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Friday, February 10, 2012

Short Conversation with Dr. James Merritt author of “God, I’ve Got A Question”


This is a short conversation I had with Dr. James Merritt on his Facebook page for his book. He is the author of “God, I’ve Got A Question” subtitled, “Biblical truths for Our Deepest Concerns” The conversation started with me commenting on his post, which was…"Any claim from Jesus has validity only if He was who He said He was--the Son of God." --Dr. Merritt

Remember the Facebook page is named after his book, “God, I’ve Got A Question”, and I have some deep concerns.

Ted Musk) My question would be, why didn't Jesus at least write a book in the New Testament when he was here? Instead the New Testament wasn't written until 50-80 years after his death and we know how good people's memory can be just after a week...think how different the stories must have changed 50-80 years later.
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God, I've Got a Question) Archeologists have more than 5,600 original texts from which the Bible came, making it more accurate in terms of written history than any other document ever written. It was written by more than 40 men over a period of 1,500+ years. Christians believe the Bible itself, as God-inspired, is a living testament, and miraculous in its teachings and its origin.
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Ted Musk) How do they know those original 5,600 texts were accurate? Does that mean that verses such as Deuteronomy 22:28-29 is also accurate? It says, “If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father.  Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.”
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God, I've Got a Question) It's always dangerous to take verses in the Bible out of context. You must know not only language, but the culture of the time, the author and what God is trying to teach through the particular passage. Christians spend a lifetime studying the Bible and learn from it each and every day, more and more, over and over again. Christians believe the Bible is wholly accurate and without error. We place great trust in the Bible as God's Holy Word. But it is a difficult book that can rarely be taken at "face value". Your questions have to do with the origin and trustworthiness of the Bible. So, to explore how the Bible we have came to be, I'd recommend reading "The Word of God in English" by Leland Ryken or "How the Bible Came to Be" by John Barton. Both books are good primers that give perspective on how the Bible got from an oral history to an authoritative written word.
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Ted Musk) Are you saying I took that verse out of context? All I did was quote a verse just like we would quote John 3:16. If I took it out of context can you please clarify it for me? If God is never changing and is the same back then as he is now than should we still be living by that law? God doesn’t care about culture, and no matter what culture we live in his morals would not change.
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God, I've Got a Question) The context is that the five books of the law (Genesis through Deuteronomy) lay out rules specific to the ancient Hebrew culture. God does care about culture--He created all of them at Babel. I think it would really help to understand how the Bible came to be, as that would help you to understand why some verses seem odd or even cruel. The Old Testament is law, poetry, history, prophecy. The Bible says it will in itself seem foolish to those who do not believe it when they read it. Belief comes hand in hand with understanding what you are reading in Gods Word.
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Ted Musk) If God's goal is for everyone to follow him, why would he create the Bible to seem foolish to those who do not believe? Why not make it seem moral and wise so that people will want to believe... that seems like the smarter thing to do. And if God is the one who created culture, and it is our intolerance of others culture that creates many of the wars... does that mean God was the cause of those wars? Sorry for all the questions but your answers are causing me to have even more questions. But you make it seem like God created different morals for different cultures... and morals should be the same no matter what culture or time in history you live, especially if God is the one who determines these morals.
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Dr. James Merritt then deleted me from his page and deleted this conversation. I always try to keep an open-mind and am willing to discuss these topics with anyone, and am always being encouraged by my family to keep looking for answers for the many questions and concerns I have for a belief in God. But it is these types of conversations that confirm that my lack of belief in God is the correct one. I’m continually being let down by those who claim to be experts and knowledgeable about God.

After he deleted me from his page, I can’t help but wonder if he knows he is selling lies, but is continuing to sell them since they are lies people want to believe. Afterall, they are extremely easy to sell and become very profitable (it is no different then someone going to a psychic/medium and being told things they want to hear). Although I’ll assume he believes it to be true, but I still wonder if he comes away from the conversation asking himself "Could my beliefs about God really be true", or does he just try to forget the conversation ever happened? If you delete someone for asking a question shouldn't that be a sign that you don't know as much as you think you do? The reasonable and logical reaction is to at least question or have some doubt, right? It is easy to seem like an expert around people that listen and agree with everything you say.

I think the most disturbing part is that he is a pastor and deleted someone who was asking some serious questions about God. He didn't just stop the conversation by not responding back, but went even further by deleting me from the page - which could possibly mean (in his view) me going to hell. And for what, so he wouldn't look bad and could sell more books? If so, that doesn’t seem very moral to me. Dr. James Merritt is a pastor and his job is to lead unbelievers to God and I was giving him this opportunity. I guess his real job is to sell lies that make people feel good and in return collect 10% of his church members hard earned money each Sunday.  

wouldn't normally call out a pastor for not being able to answer a question about God (that would make for way too many posts), but because of the way this pastor cowardly deleted me from his page when I was simply asking questions, I felt the need to post my experience. 

28 comments:

  1. i believe in jesus but i have experienced much the same attitude when i ask questions. i think it is a result of a particular mindset that leads to a complete misunderstanding of the ancient styles and genres of writing that exist in the bible, quran and other ancient holy books.

    but being that the bible was a cobble of ancient books from various writers using varying modes in vastly different circumstances over an incredibly long period of time? im not sure it was ever meant to be what dr merritt and so many others believe it is.

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  2. I get the same "out of context" replies from pastors and people who seem to repeat them. It is the only way out for them to quickly dismiss obvious contradictions that it must hurt to admit to have followed for so many years a flawed, and obviously non-divined book, especially those that have devoted their entire life to it, and practically speaking, LIVE OF IT. So, most of them rather lie to themselves and continue with cherry picking what sounds divine to them, than to admit, change and correct so many years of bad history. My verses are very much in context every time I pick them just like any other Christian when they pick their verses as well. I mean, really, how hard is to pick things in context? You really have to work hard to pick something out of context out of any book, and it is rather obvious when you do that. Why is it that any Christian, with no history and cultural expertise, seem to have no problems picking verses in the Bible in-context, but all non believing experts in history and culture ALWAYS pick the verses out of context? :-)

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  3. It looks like his Facebook page now isn't even allowing people to comment. Interesting that an author of a book claiming to be able to answer tough questions doesn't allow questions.

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  4. Wow. I see why you have a hard time talking faith and Bible issues. To delete an entire conversation on a public page because it perhaps doesn't go in your favor...?

    In the Bible, God gave the Hebrew people a specific set of laws to set them apart from other cultures. They were to be different, and others were to notice the difference. The behavior was strict and the punishments stricter. The Jewish culture was the one that God was specificly working through to bring about salvation from the fall of man. Wars and intolerance between cultures are typically the result of the sinful nature of man chasing our own desires. This is actually played on when Jesus appears in the NT, and speaks and teaches to those outside of the Jewish culture, who often looked down on or would not consort with other cultures.
    It's not uncommon for God to work through the sinful acts of man to accomplish good things toward salvation. Jesus was put on the cross by men that didn't follow God at all, and in doing so accomplished his purpose. Weird.

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  5. If God existed and was so powerful, why did he only reveal himself to the Jews and not everyone else in the world. If it was because other cultures wouldn't listen to him, why would God think humans could do a job he couldn't? And if people say it's because the Jews are God's chosen people, then God would be extremely immoral to create a civilization then pick a favorite and send the others to hell to be tortured for eternity! Doesn't make much sense, and anyone who believes it has to sacrifices their reasoning skills to justify their belief.

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  6. Why didn't God just not put the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" in the middle of the Garden in the first place? God promised salvation to Adam and Eve in Eves seed crushing the head of the serpent. That "seed" was to ultimately come through the Hebrew people, meaning that they had to be set apart. And while God could have easily zapped everything he wanted into happening, his intentions for us mere humans was to choose to place our faith in him to accomplish his will on his behalf. This is a running theme in the stories... that the characters typically fail or cause more trouble for themselves when they go out of God's instructions to accomplish these tasks on thier own. This happens with Abraham, and Moses, among others. The running theme is "faith." There is no test of faith if God just zaps everything into rightness for you. How God, as a just God, accounts for those who never knew him is up for debate. Romans 5 mentions those that never knew the law were not held accountable.... but were still subject to the penelty of death sin brought into the world. (I don't have an understanding of that yet...) I would think it completely moral to offer Jesus Christ as the path to salvation that crushes sin, but is still up to us to choose to accept it by faith. And you do have to sacrifice your reasoning skills to do so. That's the point. To finally turn down the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and choose life....

    At least I'm trying and not just disappearing... right?

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  7. I can't tell if you believe god exist or not, your pointing out the ridiculousness of it as well. Are you arguing the existence of God? If so, I don't see how a moral God would make us sacrifice our reasoning skills in order to believe in him. That seems more like satan if he existed (but he doesn't exist either). The ignorance and intolerance in the world acts as "evil" and makes it seem like satan does exist.

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  8. I do beleive. Take a look at the Bible again. God asked a guy to build a giant boat with no land around. He asked a guy to leave his homeland and move to this other land with nothing and even though he and his wife were old they were going to have a child that would create a great nation. He told a virgin she was going to have a baby who would be a blessing to all people. Reason is constantly replaced with faith. Many of these figures questioned with reason or even tried on thier own merits but ultimately followed through with faith. To have faith in Jesus is to put your hope in him as having paid the price of sin for you, something impossible to accomplish on ones own. The Pharisees struggled with this in the Gospel because they kept the law so well. They were expecting the messiah to vindicate them, not contridict them. Reason vrs faith.

    It seems satan's ultimate function in the Bible is to turn us away from faith, to our own reason, where we embrace our own goals and our own desires, and ultimately our own pride and selfishness. This is where people cause suffering to others for thier own gain, and you see it all over the world in small degrees and large ones.

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  9. Correction above...No sea around, I mean.

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  10. I'm having a hard time taking you seriously. I think you are a poe. But if you value faith over reason, do you still believe the earth is flat? or the sun orbits the earth? because if not you are using reason and you shouldn't be doing that as a Christian. I do think you are secretly mocking Christianity, but if not you are making a better case that god doesn't exist than I am.

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  11. I'm trying to give you some answers better than "you've just taken the verse out of context...." But it's interesting that you find this to be mocking my own faith.

    Let's take a look at the world that tries to shed religion. This has been attempted recently in governments that practice communism, who's leaders ended up killing millions of their own people while forbidding worship. Yet you argue the world would be a better place without religion. What's your opinion there in those cases? Christian missionaries? Not so scary. The teaching of Jesus to love one another? not so scary. You say that God isn't real, but "sin" or acts of evil or hurt seems to be very real.

    I'm not trying to have fun with you. You've asked questions and invited the debate.

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  12. I really appreciate the debate and trying to give me answers, but once you have already admitted that your stance is unreasonable I think the debate is over. I'm not willing to believe things without reason.

    But I'll be happy to try and answer your questions. If you can be more specific on what countries or parts of the world you are talking about I could better answer your question.

    I do argue the world would be better without religion. It is a fact that countries with a higher percentage of atheists have less crime, at the top of that list are countries such as Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. Check it out for yourself. Also, 99% (if not more than that) of prison inmates in the US are religious. Less than 1% are atheist.

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  13. Whoops. I didn't mean to make an unreasonable stance. You asked for reason, and my take is that God has us do what he could easily do in order that we can grow in character, and grow in faith. He's not a helicopter God. He didn't create us to serve and wait on us. Perahps I went to far into the faith portion in the answer... so I offer this quick retry, which at least has some reasoning to it. After all, what do kids learn from their parents if the parents do everything for them?

    Stalin, North Korea, China, all situations where religion was or is prohibited or very limited...

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  14. See I have never heard someone who is serious about their belief say, "whoops". It was a good effort though.

    I don't think you understand how North Korea really works, Kim Jong-il was their God, and they all worshiped him because they are all brainwashed. They are taught he never went to the bathroom, he had 11 holes in one in his first round of golf all kinds of crazy non-sense. So I don't see why you brought North Korea up? I also don't see why you brought china up either. There two main religions are Buddhism and Taoism and Buddhist are basically atheists but are taught how to live through teachings, and I really don't know much about Taoism to be honest. But you are claiming they are allowed to have a religion and they are. So again don't see why you brought China up. And btw, I think the US has about twice as much crime as China.

    With Stalin, he was an atheist but he wasn't driven to do the things he did because he was an atheist. With or without religion, you'd have good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion. Stalin was simply just a terrible man. Plus, I don't think you want to play that game, because for every bad atheist you can name, I can probably name 20 christians/religious people just as bad.

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  15. You can give me 20 names of Chrisitians who are just as bad but they aren't Christians. When it comes to "sin," or behavior and choices that promote greed, selfishness, and self adulation, Christians and Athiest are typically in the same boat. Christians are to admit to being sinners, while Atheist tend to try to prove thier moral creditiontials. We all falter though.

    Religion doesn't make good people do bad things, as you like to say. People make people do bad things and they will use relgigion as one tool to make that happen. Not only by suggesting punishmnet, but also suggesting rewards that appeal to greed, selfishness, and self adulation for carrying out an evil act. An individual who hasn't studied scripture could be easily mislead by someone if they believe them without studying themselves. The Bible states to read and study it's words. Someone who commits an evil act for a religion, any religion, know it is wrong, but have let themselves be lead by different motivations and given themselves entirely to them. An open mind and understanding is required of following a religion. The Bible doesn't say "do what your pastor says..." It says read and follow the word.

    Jesus does not teach such things. Evil acts are not taught, nor is there a reward for performing them. Judgment and condemnation are not to be done. Giving is to be done quietly and not bragged about to bring honor to yourself. Imperfection is admitted and not redeemable on our own self righteous actions. Salvation is not based on works but on simply accepting the gift of forgiveness and passing it along and seeking it from others in your daily life as best you can. Anyone who thinks they can buy prayers from TV preachers or pray for wealth and thier own self interest from God have never probably bothered reading the Bible except for maybe a few versus that can indeed be taken out of context.

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  16. Atheists don’t admit to being “sinners” because it is a made up term by the church/religions to draw a line of what is right and wrong defined by their own doctrine. Since atheists don’t follow any of these ancient doctrines we don’t use the term “sin” to determine what is right and wrong. Example, it is not a sin for a Christian to stone an unruly child, but secular law would say that is not moral/right thing to do. Although, it is rare to see something like this happen today, 3000 years ago that would have been acceptable by Christians.

    Also, I would go even further with your last statement. Most people who are Christian and believe the Bible to be completely accurate and inspired by God, also have probably not read the Bible except for the good parts that devotionals guide them too.

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  17. Jesus also said that he did not come to bring peace, and that if you don't have a sword then sell your shirt and buy one. And if your hand causes you to sin, then cut it off. Oh yes, and love him above all else including your own family. And if one of your family members refuses to follow Jesus then you are supposed to treat them as an enemy.

    They all seem like rather evil acts that Jesus did teach.

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  18. Sorry to nitpick, but 3000 years ago there werent any Christians.

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  19. haha Craig your right, sometimes it becomes hard to keep everything in their religion straight.
    But the belief in the God Christians now believe in did "exist" 3000 years ago. And that God is also Jesus, so I guess Jesus had to exist 3000 years ago but Chirstians weren't yet called Christians because they didn't know Jesus existed yet... because God has always existed therefore Jesus also had to exist right?

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  20. This is why we christians pray for the unsaved in that you would ask,seek,Knock. For wisdom and Knowledge comes thru the Lord Christ Jesus.

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    1. I'm not sure what you are trying to say? Because I have asked and seeked, and in doing so I realized their is nothing real about Christianity, it is the same as all other religions - a delusion that attempts to make us feel good. I could sacrifice reason in order to believe but if I did that I could just as easily believe in any other god.
      Wisdom and knowledge does not come from Jesus, and James Merritt is evidence of that, otherwise he would have had some better answers and not deleted me when I was asking him a question.
      Contact the Clergy Project and ask if they asked and seeked. They desperately wanted it to be true, but they now know it isn't which is why there are 100's of Pastor's that are now atheists.

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  21. Ted, i c u r struggling or rather concerned abt the same issues im concerned with. May b we can attempt to figure them out by drawing from each others resourses. Most of my folks r christian but cannot answer my questions satisfactorily hence my bid to search out for myself wherever i can find what the truth is...

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  22. I think we shd begin with the arguments for and against the existence of God since all the other questions seem to hinge on this argument. Unless u have a better start up argument...

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    1. I'm no longer struggling or concerned about these issues, I'm confident that I have found answers to many of the questions I first started asking myself. However, I always stay open-minded and am always willing to discuss any topic. Is there something in particular you want to discuss?
      I suggest, if there is a topic on the blog that I have wrote about that you want to discuss more - make a comment on that post so others can follow the conversation. If there is a topic I have not discussed on the blog, post a comment on the facebook page so I and others can discuss it there.

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  23. Good for you. I am still searching. So let me ask first abt what u consider or believe accounts for the existence of the universe or matter in a broader sense.

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    1. So what accounts for the existence of the universe or matter? First, I don’t think we need the answer to this question in order to believe in a god or not, because even if we never know how the universe began it doesn’t tell us which of the 1,000’s of religions is correct. So if we don’t have evidence for the god we want to believe in, there is nothing wrong with not believing due to lack of evidence. Especially if we think that the god is a moral god, because it would be immoral to ask people to believe something and not give them evidence for that belief.

      But to answer your question, I think the Big Bang Theory is the most plausible explanation, because we can measure that the universe is expanding. So it makes sense to believe it started from one point. As for accounting for matter, we have never seen nothing, even space is something so matter could always exist but in a condensed form and it is more plausible that matter which is not intelligent has always existed rather than an intelligent being/god always existing because that just brings up the question of how did it always exist. But I’m not a scientist, so I would suggest reading “something from nothing” by Lawrence Krauss or watch a lot of youtube videos of him or Neil deGrasse Tyson if you want to know more.

      So I’m always curious how theist find the blog? I started it to help encourage theist to ask questions they have always been afraid to ask. So I’m glad you found it, but how?

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  24. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  25. ey ..I am say an upcoming atheist. ..in india.....and I will say I have to fight a lot of gods in order to become one.......but my journey began when I started to pray and it didn't happened ....so I started hating god.....later on when science and logical reasoning showed me wonders of universe ...I came clear there was no god like thing....and when i looked out to other religions they too had the same drama going on ....a god comes tells every1how live up their lives and punishes madly if neglected ....and the blah blah..(i was a little unwell cause I am not able to explain clearly what I am able to see why there is no god like deity ....may be I am not matured enough) but I am definite of what I am seeing ....and that why choose to become atheist. ......no one forced me....no one gave any comments......I came up with my own merit to choose this path..., and when I looked around ....I saw I was not the only one there are several people ...like me.....what you discussed was truth......people too blind with emotions and hope of happiness ....that they need a superman to bank upon......a god like deity which puts everything in perfect position for them ......and that what we have to fight against when we are trying to preach atheism and science to these people.....and it will be hard ....cause they are not able to deffrentiate bet ween moral values and...their mixed bag of lies and morals of their religion. ....made to look..do...see...and kill as per the book says...and yeah ...the best evidence they all have is a BOOK ...i mean all of the religions......claiming god existed and thir god made this world ...and they told to write them BOOKS... (definetly the god were dealing with less advanced race...otherwise why not just email them .?..)..and when they wrote ....we all want to belive in a talking snake ....a flying monkey....a prophet who slahed the moon into halves ........and the reason to belive is that they force you to belive that.......and when asked questions ....SINCE THEY DONT HAVE LOGICAL REASONING ...THEY SAY.....Faith?....have it......yup A BOOK THAT HAS ALL ANSWERS .......i wonder why scientists are playing at the CERN LAB....wasting time and money ...they should read the book ....

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