₦airaland Forum

Ubenedictus:
It may suprise you to know that i also agree with 9 on the objectivity of the bible.

for instance, the bible say God is merciful, objectively it is talking about divine character or attribute, that stuff that is in God that makes him always give beyond what justice demands, subjectively, i may make committed a terrible sin and that verse for me simply means do not dispair, in a moral sense it means i must be merciful myself.... the meaning make be much but it has an objective interpretation ie mercy is a divine attribute.

The goodnews for a catholic is that each of those different interpretation is acceptable in different context but if i were discussing doctrine i will give priority to what that text means exactly and how that has always been understood from ancient time.

Jn 6 for instance can mean for me Jesus wants faith in him but that is not exactly what the text says, the text says Jesus wants us to gawn his flesh and that has been understood since the 1st century as communion

It's a view, I guess, and depends on what one understands by objectivity. We atheists, for instance, use biblical objectivity to muddy the waters more often than not. Take Genesis 1, for instance. An objective reading would be a more literal understanding of the text, which to some is pure stupidity, but a subjective read might make one look behind the facts as listed and see further. Would one be wrong to claim any project one embarks on would not benefit from the steps listed in that chapter?

Or take the commandments of Jesus Christ. Love that which is good with all you are and love your neighbours too. Some might claim the first part of that law is easy, and the second easier still, but does it's meaning not depend very heavily on the subject who reads it?

The Bible wasn't written with objectivity in mind, is my position, since what one sees in it depends pretty much on where one stands looking at it. That's the reason why some have used it to justify things we would not contemplate justifying today, though I'm certain those who justified atrocities would claim they were being objective then too.

The fact that we call it a living book that comes alive in the mind of the subjective reader makes it very unobjective to me, and the fact that we need to interpret it makes it even more subjective. If that weren't the case, we'd all agree on one single objective meaning and there wouldn't be so many subjective sects. You compare the objectivity in a science book and you might see where I stand.

JujuSugar:
[s][/s]
Fancy you telling me to keep my knickers on when you've let yours down around the ankle and you're displaying all this emotion . Like I said, you've hyped me up to expect great responses soon and I'm holding you to your words. Do take your time, Sir Muttley. Wouldn't want you setting mouse traps for yourself next time

Don't you dare let him start going on about your knickers! He writes those meaningless and irrelevant patronising words when he's cornered and has nothing relevant to say. I'm calling it the "muttley kitchen sink approach", except nothing sticks where he's concerned!

Ubenedictus:
Are u kidding me? that is nice, i know it will be hard to part me from my books.

Lol! It was hard for me too. Letting go wasn't easy. But when I do go home and some kid comes to tell me how they benefitted from my letting go, I do confess that I feel justified.

I used to have a notebook where I listed every book I read and wrote at the end that I'd one day fill it up. I started at age 9 and kept it up to date well into my mid twenties until one day I felt vain and stopped. I also couldn't go past a bookshop without going in, and couldn't leave without buying a book or two. Oxford Street was my favorite walk. From my home in Baker Street where I lived at the time to the end of Oxford Street, there used to be 9 bookshops, then there's Charring Cross, the second hand bookshops street of the world, and it didn't help that I worked in Piccadily Circus so they were on my root to and from work.

My weekends used to be, go for a walk, buy books, go to my favorite bar on Wardour Street and drink a bottle of chilled red wine with my newly purchased books spread out in front of me. Heaven! I even eventually worked in bookshops, one, a charity, which paid just travel and books, so you can imagine how many I had. Then I went to the Orolu Kingdom and discovered I had more books in my house in Lagos than there was in the entire kingdom, so I gave all my Lagos books to the library, and shipped all my London books there too, and got books from other sources and shipped them there as well. They just about throw them away here. Yesterdays was my eight shipment.

However, they are like pearls and what they are associated with. The report I just got is the library is shut as the local authority aren't staffing it so now I'm considering paying someone to keep it open. It's either that or I go back home and hustle to become the local government chairperson so I can get my hands on their allocation and divert it there, except no way would they have someone like me since I'd stop them sharing the money and showing nothing for it.

I blame Christ! I can't help selling all I got and giving it to those who have none. It's just such a pity God refused to create me as a Christian.

Ubenedictus:
But i must warn, if u really want to gain the right insight invest more in the bible text instead of the notes. i usually find more meaning in a text compared to whatever an expert commentator say. The bible has been know to say different thing to different situations.

Funny you say this. I'm in discussion with 9inches where I'm claiming the subjectivity of the bible is what makes it so valuable a book, but he's telling me to go Catholic where I'd get the objective meaning.

It is in my opinion, subjectivity, that makes one 'hear' different things in different situations, and what makes the book the so called "living word of God". I see it like the mud that God breathed life into. If not read in the proper way it is just another book or dirty mud, but if read properly, it's like mud spat on by Jesus and rubbed in the eyes so one can see.

The notes in my current version are not commentaries. They are more historical development and contextual notes. The introduction says how it was cobbled together over many years of verbal transmission and states the likely difficulty involved in forming the text we have today. My Quran is of a similar nature. The forward (of the Quran) states how it was initially spoken, then recorded on tablets, bones, and the wide, flat ends of date palm fronds before it was brought together as the book we now know. Nothing like perspective, I say, and likely not a suitable version for 'believers'.

Ubenedictus:
I hope u also know that storing wealth in the bible also means giving to others whether intellectually or materially or spiritually.

Didn't you see the link? I gave all my books to a local government library and begged others for their's to give too, and just yesterday did ma deliver my last shipment.

Ubenedictus:
That is just terrible, is it that he has no superiors to whom he is answerable?

He hoodwinked everyone, and they were happy with his returns. His fall came 3 months after they made him an overseer of two other churches, and even then his superiors tried to defend him until I threatened them with the law.

virgoquin:
This is the comment section not advertisement section. you guys are spamming the forum with this long ads

And instead of just reporting it, you reposted it?

Ubenedictus:
good thing the Quran isnt that big compared to the Bible, but the text u chose is a monster, why all those books?

Funny enough, it was that religious knowledge teacher who done it in the end. He started with Samuel and got me with wise Solomon and I've spent my whole life seeking wisdom and understanding storing up wealth where moths can't get at it. And what do I go and do in the end? I gave all my books away and now have bare walls.

Ubenedictus:
Sorry abt your experience.

It sounds surprising to me.

Nothing to be sorry about! At least I got to save my sisters from that fake pastor. He used to come to my house, we'd discuss the bible, and he'd go preach what I told him in church on Sunday claiming it's what an angel told him, while informing my sisters I was the devil! We later found out that when he claimed he was on the roof praying he was all along watching porn! He abandoned his wife and daughter in the end and ran off to Ghana, I was told.

Ubenedictus:
I guess u are enjoying the notes.

More than the text of the Bible itself I daresay. It's like my Quran which also has copious amounts of contextual notes.

luvmijeje:
You who tells them that at end of all their achievements, they will still end up in the kitchen. You who tells them, that as soon they are married, they cease to exist. Their husband's dreams becomes their dream. To have a successful marriage, they must be submissive, they must be quiet, they must be silent. That the success and the failure of a marriage lies with the woman. You who see the cheating by a man as normal and the cheating by women as a crime. You who tells us that a woman should relies on the man for his survival but failed to realize in doing that, one loses her voice and loses her worth.

You who blamed us for being rape. You who tells us that we are second class citizen because Eve committed a sin. You who told us that Adam came first into this world so we must all be subjected to a man. You who segregate the women from important position because you think they are not good enough. You who tells them that no woman should be a leader over men. You. You. You.

Men are pigs! Not all of them mind, but men are pigs!

MuttleyLaff:
Now, frank317, tell what exactly, is the bad deed, in God telling Abraham to go kill Isaac, his son there as a sacrifice for God, and this same Isaac, Abraham's only son, the one he love, should be used as a burnt offering on one of the mountains God said He will point out which to Abraham?

"A burnt offering on one of the mountains God said He will point out which to Abraham" ?

Told you something was fishy about that story from the very beginning! Jealous only god Yahweh would not be asking for sacrifices on mountain, and if Abraham thought Yahweh did, then he's failed already. But I guess no one said you could ever think of it that way.

You're going to have to forgive me ignoring you for awhile muttley, you're killing my brain cells.

MuttleyLaff:
I am sticking to the purview of the Bible and the thread's topic about God mentioning names or specify them and giving expressed commands to do something.

Oh no, I am not getting emotional. Why you asking? What on earth prompted you to ask that question?

And we're telling you a god who commands someone to go sacrifice their child to it is an ass even if it was just a test or a lesson, and that's all apart from the fact that the whole made up story is just that, a made up story!

I hope if your god commanded you to do something so stupid you'd go get yourself a new god or you'd be no different to those it presumably tells to go blow up some infidels!

I'm just glad Christians did get a new more rational and intelligent god and strongly advise you, muttley, to accept Christ into your reasoning! This your Yahweh dude needs to be taken to the bottom of the river and have its head bashed in!

Ouch!

mike19 minutes ago
I THANK GOD EVERY NIGHT FOR PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP !
•Passage of the tax reform bill providing $5.5 billion in cuts and repealing the Obamacare mandate.
•Increase of the GDP above 3 percent.
•Creation of 1.7 million new jobs, cutting unemployment to 4.1 percent.
•Saw the Dow Jones reach record highs.
•A rebound in economic confidence to a 17-year high.
•A new executive order to boost apprenticeships.
•A move to boost computer sciences in Education Department programs.
•Prioritizing women-owned businesses for some $500 million in SBA loans.
•Made good on his campaign promise to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
•Opened up the North American Free Trade Agreement for talks to better the deal for the U.S.
•Worked to bring companies back to the U.S., and companies like Toyota, Mazda, Broadcom Limited, and Foxconn announced plans to open U.S. plants.
•Worked to promote the sale of U.S products abroad.
•Made enforcement of U.S. trade laws, especially those that involve national security, a priority.
•Ended Obama’s deal with Cuba.
•Laid out new principles for reforming immigration and announced plan to end "chain migration," which lets one legal immigrant to bring in dozens of family members.
•Made progress to build the border wall with Mexico.
•Ended the Obama-era “catch and release” of illegal immigrants.
•Boosted the arrests of illegals inside the U.S.
•Doubled the number of counties participating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement charged with deporting illegals.
•Removed 36 percent more criminal gang members than in fiscal 2016.
•Started the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program.
•Ditto for other amnesty programs like Deferred Action for Parents of Americans.
•Cracking down on some 300 sanctuary cities that defy ICE but still get federal dollars.
•Added some 100 new immigration judges

https://66.media.tumblr.com/4524fb25a203d9f9a4e067b2618e31b1/tumblr_p3ehvrLIGV1vl4i7go1_250.gif

https://66.media.tumblr.com/16d805e7b3aa490673f2de2cfa71ae9b/tumblr_okniirBejs1u29yy1o1_400.gif


U.S. economy added more jobs than expected in January, unemployment rate rose to 4%

HappyPagan:
Ah, religion.

Dad was ill(mental health). Over twelve years... I wasn't at home most of that time, spent some time (6 years) in India.

Came back to meet lots of pastors, prayer warriors, and traditional healers. Prayers , some weird fruits and stuff . was a crazy period trying to convince them (esp Mom) to take the ill man to a hospital.. Lol.

Took me threatening to say some nasty shit at his burial (in case he died, thankfully, he's still alive) , before they took him to see a proper psychologist.

O... He had one already.. Some idiot. Hes a professor of Psychology at a popular Federal University.. Motherfucker was feeding my dad crazy drugs that just made shit worse.


Lol. Fucking pastors praying and suggesting crazy shit...

Hope this come out as a rant.. Not had the space to let off ..

Anyways, Pops is better now.

Must have been a trauma. Glad dad is now well. The more I look into religion the more I run from it in the end.

How was religion in India? Bet same as in Nigeria, just different god.

MuttleyLaff:
Swap see with read then and stop acting like you don't know or understand what I mean by that comment

Doesn't matter how you spin it muttley, boko haram and alqaeda too can write. You'd only argue god didn't write it just as I'd argue no god wrote your bible!

P.s. Are you not getting emotional!?

MuttleyLaff:
Where in the Bible did God send them budaatum. We see God telling Abraham to go kill, we see God in the Bible telling the Israelites to kill the Canaanites etcetera. When and where in the Bible are the Crusaders mentioned and given authorisation by God to go on warrior paths budaatum?

We don't see God telling Abraham anything, muttley, we simply read it and some of you think some god truly spoke to some Abraham, and unfortunately jump from that to god talking to them too!

MuttleyLaff:
It is not a bad deed, if God Himself auhorises you to do it.

You're so boko haramish and alqaedik, muttley!

obixcel:
You can't stop NATURE...Not trying to sound too hash but let's face it her time is almost done anytime soon.

But her time was not yesterday, or the day before, or even the part of today that has passed already, or is it!?

It will be sad for us you call libtards when she dies but you don't have to be so desperate to bury her before she's dead!

MuttleyLaff:
When you are done having a hard on, will you then please give me the names of those people that committed those acts in the Christian Crusades that God authorised.

Seriously, Muttley? Do you seriously not know the Crusaders were "God's Warriors", and they were fighting "God's War" ? Or are you claiming God didn't send them?

CreepyBlackpool:
Shifting, swinging, clutching straws, its like they just taught you those words in this week's reading comprehension passage.

Funny thing is, he's guilty of them all!

MuttleyLaff:
They are not murders, that was God carry out and/or executing judgement. Now God specifically personally and directly authorised those people to carry out His command.

Isn't that also what boko haram and alqaeda say when they blow people up?

MuttleyLaff:
Keep on jumping from pillar to post with invalid comparisons

How is it an invalid comparison? Even today, the Jews justify their stealing of the land the Palestinians were on with what their god supposedly told them, so why would you not accept when Jihadists blow you up because their god told them to?

MuttleyLaff:
If I were to test you both youse budaatum and frank317, the test will have to involve something you cherish, something you hold dearly, it will have to be with something they'll will have to kill you first and the prise your clinging on to fingers, off before they'll take the thing off you. You know thats how the cookie crumbles now.

Really, muttley? Is that how you are tested? You can't just test with something simple like, what is the sum of one plus two? No wonder your cookies crumble!

MuttleyLaff:
You are letting your emotions get the better of you

You know very well I get that way when you refuse to use your brain and resort to copious verbiage that anyone with an ounce of sense would cringe at and if I didn't know you had a brain in that head of your's or used it, I wouldn't get emotional!

Intentional ignorance gets me that way, muttley. I can't be unemotional when I see otherwise intelligent individuals sprouting what they cannot possibly believe but ask others to. The words "stones instead of bread" spring to my mind.

9inches:
Life itself is a school. You go through different classes until you die. There's no graduation; you don't stop learning until you die.

@bolded, Your preconceived notion about catholics isn't letting you focus on the argument I'm making. Just to address your straw man, as a Catholic I believe I can go to hellfire and an atheist or a muslim can enter heaven. So, I don't know how your "tax collectors' straw man could be attributed to my argument.

I have read the whole bible multiple times and I know there is no way anyone could understand everything in it if "bible alone" is to be the rule of faith. Only Catholics claim the bible is NOT the only rule of faith which means we have other sources to put the seemingly confusing parts of the bible into context for better understanding.

I would like to see where the JW claims their version of christian interpretation is objective.

You must have just heard of this strawman. You do mention him often. Do you have straw where you are?

Is your current argument not that one should be a catholic (your initial one being one should be a Christian), because they are the only church of Christ who can objectively teach the Bible, which is necessary because people need someone to teach them the bible because any individual understanding is subjective and wrong? And does a wrong understanding of the bible and Christ not lead one to hell?

Tatime, could you please let 9 know if Jehova Witnessing is not the only church of Christ with the proper understanding of the bible, and everyone else is wrong?

As to your "Life itself is a school. ...... you don't stop learning until you die", yes, I agree, and I don't see the point wasting that life learning about your one god in your one class in your one school. One must not live by bread alone, see, but by every word, and you would find, if you search, that there are words outside the Catholic Church and outside Christianity even, all godly too.

I'm beginning to think you evoke your strawman to change the topic when you are down a closed alley!

9inches:
The "school of life" end only when you are dead.

That's not a reason to remain in the same class or the same school throughout one's life!

9inches:
So true for protestants, not true for the Catholic church. Protestantism is Subjective, Catholicism is Objective.

You all claim your version is objective, 9. Even Tatime, a JW, would tell you their interpretation is objective and everyone else's is wrong, but just take your comment above. If you read your Bible and understood it, you'd not be repeating the "Thank you Lord that I am not like those tax collectors over there", error. Just goes to show you treat your sect as if it were a political party, "vote for us and you would enter heaven, vote for those other lot and you are going straight to hell". Not very Christlike in my subjective understanding, but I'm sure you'd caim I err, again.

CreepyBlackpool:
And the only test he could possibly give him was to ask him to commit murder, a sin?

And goes on to reward him for attempting to commit sin?

And somehow, I shouldn't feel insulted when Im caught bowing down and worshipping such a god?

I guess it would make sense to me if I park my brain away and refuse to use it like muttley does.

1StopRudeness:
Atheists and their love for insulting and harassing God they claim do not exist....It always makes me laugh...

Yeah, poor god. All those atheists will burn in hell!

MuttleyLaff:
I am sorry budaatum, what exactly, for the sake of this discussion, do you think Abraham was tested on?

Just so you know, I don't think Abraham was tested on anything by anyone since the tester hardly existed and Abraham didn't either.

At best, the story is to show that the new understanding, god Yahweh, disapproved of human sacrifice that was rampant at the time.

HappyPagan:
Or an environmental that enforces it strictly from childhood.


For me, it was everywhere day one. I remember the morning devotions, the clapping, the singing. Church was just on Sundays though, and we rarely had devotions at home, so it was cool.

Then, just when I was hitting puberty, pentecostal churches and their "redemption" message began to spread.

It was horrible and scary. Church, devotions, cell fellowships, campus fellowships... What ever little time one had was taken up by a religious activity or another.

TBN was regular on most screens, speakers(even in public places) play religious songs 24/7. All year, every fucking day.

I was enrolled in a private Christian school.. Church, church, church, class, church. Pray morning. Afternoon. Night. Walk into most Pentecostal churches and lead a praise session.. It can be powerful, very powerful, getting hundreds of people to sing and dance so emotionally. But it never touched me. I never felt I belonged there. I hated everything about there.

Got to uni, and it was almost a similar experience... Yup Covenant. Lol.

Second year, called my parents, and told them I was withdrawing... I left there hating Christ, religion, and life too I guess.


Funny thing is I got back home, and found religion, love and God again....

Or at least, I thought I did

I went to a baptist school but amazingly, it wasn't religion everyday in my days. Worst we had was some old teacher of religious knowledge who forced us to memorise about Samuel and the Kings. Thankfully, he held his once a week class on the groundfloor and we could just elope out the window. And then I go to Nigeria in the mid 90s and the gods are everywhere!

I had to save my sisters from their pastor in the end after he'd stolen my car, raided my account and taken out loans on my house. It took lots of yelling for the Redeem hierarchy to make things good.

frank317:
The issue is that God is testing man to find out if he is obedient enough to carry out a bad deed for him.

In fact, a sensible person might argue that Abraham showed he hadn't abandoned his old gods, if one were to assume they were the sort who did appreciate human sacrifices, and therefore, as far as Yahweh was concerned, Abraham failed woefully!

MuttleyLaff:
It was a test, and for the benefit and cause of Abraham. Afterall, Yahweh knows it all, but does Abraham know himself all, talkless know it all, like Yahweh does.

How much do you know about yourself budaatum?

That's a stupid question muttley, but the answer all the same is, more than anyone else knows about buda!