Exactly! Just pick & choose the parts you like and ignore what doesn't fit your agenda, it all works out.
That's what most of them do anyway

 

An enjoyable, seemingly well-educated discussion. I'm subscribing.

OG, thanks for getting this started. I, too, was raised in a fairly strict setting. Although I attended a secular school, Christianity found its way into my public, small-town education on a daily basis. Yes, they taught me that the sky was blue (but only because God made it that way...not because of light waves) and they taught me that 2+2=4 (but only because God made it that way...if you question that later in a mathematics education you can "prove" that 2+2=5* [*for extremely large values of 2]) but I questioned it all the same.

In adulthood, and in a world hungry for titles, I embrace atheism. If I need to embrace faith in order to embrace an idea, I tend not to (and that includes some upper level physics). I consider myself equal to people of different sexual orientations, people of different skin tones, and even people with different religious beliefs.

 

Minischool or miniscule? Please, don't give me straight lines.

 

Thanks

 

Is there a readers digest version of this thread? I start twitchin tryin to read it all.

 

You may be suffering from RLS take some Requip or Merapex. I use to take Merapex but the strong dosage caused liver damage. I now take Requip and try to keep it at 3mg even when I feel I need a stronger doze. Try it, it might just help.

If that that doesn't help copy and paste what you want to read onto Microsoft Words. Then you can make the text any theme and/or size font, and color you'd like.

Or Simply make your own readers digest, print it out.

Good luck.

 

See my problem with religion is that it is supposed to be about people being kind to each other and loving each other.

Problem is that people use religion to show they are morally superior to another.

You have God fearing people killing other God fearing people because they don't fear God in the same way they do.

You have ministers on TV ripping people off for their life savings so they can build these huge ministries and later end up in scandals---Got to love Jim and Tammy Baker!!!.

Almost every war and conflict man has faced has been based on faith. I can't see a God putting his "Children" into so much adversity if he "loved" them. Science seems to be the only "real" thing.

 

I'm always amazed at the direction these God threads go. We Humans are such an intellectually advanced mark on the universe, that we don't even know how large it is. Our planet is just one tiny rock among a pile of mass that has more space between it than there is solid mass in the pile (metaphorically speaking that is). We have people that believe in a Supreme Being. We have people that believe we are the supreme being. It is in reality, that we may be the toughest kid on the block, but in the grand scheme of things, the toughest kid on the block says there is no other block.
We don't even understand the planet we live on, much less comprehend these sheer size of the universe, or understand what makes it all possible.

I agree, science is the key to understanding, and identifying everything about our existence. But we can't even answer the question of what makes it all possible. I'm not referring to evolution. through years of study it is hard for anyone tho argue the fact that we have evolved from a primordial ooze. We research fossils such as Lucy and we find that there are small differences of DNA that separate us from her. But during the last 6000 years (or longer) people invented God to control the masses. Wars have been fought in the name of God over and over again, and it was science that made those wars possible). So it appears to me that a belief in God was the beginning of civilization. If it were not for that single belief, we would be such as any other animal on Earth. (That is what we refer to as self awareness) Some animals travel in packs for survival, as some hide alone as not to be found by a predator. But in the beginning, it was the question of "Why are we here?" that unified people into communities. The question of "Why?" , that led individuals to follow the person that had the answers. Even if that person pulled the answers out of his anus. But people will follow the person that has the answers, people with no faith will put their faith in that person. A good example of that could be any TV Evangelist.

If I were posed the question of "What makes our existence possible?" I would have to say "Light" is the first step. With out it, there would be know universe. Because all solid mass is made of light. Science proves that fact. Science has yet to prove why. But it has given us a grasp of the beginning as we know it.

One thing that I do know, a person can take anything from me. But my Faith is with me until the end.

I will be gone the rest of today, but I'll catch up on this thread when I recover. Today I get stoned so I can get the injections in my back.

 

What keeps me sane about biblical topics is that I understand that the Bible has been translated time and time and time again. Some things may have gotten lost and some things may have been added, for whatever reason - good, bad or indifferent. The way I see it, if there's something in there for you, sooner or later, you'll know. Believe me, I thank God everyday. My .02 - Og

 

Isaiah 29 verse 13 NIV

 

Amen

 

 

 

If you turned away from your faith at age 26, then you weren't saved from the beginning. God does not promise us an easy life, however he does promise us salvation if we simply have faith in him.

Me, I'm 26. I was raised Methodist but I attend a Baptist church now because I like how the message is preached every Sunday.
My perspective is that people get caught up in 'religion.' It's not about religion; it's simply about faith. Faith alone will lead to one's salvation. Not works, not words, not anything we can do here on earth. Our true belief in God and recognizing that no one comes to God except through Jesus Christ is the bottom line.

All of you who doubt, I pity you. I look to reach out to you. For some reason, you are hardened and you bundle every claimed Christian into the same bucket of people 'who need a crutch.' For some reason, every Christian is seen as a TV evangelical who is only out for money or we're the guy you see in the bar on Saturday night and church Sunday morning. You are terribly mislead in your assumption.
What you might not understand is that church is for IMPERFECT people. The most guilty of guilty need to be walking in the doors every Sunday morning, along with everyone else. Someitmes, it takes decades for a person to understand that they must accept God as a little child would and they must ask him to save them from our wicked human ways, which are natural behaviors for us.

Man is not perfect. In an effort to show is unending love for man and to save man from eternal fire, he sent Jesus as a messenger; a man of flesh that we could understand. He paid the ultimate price for us, and we intern are indebted to him. Each person has a choice to make. We can laugh it off and say that science proves otherwise, or we can simply lives our lives according to the simple rules that he gave us to follow.

 

Then you don't need organized religion do you?

Again, your words here seems to imply that churches, sermons, helping your fellow man, and organized religion as a whole is unnecessary for "Salvation".

But now we see that only your beliefs count. You must be Christian and accept Jesus to be "Saved".

The above is the start of the hypocritical BS OGT mentioned earlier. You "pity" those who don't believe what you do because you think you're better than them. That those people who don't believe that an immaterial GOD impregnated a dirt poor virgin who then had a kid (funny we have the story of his birth, but nothing about him until he is an adult), who can walk on water, heal people by simply touching them, then when he's executed by the Romans, his body is put in a cave where after 3 days it comes "back to life" before being pulled up to into heaven.

Here's the same story with a slightly different twist:
2000 years ago some Aliens stopped by earth and wanted to see what a human-alien hybrid would be like, so they knocked up some chick that nobody would care about, then made sure the kid survived during childhood (lots of kids died young back then, they wanted to insure their experiment would work). So now you've got this hybrid that has "superhuman" powers, the gov't freaks out, executes him, but the aliens decide to reanimate the body, then beam him back up to the mothership for a final report.

Why should I believe one story over the other?

- NCSU