Bentley wrote:

The whole problem to begin with is, that anyone can claim to be a preacher or a christian, there is no requirement of credentials, no documentation requirement, no education requirement, no age requirement, no IQ requirement, no previous background checks, no qualification requirement, no nothing requirement, any person living, can claim to be a preacher or a christian.

Why do we allow people to self-claim these titles?

How long will we continue to let just anyone claim these false titles?

Why do we let a little book written over 2000 years ago, tell us how to and live and think?

Are we so insecure in 2006, that we have to have a book written by insane men, tell us how to live?

Anyone out there want to be a preacher? go for it!
No requirements?
Just pretend that you talk to an invisible god and he talks back to you?
No questions asked, they will believe you!
Just be sure to ask for money!
Lets all claim to be a preacher, why not?

I'm a preacher, he's a preacher, wouldn't you like to be a preacher too?

As long as you claim to be a preacher or a christian you can get instant forgiveness from jesus 24/7.

Lets all claim to be a preacher or a christian, why not? That's the way to go, we can do no wrong, how can we?

I'm a fundy, he's a fundy wouldn't you like to be a fundy too?

Preacher Ben, the christian.

posted: June 23, 2006 EST  

Anonymous wrote:

The problem is, that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
Everyone who considers themselves a Christian, those who speak to the one true living God, ought to pray for the repentance (or, if he has never been saved) the salvation of this pastor.

posted: July 23, 2006 EST  

Yay for jesus wrote:

No! This man has lead so many souls to christ, but of course he was molesting little children along during this time, but no matter, the important thing is that those people were brought to christ.

Even if the preacher was naked and well, you know...as long as people were accepting christ during this moment.

I suppose jesus was molesting little children while he was saving people souls and preaching and performing miracles, no matter, so long as people souls get saved is all that matters.

Christians are not perfect, just saved!

posted: July 25, 2006 EST  

ref presbyterian wrote:

Ben, this is one of those times, though, that the pastor has a seminary degree and ordination through the presbyterian system. He was not self-titled. In some ways, it makes the story more tragic. He has been under discipline by his denomination since April, and cannot preach or teach in any church. I must point out to Yay that even though this man's crimes are hideous, there is no evidence presented in court or anywhere else that he has ever touched a child.

posted: July 26, 2006 EST  

Beauti_from_Ruin wrote:

Ben... your right there are some false prechers and it's really sad. My advise is to look at christians individually. Some are hypocrites, but if you check out the Bible Jesus hated that! That's not what being a true christian is about, sadly alot of christians dig their own graves. I am a christian. I don't know everything. I don't think I'm always right. I don't judge people. So I just ask for he same respect in return. Your right, but just look at christians individually. We're not all like that.

posted: August 19, 2006 EST  

Anonymous wrote:

yay for jesus said...


actually jesus himself said..."It would be better for a man to be thrown into the sea with a mil stone around his neck than to cause a little one to sin."

I was a student of Pastor Bob's (as we all called him) at a christian school. He was inapropriate many times with some of the kids in class, but the other teachers wouldn't believe us when we tried to tell them. They always said we were lying. I know God is looking out for us because he brought Pastor Bob to justice. No one at my school would help us, but God stoped it when no one else could. Pastor Bob was a smart man, he knew how to pick just the right girls in my class, he fooled everyone, but God saw everything and he was watching out for us. He also is making sure the is justice for all the little children that were exploited in the photographs.

posted: August 19, 2006 EST  

Shelly wrote:

Ben???

Previous Background Check???

The whole point of christianity is to save sinners.

There is no sin too big for God.

You can't say. "Oops. sorry you're too sinful and disgusting for God."

He's more powerful than that.

posted: August 19, 2006 EST  

Bentley wrote:

Anyone ever noticed how God can somehow find the time to call preachers to preach and beg for money, but he just can't find the time to help little innocent children from being raped or starving in other countries?

Take 9 year old Jessica Lumsford in Florida for instance, millions of people were praying for her safe return through their knowing she was missing by TV, but God could not intervene with her captor, God could have caused that man to have a stroke or a heart attack or caused a tree to fall on his head, no one would have known that God secretly intervened and could have saved this little girls life, but No!!! God was too busy calling the Billy Grahams and Benny Hinns to collect money for God's work.

You Christians can kiss my ass!!!!

posted: August 19, 2006 EST  

Kevin wrote:

Ben,
I know you are a liberal but think of this. The liberal talking points are that conservatives are mean-spirited.
The comments you have been making are beyond mean-spirited.
Liberals claim to support free speech but are the first ones to shut down any conservative view points.
Drop the hatred of chritians! If you wrote blacks in place of christians in "you christians can kiss my ass" the whole world would come down on you.
Sinse it is a christian, liberals have no problem with their hate speech. What hipocrits!

posted: August 19, 2006 EST  

That "Ball" Guy wrote:

The main difference being that people are born black, or white, or whatever race.

To be a christian is to adopt an unhealthy philosophy in the same vein as the KKK. If we put "KKK" in place of christians, you'd be all for us.

posted: August 19, 2006 EST  

boomSLANG wrote:

Beauti_from_ruin said:

"My advise is to look at christians individually. Some are hypocrites, but if you check out the Bible Jesus hated that! That's not what being a true christian is about, sadly alot of christians dig their own graves. I am a christian. I don't know everything. I don't think I'm always right."



Beauti,

In one breath you confess that you "don't know everything" and are not "always right", but in the next, you imply that you somehow "know" that you have the proper interpretation of what makes a "true Christian". I hope you see the contradiction here.

The concepts in the Holy Bible are too scattered, incohesive, contradictory, and non-sensical for it to be some sort of acid test for becoming a "true Christian". It's not like an algebra test---one where you either interpret the data correctly and pass, or else you fail.

Like all religions, interpreting Christianity is purely subjective.

Take care.

posted: August 19, 2006 EST  

Bentley wrote:

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

posted: August 19, 2006 EST  

Bentley wrote:

To Kevin and Christians....

How come you never addressed my main most important point????

You bring up some useless trash involving liberals and conservatives!!! I care-less about Libs-consers. I am neither, I claim no titles.

Now would you kindly address my main point if you can keep focused from trying to sound politically correct, which has nothing to do with the whole topic on this tread!!!

Care to try anyone?????

"Take 9 year old Jessica Lumsford in Florida for instance, millions of people were praying for her safe return through their knowing she was missing by TV, but God could not intervene with her captor, God could have caused that man to have a stroke or a heart attack or caused a tree to fall on his head, no one would have known that God secretly intervened and could have saved this little girls life, but No!!! God was too busy calling the Billy Grahams and Benny Hinns to collect money for God's work."

Give it your best shot!!!!!

posted: August 19, 2006 EST  

Shannon wrote:

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

posted: August 19, 2006 EST  

Shannon wrote:

Ken, I’m with Ben. Tell me how could your all-powerful, loving god just sit and watch Ottis Toole sexually torture then behead, six-year old Adam Walsh? I guess Ottis, there, was just exercising his free will. It’s seems odd that he just didn’t use it to turn away from (your) god but he used it to trump over Adam’s free will.

Your god sucks. The end.

posted: August 19, 2006 EST  

David wrote:

To Ben,

It is called free will. Sometimes it is great but sometimes it is a bitch (forgive the cuss). People have free will. They can do what they want, be it for good or evil. Think of it this way; you live in America, you want to have a beer but you can’t buy any because the government has deemed it bad for you and thus illegal. You can’t drive a car because so many people die in accidents every year. Poverty is a problem so to slow its growth the government makes it illegal for people below the poverty line to procreate. Rape is a problem too so all men have their penis’ cut off at birth to prevent it. All pregnancies may now only occur in a lab and with prior government approval.

This may seem extreme and you may think it doesn’t relate but it does. I don’t know why God seems absent from certain situations. And where do you draw the line? Where do you want God to step in and where do you want Him to mind His own? From what I have seen, He comes where He is invited. That man who violated that girl probably didn’t want God in his life. People want free will, and a world will total free will is a world where this type of thing can exist. Would you give up your free will to ensure that these horrors never occur again? Because that is what it is going to take.

Dave Poole

posted: August 22, 2006 EST  

.:webmaster:. wrote:

The point, Dave, is that there is no god.

Think about it. If God is omnipotent, then he could have created us so that we would want to do the right thing all the time. Since we would want to do those right things, we would be freely choosing to do those things. As it stands, I have very little control over the things I want. What I mean is this: Do I decide that I want to eat, or does hunger drive me to eat? Do I decide to have sex, or do hormones drive me to it? Can I decide to NOT be attracted to the opposite sex? Can I decide to never feel hunger?

Some things are within our ability to choose, but I cannot choose what I do or don't like. If I like ice cream, I cannot choose to hate ice cream. I can choose not to eat ice cream, but I'll still like it. I cannot choose to have a different sense of humor than the one I was born with. I cannot choose to have musical talent, or an artist bent, or to have perfect vision, or to be smarter, or a million other things I might want to choose. I cannot choose to float in the air, or breathe unassisted under water. I can only choose between a few options.

Since my freedoms are already so hampered, I see no reason a loving, omnipotent god would find it difficult to so wire humans that they would like to do good stuff instead of doing bad stuff to each other. Since people do seem to enjoy doing remarkably harmful things, it appears a more naturalistic explanation is in order. As the entire animal kingdom is pretty violent, so it is fairly obvious that we are all just fancy animals. And it is obvious that your god is just a myth.

Besides, if freewill requires the option of wickedness, then I guess no one in your god's heaven has freewill, so that blows your entire premise.

posted: August 22, 2006 EST  

boomSLANG wrote:

Quote: "From what I have seen, He comes where He is invited. That man who violated that girl probably didn’t want God in his life."

Remarkable. It's bad enough that the whole point was over-looked, hence, why we see the whole argument from the presuppositional POV that God exists---but now it's accompanied with such statements as the above.

I don't believe in God(s), but for argument's sake---did it ever occur to you that during the 10 or 15 minutes when that little girl had a smelly drugged-out 180lb man on top of her just pounding away, that maybe, JUUUUST maybe, she "invited" your God to help her? Additionally, even if we assume for a split-second that she "didn't want" your God's help, what kind of "God" would yours be if they would stand there as a by-stander while such a horriffic act takes place, just to make a point? Hell, even the mortal parent intervenes against their children's wishes. Why?.....because their child's safety comes BEFORE anything else, and that includes lessons, and egos.

The Christian biblegod only exists in concept, and that is a lame concept.

posted: August 22, 2006 EST  

David wrote:

To wm,

You’re right, God could have created us to always be good; and you could have crippled your children so that they would need to love and depend on you for their entire lives as well. But you didn’t. You would rather have your children chose to love you, and chose to be with you. I think God did the same thing. What satisfaction is there in people ‘having’ to love you? It cheapens it.

And get real with the ‘only a few options’. No, you can’t choose to have artistic talent or whatever, but you do make thousands of choices everyday. And I make no claim to know what heaven is like. Maybe we don’t have free will. I have never died and became an immortal spirit before so I have very little experience to draw from.

Dave Poole

posted: August 22, 2006 EST  

freeman wrote:

Dave Poole,
I think you are missing the biggest point in the parent child relationship.

If one of my children became a murderer, I would be extremely disappointed as a parent. I would feel let down. I, however, would never stop loving them. I could and would not pull the lever for the electric chair. I could not even administer the leathal dose to end their life peacefully!

Yet, this christian god goes way beyond "just punishment" and condemns one to endless torture! Don't you get furious when a person is arrested for having a child on a leash in a closet malnurished! That is a cake walk compared to what your god is capable of doing to one of his "children".

Unmercyful, unjust, uncaring!
This is not my parent!

Thank god (pun intended) it is all ficticious!

posted: August 22, 2006 EST  

boomSLANG wrote:

Quote: "You would rather have your children chose to love you, and chose to be with you. I think God did the same thing. What satisfaction is there in people ‘having’ to love you? It cheapens it."

Interesting. I'd rather my children, spouse, friends choose to love me too..... but only if they genuinely WANT to---not because they're afraid not to.

'Talk about "cheap".

posted: August 22, 2006 EST  

.:webmaster:. wrote:

DP said: "...You would rather have your children chose to love you, and chose to be with you. I think God did the same thing. What satisfaction is there in people ‘having’ to love you? It cheapens it."

So it is better to threaten you children with eternal torment for being exactly the way YOU created them? I'm sorry Dave, I really don't see your logic here. Of course I would rather have my children love me of their own free will, but if they don't, I would never torture them, even for a few minutes. If they don't love me, then they are free to live their lives without me. I would feel pain from that, but I wouldn't wish them harm. Like I said, I don't follow your reasoning in justifying a heavenly father who is so pissed off about not being loved that he insists on everlasting torture.

Now, you have no idea of what heaven might be like. How quaint. Do you have any idea what hell will be like? If so, isn't that interesting that you would have a pretty good idea what the threat is, but have little comprehension of the reward? And more interesting that you would find that acceptable. I wonder if you would be so accepting of an employer who threatened you for not working for him or her yet gave you little or no real knowledge of the rewards of his or her employment.

Again, freewill is an supposedly absolute imperative in meat life, but in ghost life it's meaningless. That's interesting too.

posted: August 22, 2006 EST  

.:webmaster:. wrote:

However, Dave, what any of this has to do with a Pastor standing trial on porn charges, I can't imagine.

posted: August 22, 2006 EST  

David wrote:

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

posted: August 22, 2006 EST  

David wrote:

To wm,

I don't remember saying anything about hell or consiquences (sp). You spoke about God creating us to love Him, and I likened it to us creating children to have to love and depend on us. Please don't stretch what I said beyond what I intended. I have no idea what hell or heaven will be like. I just know the heaven is the prize and hell is the consequence (sp?). Before I was 17 I never had sex but I knew it would feel good. And I don't have to get punched in the face to know that I won't like that. I don't have a good idea of what the treat of hell really is. Maybe it isn't as bad as everyone says. I don't plan on finding out though.

Dave Poole

posted: August 22, 2006 EST  

David wrote:

To wm,

This tangent has nothing to do with the original post. If that pastor did what he is accused of they should throw the book at him. I was simply answering Ben’s challenge that he posted on the 19th. If you can’t ‘imagine’ that then that’s kind of sad.

Dave Poole

posted: August 22, 2006 EST  

.:webmaster:. wrote:

So you don't take the Bible as authoritative on the subject of hell?

Interesting.

What I was trying to illustrate to you is that the descriptions of hell in the Bible are quite detailed, while the descriptions of heaven are down right scanty.

The other idea I was hoping to get across is that love does not bribe with a carrot and threaten with a stick. That's more like ownership. Ask yourself this: If there was NO promise of eternal life in heaven, or threat of hell, in the Bible, would I still be a Christian? If the answer is no, or maybe, or I don't know, then the mutual "relationship" you have with this god is not one of love, but one of "quid pro quo."

Oh, and don't worry, you won't go to hell, because there is no such place. You will, however, go to the grave, as will we all.

posted: August 23, 2006 EST  

Post a Comment | Create a Link | Post in the Forums | Permalink

Quickly catch up on comments posted to various articles on http://exchristian.net by clicking here. Keep track of comments on this topic with .