what's funny is that you guys are debating things that don't even matter.

we can not even prove that we exist, let alone anything else. who knows, you could even be dreaming this right now. you would have no way to prove it otherwise. what's best about this argument is that you can not prove that you do, in fact, exist. because everything you would use to prove it is predicated on the idea that you do exist.

that would be like defining a word using said word.

give up on pointless posts. except that nothing truly matters.

@Leauki:

This kind of approach to "God", religion, history n stuff that you have is the way I would very much like ALL people to have.

Because I could not more wholeheartedly agree to this statement:

The discussion with Leauki has been regarding my statement that OT Judaism ended in 70AD when the Jewish Temple and Altar was destroyed. I'm talking about the Judaism that Almighty God gave the world through Moses. As the coming of the Messias was the primary hope of Isreal at the time when Judaism was the one and the only religion of ALmighty God, Moses himself just before he died told the Isrealites "to hear" the PROPHET, Jesus Christ.

Leauki posts 240

Yet, you fail to realize that the Messianic Son of David during the present age or in any future age is an impossibility as there is no House of David, or tribe of Judah, in which a Messias or any other person could be born of. This is providential, as the Messias arrived in Bethlehem in the city of David as predicted by Micheas 5:2 in the exact time predicted by Daniel 9 and in the manner foretold by Isaias 7. 

Judaism of the Old Testament no longer exists. It fulfilled its mission when Isreal brought forth the Blessed Virgin Mary, her Divine Messianic Son, Jesus, the twelve Apostles and the thousands upon thousands of converts who formed the membership of the infant Catholic Church. It is an indisuptable fact that the conversion of Jews is based upon love of not denial of the religious faith of their fathers of old in Isreal. My point all along is that faith no longer exists or rather has blossomed forth into the "new covenant made with the house of Judah" as predicted by Jeremias 13:31.

Some call modern Jewry a debating society and if you would like to continue this discussion, Leauki then I would offer this...

The Judaism of Moses, the only genuine Judaism, is based upon eternal unchangeable, God-given principles...therefore, they cannot rightly be "added thereto, nor diminshed" according to Deut. 13:1 to fit the Judaism that you claim to follow.

Those principles are set forth in the Torah (Pentateuch). The Torah makes plain the fact that the Judaism of God is of an authoritative, priestly, sacrificial character. The Book of Leviticus deals with the God -instituted priesthood of Aaron, of the tribe of Levi. 7 chapters deal with the various kinds of sacrifices followed by 3 chapters that deal with the solemn consecration of Aaron by his brother Moses. Leviticus tells in detail of the duties of the Aaronic priesthood, the sacrifices they were to make to God for the people of Isreal (and I'm not referring to the modern state of Isreal!).

It's the Jews of old who were God's chosen people, keepers of GOd's laws and determiners of of their application that atonement comes through blood which is the life of the flesh. Lev. 7:11. No one, but no one speaks with Torah authority today in either the Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, or Reconstructionist divisions of present day Jewry. The Jews of today have Rabbis, not priests. Period. The priesthood ended with the Temple.

*get's a bowl of popcorn*

I was responding to his point of view. If there was nothing, then where did everything come from. If there was a "primordial soup" or whatever you want to call it, then where did that come from? The question is still there no matter which way you look at it. It's just something that people refuse to think about or think is unimportant. It's up to them, believe what they will, just saying there's always that question and we dont' have an answer for it yet.

From my own point of view (which is more or less the current scientific one), it didn't come from anything.  If you had a video tape of the history of the universe, and you were watching it on high speed reverse, when you got to the very beginning of the big bang, the tape just stops: you've hit the beginning of the tape.  You wouldn't be able to keep rewinding before that point, and you wouldn't see a scene where someone or something is standing somewhere and creating the big bang.  There is no time to create anything before the beginning of time, and there is no space to create it in before the beginning of space.  Everything that exists started in that first instant of time in that first point of space.

There's also a similar theory in science that also sounds reasonable to me, though it's a little harder to explain if you haven't studied relativity.  Some scientists instead think of it in terms of time dilation, which would mean if you were watching the tape in high speed reverse, as you got closer and closer to the very beginning of the Big Bang, where everything is just starting to explode outward from the center, the video would keep getting slower and slower, and you'd just end up watching the tape forever as it became slower and slower, without ever reaching the beginning of the tape, or ever seeing the exact beginning of the Big Bang... you'd only keep getting closer and closer to the beginning of the explosion by tinier and tinier fractions of time.

Yep. Time is an attribute of the universe, and as such does not exist before the universe.

And there you go again, telling me what my beliefs must be.

Why on earth would it be an impossibility? There is a House of David. Why do you think that family would have ended? Heck, there are thousands of Jews who track their ancestry back to King David. And while that is not proof that they are indeed from David's family, neither is your belief that they are not. Their word is as good as yours; better, actually, since at least they COULD have the correct information whereas everything you say about Judaism including the House of David is just made up completely.

And now there is no tribe of Judah either? Now isn't that surprising... I am of that tribe. My tribe doesn't exist? Really? What do you even know about the tribes of Israel? (And I mean _know_, not _capable of making up_.)

Again, since your ignorance on this subject still won't stop you from making stuff up and since truth is so important to you and hence I don't want others to live with the untruths you tell them about Judaism.

Rabbis have the same authority to speak about Torah as priests, or as anybody. You are confusing Israelite priests with Catholic priests. Jewish priests do not and did not interpret Torah.

I see you are also fairly resistant to learning about the divisions of Judaism as you still list Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist as "divisions" of Judaism despite the fact that for the purpose of the validity of scripture, those are quite irrelevant as the correct divisions are, as I said, Rabbinical, Karaite, Samaritan, and Ethiopian. But I don't think I will ever see you even mention those since you seem never to learn and instead simply keep repeating what you already "know" or what you can make up as you go along.

Rabbis are not replacements for priests. They have different jobs. I don't expect you to understand their relation to each other. But I do expect you not to tell others about them when you clearly have no idea what either status entails.

Meet the Samaritan High Priest, Mr Elazar ben Tsedaka ben Yitzaq:

http://shomron0.tripod.com/2004/feb26.html

He became High Priest in 2004. I think you can reach him by mail in either Nablus or Holon (near Tel Aviv) in case you are interested in informing him that he doesn't exist or that the Israelite priesthood has been "replaced" by rabbis or something like that.

MAKESHIFTWINGS POSTS #284

Someone else on another thread described it as:

the only way I believe in the Big Bang is .........God said it, and Bang it happened!   

I usually say that "I believe in the Big Bang, I just believe that it was God that said Bang!" or something along those lines, but there was someone else that came up with that particular quote... KFC maybe....

MOMMIE4LIFE POSTS

The Big Bang theory is pure imaginative bunk....it violates physical laws and common sense.   

And yet, we've seen that it isn't something that people refuse to think about....as a majority of scientists today have accepted that nothing packed together tightly, condensed somehow into a single tiny spot and then it decided to explode producing neutrons, protons and electrons that somehow hurled themselves ourward at incredible speed and formed themselves into atomic structures of hydrogen and helium atoms.

On the contrary, the theory holds up so far and correctly predicted several phenomena now confirmed.

Again and again I find that you know little about religion or physics.

As for "common sense", is it really common sense to assume that if G-d created the world, the act of creation would not have looked like an awesome gigantic explosion in which the world comes into existence from nothing?

Well, now you've got me confused. I guess it must have been KFC then. Genesis follows the Big Bang theory as long as you see that the "day" designation is a period of time instead of 24 hours. After all how long is a day to a being that doesn't die or before there is day and night? It was put down using a system that the people of that time could comprehend. Kind of like explaining it to a child.

No, the Big Bang is scientific fact.  We can see the echoes of it still in the universe; we can measure when it happened; we can observe the effects of it in the expanding space around us.  No one in physics today denies the Big Bang, so saying it violates physical law is a little ridiculous.  Whose physical laws are you referring to?

The only matter of contention is how and why it happened.  No one thinks that it DIDN'T happen.  If you want to find a place to stick God into the mix, then the only place it really makes sense is as mommie4life said, that God made the Big Bang happen.

Even then you'd run into some trouble scientifically speaking, since there wasn't actually a space for god to be in or a time for him to be at, but you'd have an easier time being taken seriously by just saying God can sidestep those problems because he's a god, than you would by claiming the Big Bang didn't happen.

And as a side note... if you think the Big Bang violates common sense, just wait until you start reading about general relativity and quantum physics.  That's when most people's common sense gets torn to shreds 

I don't think any argument can be made or supported claiming that any particular scientific theory violates common sense - I know people claim many things violate common sense, to the point that common sense is a relatively nonsensical phrase. When I have had people tell me that my own experiences (I'm not talking supernatural stuff, just day-to-day social interactions) violate common sense I have to question whether the phrase common sense is even a coherent concept, or simply a way for some people to dismiss experiences they have no personal connection to.

As for violating physical laws - one wonders which physical laws you have in mind? This is a pretty heady claim, and it virtually requires citation. Read up on it first if you think you've got the chops to discredit it completely.