shnarkle;
Well, surprise, you are finally comin' round to being somewhat fair minded. So glad, because I am exhausted with your pure opinion(s);and had planned to forget this site... see, per Plato, Socrates regarding the absurdity of arguing via opinion, which is, in his estimation, the most useless mode of human discourse. This, then, is the central rub: "You assume the Biblical God introduces law to determine behavior. I have shown repeatedly that this simply isn't the case at all.", and, therein lies what appears to be a seeming lack of common knowledge regarding what the Bible presents in regard to the Law. The thou-shalt-nots posited unto Adam and Eve; the Mosaic Ten Commandments, were not posited for the sake of Jehovah determining human behavior!? Such a notion defies common sense. Your assertion is outlandish! If "Thou Shalt Not..." is not posited in order to achieve predeterminate determination of human conduct, what end, instead, is the prohibition intended to accomplish? You totally have my attention and, I do not see how you can possibly sophist(icate) your way out of the apparently absurd stance you are taking now! Good luck...remember, you stand here in front of the whole world...maintain fair mindedness.
Duane
It appears that you have me on "Ignore", but the rest of "the whole world" might still be paying attention. So I will respond anyway even though you have added blinders to your own personal blindness problem:
I have been offering anecdotal examples for you because of your elementary position on the subject matter (God). But it obviously has not been working, so I will express the problem on your own terms:
You are out of context. You understand context issues, and this is one exactly. You are trying to understand something outside the realm of your own knowledge and that of the world, with the logic and knowledge that only exists within the realm of your own knowledge and that of the world. There is no way that is going to work, and you should be smart enough to figure out that you are out of context--and yet you have not. Thus, if you should feel that you are not being taken seriously or even being made fun of...it is because you have fallen on your face right from the start. Ironically...you are not being very smart.
Nonetheless, addressing your above points:
1. You are assuming that you are debating against "opinion", and sometimes you are. But at the core of the Christian "belief" is "knowledge" that overrides worldly knowledge. What is missing, is you have not been exposed to that knowledge, and have been left to believe or disbelieve. What you also have not perceived, is that it is intentional...just not in the way you consider things of intent. Godly intent is different, something you do not know about, and therefore, your understanding of just how this all plays out is not at all what you think it is. More on intent later.
2. You are assuming that God's laws were "posit." That is not true, not the case.
3. You apparently do not understand that your use of "common sense" does not apply in this arena. Actually, you come close when you call things "outlandish", for that is exactly the circumstance, the subject is out of this world. And for this reason, you have assumed the intent was to "accomplish" something it was not intended to accomplish at all. On the contrary, the information that you have incorrectly derived your assumption from, is merely information. In other words, you were not reading about history unfolding in the world, you were reading about history that occurred before time, before the foundation of this world. As such, not occurring within time...no, nothing was "posit", and the "intention" was only
to reveal the history of godly matters among the history of the world. And if you cannot track with all of this--that is your own
shortcoming (I told you so). Tell me if I need to slow down or elaborate.
So...the problem has been that you have been looking at things out of context. There is a context of the world, but also a greater context in which the world resides, of which you have been completely unaware and blind to.
But let's stop there so you can tell me if you are getting any of this.