a lot of the misunderstandings about Christianity come from a lack of wisdom about human nature

I think a lot of the misunderstandings about Christianity come from a lack of wisdom about human nature.

One of the core truths: Humans are inherently sinful apart from God.
Or, if you're an atheist and prefer to see it this way, humans are ultimately not capable of leading truly righteous lives on their own, less so than they think.

That's what it comes down to.
If you don't believe human nature is inherently sinful then, naturally, it's hard to see a need for a Saviour.

 

Why should I or anyone else believe that human nature is inherently sinful?

Note: do not use the Bible as proof.

 

It has now been shown that chimpanzees can and will lie. I'm guessing lying is sinful. If chimpanzees are inherently sinful, aren't humans?

 

If you've been on the earth long enough and seen enough things, you'll begin to see this.
It's a facet of wisdom, and you don't need a theology to tell you this.

Now there's countless accounts of kings of Israel and Judah in the Bible and what they did when they held absolute power. Viewed as a purely historical account, it demonstrates even the best fall victim to human nature.

 

Speech is required to "Lie"....deceit is a different story.

 

You can look at this in a different manner too. The person who is ruled over, and is oblivious to what the ego is, will always sin. For that is what the ego does, as it seeks self gratification, which hurts others.

Therefore, being with god, allowing him into consciousness, is in effect the transcendence of this ego. This, when it happens, can be called salvation or enlightenment. And once this happens, the ego loses its power, as one becomes aware of its very nature, and that awareness changes consciousness fundamentally. You are no longer propelled to sin. You are acutely aware of consciousness, including the remnants of the ego, which is now understood on a deep level. This changes man. For when one is no longer ruled over by the ego pursuing pleasure, the state of being is different, and some people say god now lives within man. But it is a metaphor, IMO.

 

Why would God create being that were inherently sinful if apart from God? That's really narcissistic. He creates a group of beings that will inherently disobey the rules that He created unless they follow Him, and then have the ones that don't follow Him tortured for eternity. Kind of a jerk move.

 

Chimps have different vocal signals to signal danger or otherwise communicate. PBS had a program that featured a scene where one of the younger members of the tribe found a nest of eggs, which it would lose to one of the larger, older chimps if discovered, so it LIED and gave the "snake" danger signal, sending all the other chimps into the trees in alarm, so it could eat the eggs undiscovered. The voice-over guy said if the chimp had been discovered lying about the snake to eat eggs, it would have been severely beaten, but in this case, it got away with it.

 

Like I said.

 

Why is lying sinful?

 

I'm not going to take it on faith. Provide proof. And do not use the Bible. Saying I have to believe in the Bible in order to believe in the Bible is the most idiotic circular logic that Christian peddle.

 

If I have to explain that to you, you are far more sinful than someone who lies and knows it is a sin.

 

'sinful' compared to what? (in nature).

 

So when Christians lie to their children about Santa Claus, they are sinning unapologetically and will go to Hell?

 

Wisdom also brings with it the relinquishing of the ego-driven refusal to accept one's mortality.

 

Dogs will lie their way out of trouble.

 

MOST people are evil because MOST people believe have an invisible friend ("god") that is so savage that he will send people to get burned alive for, get this, just not BELIEVING in him. That's pure evil.

 

I looked up "wisdom" in the dictionary, and there's a picture of crank.

 

They'll LATER admit the truth about the Santa lie to their (older) children, they are not being evil in telling about Santa. But they won't later tell their children that JESUS is not actually real, so they are evil when it comes to THAT lie.

 

Sounds like most Christians are delusional, Questerr.

 

If you lie to someone to save someone else's life - is that a sin?
For example, Nazi come pounding on your door asking for a Jewish person - and you lie and say they aren't there ... a sin?

 

But since the god of the Bible is sinful HIMSELF* that's not really true.

He "blesses" people who smash babies against rocks, and most of his followers care too little about what they teach their impressionable young children that they can't summon the moral courage to print versions of the Bible w/out that Psalm (137:9) - or more likely, they APPROVE of anything their god would do because they can't think for themselves, so they leave it in.

 

That's a very noble act, but they are just delaying the brutal torture that that innocent Jew will receive - since "Jesus" (worse than the Nazis, of course) will see to it that that same innocent Jew will be savagely tortured in a "lake of fire" in a few years (after they die.) Even the barbaric Nazis rarely put innocent people in a burning lake of fire, so Nazis seem more compassionate, more loving, more ethical towards Jews than this "Jesus" guy.

 

Because the Bible says that slavery is GOOD, raping women is ACCEPTABLE, and lying is BAD.

 

If the kid has two fathers, or two mothers, then yes, those parents will certainly "go to Hell" according to 1 Cor. 6:9-10.
(But, uh, that has nothing to do with a jolly elf.)