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Good Questions To Get Christians Thinking Critically by finalboss(m): 3:04am On Feb 26, 2019
1.Have you read the Bible?
2.Why do you think the Bible is divinely inspired?

3.Why didn’t Jesus appear to more people after his death?

4.If Jesus wants to have a personal relationship with every human, why does approximately 70% of the Earth’s population not believe in him?

5.Did anyone who ever knew Jesus write about him?

6.Why did no contemporary historians mention Jesus? He’s only mentioned by historians who were born after he died.

a. Was he not very well known during his life as historical Jesus scholars think?
b. If Jesus and his disciples performed so many miracles it would be impossible to write them all down as the gospels claim, why didn’t this get contemporary historians’ attention?


7. Why did Jesus curse a fig tree for not bearing figs even though it wasn’t the season for bearing figs?

8. Why did Jesus’ divine saliva fail to fully cure the blind man the first time Jesus spit in his eyes requiring a second application of spit? Is it possible this miracle story is made up? If so, is the claim that the blind man saw people who look like trees a hint that the gospel author was inspired to make up this miracle story by a similar miracle story about Moses that involved trees?

9. Why did Judas betray Jesus? Presumably…

a. Judas was an eye witness to the most amazing preaching ever, tons of miracles, and even performed miracles himself with power given to him by Jesus.
b. He knew he was betraying God incarnate and that there was a hell.
c. He had only been in Jerusalem a few days when he decided to betray Jesus and the priests had not offered a reward for information about Jesus or formally announced any desired to harm Jesus.
d. John contradicts the synoptics’ account of Judas’ betrayal and decides to have the devil enter Judas in order to try to make the story make sense. Does having the devil enter Judas to make him commit the betrayal even make sense?

e. Judas was the only person who knew about his secret meetings with the priests, so where would the gospel authors have gotten their information if Judas committed suicide shortly thereafter?

10. What sins, if any, would actually cause someone who believes in Jesus to go to hell?

Is Jeffrey Dahmer, a man who accepted Jesus on death row after kidnapping little boys, raping them, murdering them, sodomizing their corpses, eating their corpses, and using their skeletons for decoration really in Heaven now?

11. Are the accounts of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and Luke so blatantly contradictory that we have to conclude at least one of them was completely made up?

a. Some early manuscripts of Matthew have been found that don’t mention the virgin birth. Is it possible that later Christians added the virgin birth to Matthew’s gospel?

b. Did the world wide census that Luke claims forced Jesus’ parents to go to Bethlehem actually occur? If Luke is actually referring to the census mentioned by Josephus that occurred in Syria when Quirinius was governor of Syria, would Quirinius have required Joseph to go to a different province where the census wasn’t taking place to be counted in obscure, tiny town of Bethlehem a week’s journey away from his home in Nazareth?

c.Why does Mark’s gospel say that Jesus’ family thought Jesus was out of his mind and thus tried to stop him from preaching?

lastly The Problem of Evil

a. If you had the power of God to stop something terrible from happening, would you do it?

b. If humans can’t comprehend God’s motives for allowing apparent evil, why should we think that God’s mysteriousness is a valid defense of God? Shouldn’t our inability to comprehend God’s mysteriousness be a strong reason to doubt?

Jonathan Sobieski

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Re: Good Questions To Get Christians Thinking Critically by CAPSLOCKED: 10:51am On Feb 26, 2019
THE GENERAL WORLDWIDE CHRISTIANS' ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS :

1. NO NEED FOR FACTS. YOU NEED ONLY FAITH AND THE DIRECTION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO UNDERSTAND AND BELIEVE THESE THINGS.
2. ONLY A FOOL SAYS THERE'S NO GOD.
3. FOOLS LOOK AT THE WHOLE UNIVERSE AND ALL LIVING THINGS. WHO DO YOU THINK CREATED THEM? YOU MUST BE DELUDED TO THINK THERE'S NO CREATOR.
4. YOU BETTER REPENT AND BE SAVED BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.
5. DON'T WORRY, WHEN YOU DIE YOU'LL FIND OUT IF THERE'S GOD OR NOT.
6. I PITY YOUR SOUL, POOR FOOL.

7. THE END.

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Re: Good Questions To Get Christians Thinking Critically by OpenYourEyes1: 11:36am On Feb 26, 2019
No single reference? This makes zero sense.

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Re: Good Questions To Get Christians Thinking Critically by finalboss(m): 12:31pm On Feb 26, 2019
OpenYourEyes1:
No single reference?
This makes zero sense.
not necessary for you to answer
Re: Good Questions To Get Christians Thinking Critically by LordReed(m): 2:25pm On Feb 26, 2019
OpenYourEyes1:
No single reference?
This makes zero sense.

Why is reference needed?
Re: Good Questions To Get Christians Thinking Critically by Ihedinobi3: 3:26pm On Feb 26, 2019
finalboss:
1.Have you read the Bible?
Yes. And I still do everyday.


finalboss:
2.Why do you think the Bible is divinely inspired?
I don't merely think that it is. I know it is. The same way that you can tell that a letter from, say, your dad is really from him is how I know that the Bible is the true Word of God.


finalboss:
3.Why didn’t Jesus appear to more people after his death?
He wasn't obliged to appear to anyone at all in the first place. He only appeared to a number of His disciples to confirm and strengthen their faith in Him.


finalboss:
4.If Jesus wants to have a personal relationship with every human, why does approximately 70% of the Earth’s population not believe in him?
I can't credit your statistics, but it is true that only a small proportion of human beings choose to love and submit to God. The reason that the rest don't is that they don't want to.


finalboss:
5.Did anyone who ever knew Jesus write about him?
Matthew, John, Peter, James and Jude were all very close to Him and they all wrote parts of the New Testament.


finalboss:
6.Why did no contemporary historians mention Jesus? He’s only mentioned by historians who were born after he died.
I can't credit your claim here since we don't have all the literature from that time. It has been two thousand years after all. Of surviving literature, however, there is the witness of, I believe, Tacitus, at least.

But you do have a point. One reason there is so little surviving record is that at that time, just as it is today, the world was little interested in such things. The Roman Empire was more interesting for the vast majority in its political intrigues, wars and scandals.


finalboss:
a. Was he not very well known during his life as historical Jesus scholars think?
In Palestine, He was known, at least by reputation, if not by face and perhaps name. Judea and its environs was excited by Him because of their religious history. But among the Gentiles, not that many people cared much for what went on with the Jews at the time.


finalboss:
b. If Jesus and his disciples performed so many miracles it would be impossible to write them all down as the gospels claim, why didn’t this get contemporary historians’ attention?
The Lord Jesus did not care for celebrity and thoroughly eschewed it right up to the point of sternly commanding the beneficiaries of His Miracles to not tell anybody about them. Additionally, as I said, then as now, people cared less about spiritual matters than they did about the material affairs of life.


finalboss:
7. Why did Jesus curse a fig tree for not bearing figs even though it wasn’t the season for bearing figs?
It was to teach a most important lesson: that God expects fruit from us. When we are given life, we ought to seek to find out what God wants of us and embrace faith in Christ as soon as we hear the Gospel. When we have believed, we are responsible to grow in the Truth unto maturity and with our gifts help others to come to faith in Christ and grow in the Truth as well, if they want. We are to do this "in season and out of season", that is, at all times. If we fail, we will incur God's Displeasure because no matter what season it may be (that is, what our circumstances are), He provides everything we need to do these things.


finalboss:
8. Why did Jesus’ divine saliva fail to fully cure the blind man the first time Jesus spit in his eyes requiring a second application of spit? Is it possible this miracle story is made up? If so, is the claim that the blind man saw people who look like trees a hint that the gospel author was inspired to make up this miracle story by a similar miracle story about Moses that involved trees?
This was a deliberate lesson to teach us the greatness of the Miracles the Lord Jesus performed. In healing blindness, there are two things which happen. The physical equipment, that is, the eyes are fixed so that they work again. But sight involves more than working eyes. It also involves perception, that is, proper interpretation of the visual information that the brain is encountering for the first time. So, whenever the Lord Jesus healed the blind, He did something incredibly powerful which the seeing may not appreciate since they have never had to deal consciously with their brains "seeing" for the first time.


finalboss:
9. Why did Judas betray Jesus? Presumably…
Because he loved money more than the Lord Jesus (in fact, he had no love at all for the Lord Jesus).


finalboss:
a. Judas was an eye witness to the most amazing preaching ever, tons of miracles, and even performed miracles himself with power given to him by Jesus.
Judas was a very grand demonstration of the power of creature free will. Nothing can make anybody who does not want to believe in the Lord Jesus to do so if they don't want to. Nothing, that is, except the appearance of God in His Naked Glory which destroys every creature ability to resist Him.


finalboss:
b. He knew he was betraying God incarnate and that there was a hell.
Everyone knows that in rejecting the Sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, we disobey God. Everyone knows that there is a hell. But not everybody continues to believe this. We possess the ability to deny the truth we know. That is what free will makes possible.


finalboss:
c. He had only been in Jerusalem a few days when he decided to betray Jesus and the priests had not offered a reward for information about Jesus or formally announced any desired to harm Jesus.
Although it was no secret that the Jewish leaders wanted to kill Jesus, this is only the Bible's further teaching that when people want to do evil and are allowed to by the Lord, they will create the opportunity to do it where it is lacking.


finalboss:
d. John contradicts the synoptics’ account of Judas’ betrayal and decides to have the devil enter Judas in order to try to make the story make sense. Does having the devil enter Judas to make him commit the betrayal even make sense?
I don't see any contradiction. None of the other accounts even suggests that Satan did not enter Judas. John only added information to what we learn from them. What he did was to demonstrate to us just how far gone Judas was. Demon possession does not occur without the consent of the human involved. It is no different when it is the devil himself doing the possessing. Judas wanted Satan to share his body and granted him permission to. This was not necessary for him to betray Jesus, but it certainly made him far more disposed to it and perhaps even particularly resourceful about it.


finalboss:
e. Judas was the only person who knew about his secret meetings with the priests, so where would the gospel authors have gotten their information if Judas committed suicide shortly thereafter?
I know no reason to suppose that nobody else knew of Judas' actions. But even if they didn't, the point of inspiration is that the writers of the Bible were enabled by the Holy Spirit to write accurately things that they knew supernaturally as well as from divinely-guided research.


finalboss:
10. What sins, if any, would actually cause someone who believes in Jesus to go to hell?

Is Jeffrey Dahmer, a man who accepted Jesus on death row after kidnapping little boys, raping them, murdering them, sodomizing their corpses, eating their corpses, and using their skeletons for decoration really in Heaven now?
None. No one will go to Hell for sinning against God because the Lord Jesus has paid for all human sin no matter when it was or is or will be committed. The only sin that the Lord Jesus did not die spiritually for on the Cross of Calvary is the sin of unbelief. If anyone chooses to reject Faith in Christ or refuses to accept it, then they will go to Hell.

If Jeffrey Dahmer died believing in Christ, then yes, he is in Heaven now.


finalboss:
11. Are the accounts of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and Luke so blatantly contradictory that we have to conclude at least one of them was completely made up?
There is no contradiction in any respect between the two. Is there any reason that anyone might think that there is?


finalboss:
a. Some early manuscripts of Matthew have been found that don’t mention the virgin birth. Is it possible that later Christians added the virgin birth to Matthew’s gospel?
I don't know about these manuscripts and I know about the Sinaiticus myself which is the best manuscript available. Do you have a source for your information?

As for adding things to the Bible, people did that in the past - and still do today. But the virgin birth is part of Matthew and of the Bible as a whole because of the Lord Jesus's Unique Humanity. He is the Only Human Being Who was born with a Human Body that was not corrupted with sin. Every other human being is born of male seed which carries the corruption.


finalboss:
b. Did the world wide census that Luke claims forced Jesus’ parents to go to Bethlehem actually occur? If Luke is actually referring to the census mentioned by Josephus that occurred in Syria when Quirinius was governor of Syria, would Quirinius have required Joseph to go to a different province where the census wasn’t taking place to be counted in obscure, tiny town of Bethlehem a week’s journey away from his home in Nazareth?
It wasn't Quirinius's census. This census was empire-wide (that is what worldwide really means here) and occurred before Quirinius's.


finalboss:
c.Why does Mark’s gospel say that Jesus’ family thought Jesus was out of his mind and thus tried to stop him from preaching?
Because they did not believe in Him. Only His adoptive father and biological mother believed in Him until after His Resurrection when His siblings finally did too.


finalboss:
lastly The Problem of Evil

a. If you had the power of God to stop something terrible from happening, would you do it?
Can you have the power of God without the knowledge/wisdom of God as well?


finalboss:
b. If humans can’t comprehend God’s motives for allowing apparent evil, why should we think that God’s mysteriousness is a valid defense of God? Shouldn’t our inability to comprehend God’s mysteriousness be a strong reason to doubt?

Jonathan Sobieski
Anything can seem a valid reason to doubt for anyone who wants to doubt.

Man is not God. His undeniable limitation in knowledge and wisdom is excellent reason for him to humble himself to God and accept at His Hand whatever He is pleased to give.

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