This is the theological lair of the formidable Lotharson, “der Sohn des Lothars”, the son of king Lothar of Lorraine.

In this holy place, Lotharson will regularly express the thoughts appearing in his heavenly blog.

Lotharson is in constant communion with the Holy Ghost, both are deeply entangled.

From this union follows a unique text, the inerrant Gospel of Lotharson, delivered once and for all to all progressive saints.

There is one feature of Lotharson that nobody can overlook: Lotharson can never withstand very long the temptation to make a fool of himself.

He is currently examining the assertion of Ken Ham that Christianity is perishing because there is not enough Young Earth Creationism.

Lotharson would be truly delighted if mere mortals were to interact with him on this place.

I’m glad to approach to the throne in this place!!

Yay, Lotharson blog thread!

For no readily apparent reason I feel like suggesting you’d love the Crusader Kings 2 game from Paradox if you aren’t playing it yet.

Good luck on Ken Hamm. I’m not hostile to YEC (I’m at least partially responsible for my brother and his wife going that way several years ago), but I wouldn’t mind if there was less of him going around. He’s kind of like the Richard Dawkins of YEC. (Though I do like some of his humor. “God created dogs, but only original sin could create a poodle.” )

I was bitten by a poodle as a small child, so I think I kind of appreciate his humor. Did he smoke weed the day he made such a wonderful joke?

Otherwise, I think it is more appropriate to say that Richard Dawkins himself is the Ken Ham of atheism.

As I explained, the New Atheists are truly an embarrassment for intellectually honest atheists.

They are a bunch of hateful morons, utterly worthy of our disrespect.

Congrats on your new “throne room,” Lotharson. VERY impressive!

“God created dogs, but only original sin could create a poodle.”

Hey, I have a 4LB toy white poodle and she thinks that was a poopy comment.

Hail mighty Sohn des Lothars

I approach your throne with appropriate gestures of bowing and scraping .

So, Ken Ham thinks that ‘Christianity’ is perishing because there is not enough Young Earth Creationism does he? Well he may well be right. Indeed, I hope and pray he is. At least, I hope and pray that the homophobic, ignorance-based brand of ‘Christianity’ peddled by Ken Ham will hurry up and die the death it so richly deserves. Those who have abandoned it will then be in a far better place theologically speaking than they were when they believed in it. But God will bring them round to right beliefs in the end. He has all the time in the world to do that.

Here’s just one little question for Ham: his website states that the Bible is inerrant in every detail, and that Genesis is literal fact. It also states that incest is sinful and offensive to God. So, in the beginning God created Adam and Eve, and all human beings are descended from them right? Which means that either their kids had sex with each other, or with Adam and Eve themselves? So which was it, Ken?

All the best

Johnny

Johnny: creationists say that incest is not disgusting for God.
He forbade it because it became genetically dangerous, but at the very beginning siblings could interbreed without risking to beget sick children.

There are many things they are capable of explaining.

The main problem they have to face is the strong evidence of poor design in living things and for an old earth if they are YEC.

Hi Lotharson

Ken Ham’s website says that incest is sinful and offensive to God. Obviously God changed his mind after a few generations of human beings had been born .

You’re absolutely right about poor design. That’s just one of the myriad reasons I reject creationism and so-called ‘intelligent design’ - which really ought to be called unintelligent design. It’s an insult to the Creator to assert that he came up with so many poor, dead-end species designs and badly functioning biological systems.

As for the evidence for an old earth, well, it’s so overwhelming it’s not worth bothering to debate.

Keep up the good work on your blog.

Cheers

Johnny

At the time I heard the joke, the people who gave me the video the joke arrived on had owned a cheerfully troublesome (though to them adorable) spaniel with a poodle haircut for years. This increased my appreciation of the joke beyond its inherent merits.

Lotharson,

The creation vs. evolution topic tends to attract a lot of highly emotional people against one or the other topic (and/or in favor of the other topic); so unless you want your blog thread booted first to the “sensitive” category and then eventually locked, I recommend you choose your topics carefully to post here, LS.

(I tend to want to roll my eyes and sigh at having to make that practical warning, because I don’t have strong feelings on the topic one way or another, but I acknowledge that might be a failing on my part and that I ought to have strong feelings one way or another. I just don’t. It’s an interesting topic to me either way, and that’s it. I don’t regard people as insulting God (which technically is blasphemy) for holding one or the other position per se, for example.)

I recently translated into German a post about the definition of Christianity.

I’d be very interested to learn what you think about my views.

Cheers.

This is a very recent post about a vicious circle of hatred known as the culture war.

Your own thoughts are wanted.

Respect towards homosexual: many well-meaning Christians asserts loving the sinner while hating the sin.

In this post I explain a huge problem with this attitude when applied to homosexuality.

I am eager to learn your thoughts on that.

Crude, in the comments, does bring up some valid points, particularly in the area of the assertion of moral beliefs affecting one’s employment status. There cannot be respect of LGBT attiitudes toward Christians if the same respect is not reciprocated. Christians shouldn’t feel threatened because they disagree with certain moral behaviors.

Having said that, I do agree that there ought to be equitable grounds for discussing the topic with open ears from both sides. Conversation ought to avoid words so as to keep civility and not turn it into an irreconcilable argument.

In the public arena, the issues will most certainly become dicey, because the secular society will wish to recognize freedom and liberty and rights of all persons, regardless of orientation, and therefore any religious connotations will naturally be distained. Really, the only logical discourse that would even be remotely accepted would be natural law, which will take on a relative course, since LGBT proponents can argue instances like homosexual penguins and the like.

But in Judeo-Christian circles, the topic takes on a different form, because now we are discussion the moral implications as it related not only between humans, but with God. The task for Christian who believes homosexual behavior is opposed to God’s natural course for man will attempt to make the case based on the scriptural mandate, which then gets into the areas of inspiriational, contextual, cultural, and doctrinal considerations in apporoaching scripture and/or related materials.

Perhaps the best approach in speaking toward gay Christians would be “WWJD?” What kind of behavior would Jesus engage in if He entered into a binding, marital relationship? If God’s purpose is for us to be conformed into His Image (Romans 8:29) , that is the image of Christ, then how would this translate to our own personal relationships? Is the relationship sanctioned and blessed by God and of the original intent for man as a species in the beginning?

The problem is that I see absolutely no reason to think that homosexuality is against God’s wish for nature.

We have very strong evidence that almost nobody chooses to be gay, they are born that way.

I think that God’s will for individuals is to grow in one’s** ability to give and receive love**, and you don’t have to be a Christian to know it is true.
This law is written in our hearts.

Therefore one should certainly strive for a lifelong committed relationship,as I explained here.

But I see no reason why two persons of the same sex could not pursue such a relationships and even believe we have strong theological grounds for endorsing this.

The only objection stems from the**

**: everything a Biblical writer intended to convey is true.
The problem is that this principle leads us to believe also that God commanded soldiers to kill babies and apparently suffer under a split brain disorder.

I view the Bible as an important of the tradition of the people of God. which is evolving as new data come in.

I see, for instance, the writings of the apostle Paul in the same way I view the writings of C.S. Lewis: both men had wonderful experiences with God but they were inerrant or infallible.

The true foundation of my faith is an event: God’s ultimate revelation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

Cheers and blessings and faith forward.

Although I’m not attracted to men, I’m not sure where I stand on this one. I know for me I’ve decided to be single so I can devote myself to God. But this is a very interesting topic and one that I have spent a little time with. I don’t think one can prove from the Bible that homosexuality is wrong. The passages usually used to show it’s wrong can be seen differently.

"The true foundation of my faith is an event: God’s ultimate revelation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. "

…as reported by who?? Could THEY have been mistaken, errant, fallible? Are we following cunningly designed fables and myths when it comes to the resurrection?

And really, comparing Saul’s Damascus road experience, and then a couple of years in the desert being taught by the Holy spirit, with Lewis’s experience seems like an unequal comparison to say the least.

I realize these things are a matter of choice, but that does not mean that the choice we make is right.

Sorry for the plain talk.

If an event can only be known if we dispose of an allegedly inerrant writing reporting of it, then we don’t know if Napoleon existed, if the Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis and so on and so forth.

Viewing the Gospels as normal historical documents does not necessarily lead to the view that they are fables.
Many Christian books written from the fourth century onward report of God’s miraculous working in the Church, and they were certainly not meant to be inerrant.
Are we to conclude that all these miracles necessarily did not occur?

But in the end the evidence does not suffice, this is why I view faith as hoping in the face of insufficient evidence.
I have read almost all possible apologetic and anti-apologetic stuff and I find neither of those compelling.

Cheers.

A defense of C.S. Lewis trilemma:

lotharlorraine.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/the-trilemna-of-c-s-lewis-das-trilemna-von-c-s-lewis-unten/

While extra-biblical books are profitable for aiding in understanding scripture, I think great caution should be observed before deciding that these books rate the same level of inspiration as the traditional biblical canon. Having said that, I’m not opposed to the idea that books *within *the biblical canon rate different levels of inspiration either. For instance, I believe that the words of Jesus would carry more weight that say, Paul, only because of the nature of who He was. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Jesus contradicts Paul, but it seems that the Gospel writers emphasized Jesus words to have great significant import in such phrases as, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” and other such statements. Paul was a teacher of the Word, a teacher of the *established *Word. And that meant the Hebrew Scriptures (OT). So the nature of Paul’s written letters to the churches in the NT doesn’t appear to exert itself explicitly as scripture. But the canon was formulated and established with specific criteria in order to limit the chance of error or heretical teachings from creeping in. Paul, himself, stated the importance of sound doctrine in his first pastorial letter to Timothy no less that 9 times.

Without trying to sound dogmatic about it, “doctrine” simply means “the explication and officially acceptable version of a religious teaching” (Encyclopedia Britannica). The key word here is “acceptable”. What does a body of religious faith believe to be true?

Inasfar as “canon” goes, a very good treatment from The Jewish Encyclopedia is helpful in illustrating my point. From a discussion of Ecclesciates 12:12:

If one doesn’t draw the line somewhere, then one is never going to be on firm ground. One will always be “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” as Paul exhorts Timothy in his second letter.

I understand the exaperation of those who cannot swallow that genocide of the type claimed happened in the Bible. But I don’t know if it is wise to dismissed such episodes merely because it isn’t palatable. I struggle as well to understand these hard passages, nor do I easily dismiss them. Nor should I, if it means keeping the integrity of belief on a solid standing. Once I start picking and choosing which parts of the bible to believe based on my tastes and distastes, then I might as well write my own “inspired” book.