If I were to ask any other follower of their faith the same question, they would give me the same exact response you did. EVERY religion has its quirks and contradictions, that's why it takes faith to believe in it. Care to go a little deeper than just "we're right, they're wrong"?

 

Catholics are Christians.

 

Which chapters are those? I use the KJV.

 

Nope, that's it. Christianity is built on love, others preach horrible things. American Heros by Col. Oliver North is a great book to read to get to know Islam. The coran is something else to read. Take a look, you will see.

Zig

 

It's been many years since I have studied all those things, but doesn't the Catholic Bible have some books from the Macabean period? This is the period of rule by the Macabees, that covers about 400 years. Comes in between the Old Testament period and the New Testament period. I may be mistaken, but that is what I recall.

 

It is possible. I have only seen Old and New testaments though. I was raised Catholic but I am a better Christian than I am a Catholic. I use the KJV in my house with my children.

 

I spent my young years using the KJV but when in college, switched to the New English Version (NEV). It is supposed to be a pretty accurate translation and much easier for me to read and comprehend.

 

I must have missed something. I said yes, they could be saved, and I said that it would not be probable. I also asked that you refer to the answer that I gave Habibi. Why? So that I would not have to repeat myself....

Well golly gee English Adam, this totally hypothetical and ludicrous scenario must happen thousands of times daily... But my wife has said that this is a fair question from a non believer and even some believers who are not well versed in Scripture.

But the answer is yes. I understand that you are wanting to trap me and make Christianity look incredulous. I know it, you know it, yet the answer is still yes. Even though your scenario MAY have happened once since the beginning of man. (My wife pointed out something after reading this.) Men who are on death row, and have committed heinous crimes have come to know and accept Christ.

I don't know, I am not sure if you are wanting to learn, or are triying and hoping to make me look stupid. I am going to assume the first, and that I did not explain well enough that you and Habibi posed very similar questions. My response, and Gods answer is still the same.

John 3:15-17
15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but[a] have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

We as Christians understand that this is an illogical concept to those that do not know Christ. We are used to working to get things that we desire. Man feels that everything comes with strings attached, that it must be earned. God does not place an asterisk* with His Word. He has laid out salvation through His Son.

1 Corinthians 3:11
11 For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

 

My favorite bible is the New Living Translation (NLT) that my mother in law got for me. It reads very easy for newer Christians, and I prefer to study it. We also use the KJV as well in the house, as well as a few other translations. It's all about the Word.

 

Well it looks to me like it comes with strings attached.
According to your doctrine, God created the Universe and he created me.
I can live a good life and If I don't accept Jesus then I get damned to eternity in a fiery hell. Bummer.
That's a pretty big string, wouldn't you say.

But then again, according to you, I could live the most evil life I chose, murdering and raping and cheating and right at the very end, accept Jesus and get a FREE PASS. How cool is that?

What happens to little babies who die in childbirth? They have no knowledge of Jesus. What happens to them? How about some remote tribes that still exist? No Westerner (as your version if Christianity is a very western concept) has brought mention of Jesus to them.
Has God created them, denied them his word and will then damn them to Hell for not hearing it?

 

it takes faith for any religion because you have to have a faith in a God, a God that you cannot see, so every religion will have faith. As far as contradictions go you can find contradictions in every religion but i have yet to find one contradiction in the christian religion. That is why i believe in it, it is 100% true

 

Faith is delivered to you, when you sincerely ask for forgiveness. You don't have to do anything other than that.

 

If you like I will look and post but King James list 66 books (Catholics list 73) written by divinely inspired writers from all walks of life and span over 1,500 years or more....so even the Catholics left out and editorialized. King James version is just that, King James choices and slant on the stories he chose to put in his version.

There was no specific list or accounting of all the books that made up the Bible until the commission of the first Bible by the Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century AD.

Constantine began what was to become a centuries long effort to eliminate any book in the original Bible that were considered unacceptable to the new doctrine of the church. At that time, it is believed there were up to 600 books,which comprised the work we now know as the Bible.

 

Both books list some dire consequences for unbelievers and have quiet a bit of violence in them. I think if you take either out of context it could be something else to read.
I have read both.

Old and New Testament have many contradictions.

 

The Bible, like many other religious books, is a GREAT book of morals. Thats it, and when it is taken a step farther (literal translation, for example) then it becomes the work of evil. I truly believe RELIGION is the root of ALL evil. It is the reason the world it the way it is, it is the reason for mass genocide and horrible executions. Every major tragedy that has befallen man, has come so in the name of, or for the sake of a religion. Every war, every mass genocide, all the conflicts going on in both the middle east, and much more so in Africa, are a direct relation to a religion. An "idea" is one thing, a "belief" is a whole nother .

The Bible has been used in the past, and is continued today to be used as a form of control, over the mass of people. People are generally operating on a low form of humanity. They only do good, out of hopes of reward, or fear of punishment. That is not to say all people do, simply the majority (even if that be 50.0000001% ). Look at how the Bible has changed over the years. It has gone from gloom and doom, fire and brimstone, to accepteance and understanding. Christians nit and pick the Bible and say these parts of the Old Testament don't count, but these other parts of the Old Testament do count. Which ever is more convenient at the time. In the beginning suicide was not a sin, and during the early times, many Roman Catholics began killing both themselves and their children in hopes of a better life in Heaven. The pope quickly changed it, so that suicide was a direct ticket to hell. How can you take a religion seriously, when so many human interventions happen. Man wrote the bible, and man can and will lie for his own advantages. The bible was written HUNDREDS of years AFTER Jesus Christ, not one person who wrote it was alive during his time, nor knew someone who was alive. How accurate can it be ? Accurate enough to base my entire life and all the ways I think around it ? No. During the time it was written, stuff that today seems simple and easy to explain through science and other discoveries was strictly a mystery to them, only explained through the phenomena of "God".

Want to know my personal beliefs? I like to use what Einstein said as an example. Much better said then anything I could come up with:

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."

(The following is from Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer, Princeton University Press)
"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."

He said it best, IMO. He is truly a fascinating man, someone I think everyone should look into a little more closely.