Dave, my bad. Forgive me. Yes, the “slippery slope” argument does make generalizations, and you and qaz are definitely exceptional people who I would not try to force into any box.

I used to work in an office that helped clients design valid and reliable surveys, and then we processed and analyzed the completed surveys, and reported the results and discussed conclusions.

There are techniques to help hone and amp up the discriminating power of each question of a questionnaire, and statistical tests to analyze the results, and draw valid conclusions. Sometimes there is predictive power in people’s answers to some questions, from which one can reliably infer or predict their answers to other unasked questions.

-So, for example, if a person favors legalized abortion, they are more likely to also support legalized euthanasia. These positions are highly correlated.

-Being in favor of easy drugs/ being in favor of easy gambling.

-Involvement in drugs and gambling/ higher rate of addiction / higher rate of incarceration.

Slippery slopes. One thing predictive of another.

But as to not trying to convince each other, well. We are to *“earnestly contend.” * We are to try to *“win people over.” * To "turn people back who stray.” So, of course I’m trying to convince people to come over to my viewpoints. I may not be right about the things I choose to argue, but I honestly think I am, and that they are important. Obviously I am no Paul, but I want to be like him (and even more, to manifest Jesus himself in 2018):

-All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. 2 Timothy 3:16.
*
-…With gentleness correcting those who are in opposition…2 Timothy 2:25.
*
-As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures….Acts 17:2.

Much of the Bible is corrective. Jeremiah, Isaiah, and so forth - they are correcting, and Paul is correcting, and he is weeping and warning night and day for three years!

Blessings.

Hermano - honor where honor is due: you’ve always been upfront and encouraging and I am appreciative of that. Even if we don’t convince one another, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another”, right? Let’s stay sharp!

Why don’t they intervene in our world any more now that we have video cameras?

I don’t suppose you would believe me but i did have an encounter with one in a Post Office parking lot. Re your other questions we are not told that info so any answers would just be speculation. I don’t really understand why it would be harder for God to create Angels then Universes or stars or planets or humans or insects?

Why don’t angels intervene now? Well how do you know they haven’t? There are countless encounters of miracles where strangers happen to show up at the right moment to save someone’s life and then disappear. Also it says we can be entertaining angels and not even know it:

Hebrews 13:2-Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for in doing so, some have entertained angels without knowing it.

I like it. Especially the KJV bible stuff These are things we all have to deal with… And thus why we come to forums like this to beat each other up

If we can really accept other views, even if we don’t embrace them, we will go a long, long way to helping humans understand each other.

Good post

qaz said:

Hmm, can you elaborate on why? I am interested.

So you do not think that angles or demons are active today? In other word is it possible that believing that the second coming was fulfilled and Satan and all the cohorts (demons) were thrown into a fiery lake and we are now living in a time of grace where angels do not tread?

I’ll say I think God is still working. I think he uses Angels and I think because of my understanding of history, Christ came back to judge Israel. After that, I think God is continuing to work and influence people here on his creation.

No Steve, I don’t believe you.

When I think about our universe running its course for 14 billion years, I find it extremely hard to believe that while stars and planets have been forming and life has been evolving, there have been persons in an alternate level of reality just waiting for human life to evolve so that they could on rare occasion intervene

If i understood you correctly i think it had to do with Angels being metaphysical but isn’t God too? Didn’t John call God “Spirit” plus the “Holy Spirit” is metaphysical too? Why would you believe in one and not the other?

Metaphysical creatures who have existed outside the universe and sometimes teleport into the universe to intervene is not.

Of course you’re entitled to your belief but it seems to me if God decided He wanted to create metaphysical creatures that existed outside the universe and sometimes travel into the universe to intervene then God would have created these beings called “Angels.” Jesus certainly referred to Angels as did Daniel and Moses and Paul and others.

That is interesting qaz. To believe in God and to think He would not have agents working on his behalf is quite remarkable.

I totally believe in God’s not only ability to work within our 2018 world but to work in ways that we can never even fathom.

How can I say this delicately, Enjoy the understanding of who God is and what Jesus did for
us and humanity. Go on… Enjoy

oops, posted in wrong thread… Thought I was in Qaz’s thread.

Measurements of time are based on suppositions. A redshift occurs whenever a light source moves away from an observer. The Red Shift used in astronomy to support Big Bang supposes a constant rate of expansion, going out from an initial explosion of all matter. But some scientists believe there was an initial rapid expansion in the first seconds at a very accelerated rate, before the steady rate that is now observed began.

Many years ago, in a secular science magazine, I read a physicist arguing that almost the entire distance outward currently reached by the celestial bodies could have been attained in the first milliseconds after an initial explosion, before those bodies decelerated to their current sub-lightspeed steady velocity. And he had math that showed his model to be feasible. Can’t find it now. But I’ve seen this again from others, since then. For example: “The Inflation Theory proposes a period of extremely rapid (exponential) expansion of the universe during its first few moments. It was developed around 1980 to explain several puzzles with the standard Big Bang theory, in which the universe expands relatively gradually throughout its history.” Suddenly we can go from 14 billion to a several thousand years, depending on the model.

Also, Red Shift assumes the speed of light is a constant, it assumes light has always traveled at the same rate, and it assumes that the light has not traveled through anything that may change its speed and/or appearance. But physicists have succeeded in both speeding up, and slowing down the speed of light! (See here, here, and here.)

Einstein hypothesized that at the speed of light, time stops. And that at greater than the speed of light, one could move back and forth in time. (I believe that the book of Revelation shows that the author, John, went forward in time.)

Radiocarbon dating techniques used in geology and archeology assume the atmosphere has had the same Carbon 14 concentration in the past as now. And it assumes a constant decay rate. However, there is evidence that radioactive decay rates and concentrations have not been constant in the past. Again, you can go from billions of years, to thousands, depending on your suppositions.

I think you would agree that it would be impossible for anyone to provide real scientific evidence for the origin of time, space, and matter. To discuss something’s origin, we must go beyond time, space, and matter, which takes us outside the realm of science.

Blessings. (PS I will also post this same comment in “Evolution, The Flood, and God’s True Nature.”)

I think it’s too early to tell, what changing the speed of light experiments show - or don’t show. We will have to see if future experiments, can show the same thing. And whether they can be easily replicated. Whether light can be speeded up or slowed down. For now, I’ll just keep an open mind.

I don’t think it makes much difference - theologically…whether we adopt evolution, old earth, and big bang…or some form of seven-day creationism. As long as it doesn’t radically alter - our fundamental theology.

Good discussion here.

I’m going to give you a way to understand the Law and I’m going to use the example of the Speed Limit. At some point in time, civil leaders acknowledged that they had to reduce injury and death on the highways, therefore, they enacted the Speed Limit and that law said to Obey Established Speed Limits.

Now let’s break this down a bit -

Spirit of the Law = Reduce Injury and Death on the Highways
Letter of the Law = Obey Established Speed Limits

Now consider your driving in your car and suddenly a tire falls off the back of some flatbed truck and goes rolling diagnally toward your lane. You know that if you slam on your breaks, the person behind you is going to smash in to the back of your car. But you can quickly identify that if you speed up the tire will pass between your car and the one behind you preventing any problem. However, by speeding up you break the Etablished Speed Limits which is the Letter of the Law. But, you also fulfilled the Spirit of the Law which is to Reduce Injury and Death on the Highways.

You see the Letter of the Law is provided to help you understand the Spirit of the Law. But the problem in the Old Testament is that the Letter of the Law became the Law. In other words, the image became the focus instead of what the image was a reflection of - The Spirt of the Law. Therefore, in the scenario I showed above, if you execute judgement based on the Letter of the Law, you would be guilty for having went over the speed limit. This is how the Letter of the Law can be used unjustly.

Now with Christ, He came and abolished the Letter because He provided a way for the Spirit to abide in us.

Col 2:14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;

and against your sense of rationality

Isaiah 45:7 “Former of light and Creator of darkness, Maker of good and Creator of evil (hebrew word Rah). I, Yahweh Elohim, made all of these things.”

ooooppps…

Are we going to go by emotional reactions and philosophy or scripture?

If God didnt create evil where did it come from? Why did He state He made it? And how will we be sure it wont slip through the cracks into the new heavens and earth if it so sneakily slipped past Gods eyes before?

We could try going by the words of the apostle John:
…in Him is no darkness at all.(I John 1:5)

And especially by the words of God’s Son, who revealed His Father’s character as no other had ever done:
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. (Luke 6:35)

By the way, all commentators that I have read say that “creator of evil” refers to the fact that floods, earthquakes, etc. are the result of God’s creation. There events are considered “evil” since often people die as a result of their occurence. There is NO scripture, even in the Old Testament that affirms that God creates moral evil.

Good response, Paidion, but it will fall on deaf ears.

You two have both advocated to literally throw parts of the bible out and call it man made! you,dave, for job said “it was a book written 4000 years ago that shouldn’t be taken literally”. paidion throws out anything in the o.t., despite God using evil in the n.t. too like the crucifix and revelations, that doesn’t fit his “God is always a warm and cozy teddy bear that never uses evil for his purposes of good”. because it doesn’t fit your theologies that you learn from “such esteemed theologians with hoity toity degrees from the top seminary schools”. You both would ignore Isaiah 45:7 because it’s a “hard saying” as Christ would call it. And you say I have deaf ears?! I try to Harmonize scripture as it is written concordantly. Not toss the extra verses away, like extra screws after a project, or add words to change what it plainly states.

If you both sharpied out what you consider man made and not inspired I wonder how much would be left… Lets take out the flood, let’s take out the war commands, let’s take out Isaiah 45:7,take out the plagues and killing of the first born in Egypt, definitely take out pretty much all of revelations for sure because woah that’s a lot of wrath…, lets take out the stonings for going against the law in the o.t., lets take out judgement cause that won’t feel too nice, while we are at it let’s take out the crucifix and all the verses saying it was Gods plan too because that was the WORST evil ever committed. There we made God out to be nothing but nice and cuddly. Why even believe in scripture when you just ignore it or twist it to say what it doesn’t when it goes against your man made philosophies?

If you seriously don’t believe it I dare you, cross out what you don’t believe is true and/or write in the words you think should be in there that aren’t. Go ahead. Change God’s inspired words to your liking. After all it’s what you are currently doing to justify your positions of a God who “never uses evil for His purposes”. Make sure to cross out the parts that attributes the evil, yet divinely ordained, work of the cross to God.

I’ll trust scripture over man saying it, or parts of it, aren’t true any day. “Let everyone a liar and God be true”.