You are dead, you body gets burnt down to ashes or it simply degenerates. You only live once my friend, make the most out of it.
Why is that sad? What has a man who has chosen to live a life based off of the teachings of Christ lost or missed out on? Does it REALLY matter if someone belives that it's the Holy Spirit that guides thier conscience. You don't even have to respond to this, I just wanted to say it.
Aren't you doing exactly the same as you accused me of doing? I do respect a lot of people's opinions but that doesnt mean I agree with all of them. I respect your opinion because your first few posts in this thread stating your position. But still, there's no hard feelings. Either you believe what I said or not. Go Rockets.
Let us look at the concept of good vs evil...do i need science to indicate to me that the massacres committed in Newton CT were good or evil...do i need a scientific explanation that shows me that what we all saw was the true face of evil...The answer is No... See life is actually quite cut and dry...people can choose to do good, or people can choose to be evil...we all know the things that consist of good actions and evil actions...and every person has the most fundamental thing...a choice and the ability to reason that choice...you have the right to choose or not choose but in the end you have to stick with that decision forever...there is no grey area. Christianity provides one such explanation for this social quandary...what is goodness and why does it exist, and what is evil and why does that exist...God and Satan are actual beings that represent these two choices. Once again, im just an ordinary blogger and no religious scholar. But for us, God is the being from which goodness emanates. He created everything. One such creation was angels. These celestial beings according to the church are beings that constantly and unceasingly praise Him and all His goodness. One such angel fell so far from favor with God that he was thrown from heaven. It was that angels right to choose...and in that right he just wanted to be the option of God's Light/goodness...this is who Satan really is...he is the polar option: Darkness/evilness... Finally i do realize that your next point will be to say then why does this all powerful God let bad things happen to good people...To which i reply: Let us look at the example of a tsunami that destroy countless lives and impacted people tremendously...this was an act that had no impact by humankind...it was something that happened that was bad...but it wasnt caused by humans...where as let us look at the actions of 9-11...These men in their deranged minds had a thought that led to an actual action that impacted the lives of 6000...I can use the same example by looking at the US Miltary killing innocent civilians..or the crazed guy shooting people in a movie theatre...All of these examples have concrete examples of humankind yielding a bad result...this i believe is the true action of Satan...The ability to cause division, etc... But why did those good people die in the Tsunami?? I dont know; why do accidents happen?? I dont know...Once again...Im not a religious scholar and I cant reason all these things as articulately as others may...but why I choose to believe in my God is bc i choose too...I hurt him, and I do things that i shouldnt, and I hope as i grow i can change those things... You may think this is a nice lil story and has no weight. In the end...you too have a choice of belief...you can choose to or choose not to...and while i definetely consider my self a namesake Christian, i know that i have so much to improve upon...and this belief is so strong that it has become faith...and while i too have the choice of making either good or bad decisions, i believe that I am always told what the good and right choices are by an ever present compass...a guide(represented by the Holy Spirit)...There are times i acknowledge the Spirit and choose the right path...and there are times I dont, and I know i chose wrong afterwards...I cant put it in eloquent terms or give you a scientific theisis...in the end every man will have to make a decision...I am comfortable and at peace with mine...
Was wondering why some peeps always gotta be so bitter and condescending towards Christians. It's not like anyone here is trying to convert or judge you. They're just sharing their beliefs. The contempt and disdain is way off-balance. I've yet to see a 'believer' ridicule an atheist like he's some child in fantasy land. And if it's the bible that makes you feel condemned, why be so upset about it if you don't even believe in it?
I could just as easily say you are living in a godless fairy tale, in which your soul doesn't exist and you have no consequences for the choices you make, when you die.
mainly because i think christians are brainwashed. if you thought someone was brainwashed, would you try to snap them out of it? or would you just let them be brainwashed? btw, have you seen that movie 'jesus camp' ?
Atheists get ridiculed for evolution constantly, the whole I didn't come from a monkey theme is quite prevalent among Christians. The problem is the generalizing of Christians really. There are all types and those which are most objectionable are the ones that get generalized about. When you ask a Christian why Christianity is any different from all the gods and religions prior to them there's really not an answer that couldn't be given by a member of those prior religions. When you question the veracity of something they take so personally they're not prone to look at their belief in a detached, analytical way. They're insulted because they take it as an implication that they're stupid. The bible is a book of stories yet many people take the stories literally. They will pick and choose what stories mean to serve their own purposes. One poster here says the bible is prophecy come true and another says that the bible proves the earth is round despite the fact the church attacked people for promoting a round Earth. Someone else will tell you unless you believe in Jesus then you're going to hell, says so in the bible. Now the trendy thing is to use bible stories as corroboration for science. Someone here says the bible explains dinosaurs. You can't have it every which way. You can't suggest through your belief I'm a bad person and I'm going to hell and then say but you have to respect my belief. Huh? Do you respect Scientology? I don't think I've ever met anyone that didn't think it was total nonsense. I respect MadMax and rhester as men of faith. I've have read them long enough to see the humility they have for their beliefs and how thoughtfully they approach their beliefs. The message of Christ is incredible, I have a tremendous amount of respect for that message. Unfortunately, that message is not exactly what Christianity has come to be about. The Christianity we see all too often is judgmental, intolerant, and really aggressive. So when we talk about Christianity it's not about the humble good works for the poor and under served that happen every day all around the world because in some town somewhere Christians on a school board in the 21st century are trying to inject religion next to evolution in science class, or the President refuses to support stem cell therapy that could help thousands, or yet another state has voted to pass a law against gay marriage, or some priest uses clergy privilege so to protect another priest's molestation, or some parent is trying to push prayer in school, etc. There is a church on every other corner in this country and the influence is gigantic so the woe is me poor Christian thing is kind of weak.
Not sure - but I certainly wouldn't act condescending towards them if I wanted them to listen to anything I say. If you treat someone like an idiot, do you think you're remotely going to have any influence on them? If your goal is to snap them out of it, it seems like you'd be pretty terrible at it.
I agree with everything you have said so far. Even religious scholars will not know everything. You are right in using Mere Christianity to standardize Christian beliefs.
That's really the heart of it, Franchise. This stuff really does matter. There are an infinite varieties of ways to live on offer. Should a man be an ascetic? A hedonist? A stoic? A Cubs fan? The Christian faith states that above all, being a Christian is the right way to live, and the reason is that while the other offerings are the products of flawed, falliable mortal minds, the Christian way of life comes from a higher being whose intelligence is beyond our comprehension. The life this being asks us to lead won't always square with our proclivities (we are, after all, flawed mortals and not deities ourselves) but when the two conflict, we should trust its wisdom instead of our own because it knows more than we do. Like the old saying goes, if God is your co-pilot, you should switch seats. Without that, there really is no religion. If we can't trust that this belief reflects a wisdom higher than our own, then we have no reason to give it any more credence than the other belief systems on tap. That's why, if the Bible were to lack clarity, it would be equally damning. It doesn't matter if I have the world's best tech support guy on the other end of the line - if he can't speak English, there's no way for him to transmit his wisdom to me in a format I can use. That's why obvious factual errors, like the age of the earth and the origins of life are so alarming. I believe you when you say that the creation stories are in a common form of poetry, but there's no actual account of the earth's origins included as well, there's no indication to the reader that the story is fictional, and scores of people suffered terribly in the past for challenging the veracity of what turns out to be a fairy tale. This is, at best, a product with a critically dangerous design flaw. It looks very much like the product of Middle Eastern tribesmen who predated geology and very little like the product of a being with better information than we have. The flagrant examples of moral outrage are even worse. Why did Yahweh harden Pharaoh's heart before he could let the Israelites go? Why did he shake down the walls so his people could slaughter the Jerichites hiding behind them? Why did he cheer them on as they performed what can only be called an ethnic cleansing of the occupants of Canaan? What about the ridiculous laws and punishments of the Old Testament? All just poems and metaphors? The Bible is God's only official communication with us. Other than that, all we have is 'Well, I think God thinks X', which is functionally identical to 'Well, I think X' If all he'll give us is a document that only a first-century reader can interpret safely, then he's as irresponsible as a parent who's given their child a car battery to play with in the bathtub. I hope you'll forgive my suspicion that it's much more likely that the Bible is a very human anthology of Hebrew mythology, mystery religion, and bad Mesopotamian history and not a divinely perfect instrument that we're just not sublime enough to understand.
The difference between Christianity and other religions is relatively simple: Christians believe that Jesus, as a sinless person, died on the cross and took on the sins of the world. Christians believe that God is triune, three people in one, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We do not believe in evolution because we do not believe the world is evolving, or changing for the better. If one looks at the gene pool, one would see that the number of genetic diseases has greatly increased since the beginning of time. Evolution is a theory, not a law, just as global warming is just a theory. However, such theories are described in such a way that scientists in the field are unable to provide empirical support ("verify") or empirically contradict ("falsify") it. What makes those theories any more correct than Christianity? While Christianity does still have a large influence on society, it is slowly slipping away.
Let me state again, that I appreciate your respectful approach to this discussion. I will be the first to admit that my understanding is severely limited, and I by no means have all the answers. So what I'm telling you is where I'm at on my (hopefully) progressive path towards a greater understanding and not in any way to be taken as God's official word, or the official stance of any denomination of Christianity. I don't think the bible is meant to be a set of rules that someone has to follow either. Certainly there are things that are described as wrong. But it all comes back to the basic premise and Jesus' example of love, which Jesus said were the top two commandments. He said to love God, and then love others. Those are the two most important things. If the point of the bible is to get that across why would it have to say anything about history or science? We have historians and scientists to teach us about that. So it isn't really the place of the bible to lay down the law on those subjects. Now, I do agree with your position on when our own wisdom or inclination is in conflict with the message of love and Jesus we should go with Jesus' message. It's not always possible. But when Jesus is saying that if someone takes some article of clothing from you to give them more of your clothing, that goes against conventional wisdom which says punish that person. Yet willingly doing that to the person might teach a lesson to them more valuable than just taking the item back. It shows a generosity and loving spirit beyond what they put forward. They might actually learn from it. That would especially be true if everyone acted that way. There would also be less reason for people to go around taking things in the first place. I understand that people and the world are from perfect and it will never happen 100% of the time. Yet the more people do it, the more others might witness it, and learn from it. I'm using the bible and Jesus' own words the guide for this here. That's certainly not human nature, nor is turning the other cheek, but I do think that it's a better way. That's what makes it divine. It's better than the standard human nature. Think if everyone did that. As far as the violent stories, and ridiculous laws go I'll use another example of Jesus. He acted out in a way of healing someone on the Sabbath. The religious leaders of the time believed those were against the laws of the old testament. What Jesus said was that he didn't come to change those laws but to fulfill them. What that tells me is that the religious leaders and those that held to the fundamentalist nature of those laws were wrong, and that he fulfilling the loving message behind those laws were doing the right thing. Jesus also talked about the spirit of the law being more important than the letter of the law etc. So I think any interpretation of those laws and stories that miss a loving message aren't interpreted correctly. That's the example I learn from Jesus. I agree that the bible was written by humans not some supernatural old man in the sky. Those people can't be blamed that it was written for a specific audience that was more familiar with the traditions, cultures, norms, and traditions of the time than we are today. There is no doubt that the bible is from humans. Again, from the bible it says that those that know love know God. It says that God is love. That plays into the way I see the other parts of the bible. There are Christians who have plenty of disagreement with the way I believe in the bible and Christ. That's okay too. Like I said, I have more to learn and hopefully understand. But so far the more I understand and learn about the bible, the context and what the words would have meant to the audience it was written for, the more I feel devoted. But I never close the door on the fact that I may be wrong. That's always a distinct possibility.
The theory of global warming and evolution like the theory of gravity or the theory that germs and bacteria cause infections and illnesses are indeed just theories. But like those theories they have actual evidence that supports them. They are scientific theories not theories like the theories viewers of the program Lost had at the end of Season two about what was going on.
That's just the difference in the story. Every religion has its own story. In the first sentence you say you don't believe that the world is evolving and in the second sentence you say the number of genetic diseases has greatly increased. A new disease is an evolution. A disease is an organism that adapts to survive. There are organisms now that are resistant to antibiotics, that's evolution. No offense, but this is ignorant. Evolution is something that is readily observed in organisms. Evolution is a theory much like gravity is a theory. We know gravity exists and we observe it however we don't quite understand the mechanism of how it completely works and so it's still a theory. This idea that something that is a theory doesn't exist until it's a law is just ignorant. Are we to say that motion didn't exist until Newton came up with laws of motion? Of course not. That's untrue. Theories can have a lot of empirical evidence. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific meaning of theory. This is why the discussion with Christians get tense. This line of thinking is widespread among Christians. In truth, it's just completely ignorant. Evolution is a theory! Oh my. There's a reason why evolution is taught in science class and creationism isn't.
You'll respect his opinion until he responds. Then you'll command him to justify it. To me, that's hilarious. You simply cannot justify everything in the world. Haven't you ever had something that you knew, in your heart, to be true but could not explain it? If not, I feel sorry for you. It is a very defeatist attitude. The concept of faith, whether it be religious or otherwise (that difficulty will pass etc), is a very beautiful part of the human experience.
rocketsjudoka, I fall somewhere between Malone and Stockton It seems like a very important question, but IMO less pondered and considered than many lesser questions, Paul from the bible once said something to the effect that it would be miserable if all he had was the suffering he endured in this life, Jesus from the bible once said I go and prepare a dwelling place, so you can be with me. I'm not sure what many others have said, but I once thought I would just never die, and at the time it seemed like the best idea.
