AntiSonic: In keeping with our parents example... how do you know if they are loving and caring if you have never seen them. The paramaters are that you never see them, are just told all of the rules they want you to follow. One might start to think, "why?" Why must they follow these rules if there is no proof these parents exist or that they care. Why should one bother... Explain how God is kind and loving, when all religious language centers around wrongs and sin, with which we are all born. God giving little hints: That is my point, why just little hints? Why not make it obvious? Just to weed out the good, right? Pre-monotheism life: Well, ther are two contradicting creation stories, the 7 days, and the garden of eden. But on the garden of eden, I simply cannot accept that we are forever having to apologize for the fact that Eve ate from the tree. Not only would that be spiteful, but how did the snake/devil get there in the first place? If it was paradise and perfection materialized, then why was evil present? Again, did God mess up? This is also an example of why I do not understand how a woman could be Christian - it was Eve that got everyone kicked out and forced us to fear damnation ever since. The obvious result of a male dominated society. On ET: No, I would not have brought that up, there are other, more important, areas for me. I lump that all together with inaccuracies in the teachings - that the Earth was the center of the universe, no mention of other life, etc. Well, I must end abruptly, but I have a little more to say later... ------------------ "One evening I seated Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter." "I am a sick man...I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts."
You are brought up to believe as your parents believe. They teach you about right and wrong, heaven and hell. You go to church, they tell you about the 10 laws that God told Moses. They tell you "if you break any of these laws and do not repent, you will go to hell for eternity" Then, when you are old enough to form your own opinions, you question every thing you were taught. "What is God?" "Where did he come from?" "Why do so many people believe in Him?" The older I get, the more questions I have. The more questions I ask, the more confused I get. Each one of us has our own path to follow. We are all searching for the "Truth." If you do not have an open mind, you cannot acquire knowledge. Knowledge brings us closer to the answers. IMHO ------------------ "When your dead, anything's funny."-John Lennon
Continued... But first, in response to Bobb: Nice post. That is the problem, and why so many people do not bother. If you start looking for the truth in anything, start asking questions - it only leads to more questions and they only get harder. It would be impossible to go back as well. That is why many people live their lives in cruise control - with religion, politics, society, etc. It is hard follow the truth seeking path. Which leads me to what I wanted to say in my earlier post... I have always tried to set my own guidelines, my own rules. I feel they are better than any established by religion or whatever, because they are tailored to me. I list them as follows: -like yoursef; - so few really do and everyone would be better off if they did -always strive for self-improvement - not through "self-help" books or anything, this is just learning more, doing more, trying to make a difference, anything -look for the truth in everything - like with what Bobb was saying -always be a good person - up to personal definitions, but it is self-explanatory -do not ever lower standards for yourself or anyone else - I take this a little too far at times, as I am often too hard on myself -listen to as much jazz as you possibly can - sorry, couldn't help it. This is a little bit of my "religion". Sure, it is more involved than that, and if you had to push me to the closest spiritual thought, I would say philisophical taoism (which is called a religion, but really should not be - but there are branches of taoism that are). I was raised Christian, but as far as I can remember, I was generally uninterested. My mother is religious, my father always made it clear that he would not really let us know his religious views, so it would not influence us. When I was about 12 or so, I was supposed to go through the procedure to really join the church and I avoided it. I did not rebel, I just did not want to. I cannot really say why I did not want to at the time. Again, It was just not a part of my life. I am, however, fascinated with all religious studies. That is why I enjoy threads like this. Anyway, AntiSonic, I am not finished with you. I am interested to hear from you, after you have heard my brief synopsis. I welcome any challenge or clarification, and you still need to respond to my questions from the other... ------------------ "One evening I seated Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter." "I am a sick man...I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts."
Oh yeah, Rocketman95: If you do not beleiev too much of the Bible, then why do you chose to beleive in the Jesus part, just curious... ------------------ "One evening I seated Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter." "I am a sick man...I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts."
rimbaud: "If you turn your back on them (these supposed other parents), is that your fault?" That depends. If your parents are mean and spiteful, than it's not. If your parents are kind and loving, than it is. God is the latter. "How do you know if the people telling you about your parents are really not your parents?" Another very good question. We all have to answer this ourselves and no one follows the excact same trail to come to this conclusion. Now granted, some people are going to have more difficult lives than others(and I know this goes hand-in-hand with your argument on religion as a tool), but those who success comes easy to are going to be judged a lot more scrutinously than those who lead hard lives. One could argue that if someone is successful that it's easier to accept God. Well, with money often comes comes greed and/or feelings of self-sustainment. Some people get the feeling that they don't need God because they made themselves. On the other hand, some people feel that they owe all of their success to God. The proletariat, like the successful person, can go either way. He can accept God and His promises of fulfillment in the great beyond, or he can reject God and blame Him for his misfortunes. So you have a fairly equal degree of difficulty of accepting God for everyone... "Why all of the games? If there is a god, wouldn't it be better if he made all of us aware that he did indeed exist, thus people would be more inclined to follow "his word"?" I believe that God does give us little hints that He's really there every now and then. You just have to be really alert to pick them up. "Did all peole that pre-dated Judaism and the creation of monotheism go to hell as well? Why did monotheism take so many thousands of years of human existance to come into being?" You'd have to ask a theologist on that one for a good answer, sorry . That question pretty much deals with man's origin which in itself is a touchy subject. My personal answer however is that the Bible is probably coated with symbolism. In the book of Genesis, man is expelled from Eden- man and God used to live together. Now I am not a theologist by any means, but this is how I interpret Creation- God's intervention in helping Mankind evolve and create civilization. Mankind is a comparitively weak species. Our only natural weapon would seem to be our minds(now granted, a finely tuned human body is a great weapon as a whole, but there probably wasn't a lot of good nutrition and fitness equipment when our ancestors were growing up in Africa). Put that in combination with our extremely slow growth rate. It takes anywhere from 14-18 years for a human being to physically mature, while other large mammals can grow up much, much faster. It seems like our ancestors would require at least a little help to get on their feet. Since God is eternal, thousands of years would be nothing to Him, so that can account for the short time scale that is given in Genesis... Did all those pre-religion humans go to Hell? Again, I can only offer my personal opinion and unprofessional theory on the matter, but I doubt it. Like was said earler, Man lived with God in Eden until he broke his covenant. "And, man, you are killing me - not telling me what argument you were expecting next." We've gone waaay off topic since then, but if you really want to know, I saw the question posed on The Learning Channel a few days ago: "What about the salvation of potential extra-terrestrial life. Did Jesus die for them?" Since we aren't talking about Christianity per say, I won't give my little thoughts on that matter... But it does provide for extremely interesting debate. On Bob's soul question: I think that the soul is what one person is... Okay, that's a little vague... Does one's concsiousness explain it a little better? Not necessarily brain activity(although that is how 'consiousness' is defined, isn't it?), but an awareness of one's self. Basically, I think our soul is what allows us to repress our instincts. One could argue that our intelligence is responsible for that, but(pardon my crudeness) there are a lot of intelligent dogs, and I've noticed that none of them seem to care that trying to mate with curtains is a futile venture. ------------------ WE WILL WATCH THEM FALL... next year, at least.
rimbaud: "Why must they follow these rules if there is no proof these parents exist or that they care. Why should one bother..." Just in case they do exist is probably the best answer you could give to that question. Now I've never seen anyone jump off of a skyscraper and die, but I'm still not going to do it because I'm aware of the potential consequences. Now granted, there is physical evidence of people dying from jumping off of skyscrapers that we can use for reference. The reference that I can use for the consequences of not following God's orders is The Bible. "Explain how God is kind and loving, when all religious language centers around wrongs and sin, with which we are all born." Didn't your parents tell you to be good when you were a kid? "Say 'please,'" "say 'excuse me,'" "wash your hands," etc. They were kind and loving, weren't they? "why just little hints? Why not make it obvious? Just to weed out the good, right?" I've asked myself that question a lot too, and you've got as good an answer as I do. However, he did leave The Bible which in itself is a pretty big hint. "I simply cannot accept that we are forever having to apologize for the fact that Eve ate from the tree." So did Adam, on his own free will. "Not only would that be spiteful, but how did the snake/devil get there in the first place? If it was paradise and perfection materialized, then why was evil present? Again, did God mess up?" I wasn't there so I couldn't tell you why or how it got there. The best I can come up with is that God was testing them... "This is also an example of why I do not understand how a woman could be Christian - it was Eve that got everyone kicked out and forced us to fear damnation ever since. The obvious result of a male dominated society." Again, Adam ate the fruit too. They got kicked out together. Anyway... Rimmy, I can understand where you're coming from, especially with the not liking church bit. I kind of dread going to church every week, but it's only because I'm forced to wake up early and I never really have been big on all that singing... However, I do find whatever the pastor has to say extremely interesting, and that is pretty much the only thing about church that I like. ------------------ WE WILL WATCH THEM FALL... next year, at least. [This message has been edited by AntiSonic (edited July 08, 2000).]
