quote:

Originally posted by Michael Russo How about history? We know for sure Jesus existed. And we know for sure that THOUSANDS were converted on Pentecost. And we know for sure that Christians were persecuted and tortured and killed for their beliefs but still the community grew stronger and larger.

Ok you can't say FOR SURE Jesus or God exists! Did u know him personally.
All there is is hear-say, A book with "the suposed word of god" in it, and a hoaky religion that for one thing highly resembles a cult (all that chanting and eating/drinking the body/blood of christ, oh and don't let me forget "Pass that collection basket arround and give us money"). There is no solid proof of any of that.

I personally don't follow any religion. I follow what I believe (and that is doing great for me by the way) U can't say that God created the universe for sure because who are we but feeble humans to say that there even is a God. We may not think of ourselves as feeble but you can't honestly say that we are the only ones in this universe and as the saying goes, "No matter how good you are there is always sommebody better." We can say that we believe in a god and that we believe that he created the earth, but how can u say the words "FOR SURE". The only thing that is "FOR SURE" is that we are hear only by chance. Whatever it was that started life as we know it created us instead of some other species on some other planet.

So please do not say that things are true because u beleive in them.
Because there are thousands of religions out there that believe in totally diff. things and what are the chances that the Catholic religion is the right one. No truth in any religion has the same odds of being true as the catholic religion.

Oh one more thing.
I appolagize in advance if this has offended you.
But this is my opinion and as I said in the post, there may be no truth in my oppinion as well.

___________________
MMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!SANDWICHES!!!!!!!

Hehe, just when it was gonna get resolved.

tiesto14, take some time to reread your posts. Listen to what you are saying. God, by His very nature, MUST be above our finite world. He has control over everything... if you don't believe that He can do something as simple as parting the Red Sea, then you don't believe in God, plain and simple.

What do you mean, God by His nature? God has a nature? He is God, he can do whatever he wants. And above us? Like straight up? Is the World still flat?

God would rather us go through pain on Earth than infinite pain in Hell... in all evil and suffering there is a chance that good will come from it. Many people that are suffering turn towards God, and eternal happiness is their reward. Those that already believe don't turn away. There are still some people who suffer and don't turn to God, but the opportunity was there and it is their choice. Also, don't think you have to believe in God to go to Heaven. You don't have to knowingly "love Him back." You just have to be a good person.

Two things to touch up on. Eternal Happiness is not possible, because doing the same thing for all eternity (whatever it is that makes you happy, be it sex, youth, etc.) would eventually turn into unbelievable torment. Also, according to Christian Beliefs, you do have to believe in God to go to Heaven. That is probably my biggest ultimate beef with Christianity. I always felt that if your a good person at heart, you should be rewarded. But according to Christianity, you must believe in Jesus Christ in order to be saved. It is a simple fact. Either worship me or burn. That is the perspective from Christianity towards non-believers.

Sorry, I'm going to sleep now and I needed to get that out of the way or else I'd forget. Everyone get some good sleep, and have a nice night.

___________________
Trance...a state of mind.

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Originally posted by Devbert First off, I don't want you to stop believing. If Christianity makes you a better human being, I'm all for it. However it puts a lot of people on a high judgemental perspective that they have the right to judge others. I'm not religous, and I don't need to be told I'm gonna burn in hell for not believing what someone else does.

Yes, I see what you mean... but Christians aren't supposed to judge others. I hope you weren't implying that I was judging you? Cause if that's the impression I gave I'm sorry, its not what I meant to do.

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Originally posted by Devbert What was wrong with the Old Testament? It was the original, wasn't it? And the historical validity of the biblical passages is important. There are people who believe that the majority of the stories are to explain and identify Christian morals and beliefs, and others believe that they are facts passed down through time. God made the Earth in 7 days, right? I'll drop the Old Testament/New Testament debate, because they are contrary views, and to argue with you based on what you don't believe in would be pointless.

I want to drop this too, but just to clarify: I would definately not say that in the Old Testament "the majority of the stories explain and identify Christian morals and beliefs." The New Testament definately contains the essence of Christian morals and beliefs. The Old Testament is not too important, not only in morals/ beliefs because these are addressed in the New Testament, but also in its historical accuracy. For example, in Catholicism we are taught how to interpret these Old Testament Biblical passages. A rough Catholic interpretation of the creation is that God created the Earth out of His love for us... not that He made the Earth in seven days.

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Originally posted by Devbert I think God is way often treated like a human being. God is not human, yet he is represented by so many human characteristics, like an ultimate father figure. So who is to say that God can feel emotion or love? It is all interpretation of prehistoric text.

First off, God is represented by human characteristics way too often... He really should not be. He isn't a teddy bear or a loving father in our human sense, but people seem to think He is. That is one reason for not believing in God. It's called the Fantasy Factor - "when you reject a false image of God but not God Himself."

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Originally posted by Devbert And if God already knows the answers, then it's kind of tough to explain what this woman did to her 5 kids. God created people like this? He has a mean streak I guess.

No, He doesn't have a mean streak, but evil exists in this world and it is not God's creation. Evil is a lack of goodness, so for evil to exist goodness must exist first. Some people may choose to do the wrong thing, but that is a byproduct of free will. In order for people to good we must have choice... we must have the ability to do bad as well.

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Originally posted by Devbert I find the concept of heaven amusing almost. What is heaven like? If you die old, do you go there looking like you did when you died? Or when you were 21? Or do you get a choice, and get to change form? And what is appearance anyways, except a mind-altered perception of ourselves. Think about the most enjoyable things in life for a lot of people: Sex, Loud Music, Drugs. They aren't done very often, but are arguably the most enjoyable. Heaven is treated like a 24 hour pleasure trip, yet I don't think God would appreciate a bunch of Stoner Nymphomaniacs bumping Pink Floyd. Or maybe he would. However, what I do know is that even the most enjoyable things get boring when done for extremely long periods of time. Eternal life in heaven would eventually become a hell in accordance with this theory.

I see what you mean, but the problem lies in your interpretation of what Heaven is actually like. You bring up a good point about things getting boring after doing them a lot. That is completely true. But you have to make the distinction that these are finite things... therefore they bring us finite joy. But being in Heaven is being in the presence of God for all eternity. God is infinite, so He brings us infinite joy... therefore we don't get bored.

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Originally posted by Devbert I don't need a moral guilt trip from my neighborhood Christians for how I live my life. I don't tell you what you should do.

That's unfortunate. That definately should not happen.

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Originally posted by Devbert What do you mean, God by His nature? God has a nature? He is God, he can do whatever he wants.

Yes, if we approach the issue of God from a philosophical point of view and use reason to answer your question, we can determine that God does have a nature. This nature is made up of qualities (or attributes) that God must have in order to be the supreme being. If you'd like I can go into it.

quote:

Originally posted by Devbert Two things to touch up on. Eternal Happiness is not possible, because doing the same thing for all eternity (whatever it is that makes you happy, be it sex, youth, etc.) would eventually turn into unbelievable torment. Also, according to Christian Beliefs, you do have to believe in God to go to Heaven. That is probably my biggest ultimate beef with Christianity. I always felt that if your a good person at heart, you should be rewarded. But according to Christianity, you must believe in Jesus Christ in order to be saved. It is a simple fact. Either worship me or burn. That is the perspective from Christianity towards non-believers.

I already addressed the eternal happiness issue, but I'm really glad you brought up that other point. You definately do not need to believe in God or Jesus to go to Heaven. If you are a good person at heart, you will go to Heaven. "Either worship me or burn"... definately no. I hope that is not the attitude Christians are giving. If you are seeking truth, love, and beauty in the world, the understanding and Catholic teaching is that you are seeking Jesus without knowing it.

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Originally posted by Devbert Everyone get some good sleep, and have a nice night.

Thanks, I hope you have a nice sleep too.

I think this debate is about wrapped up, as it could go on forever. You have a very noble perspective of Christianity, but it is very unsimilar to the majority of the pack. According to Christianity, you must believe in Jesus to get to Heaven. But oh well. Time to move on I guess, wayyy too much typing, hehe.

Thanks for the debate, glad it could be clean and non-flamewar like.

___________________
Trance...a state of mind.

Are you sure that you must believe in Jesus to go to Heaven? I'm 100% sure that in Roman Catholicism you do not have to believe in Jesus. Roman Catholicism is the basis of all Christianity, but other groups did break off (for heretical reasons pretty much) so its possible certain Christian groups believe that you must believe in Jesus.

Anyways, thanks for a good debate

Anti Christians-FYI do not take the bible too literally. For example, seven days does not mean 168 hours. One thing people forget and do not know is that different sects of Christianity have changed alot of the passages in the bible to be inline with their changes in theology. Which is very sad. I don't know the exact years or dates, but the timeline is sort of like this Christianity was not broken into little branches as it is today. It was all one faith and theology. Then the Pope of Rome split off and introduced various innovations into the theology, namely the Infalibility of the Pope and the concept of the Vicar of Christ. So now you have East and West. Out of the Roman Catholic faith broke out various other innovations that created more little schisms and before you know it you have different groups some beleive in Christ as God, some don't some beleive he has two natures some three, all sorts of strange things. What is called Orthodox Christianity is essentially the original theology. It has the least innovations and retains all the original canons and theology. The reason for this is the relevance is as follows. The bible was not written originally in English. The early gospels were written in Greek or Hebrew or Latin. I think primarily Greek though. Ancient Greek does not translate very cleanly into English, nor does Hebrew. As a result certain words in English may translate into a certain word or phrase in Greek or Hebrew, yet if you take that same Greek or Hebrew word it can mean something else. A loose translation if you will....the ancient Greek language was very different and often the words or passages meant something similar but not exact. The problem here is that over the ages as the bible was revised by various religious groups it loses its effect or meaning. In this case, I don't know for sure and I cannot think of a specific example at the moment, but day does not necessarily mean 24 hours. It could very well mean an epoch. If you beleive in God, you beleive he is timeless. A thousand years to him could feel like a day feels to us. But in case the point is the bible is not to be taken so literally and many people have spent their entire lives dedicated to interpreting it, and I would hardly call these people ignorant.

You can beleive what you want, but challenging someone to prove the bible is just wrong. Part of the faith is just that...faith. Its not scientific. If you are not religious thats fine, nobody is forcing you to be, and you don't have to be so harsh on Christians. What really aggravtes me is that people rely on all this scientific stuff to dispell it but, science lacks perfection too. Alot cannot be proven, it just can't. For example, the creation or even evolution. If God didn't create the world...how was it created? Evolution...BS. There is only theories about it but I do not beleive that I came from a monkey, sorry. Do primates share simlar features to human beings, sure. Anyways, you cannot judge a religion by its followers. A Christian who judges you is not a good Christian because they have pride and are judging others. These are sins according to their faith. But judging the entire religion based on a few bad apples is wrong.

quote:

Originally posted by Lazgti Anti Christians-FYI do not take the bible too literally. For example, seven days does not mean 168 hours. One thing people forget and do not know is that different sects of Christianity have changed alot of the passages in the bible to be inline with their changes in theology. Which is very sad. I don't know the exact years or dates, but the timeline is sort of like this Christianity was not broken into little branches as it is today. It was all one faith and theology. Then the Pope of Rome split off and introduced various innovations into the theology, namely the Infalibility of the Pope and the concept of the Vicar of Christ. So now you have East and West. Out of the Roman Catholic faith broke out various other innovations that created more little schisms and before you know it you have different groups some beleive in Christ as God, some don't some beleive he has two natures some three, all sorts of strange things. What is called Orthodox Christianity is essentially the original theology. It has the least innovations and retains all the original canons and theology. The reason for this is the relevance is as follows. The bible was not written originally in English. The early gospels were written in Greek or Hebrew or Latin. I think primarily Greek though. Ancient Greek does not translate very cleanly into English, nor does Hebrew. As a result certain words in English may translate into a certain word or phrase in Greek or Hebrew, yet if you take that same Greek or Hebrew word it can mean something else. A loose translation if you will....the ancient Greek language was very different and often the words or passages meant something similar but not exact. The problem here is that over the ages as the bible was revised by various religious groups it loses its effect or meaning. In this case, I don't know for sure and I cannot think of a specific example at the moment, but day does not necessarily mean 24 hours. It could very well mean an epoch. If you beleive in God, you beleive he is timeless. A thousand years to him could feel like a day feels to us. But in case the point is the bible is not to be taken so literally and many people have spent their entire lives dedicated to interpreting it, and I would hardly call these people ignorant. You can beleive what you want, but challenging someone to prove the bible is just wrong. Part of the faith is just that...faith. Its not scientific. If you are not religious thats fine, nobody is forcing you to be, and you don't have to be so harsh on Christians. What really aggravtes me is that people rely on all this scientific stuff to dispell it but, science lacks perfection too. Alot cannot be proven, it just can't. For example, the creation or even evolution. If God didn't create the world...how was it created? Evolution...BS. There is only theories about it but I do not beleive that I came from a monkey, sorry. Do primates share simlar features to human beings, sure. Anyways, you cannot judge a religion by its followers. A Christian who judges you is not a good Christian because they have pride and are judging others. These are sins according to their faith. But judging the entire religion based on a few bad apples is wrong.

Finally, someone who agrees with me

Just about your evolution point - It is perfectly possible that evolution occured, aided by God. It doesn't conflict with Roman Catholicism or "Orthodox Christianity." And about taking the Bible literally... the word "literal" has two different meanings. In English class the word literal refers to exactly what happened, but in Religion class we interpret the Bible "literally" as well. The only difference is that our definition of "literal" is "according to the author's intent." So when interpreting the Old Testament, it is important to keep the author's intent in mind. The rest of the story is just there to express something that is beyond words (an abstract concept). Was there an easy way to tell people that God created the world long ago? The point was to make people understand, so they made up a story about Adam & Eve.

Michael Russo, I now understand you.
I understand your arguments completely.

However, how can you say the writers of the Bible were being contacted by God?
Didn't Mohammad say the same thing?
Budda?
Many many many many many other "false prophets" and "saviors"?

People claim that they have seen ghosts, UFOs, talked to their dead relatives, and other phenomenal things.

...oh wait, you just have to believe...right?

Kind of hard when these people that were "contacted" by God sound like they...well...haven't. Contradictions and dates that don't correspond between different writers are abound in the Old Testament.

Even in the new testament there are plenty of errors. Translation smanslation, when you compare Hebrew, there are errors.

The Bible just doesn't look like it was written from God! It looks like it was written from some dudes!

And Jesus... was a human being.
The ONLY evidence that states otherwise comes from his followers, ooohh...that's a reliable source.
You don't see any roman documents about Jesus' walking on water, do you?

I don't see why the "facts" are stacked up for a Biblical God.

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As with all creeds; why do so many people assume they know why we exist?? Maybe to be fulfilled.

Well, remarkable claims require remarkable evidence, and i don't think some stories and myths from a time period where ghosts, witches, and spirits lurked about, and the Greek and Roman Gods were abound, that we can recieve our understanding from the world.

By the way, God has done a whole lot recently.

And the apocolypse better happen soon, before we destroy our planet and move to Mars...

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my oppinion, we do not know why we are here, but we can develop theories. Right now, Big Bang and Evolution have the most evidence. Finding faults in them does not credit such a faulty and ridiculous claim as a Biblical/Christain God.

If I am resurrected and sent to Hell because I live my life open minded, and do not assume whatever makes me feel fulfilled, and "pick my religion right", then so be it!!!!

___________________
The father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies / While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park / Thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums / The music and medicine you needed for comforting / So make all your fat, fleshy fingers fingers to moving / And pluck all your silly strings and / Bend all your notes for me and / Soft silly music is meaningful, magical / The movements were beautiful / All in your ovaries / All of them milking with green fleshy flowers / While powerful pistons were sugary sweet machines, / Smelling of semen all under the garden / Was all you were needing when you still believed in me.

You bring up excellent points here.

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Originally posted by davinox ...oh wait, you just have to believe...right?

Pretty much, yes.

The first step is to acknowledge that God exists. This is done through our own human reasoning. There are many excellent arguments that are extremely convincing... much more convincing than the athiestic arguments, in my opinion. I used to think what you do right now, but Aquinas' arguments make much more sense to me.

Once you can say that you believe God exists, you have to know what to believe. There are so many religions in the world. Remarkably, however, they are all pretty much the same. I'm not an expert of other religions... I'm not even an expert of my own, but I do know that many are fundamentally the same. As long as they help you become a better person, the true God (of whatever religion that may be) will not persecute you for choosing wrong. What you said about the Bible is relevant because it can be a source of unbelief for Christianity (Old Testament & New Testament) and Judaism (Old Testament only). Today, it can be very hard to tell its validity especially because of the time perod it was written in. But I also don't think people were as stupid back then as we make them out to be.

You say the Bible doesn't look like it was written by God....that it looks like it was written by some "dudes." Yeah, it was, and that was the point. God didn't dictate the Bible word for word, He gave the ideas to the writers. That's why we have Adam and Eve. And that's also why we have some errors... because we are human.

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Originally posted by davinox And Jesus... was a human being. The ONLY evidence that states otherwise comes from his followers, ooohh...that's a reliable source.

Yes, Jesus was a human being. He was completely human, but also divine. If we weren't divine I really don't see how He could convince His followers. I don't see why his followers would have followed Him.

One of the most striking conversions is that of Saul/Paul. He was alive during Jesus' time. He was one of the biggest persecutors of Christians. He hated them. Yet somehow he converts? It doesn't make any sense. And I'm sure there are documents about him... he was a prominent Jew and his views about how much he hated Christians were well known. He was also beheaded in Rome for believing in Christ... the two seem odd alternatives...

...unless God exists, and Jesus is God.

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Originally posted by davinox my oppinion, we do not know why we are here, but we can develop theories. Right now, Big Bang and Evolution have the most evidence. Finding faults in them does not credit such a faulty and ridiculous claim as a Biblical/Christain God.

I think that there are significant faults in the big bang theory. I think it is much more ridiculous than believing in the notion of God. Plus, we have to realize that we aren't talking about little faults here... we are talking about a huge fault that really discredits the whole theory. Exploring this issue is important. I agree with you: it does not prove God exists. But it can help.

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Originally posted by davinox By the way, God has done a whole lot recently.

You can't say that God has done nothing. We have no idea what He has done. He permits us to choose; what happens is our choice. He has to let this happen, or else how are we to have free will?

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Originally posted by davinox If I am resurrected and sent to Hell because I live my life open minded, and do not assume whatever makes me feel fulfilled, and "pick my religion right", then so be it!!!!

As I said before, I don't think that would happen, because by participating in this thread like you have it shows that you do care about this whole issue. Whether you believe isn't as important as whether you care (in my opinion).

Theres Gonna be some HArd people in that jail , who have children and they are gonna know what she has done.

End of the Day theres fuck all you can do about it.

just pray for the children ...

___________________

" You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert."

Over the yrs ppl have no changed the bible. It has remained intact for many many yrs and ya know what, bible has NO ERRORS. It's the truth, if ppl want to believe otherwize that is their problem.