Wow. Must be a Catholic test. Breaking one commandment will send you straight to Hell.

If that's the case then what's the use in trying anything else?

LOL and no matter how you answer you're a lying evil bastard. I love it!

Hey, I passed. I'm not going to Hell. Now where are those 72 virgins.

It says I'm going to hell. Dang. I guess since I'm going there anyway, maybe I should drop the remaining pretenses and start having a bit more 'fun' in my life if you know what I mean.

"Perhaps you feel safe because you don't believe in Hell. This can be likened to standing in the middle of a busy highway and shouting, "I don't believe in trucks!" Your belief or disbelief in trucks will not change reality. The same applies in this situation. Your disbelief in Hell will not cause it to cease to exist. God has given us HIS WORD on the existence and purpose of Hell..."

My head asplode! I thought I'd seen some pretty specious arguments before, but that's just fucking insane...

Well it's not specious, really, it assumes that Hell is real becuase it is an absolute Truth in the eyes of the arguer.

Anyway the flaw in the test is that it just assumes that you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior (it's not even a qeustion on the test) and therefore no matter how you answer the test you are going to Hell because you are obviously ignorant of the reason of Christ's sacrifice (which is why they don't even bother to ask you that before condemning you.)

Way to love, Christians!!

>>>>
7. Have you ever looked at someone and had lustful thoughts?

The Seventh of the Ten Commandments is "You shall not commit adultery." If you've ever looked at another person with lustful thoughts, according to God's standards, that makes you an "adulterer." Jesus said, "You have heard it said, You shall not commit adultery: But I say to you, that whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart." (Matthew 5:28) In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, God says that no adulterers "...shall inherit the kingdom of God."
>>>>

The human race is DOOMED one way or the other.

"God has given us HIS WORD on the existence and purpose of Hell..."

I've never heard God tell me (or anyone I know) about the existence of hell.

++Your belief or disbelief in trucks will not change reality.

Wanna bet? If I believe in trucks, in reality, I am sane. If I do not, the reality is that I most likely am not. So my belief or disbelief in trucks does in fact impact reality.

I don't think this is what Jesus had in mind.

Last week I would have been concerned about going to hell, but the test has shown me that I am going there no matter what I do or how I live my life. I have no control in the matter at all. No matter what you do, you are going to hell where you will be punished. This reminds me a lot of the times in school and summer camp where I wolud be blamed for things I didn't do. I would deny I did them because I truly had not done them and then I would be punished double hard because I 'refused to admit what you done'. So you learn to sit there and accept your 'punishment' for something you didn't do because the person beating you is bigger and stronger.

This test really has made a difference in my life. Now that I know the pain and torture that is coming when I die, I want to make sure I have as hedonistic and pleasurable life as possible before then so that I will at least have some pleasant memories to comfort me as I am being tortured with the rat cage or whatever other things they have in store for me.

Yeah no shit Rich, this is sure to be a real boon to young people everywhere. Good job these guys did with this.

I still marvel that hateful, spiteful, self-righteous, self-assured people like this consider themselves Christians.

I love this one:

"The Bible tells us that no one has kept this commandment (see Psalm 14:2-3) -- if you said you had, you have also broken the 9th Commandment by lying."

Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

Dear God,

Please protect me from your followers.

Love, Dana

"Your disbelief in Hell will not cause it to cease to exist. God has given us HIS WORD on the existence and purpose of Hell..."

Well, sorry old chap, but unless He is willing to put that in writing, signed and registered, with witnesses, I'm afraid we can't accept it.

You see, we have developed this annoying habit of not making deals based on anyone's word. Frightful sorry, and all that...

:)

Pharisees, those people.

>Pharisees, those people

Yep. Made me think of the Pharisees that tried to trap Jesus in little semantic sin games. Those types upset him more than anyone else.

It seems to be impossible to go to heaven as far as I can make out. If you say no, you didn't break the first commandment, it accuses you of lying and says you're not good enough to go to heaven; if you say you did break it then you're apparently still not good enough...

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

"7. Have you ever looked at someone and had lustful thoughts?"

I wonder how far they can push this crap before all the followers just gives up on it because it is impossible to follow.

Did you notice that all the selection buttons following "Your Score" are Grey and Black. The grey looking "disabled" but still working. Geee, I wonder where the thumpers want you to go?

But see Mat the trick is to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and then you go to Heaven, but the test doesn't ASK you whether you've done that, because what they really want to do it trick you into being "GUILTY" so that they can preach at you.

Very Christian of them... (sarcasm)

Yup - if the outcome of a test does not depend on the answers to the questions, the test is irrelevant.

Ah, right, using trickery to guilt people in to worshipping God. You're right, that *is* just what Jebus would have done...

I'm assuming you're being sarcastic, Mat, otherwise I'd ask you to provide some examples where Jesus ever tricked anybody into anything.

Does it not say in mat:14:34

And jesus extended his finger unto paul and said "Pulleth my finger, brother". And paul gave jesus' finger a pull and as he did so, jesus passed wind noisily. And there was much rejoicing.

Why do you insist on calling Him Jebus? From now on, I'm going to spell your name wrong. How bout if I add the second 't' in your name that is sorely missing? Better yet, I'll go with gnat. It ryhmes and you're both a nuisance!

Oh yeah? Well *I'm* gonna misspell  as  , so there!

I call him Jebus because I watch too much TV, specifically Simpsons and Family Guy. It's also supposed to *avoid* offence as if I say something nasty I'm not really talking about the Messiah, I'm talking about some guy with a similar name...

(Jebus does crop up in the Bible, although it's a place and not a person -- it became Jerusalem after David moved into the fortress of Zion.)

That Matt sure is a fucking moron. :-)

Touché! :)

Better have a go at these people, too... :)

http://www.jebus.co.uk/

Sigh. The idea of this test is to try to demonstrate that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Thus all need forgiveness -- and the Messiah brought us that forgiveness.

However, it is a ham-fisted, awkward, condemning, legalistic approach toward trying to demonstrate all need forgiveness. In the process, you're just as likely to conclude there IS no forgiveness, so why behave well?

As Dana said, Lord, please protect us from your followers, who in their ignorance and self-righteosness keep people from You.

Allan -

I said all that already.

Love,

Mups

Wow, muppet, I'm so glad we agree for once. Now I can have a nice weekend.

Wow, the best part of the Catch 22 on the worshipping other Gods issue is using Psalm 14:2-3 as the proof. Dude, that's a *song* about a time when God judged some men. How do you take a passage that says "God looked down and saw at that Instant that none were worshipping him" and turn it into "God decreed that it was not possible to live your live without putting him on the back burner to another God."!?!

My favorite "proof of other gods" passage was where He told one of His followers to go into the area ruled by other gods, and not to worry because He would protect him. (capital H's provided solely for pronoun discrimination purposes.)

I'm no bible scholar but I am pretty sure the concept of burning in hell for all eternity for one's sins isn't there. Most of our concept of hell was developed in the middle ages and later.

Also, I don't think there is a commandment against lying. Isn't it bearing false witness against your neighbor? That is a subset of lying. You cannot claim your neighbor did something he didn't but you can claim you have a twelve inch penis.

Just my interpretation.

It depends on what you consider to be the Bible. If you're talking about the Old Testament + The New Testament, then yes. But there may be some stuff later on... Acts, Letters, Revelations that has that stuff.

The Jews don't really believe in much of an afterlife (or so my Jewish "Bible as Literature" teacher told me in high school).

What I want to know is: Are there orgies in Heaven?

Oh, and God lied in the Bible. When God was talking to Abraham and told him that he would have many children, Sarah (Abraham's wife) said something like "Him? He's so old he can't get it up." God said something to Sarah about her being a disbeliever, and when Abraham asked God what she said, God lied to spare Abraham's feelings.

Genesis 18:

[12] Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?
[13] And the LORD said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old?

If someone tells you that they've never lied in their life, well they're lying.

I'm lying right now.

Mark, I don't think the "shall I have pleasure" phrase has anything to do with "getting it up". I was probably more likely a turn of phrase relating to a woman's pleasure of being a mother. Remember, back then, having children was very important - you could be ostracized for being barren.

Besides, he must have "gotten it up" to have Isaac.

Yeah Mark, get your head out of the gutter. Not everything is about sex. You and Aaron need to be castrated.

If you believe in evolution then, really, everything is about sex.

AHA, even if you didn't believe in evolution, going forward, there wouldn't be much happening without sex.

This is what my Bible As Literature teacher told me. Are you more of an expert than him?

Without sex the world will be exactly as the fundamentalists want it. All humans will either be in heaven or hell and nobody had be murdered to do it.

Without sex, EVERYBODY would be in hell...

Well, yes, but without sex, we wouldn't have little children. And without little children, I don't think there'd be anybody here after about 100 years.

That's what did in the Shaker's, you know. Nice chairs. Dumb ideas.

There are enough people in the world that we could not have sex for 100 years and be simply back at the population levels we had in 1800.

MarkTAW, Are you saying 1 out of 6 people alive today will live until 2105?

"1 out of 6 people alive today will live until 2105?"

Plus they'd need to still be capable of producing children and raising them, so really they'd need to be living until 2120 at the earliest. That's some oooooold people!

Ahh, but Mark, soon after that (all people being older than 100, and not being fertile any more) even if they made love like bunnies, everybody would die out.

And even if by some miracle some old broad did get knocked up, who'se going to raise the little tykes?

"And they named him Adam, and they named her Eve..."

>> Plus they'd need to still be capable of producing children and raising them, so really they'd need to be living until 2120 at the earliest.

I had the same thought, but then, he didn't say we'd be at that population level for very long ...

MarkTAW: who said God wasn't allowed to lie? He's the Creator, right? Safe to say the same rules don't apply to Him...

Not saying it's not backwards, but the logic is as fair as it's going to get on this topic.

Depending on whose estimate you use, it's closer to 1 in 8 people.

... you mean I'm not allowed to smite people???????

>> Depending on whose estimate you use, it's closer to 1 in 8 people

Yes, indeed. Depending.

CIA:
July 2005 est.
6,446,131,400
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2119.html


Population Reference Bureau
In 2000, the world had 6.1 billion human inhabitants.

Population growth accelerated. The population climbed to about 760 million in 1750 and reached 1 billion around 1800

http://www.prb.org/Content/NavigationMenu/PRB/Educators/Human_Population/Population_Growth/Population_Growth.htm

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html

1800
Low Estimate: 813
High Estimate: 1,125

(in millions)

"[12] Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?
[13] And the LORD said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old?"

I don't see a lie in here.

Paraphrase, maybe.

"shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?" == "Shall I of a surety bear a child"

???

There's no 'lie' there. Sheesh!

Here's another translation (New Living Translation):

She laughed silently to herself. "How could a worn-out woman like me have a baby?" she thought. "And when my master--my husband--is also so old?"

http://www.beth-elsa.org/sms101102.htm

We also tell white lies to promote harmony and good will among people. In two weeks, our Torah portion will record a white lie that God Himself told. Throughout her married life, Sarah had a difficult time conceiving. When she was 90 and Abraham, her husband, was 100, God sent messengers to inform her that she was about to become pregnant and to give birth to a son. Sarah was stunned by this news and began to laugh. Here is what she said: "Now that I am withered, can I have pleasure, since my husband is also old?"

When God reported Sarah's reaction to Abraham, God changed Sarah's words. Listen to how God quoted Sarah: "Shall I indeed bear a child, seeing that I am old?" In actuality, Sarah had said that Abraham, and not she, was old. God deliberately misquoted Sarah and omitted Sarah's mentioning Abraham's advanced age to preserve their domestic tranquility and happiness. Even though the ancient Rabbis stated that the seal of God is truth, they looked favorably on God's lying to Abraham to promote peace within the family.

http://urj.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=2106&pge_prg_id=14243&pge_id=3720

God tells Abraham that Sarah laughed at the thought that she would bear a child at her advanced age. Abraham questions Sarah about this, but she denies that she had laughed. Notice that God changed Sarah's words. God tells Abraham that she laughed due to her age and not because Abraham is old (which is what she said in her original statement). This was to prevent Abraham from getting angry with Sarah. The women's Yiddish commentary to the Torah, Tzenah Ur'enah, teaches that it is from this story that the Sages learned that for the sake of sh'lom Bayit, a peaceful home/family harmony, a harmless lie is allowed.

http://www.ashrei.com/emetcomments.htm

When Sarah hears that she is to have a child, she laughs and says, “Now that I am withered, am I to have enjoyment--with my husband so old?” When God repeats this comment to Abraham, God rephrases it, saying, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying ,’Shall I in truth bear a child, old as I am?’ ” That is, God changes Sarah’s comment about Abraham’s old age to be a comment about her own age, so that Abraham is not offended by his wife’s words regarding him.

http://www.bibleanswer.com/lie.htm

II. "If the words you use are "technically" true but designed to imply an untruth, is it still a lie?"
3. cf. Abraham and Sarah - Gen. 20:1-2, 3, 11-13. The implication was clear - and false.

http://ahaba.org/pastatrquestions.asp?id=40

Question: Dear Rabbi, is it permitted to stretch the truth or even lie in order not to hurt someones feelings with the truth? also, when dealing with shidduchim how much positive information should be offered(clearly one should refrain from any negative comments)?

Answer: The Torah relates that when Sarah Imenou heard that she would have a child with Abraham, she was in disbelief claiming that Abraham was too old to conceive. However, when God related what she said to Abraham, he told Abraham that Sarah was in disbelief because she thought herself to be too old. Rashi comments on this change and writes that one is allowed to change an uncomplimentary fact for the sake of peace between husband and wife.

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/economic/friedman/DivineHumor.htm

In the next selection we see that God is diplomatic and is careful not to cause friction between husband and wife.

The School of Rabbi Yishmael taught: Great is peace, for even the Holy One altered what was said for peace. It is written: 'Sarah laughed to herself saying ' My husband is old.' God, however, said to Abraham: 'Why did Sarah laugh and say ' I am too old.'

Sarah was eighty-nine years old and laughed after hearing that she would have her first child because she felt Abraham was too old . He was ninety-nine. Apparently, even at her advanced age she was reluctant to admit to herself that she was old. God did not want to cause trouble between man and wife so he told Abraham a white lie. This story also demonstrates that truth is not always the best route in human relationships. If God can tell a white lie, sometimes we should too.

etc. etc. from http://www.google.com/search?q=god+%22white+lie%22+sarah+abraham

reaching.

big time.

c'est la vie. If you want to burn in hell for telling the truth, you go right ahead. ;-)

"I am withered, AND my husband is old" -- sounds like she's saying SHE's old AND he's old. Or, perhaps, not that she's OLD exactly, but so "withered" (I assume an effect of age) that she expects she's not fertile.

As you keep stating and re-stating what God said to Abraham, you seem guilty of of the same "lieing" through mis-stating you accuse God of.

And where did the idea that this passage is about telling lies come from anyway? Sounds like you're trying to read more into the purpose of the passage than is there.

And where is God required to tell everything he heard from Sarah to Abraham, anyway? What if God told Abraham EXACTLY what Sarah MEANT, instead of the exact words that she used?

As I recall, Abraham didn't believe she could get pregnant either. I read this passage more as people having a hard time believing God when what he tells them seems "against nature" -- and reacting with laughter. Since they're not struck dead at this, I assume it's saying reacting with laughter is OK.

"And where did the idea that this passage is about telling lies come from anyway?"

I told you, my "Bible as Literature" class in High School, and apparently a lot of other places, those were just the first half dozen or so hits I got in Google.

I am familiar with the family harmony issue, it's in the footnotes of every footnoted Pentateuch I've seen. The footnotes do not say that God lied however.

Also, this is totally different than your earlier argument that Sarah was talking about sexual pleasure.

To paraphrase in modern english Sarah said, How can I get pregnant? I am old and so is my husband. God then said to Abraham, "Your wife says she is too old to get pregnant." The argument you are making is that God is lying here. That is a strange argument. What is he lying about? Sarah did say she was too old.

I believe I originally said that Sarah said that Abraham "couldn't get it up," which amounts to the same as "can't have kids."

Sexual pleasure aside - that seems to be a translation issue of whether or not "pleasure" means sexual or the pleasure of having children - the argument is the same. The words God said Sarah said, she didn't say.

Let's put it this way. If you were at the Pearly Gates, do you think kind of slipshod attitude with the facts is going to get you into Heaven?

Well Mark, all I've left to say is this… If I have to choose between myself, a teacher, a scholar, an interpretation or God's Word, I'll choose God's Word every time. That being said, Ps 33:4 tells me "For the word of the LORD [is] right; and all his works [are done] in truth."

Which translation of God's Word are you going to go with, bpd? Or do you go with the original, untranslated version?

I'm just curious, since it can be really tricky to make a good translation. It generally requires some form of interpretation.

What language does God speak, anyway?

Hebrew.

Aaron, if only I knew Hebrew & Greek! :-) Alas, I do not. I don't go with any single translation, although I usually start with a New Living Translation.

As to God's language of choice, when He speaks He does so through the leadings of the Holy Spirit. Not a language per se, but that doesn't preclude the use of communication in any of the "usual" languages.

Right. So when you have to choose between the different translations, each with their subtle differences and nuances of meaning, who chooses the right one to go with?

What exactly happens when the wrong one gets picked?

Aaron asks, "[...] who chooses the right one to go with?"

The reader makes the choice as to which one, if any, to go with.


"What exactly happens when the wrong one gets picked?"

Misunderstanding.


If an understanding of the original language (to say nothing of the cultural climate) is not available, the reader may compare translations, use a concordance, compare scripture with scripture and/or be open to the teaching of the Holy Spirit (John 14:26). Of those options, the last one is really the best.

"My parents were Seventh Day Adventists Hoppists. I have many a fond memory of hopping around the Christmas tree. See, my parents took the Bible literally, but there was a type-o in theirs, so it read 'The most important qualites are Faith, Love and Hop. The most important of these being Hop.'"

- Arnold Rimmer BSC, SSC.

'I believe I originally said that Sarah said that Abraham "couldn't get it up," which amounts to the same as "can't have kids."'

That may be what you believe Sarah to have said, but if SHE believed it, why did she tell Abe to screw her hand-maiden to provide a child?

Maybe instead of lying, God told Abe what HE believed Sarah to have meant... which, being God, he probably knew better than you, me, and possibly even Sarah.

"That may be what you believe Sarah to have said, but if SHE believed it, why did she tell Abe to screw her hand-maiden to provide a child?"

The incident with Hagar was 13 or 14 years (and two chapters) earlier, when Abraham was about 85. By chapter 18, Abraham is 99.

Of course, after Genesis 17:24, it's no wonder Mark doubts Abraham can "get it up". ;-)