A Christian, in the truest sense of the word, is someone who has accepted the gift of Jesus Christ taking the death penalty of our sin away from us.  That is the only definition of a Christian.

Yeah, well, God DOES forget.  On purpose.  Pretty neat!

Anyway, that's the gospel.  That's the thing that people have died for for ~2000 years now.  I would, if I were you, consider it much more closely than you appear to, because it's a big deal.  The Bible isn't about a code of ethics or a way to live - it includes that, but that's not what it's about.

I don't 'need' a robe wearing etc.  Why do you need a lab-coat wearing scientist to tell you about evolution, or even about why creation doesn't work?

Because, instead of doing it ourselves, we have others, even PAY others, to do the study for us so we can live our lives.  So I pay my pastor to study God's word full-time (as opposed to my part-time study, which is necessary!) and you listen to your lab-coat wearing scientists tell you about the way the world works.  How is it any different?

Hi GFT...glad your mom is doing better too.

My point about human corruption was primarily just to state that human beings do fail and fall and religion isn't a necessity of or the cause for that.

The point about the writers of the bible being fallible and subject to the same weaknesses is an excellent one.  I had the same concerns myself--even after being a Christian for some time.  It took some extraordinary circumstances for me to get a personal understanding there.

As to why I decided that "Jesus is the Way"--that requires a personal testimony--which is interestingly what the bible itself says is the only thing we have to offer the world regarding why we believe.  What you're really saying is, "Share your testimony" when you ask me about that.  I get that a lot but the fact is, most debaters actually don't want to hear that no matter what they say.  

Let me give it some thought and I may post an account of it in a separate thread or on my own site.  I'll want to mull it over some first.  That isn't something I flippantly throw out as a conversation piece--especially in a public venue of strangers with no real interest other than derisive inquiry.

Without explaining things but in way of some explanation:  the bible is given for the same reason you have someone take a message rather than tell you from memory what someone else said...or for the same reason a detective interviews multiple, prospective witnesses at the scene of the crime in order to assemble comparative notes that lead to clues through there details and similarities.

If the bible had been assembled "at a go" by a single person like Mary baker Eddie's "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures", "The Urantia Book", "The Book of Mormon" or the Quran I'd be more questioning of any trustworthiness of it.  What makes the bible interesting is that it is a thread of continuous thought that spans centuries and multiple societies and that no single portion of it is complete without the other portions.  That's a huge discussion in and of itself and I don't think I can do the research for it becasue it starts with ancient Jewish history and works to the present covering several academic areas.

Here's the simple solution:  the bible (as in the Old and New Testaments) presents Jesus along with a set of conditions required to personally discover him.  If someone follows those conditions or has experiences in life that intuitively lead them to follow them and then has an encounter that plainly says, "Jesus" to them...well that sort of gives credibility to the bible as a whole to that person from that point forward.

It's a bit like the Matrix: "Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is.  You have to see it for yourself.".

An encounter with Jesus isn't conditioned thinking or a religious meme stereotyped into a society (though these things exist).  It's an actual experience.

Most people ask, "What's your experience?"--few actually want to hear it.  Pearls and swine.

It's not contradictory to me, because I didn't make up the original nonsense meanings you attribute to it, such as 'God rested - therefore God got tired'.  Since I never added the 'God got tired' to the 'God rested', it makes sense to me that He rested because He was finished, whereas to you that contradicts his all-powerfulness spoken of elsewhere - because you made up some meaning first.

My Bible contains the only plan of salvation that doesn't require anything from man.  This means that Biblical salvation doesn't actually require any change of behavior in order to achieve it.  Think about that for a little bit.  Why would someone writing a fairy tale meant to change behavior have a salvation plan that doesn't require it?  One wouldn't do that.  All the other religions, all the other books, they all require some sort of behavioural change BEFORE salvation.  Not Biblical Christianity.  That's what sets it apart, and makes it unfathomable for the purposes you seem to attribute to it, and no human mind could ever come up with such a plan.

What I believe is impossible, can't possibly relate to you, is already fully understood by you and can't be true or believe? Not really much point in sharing anything personal there--which was my point beforehand.

O.K. 

I'd leave Jesus completely out of the equation and just define God as the Universe or Nature or Whatever if that lined up with my own experiences--but it doesn't.

As to the bible--it has to reflect my experience to be of any use to me and so far it has.  Go figure. Seems to really work for a lot of other people too--hypocrites aside.

We all choose.

You aren't having a conversation or discussion here GFT...you're simply talking out loud to yourself.  That's not why other people are trying to participate in these threads.

Actually psychology deals with the sensorimotor, emotional, and vegetative (as in: dealing in metabolic control) mind as well. There's where it overlaps with physiology and medicine, physics, information science. It also deals with social phenomena (as they contribute to build your mental outline) and there it connects with sociology, anthropology, linguistics, etc.

An interesting take on the subject of knowing and believing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_de_Finetti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_%28philosophical_gambling_strategy%29

Actually neither is true: psychology as studied by most is simply a collection of theories, but most is not all. Studied and practiced scientifically, psychology has answers for many questions, and many questions without answers. On the other hand questioning religious answers is a commendable activity, if you do it with high levels of objectivity and modesty. Infact, questioning is necessary.

Unfortunately, this isn't so. You do need a PhD to learn many justifications as to why stealing is wrong, and also, more than a PhD to learn to compare those answers and resolve the questions they pose. Of course, it is possible to get another kind of answer as to why you personally feel stealing is wrong, but that is not about causes, effects and reasons, but about affects.

It's a very complex matter. To simply put it, good and evil can be adjudicated to looking at the consequences with open eyes and open heart.

It's the communication style of a dictator.  What you say has no importance to what she says most of the time.  Mostly, she posts videos (relevance unknown) but sometimes she'll actually converse, and by converse, I mean she'll quote something, say it's wrong, explain why from her extremely limited viewpoint into Christianity as I know it, which is misguided at best and slanderous at worst, and then think she's won and I believe in 'magic'.