When you see pictures of Jesus praying...

Hotdog!

I'm very serious about what I post.

It's an analogy Bill.

More of a parable ::::rimshot::::

It was honestly funny and I think got Kendra's point across quite well.

Eh, not really, Bill. I have no issue with people believing in ficticious (IMHO) characters. My nephew believes in the Easter Bunny, Santa, the Tooth Fairy, etc. - so, clearly I don't have an issue with it.

What I have an issue with is people of faith who so strongly believe that thier way is the 'right' way they try to force others, who may or may not be believers, to live by thier rules through legislation.

Call me insensitive or crazy, but I don't like it when someone tells me I can't live with whomever I want, can't adopt children if I want to, can't be married to my partner of almost 9 years - all because they feel that they are 'right'.

That's not actually it for me. The fact that I don't think there's any valid evidence to support the existence of God (or Jesus for that matter) is actually a side issue. The main thing for me is that neither the Christian god or Jesus meet a standard that I find worthy of worship. The Old Testement God was a bit of a bastard... cruel, intolerant, violent, and a huge megalomaniac. He commanded that disobedient children be stoned to death along with adulterous women and lots of other really intolerant things (not to mention eternal suffering in the lake of fire for all non-believers). Jesus came along and put a more human and tolerant face on God but he still did things like ask that all those who would not worship him be brought before him and killed. I wouldn't elect someone to the PTA who'd ever said something like that (even in jest) so why would I worship a God who did? If the only reason is that he's all powerful then you could use the same reasoning to worship anyone or anything sufficiently powerful to kick your ass no matter how big a monster they were. I can't condone a religion that holds its god to a lower standard of behavior than it would hold an elected official (or janitor for that matter). I don't understand how people can overlook that stuff. I don't bow down to tyrants, and being omnipotent is no excuse.

I must have missed that passage in my bible-study.

Chip, you're really taking that passage out of context here:

Matthew 13:37-42
37He answered, "The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. 38The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, 39and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
40"As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Anywho...For me personally, believing that Jesus is the Son of God, who died for my sins and trying my best to be nice to people doesn't seem like too high a price.

Thing is, if you're right & I'm wrong...what have I lost? So I've spent my life believing in a fairy tale (as you all think it is) that has given me comfort in the belief that there is something better after we die.

But if I'm right & you're wrong....

Then I'll see you ALL in HELL - and drinks are on me!

Then i'll prolly be glad to have not worshipped a being petty enough to give humans free will then dump them in hell if they choose not to believe.

How is it going to be better? Will it be comfortable knowing that you're dining at the table of someone or something that's torturing millions? I couldn't accept that even if it involved 72 virgins licking whipped cream from my nipples all day long. If you're wrong you've lost nothing, but those who are being opressed by Christianity, whose civil rights are being denied, whose science is being replaced by mythology, they have lost a great deal.



Dunno... Enjoy your afterlife comfortable in the knowledge that you serve a master who's torturing a large percentage of humanity in a lake of fire? I couldn't do it. I'm sure you see it from a very different perspective, and I respect that. I just personally can't wrap my mortal brain around it.

Maybe if someone goes to heaven and then decides they don't like what's going on, they will have a revolution, and then we'll have a Republic of Heaven.

We could vote angels or regular dead people as representatives and then bog everything down in protocol and bureaucracy, so that nothing gets done (and the living can get on with whatever they've been doing for ages and ages). Form an alliance with Hell, which will have all the good bars and the best libraries (dead tourists!).

Yeah, that sounds good to me.

I wonder who I'd vote for, for President of Heaven.

Well, ignoring the fact you've ignored my earlier question, i'll try again with another one that hopefully you will not ignore this time:

The bible was compiled by various people with a strong agenda, by combining scrolls and stories into a single compiliation. Originaly, these stories and scrolls were separate, passing down from generation to generation. Who are you to say that these people did not twist anything in the process of the bible compilation, or that any of these stories did not get twisted even before they were compiled?

Infact, who are you to say that meanings did not got changed as well during the various translations from one language to another? Do you know how many words and terms are mis-translated between the armani, hebrew, and latin versions? You'll be surprised.

2000 years is a very long time.

And if you want to know my background on the subject: I am jewish, I live in Israel. They force us to study the bible in school, high school, and have a final exam about it - in the original ancient hebrew. I'd say I probebly knew a thing or two on the subject.

The divine Jake of course.

Well, i know that, but i was a bit surprised anyway: check this: how many english versions of the bible are there?

For the record, this thread oppresses buddhists.

"Just curious... which bits of Evolution didnt make sense and required a leap of faith?"

I'm sorry Crystal I didn't intentionally ignore you. Well how about we start with the fossil record as in how incomplete it is? Or how about when genetic changes are introduced to to an organism in evolution it means the organism gets some great trait enabling it to adapt to it's new environment, except when we observe them happening now they almost always destroy and hinder the organism not help it. (notice I said almost, I think there have been a very few that have benefitted from it I would need to look further into this.).There are many other issues and even scientists who subscribe to evolution agree there are some problems with the theory.Just like there are issues with Christianity that some people can't get past.

I believe the Bible was written by people down through the ages under divine influence and when I read it it is what God has guided down through the ages to be the book in my hands.

Who am I??? I am a person with beliefs. Who are you? A person with different beliefs. Is there any problem with that? You make sound like I don't have any right to believe anything or that what I believe is irrelevant. And perhaps it is to you. Thats ok. Again it is your personal choice. I won't knock you for it.

Well now, there's a coincidence, Kris. Look what I posted yesterday in another thread :
/120/12/64503/1.html#post675671

Participation in virtual worlds can genuinely help you with that first awakening glimpse. Or should I say re-remembering glimpse. But don't try too hard. It's probably better overall to take the world as it seems - no need to go trying to peep behind the scenery.

Ever thought how predictable and unexciting the miracles must have been
to Jesus * ?

How boring it must be to be God ? Where's the surprise element? Where's the achievement, the possibility of failure ? No wonder He pretends to be us, and puts up barriers to prevent us realising it.


The more clearly you see, the harder it is not to sound crazy. A blessing, really, or we'd have too many of us loonies being listened to. A deliberate protective mechanism, so that only those genuinely interested hear anything of significance at all.

Everyone else just laughs or sneers. Feels superior. Everyone happy.

__________________________


* Jesus is named entirely without prejudice on whether/what/who he was or wasn't. Representative "God performing miracles" see ?

Amen ahkenatan. Glad I'm not the only one on this thread who feels that way.

You know, i'd be the first person to admit that the Theory of Evolution isn't perfect. We only have skulls of humanity showing somewhat of a gradual change from neolithic to now, and various fossils popping up of extinct animals, or animals with changes and similarities to ones now (birds and dinosaurs are a good example of that). This of course, can have many explanations, but the most logical at the time being is that creatures advance and adapt to their enviorment little by little as the tectonic plates of the earth shift and new temperature climates arise. So in short, Evolution is still a Theory, but a good one.

Now, to me mind you, if I was faced with the decision (and I was actually) of deciding whether I subscribed more to a theory of evolution with the facts and evidence they have there, or that the world was created in 7 days by a male god making large parts of the world section by section then adding animals and people and so on. I would go for the evolution. But obviously you chose otherwise and I respect that. But some people, and this is what ticks non-christians off (and vice versa really) don't. They say, the bible is right and you are wrong, or evolution is right and you are wrong. And THAT is what people hate, because you know, one way or the other you have no conclusive proof, just facts and beliefs.

I can however, tell you why I believe the way I do.

Firstly, and quite possibly the most important thing about god is the problem with evil. In the bible, it is stated that god is good. But how do you define good? Certainly, a god who read good through the eyes of humanity would have protected us from our Hitlers, and Stalins, and Hurricane Katrinas, right? But apparently, that is not the case. Many christians would say that this is because all the bad things are fueled and backed by the devil who is at war with god. But herein lies the problem: If God is all powerful, how come he just can't seem to defeat the devil? This means two things: God is weak and can't defeat the devil, which means god is not all powerful and therefore not worthy of the title god at all, or God allows the devil to co-exist, which means that God is evil because he allows evil to exist. This of course, goes back to the concept of Good and Evil that I was talking about earlier. There's a few ways to define why bad things happen to good people in the world: One being that god is weak and can't stop things, two being that god has left the world behind and doesn't care about humanity, and three is that god is evil as well as good, which negates the bible. All of these suggestions lead to the belief that this God isn't really worthy of the title of running the universe.

Second, is the nature of god. God is almost exclusively defined as male (which lends to the weakness philosophy in that if god is male that means there must be a female, and if there needs to be a female, then god needs to reproduce and therefore has a finite lifespan). God is also described as looking exactly like us, "And he made humans in his own image" to paraphrase. In otherwords, this defines God is a human, who is quite apparently floating out in space. But why would a god be in a human form? Wouldn't it be more likely that a god would have no form at all? Simply god would be everything around us.

Third, there's how the catholic people have reacted to the knowledge of god via the bible. Basically, up until the Council of Trent in the 17th century (I believe), religious offices were sold to the nobility as positions of power, religious figures extorted money out of the peasentry with "indulgences" that asked for money to guarentee your place in heaven. But more over is how they've reacted to scientific changes: Galelieo was called a heretic and forced to recant much of his studies, same with Copernicus for daring to state that the earth was the center of the universe (a part written in older versions of the bible that was phased out after studies proved it wrong in later editions). Basically, that the bible and the church have been wrong before, the Catholic church only even apologized for these sorts of things only a few years ago.

That's for starters anyways, and that's what my beliefs amounted too. Whether or not you ascribe or put any merit to this is up to you really.

Generally, I like Jesus' teachings that God can be found in everyone and everything and you don't need churches or religious figures to talk to god. But the truth of the matter is that most of the modern christian and catholic religions and teachings have very little to do with the teachings of Jesus now.

Coincidentally a friend of mine just sent me this link. It's an essay that does a far more eloquent job of saying what I was trying to. It's well worth a read. If you don't agree with it you'll at least have a better understanding of atheists.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/there-is-no-god-and-you-_b_8459.html

I agree that it is theory. But that's not the same as saying it is incompatible.

coco