified as your inner mind, better said unselfconsciousness, or subconsciousness mind.

But since a mind cannot function without a brain, and whereas a brain is unable to operate without the necessary organs --which do not perform when a (human) body is no longer alive, it is very likely that you also don't have a 'soul' anymore.

Or more plainly said, you are completely dead, when you are dead.

This all leads to that there is no after live, and chance that you will go to 'hell' and feel pain for eternity, instantly making death itself fearless -- rather than the potential consequences that are caused by death.

Like, aforementioned; no longer seeing your friends, mother, or no longer enjoy sensation, no longer you can see your lovely neighbor's breasts or whatever.

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That said, Satanists believe that they are God. Most people aren't Satanists, which means the suggestion that God equates to the self is likely to be met with universal disagreement.

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