Bible and Nostradamus

[forre]

Well, I was sitting here and checking a little through the Bible and found a very interesting thing:

Deut. 18:10-12
"10 Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in [1] the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, 11 or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. 12 Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD , and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you."

Nostradamus was taken as an example of course, because of his occult involvement (alt. New Age of those days). Let's suppose that everything written in the Bible is the highest law. So the questions is: are we forbidden to be curious, to discover new things and to open new worlds for us?

If so, why did God create us like that? A pretty contradictive guy in this case.

[haku]

Well, i don't believe in gods or any kind of superior forces and i don't believe we've been created by anything other than natural evolution, so that drastically limits my input to this thread.
To me, as an intelligent species, it's our duty to study and understand as many things as we can, there is no limit to what we can learn.


As for Michel de Nostredame, hehe, he was a clever guy who wrote a lot of stuff that basically mean nothing but are vague enough so anyone can actually see different meanings in it, lol, he's a bit like Shap and his projects.

[Kate]

A Question of Free Will

In the realms of religious debate, we frequently come upon the subject of free will. Whenever something bad occurs, sensible people ask the question, "Where is God when things like this happen?" Where is the precious almighty when good people are hideously killed, crushed to death in cars, slammed to the ground in airplanes, or tortured and murdered by psychopaths? The only answer the God-apologists can come up with is that God gave us "free will."

What a nice idea! We have FREE WILL. These are words to soothe the masses and explain away the atrocities that could not happen in a world that was truly under the care of an omniscient and omnipotent deity. Yet, under this totalitarian system of government proposed by inane God-cheerleaders, free will is NOT allowed, because we MUST believe in Him or suffer all eternity in the fires of hell! If we "free will" humans do not slavishly follow God's commandments or "believe unto" him, his silly son or some other such fiddle-faddle, we will be severely punished. So much for free will.

Now, this is schizophrenia, plain and simply. The masses are running about squawking out of both sides of their mouths, "We have free will" and "We have to go to church/temple/ mosque/synagogue, or God will be mad at us." The God-fearers' motto is "Have free will, but be sure to mindlessly march off to church because someone else has told you to!" They are addled robots, not free-will beings. To claim that God rules everything and we must submit to his will, yet we have our own free will, is broken-brained behavior and thinking. How do proponents reconcile these irreconcilable concepts? What bizarre quirk of their minds is able to do such an illogical thing? You can't have it both ways.

Indeed, while they may be saying "free will," they are fanatically following a book purportedly written by "God" that says, "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God." (Romans 13:17) Does this sound even remotely to intelligent people that God gave anybody "free will?" How about this exhortation at 1 Pet. 2:13-18:

"Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right. For it is God's will that by doing right you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. Live as free men, yet without using your freedom as a pretext of evil; but live as servants of God. Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.

"Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to the kind and gentle but also to the overbearing." (Emphasis added.)

Other authoritarian messages include:

"Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed." (1 Tim. 6:1)

"Bid slaves to be submissive to their masters and give satisfaction in every respect . . . " (Tit. 2:9)

"Obey your leaders and submit to them; for they are keeping watch over your souls." (Heb. 13-17)

At 1 Pet. 3:1, "God/Peter" commands, "Likewise, you wives, be submissive to your husbands. . . ."

And "Paul" is relentless in his anti-free-will dictates:

"Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. . . . Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord . . . . Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters . . ." (Col. 3:18-22)

"Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands."

At 1 Tim. 2:11-15 he exhorts:

"Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty."

Blah, blah, blah. Does any of this twaddle resemble free will? Slaves obeying masters and women being forced to be submissive, quiet and bear children to redeem their supposed transgressions? Of course, the Adam-Eve fable is just another sexist device propagated by men, as is the rest of this anti-woman gibberish.

How about God making his stiff-necked people eat their offspring because they did not love and fear him? (Deut. 28:53, et seq.) Or Abraham being commanded to murder his son? Like the New Testament, the OT is glutted with authoritarian demands on the part of God, as is the Koran. Is that free will?

Of course, there are words interspersed here and there to soften such messages, such as "live as free men," but these are quickly followed by anti-free-will dictates such as "live as servants of God . . . Fear God. Honor the emperor" (!). It is obvious that vested interests such as priests and emperors are at work here. And it is equally obvious that "free will" in religion is not free will at all. It's all a grand mind-game, to be polite.

And why do religionists constantly apologize for their ridiculous Lord, who, according to them, is not participating at all in creation, unless it is convenient to their arguments that he exists? When a plane crashes, the survivors thank "the Lord" for allowing them to live. What about those who died? Did the Lord let them die? And where was the Lord when the plane was hurtling out of the sky, terrifying its passengers to the point of psychosis? Oh, he's not involved in that aspect of it, only in the saving of certain people, with whom he is apparently well pleased. Did the other deserve to die? Apologists offer their typical pablum when confronted with this flaw in thinking: "The Lord has called them home, for reasons only he can understand." In other words, the slippery canard: "God works in mysterious ways." Now, this is a sadistic god, who, although omniscient and therefore able to see what is going to happen ahead of time, and omnipotent and therefore able to prevent it, allows the shit to hit the fan again and again, never lifting a finger. Hey, how 'bout letting us in on the plan? Don't we "free will" beings deserve to be treated with some respect?

And what about the absurd thinking behind the notion of some guy dying on a cross thousands of years ago somehow absolving us of our sins today? What do he and his death have to do with us? Somehow the blind believers can reconcile these illogical concepts as well. What does this mean? Does it mean that so long as we believe in Jesus Christ, we can do whatever we wish, because we cannot sin? Are we free to rape, pillage and murder then, as long as we are "good" Christians? Why don't we all just do that then, because we will automatically be absolved of such heinous behavior if we would just "confess the Lord Jesus Christ with our mouths and hearts" or some other such drivel? Hey, we can get away with anything! Cool!

Indeed, vast armies of "good Christians" have done just that, freely and with clear conscience marauding and slaughtering all who got in their path, merely because they held up the banner of Jesus Christ. Do you think ol' JC, were he real, would be pleased by this disgusting behavior? If so, why is anyone following him, who sheepishly "turned his cheek" yet violently overturned the moneychangers' tables? If he would not be pleased, why has not his Omnipotence put his foot down and made an appearance, setting his idiotic followers straight? Oh, he gave us free will! That's the ticket.

If we have free will, then we are also free not to believe in the white, male Jewish-Arab-whatever God or Jesus in the first place, without risking eternal hellfire or any other sadistic punishment by the megalomaniacal and tyrannical Almighty. We can be free not to believe in some hallowed god person separate and apart from a wretched creation but, rather, to perceive the entire cosmos as divine. Out of our free will, we can choose not to harm other sentient beings (and even humans), regardless of what so-called religious leaders, like so many serpents, beckon us to do. We can choose to reject being part of a herd of panicky sheep who turn into wolves when it benefits them. Out of free will, we can be "free agents" who do not belong to religious cults of any sort. Indeed, without "God's plan," we can be free to create our own vision, one of a world that is not divided by spurious creeds based in myth and used to justify racism and sexism. With our boundless free will, we can create a utopia of unified humanity. Free of our god-addiction, we can be free to just be.

"Let my freethinkers go!"

Source: http://www.truthbeknown.com/freewill.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple..." Luke 14:26

WTF????!!!!!!!!!1111

So, Jesus must really hate God, huh?

[madeldoe]

well i suppose the person adressing those who follow the bible blindly and those who hide their ignorance behind religion with those statements. Because any good christian/catholic knows better than that of which you claim. Having faith is not living ones life solely by the bible. We all know these laws were created in a time much different than now, therefore some cases do not apply and ofcourse there must be meanings lost during the process of translation of the book. But one must look at it at an broader sense, meaning that you have to listen to the overall message of the bible.

it is not the fact that we cannot sin, because everyone know that sinning is inevitable, it is the fact that if we repent our sins truthfully then it is sure that god will forgive us. Although I think it's rude to call ones belief as "absurd" as well as treating the whole subject with immense sarcasm. Just because you do not agree with the religion, it doesn't mean you have to adress it in such a way. It is a fact that one cannot live truly by the bible because as humans, we are to make mistakes, but understanding its true message and trying to live by that is what faith is.

[russkayatatu]

Deut. 18:10-12
"10 Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in [1] the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, 11 or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. 12 Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD , and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you."

Nostradamus was taken as an example of course, because of his occult involvement (alt. New Age of those days). Let's suppose that everything written in the Bible is the highest law. So the questions is: are we forbidden to be curious, to discover new things and to open new worlds for us?

If so, why did God create us like that? A pretty contradictive guy in this case.

I don't think this passage means you're forbidden to be curious, to discover new things and to open new worlds ... I think it has more to do with the first commandment, You shall have no other gods before me. Divination, necromancy, witchcraft, interpreting omens; those are set aside as pagan religious practices concerned with spirits or with beliefs with many gods.

The passage, as I look it up, seems to be an admonition against imitating the "detestable ways" of the nations with whom the Israelites come into contact. "Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you." It becomes less an individual matter than a national one, and the distinction is mostly made between a holy nation and a godless one. I have no idea where the Israelites were going but probably into polytheistic areas - right?

I guess you could read it also (and maybe this is how you were reading it) as meaning there are areas of unholy knowledge, and it's not wise to try to look into the future or consult with the dead or practice spells - maybe because it makes man too much like God. I suppose this is a version of the same question posed by the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis

I don't think the injunction against learning new things is clear at all, so, I am not an expert, but I would say that there's no problem.

Also, I didn't read most of katbeidar's post, but about the last part, what Jesus said about needing to hate your mother and father and family and your life, I think he means that you should not have worldly attachments - like the Buddhists - and unlike Judaism.