If you want to ask a question

Do you really think that each soul is allocated a mansion of its own in the afterlife, soontobe? Wouldn't that be a bit lonely? I'd have thought they'd have to share.

The interpretation I accept is a truth in which I believe.

Lilygran Are you saying that the writings regarding such things as creation of the universe, immaculate conception, original sin, Garden of Eden, etc., were used to symbolise things that were difficult to explain and are not to be taken literally? If so, surely there can be many interpretations of these writings and whatever interpretation you accept is a "belief" rather than a "fact"?

Thank you.

I like your posts jingl.

God in the OT certainly had a lot of rules. Something like 617 of them?!

Jesus is His son.
Yes, we are children of God. Jesus is the firstborn I think I am right in saying. We are brothers and sisters.

As regards different intreptations, my advice is the NRSV Bible [the one most used in church services], or the King James [personally can barely understand all the olde worlde language, but some people love it], or the Good News Bible is the easiest to understand.

The Ten Commandments of the Old Testament are pretty good rules for living. To be honest.

His son was God come to earth as a man. To reassure us. God is spirit. His spirit was in Jesus Christ. The three in one - God the Father,, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. They are all one. And perhaps a small part of the whole is in every one of us.

God in the OT was a pretty grim proposition. No wonder they disobeyed.

So he sent his son - who is his son? - how does he come to be so? - most religions say we are all the children of god.

The idea that the world was saved by the arrival of his son rings pretty hollow in this troubled world. Folks are still struggling to understand the meaning of life and their different interpretations are proving somewhat problematical and divisive.

Sorry. Having a "busy" day today. Didnt mean to abandon this thread.

I have been thinking about souls and mansions jingl.
It too strikes me as odd that a soul is going to need a mansion.
I imagine a soul as something the size of say a pea.

Mishap - I think God tried not to be opaque in the Old Testament. But that didnt work, as in, people just ended up disobeying Him on such a large scale to the extent that there was barely a person left that was not doing evil.
So he had to send His son.
Which has worked better as there are people who worship up to now at least.

God lit the paper for the Big Bang grumppa, though I think that you would expect me to say that!

" The more scientists uncover, by trying to explain the inexplicable, the more the innate order of the universe appears." So, therefore God?

Hardly!

I’m sorry Lily but that’s not quite true. In quantum mechanics we discover that the entire universe is actually a series of probabilities. Physics advances by accepting absurdities. That the sun is the centre of our universe surprised everybody back then. Quantum mechanics finds that particles can be in two places at once.

Some doctrines like predestination, original sin and the Immaculate Conception which some posters have problems with, arise from people at different times trying to understand concepts beyond understanding or beyond the understanding of people at the time they were developed. Trying to explain the inexplicable. And of course you can 'believe' facts. Not all facts are concrete and others we accept because they make sense, or appear to be true. And yes, who did light the touch paper for the Big Bang? The more scientists uncover, by trying to explain the inexplicable, the more the innate order of the universe appears.

Arise and go forth!

Perhaps God is within us (and Satan)
We needn't look too far
God = good
Devil = evil

Are the words similar in other languages?

Oh! Lol!

I'm out of bed anyway.

Well, you didn't say it was your son...

No! He's not my son.

You mean Jesus?

But son has told me to embrace staying in bed. Who to listen to? More anguished self searching.

He is telling me to get up and stop being so bloody lazy.

He would be seen as a dictator. I don't think God uses a human voice. He has no human form. He is spirit. Speaks to us through our spirit.

It intrigues me that believers are not puzzled why god has made him/herself so totally opaque that all these centuries of earnest discussion and study needs to take place to understand him/her. What motive might god have to make this as difficult as possible? - seems a bit perverse to me.

Why not "Hello, here I am; this is what you are here for; this is what I require of you." - and the same message all round the universe.

Perhaps the Three Kings were Buddhists? They came from the east.

People travelled more than we think.

absent it is a laudable aim.

Nelliemoser What an interesting thought but would a fairly primitive society in a small Roman province in the Middle East have access to the ideas of Buddhism a couple of thousand years ago?

Jingle and anyone else.
This conversation now sounds like a debate about how many angels can sit on the head of a pin.

It generates more heat than light!

You can take the stories in the New Testament as a standard way of teaching ideas and it has some good ethical values which owes quite bit to the ideas of Buddhism. You can choose to think this man was a wise teacher or a divine incarnation.

The old testament is part a catalogue of Jewish history and a group of people trying to get some organisation and basic rules for an ethnic group beset by aggression from other tribes wanting the most fertile bits of land which happened to be the valley of river Jordan.