All-Purpose Religion Thread

[norton65ca]

Hislop's "Two Babylon's" is not a good source Julie. I used to own a copy. I left it on the front steps of a nearby church a while back shortly after deconverting.

I see what you are setting up here to be honest, I didn't spend thirty years in the faith without being able to recognize a few things along the way. Link all world religions to wicked idolatrous Mystery Babylon except for the one you follow. All are lost except the chosen few (how many was it again? 144,000? that's kinda gross really isn't it? ;-) the Jewish religion is the true foundation and the the Jehovah's Witness cult is the only modern descendant which held on to the true faith without letting it get sullied by Babylonian/Romish idolatry? Isn't that how it goes?

I'll go one further and it makes more sense. They're ALL descended from the same roots Julie, all of 'em, including the bible, the Jewish religion, The Jehovah's Witnesses, every goldarned one of 'em. There isn't a pure source to be found. I read a good chunk of that "All roads lead to Babylon" thread, gave me a headache after a while. I find it painful these days to read religious claptrap disguised as pseudoscience, mixed with a bit of historical data misinterpreted, some mumbojumbo and a lot of biblical mythology.

The thread has some interesting material on it, some of which is indeed of historical value, but it is mixed with pure bogswirl to leaven the mix. I have no debate as to the age of civilisation or the antiquity of ancient artifacts, I find true archaeology fascinating, but I do have issue with folks who try to support bronze age mythologies as historical fact using the bible as a foundation.

Mythology can lead us all into amazing insights into our common origins and the ways our ancestors thought and believed. Mythology can give us all incredible insights into the origins of religion as well, and your contention that "almost" (your distinction, not mine) all religions have a common root, I have no argument with that conclusion, with the caveat that I will not stop at "almost". There is no true faith, there is no true religion, they are all man made and they all have the same root in ancient history. Step out of your biblical prison and, if you find ancient history fascinating, then by all means study it and learn for it is amazing indeed, but PLEASE don't distort history and archaeology in order to provide a framework to justify your belief in an nineteenth century apocalyptic cult that preaches it has an exclusive hold on truth because, unlike in the "AboveTopSecret" website, cosmic fantasy stories will not be respected here, rather they will be examined and rejected, as being the products of circular logic, indoctrination and bibliolatry..

I completely support your right to worship whatever deity you desire to, and I believe that is a fundamental human right (hopefully one day religion will be gone from the earth and the whole issue will be moot, but until such a blessed time arrives...) I defend any man's right to have freedom of worship... HOWEVER, I also reserve the right for myself to defend our civilization from these benighted fantasies that threaten our planets' survival, endanger the lives of millions by their deceptive power and influence, and their divisive nature. I reserve the right to myself to expose, diminish and reduce the influence of the religion you serve, and all others until they are eradicated from the earth, for the sake of my grandchildren. This is what tolerance means to me. I tolerate your right to believe lies, but I do not, nor will I ever, tolerate the lies themselves. I'm sorry if you find this offensive, but I consider religion to be the enemy of the progress of the human species, and the root of the most profoundly destructive forces that have ever been unleashed on the planet. I blame religion, all religion, for the deaths of countless millions of innocent people, and the suffering of millions more.

I despise the god of the bible, this capricious, hateful, genocidal, vindictive monster, this murderous, bloodthirsty, jealous and spiteful piece of shit that treads under foot the flesh and blood of the poor and ignorant. Jahweh is a brutal enabler of child rape and the slaughterer of innocents. Thankfully, he is a mythological figure, but the power invoked in his miserable name still creates chaos , warfare, bloodshed and misery all over the world. F*ck Jahweh, F*ck the church, f*ck the priests, the cardinals, the whole disgusting edifice, all its variants, all the schismatic cults and offshoots and f*ck the bible.

Hey, if you can claim that all other religions are Baylonian mystery cults, idolatrous and rooted in sacrificing babies, worshiping "satan" Moloch, Baal and so on, many might get offended by that, well, please don't plead not to be offended by my words then, it takes two to tango. That's one of my beefs with all the various pseudo Xtian groups both mainstream and completely out to lunch cultic left field: They're all so bloody exclusive. Your either one of us or against us and with the horned one and you're going to be the main course in the great cosmic post apocalyptic barbeque at the end of it all. Utter tripe of course but it sure is easier to get people to kill for you if you can convince them that their neighbours are worshipers of old slewfoot...

[norton65ca]

...and before anyone jumps on me and says" Holy crap dude, that was harsh", I wish to stress that there's, yes, a fair bit of post deconversion bitterness here to be sure, but I mean nothing personally by it. I have still a lot of Christian friends, and I love them very much. I just sincerely wish them all well but hope they will get free of the indoctrination and bs that is christianity. I also do understand that free thinking rationalism can be hard to come to terms with after many years of faith, as the realization that we are more than likely alone in the universe, and the idea that this is IT, one life only, make of it what you may, can be extremely uncomfortable for many people to deal with. I am not particularly thrilled with the idea that when I die that's it, but I am coming around and realizing it isn't as horrifying as it first appeared the night of my "faithdeath" if you will.

Julie, I wish you well but I do encourage you to think a little outside the box and have a look at your religion from the outside, even if it seems impossible to do so.

[JulieB]

Really? So the Hebrew didn't use the word "yôm" which can only be translated as what we now recognise as a 24 hour period? It doesn't use any of the Hebrew words which could mean longer periods of time and "yôm" is used consistently throughout the bibile to mean a night and a day.

As A Religious Encyclopaedia (Vol. I, p. 613) observes: “The days of creation were creative days, stages in the process, but not days of twenty-four hours each"

It's like me saying... in my grandmother's DAY ........ I'm not speaking about a 24 hour period at all am I?

In fact after listing 6 creative days in Genesis or creative time periods in fact the same word Yohm is used to roll them altogether into one time period.....or Day....

(Genesis 2:4) This a history of the heavens and the earth in the time of their being created, in the DAY (Yohm) that Jehovah God made earth and heaven.

Yohm Kippur is a Jewish celebration - The Day of Atonement -but it is a festival of 10 days. When the Bible uses the same term eg in the Days of Noah, or the Days of Moses - it uses "Yohm" however as the Bible claims that the days of Noah spanned hundreds of years - then how could it be meaning days with 24 hour periods?

Also our perspective of a day on the Earth is not the same as for God according to the Bible at all.

(2 Peter 3: 8) However, let this one fact not be escaping YOUR notice, beloved ones, that one day is with Jehovah as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. . .

The Hebrews like the Babylonians differed to our use of day because their days started in the Evening and ran until the next evening. Ours start from midnight to midnight.

God used this fundamental division of time on the first “day” of the period during which he prepared the earth for mankind, when diffused light evidently penetrated the swaddling bands, thus causing the moisture-covered earth to experience its first day and night as it rotated on its axis through the light of the sun. “God brought about a division between the light and the darkness. And God began calling the light Day, but the darkness he called Night.” (Ge 1:4, 5) Here the word “Day” refers to the daylight hours in contrast with the nighttime. However, the record thereafter goes on to use the word “day” to refer to other units of time of varying length. In both the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures, the word “day” (Heb., yohm; Gr., heme) is used in a literal and in a figurative or even symbolic sense

[TheDon]

My brian hurts when I think about well where did God come from? But then as humans we are used to a beginning and an end.

Don't you think that that's the very reason why you have to believe it to be the work of a creator? Because you're used to everything having to have a beginning?

Surely all you've done is moved the problem of where did it all come from one step further away than it needs to be? And your reasoning for doing so is surely just the classic human projection of what we know onto what we don't. People constantly ascribe meaning to things that have none, it's how our brains work.

How do you know you're not just doing that with God?

If you see someone polish a stone does that mean that all polished stones were man made? Or is it not possible that something that looks like it was man made, is actually the result of a completely natural process?

But what are natural processes? Where did they come from? Where did the laws that govern those natural processes come from?

There are so many factors that are hard to explain by accident

The sun and moon appear the same size in Earth’s sky because the sun’s diameter is about 400 times greater – but the sun is also about 400 times farther away.

If they weren't this equal size & distance.....then we wouldn't enjoy the wonders of seeing Solar eclipses and in fact nor would life on Earth be possible.

The Earth is just the right size and distance from the Sun & the Moon for life to exist... and that is one of the things that the video I watched on Multiverses stated. However I can't remember the guys name.

But you solution, to explain this "accident" by giving it a creator, isn't solving your fundamental problem, it's just moving it one step further away.

You said that thinking of where God came from makes your head hurt, why then are you so sure he exists? If your reasoning behind his existence is that you can't otherwise explain the seemingly apparent nature of order in the universe, then surely the same reasoning, that you can't explaining the existence of God, should be used to discount his existence too?

[JulieB]

"shows that that essay isn't true"??? Is that all you've got??? I linked an extensive loooong essay written by someone with deep knowledge of the subject and all you can say is your thread on the "above top secret" UFO/Conspiracy theory website proves it isn't true? words fail me. I'd be willing to bet you didn't read a single paragraph of what I linked.

Why on earth would you reference Nimrod and his family when the bible you read isn't a reliable reference to anything historical whatsoever? If I wish to understand history, the last place I would look is in the bible, written almost two thousand years later than it was made out to be, a faked record of a non existent history of a two bit tribe who stole, borrowed and copied everything in their collective mythology from those around them. Why would one reference a book of mythological characters when trying to understand history?

Moses didn't write the Pentateuch, and no one in the third millenia BC wrote anything in what we know as the bible, it was all written around the time of the Babylonian exile. The Pentateuch could never have been written in the time it claims to be, because there are cities and towns mentioned in it which didn't exist for another thousand years or more.

If you haven't the decency to read the link I sent, don't comment on it.

UFO websites! bwahahahahahahaha

The only link I could find is the one you posted about Constantine - being a Pagan Thug. I agreed with that because he was... so apologies if I've read the wrong link I can't find another one, so please repost.

However that essay is not correct in the terms that Constantine provided the foundation of Christianity - he brought in many pagan beleifs that polluted Christianity that go back to Babylon.

Hislops Two Babylon's was written many years ago...there has been alot more research done since then.

However the fact remains that much of the Catholic & Protestant teachings DO NOT eminate from the Bible or from the Teachings of Jesus, but they have their roots in Sumerian beleifs, which can be traced all the way back to Nimrod & the Tower of Babel.

The Mystery of Babylon - the story of Nimrod (great grandson of Noah), Semiramis (his mother/wife) how she tried to resurrect him & why his penis is memorialised & their son Tammuz is in fact a central teaching also of the Occult.

The occult - Baal worship & the worship of Molech (all rolled into one with human sacrifice) is also part of the reason why world leaders and the elite gather at the Bohemian Grove annually and bow down to a 40 foot effergy to the God Molech dressed in Klu Klux Klan outfits and re-enact the burning of a human being at the foot of statue. Which Alex Jones infiltrated and filmed on video.

It is a pity you simply dismiss that thread on Above Top Secret because the researcher did alot of work on this and it had nothing to do with UFOs/Conspiracies. The thread is quite long with many contributors of all persuasions. However if you wish to dismiss it then fine that's OK.

Jehovah's Witnesses BTW do NOT teach that only 144K people will be saved. There's about 8 million earthwide and a further 10million or so attended this years Memorial of Jesus's death. That's more population than some countires.....Nor do JWs teach that they have exclusivitey of being saved. That is not our right of determination - only God has the right to judge anyone.

[JulieB]

But you solution, to explain this "accident" by giving it a creator, isn't solving your fundamental problem, it's just moving it one step further away.

You said that thinking of where God came from makes your head hurt, why then are you so sure he exists? If your reasoning behind his existence is that you can't otherwise explain the seemingly apparent nature of order in the universe, then surely the same reasoning, that you can't explaining the existence of God, should be used to discount his existence too?

The difference being - if there is no creator, then the whole Universe has no purpose. I can't accept that at all. I can't accept that IT just came about end of.

In just the same manner my brain hurts as I said before when I dismiss a creator out of the equation and just think well what existed before the Universe that had No purpose, no intelligence behind it?

[JulieB]

This is not correct. Current theories suggest that life as we know it requires liquid water to be available in the presence of the other atoms required for organic chemistry. This does not require a certain distance from the sun. It is likely there is liquid water under the surface of Europa, which is well outside the "Goldilocks" zone. The moon is completely irrelevant

Theories about how self replicating DNA formed in a supposed organic soup within liquid water. However the probabilities are so enormous of making the correct chains of amino acids to form the building blocks of DNA that they go beyond where maths quantifies a nil probability. Which is why scientists like Meyer have been asking more and more questions.

From the home page of his website: Stephen C Meyer

In the 21st century, the information age has finally come to biology. We now know that biology at its root is comprised of information rich systems, such as the complex digital code encoded in DNA. Groundbreaking discoveries of the past decade are revealing the information bearing properties of biological systems.

Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, a Cambridge trained philosopher of science is examining and explaining the amazing depth of digital technology found in each and every living cell such as nested coding, digital processing, distributive retrieval and storage systems, and genomic operating systems.

Meyer is developing a more fundamental argument for intelligent design that is based not on a single feature like the bacterial flagellum, but rather on a pervasive feature of all living systems. Alongside matter and energy, Dr. Meyer shows that there is a third fundamental entity in the universe needed for life: information.

The Bible teaches that life begins at conception - and the more we learn about DNA & the genetic code - the more the Psalmist's words seem apt

Psalm 139:16). . .Your eyes saw even the embryo of me, And in your book all its parts were down in writing,. . .

The genetic sequecing of life is indeed determined at conception and as humans have been able to unravel these genetic codes in recent years then indeed the DNA sequences for each individul human or any life on earth is indeed determined as if written in a book at the embryonic stage.

[JulieB]

Julie, if the universe was created by God, who is apparently omniscient, why would it have taken any time at all? Why could he, being all powerful and all, not just have created it in the blink of an eye?

I'm not sure I understand your question.

The meaning I thought of Omniscience is as follows -

Omniscience (play /ɒmˈnɪʃəns/;[1] omniscient point-of-view in writing) is the capacity to know everything infinitely, or at least everything that can be known about a character including thoughts, feelings, life and the universe, etc. In Latin, omnis means "all" and sciens means "knowing"

The point being that God is supposed to be all knowing.

The amount of time an all knowing God would take to create something and being in a blink of any eye aren't connected to his all knowing abilities surely?

The Bible demonstrates that our creator has a plan for the Universe - the divine name Jehovah means "the one who causes to become" - however

as aptly demonstrated he allows for alterations. The overall plan is in place but how other beings react can have an alteration to how that plan finally comes to fruition.

It's a bit like a building project - individuals may be hired & fired during the process - but the overall result will be acheived and it's up to the man in charge to make sure that happens within budget and on time.

Hence why so many Bible characters turned against their Creator and the overall plan needed to be slightly altered in it's process.- it comes back to free will and his creation having the right to decide for themselves.

[JulieB]

You see chaos... I see the hand of an intelligent designer in nature.

Learn some human anatomy, then come back to us and tell us all about our 'intelligent' designer.

Psalm 139:14 . . .I shall laud you because in a fear-inspiring way I am wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, As my soul is very well

aware.

University finds brain's complexity beyond belief

RESEARCHERS have found that a single human brain has more molecular-scale switches than all the computers, routers and Internet connections on the entire planet!

Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, says the team found that the brain's complexity is beyond anything they'd imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief. In the cerebral cortex alone, there are roughly 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies! And a single synapse may contain 1,000 molecular-scale switches.

Human Brain has more switches than all the computers on Earth

Yet as the C4ID website comments...

Yet there are scientists who appear on our TV screens all the time to tell us that life just popped into existence when the right bunch of chemicals appeared, and that the genetic instructions required to construct the awesome human brain simply evolved by themselves with no guidance at all.

I'm not saying Jonathan YOU or anyone else have to agree with these findings - it is your absolute right to disagree or not to accept them or not to accept that this in anyway says there is an intelligence behind the design of the brain functions - but many atheists are adamant that Intelligent Design should be dismissed out of hand as the reasonings of scientific numpties who are all creationist nutjobs...... & to me that's not really fair.

All some of them are saying is that the current theories in place for the origin of life & how it came about on the Earth in the first place and thereon how natural selection and evolution transpired afterwards - have some serious questions to answer.

[Brumerican]

“You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe”

[Brumerican]

The hypocrisy shows itself in abundance yet again .

The human brain is far too complex to have not had a designer apparently , yet an all powerful deity can just exist out of nowhere with no explanation or evidence .

Also for every serious question an evolutionist needs to answer there are a hundred more serious questions for a creationist to answer.

[mjmooney]

Julie, if the universe was created by God, who is apparently omniscient, why would it have taken any time at all? Why could he, being all powerful and all, not just have created it in the blink of an eye?

You see this is great because we're actually debating interesting stuff.

I actually laughed out loud at that!

[TheDon]

But you solution, to explain this "accident" by giving it a creator, isn't solving your fundamental problem, it's just moving it one step further away.

You said that thinking of where God came from makes your head hurt, why then are you so sure he exists? If your reasoning behind his existence is that you can't otherwise explain the seemingly apparent nature of order in the universe, then surely the same reasoning, that you can't explaining the existence of God, should be used to discount his existence too?

The difference being - if there is no creator, then the whole Universe has no purpose. I can't accept that at all. I can't accept that IT just came about end of.

In just the same manner my brain hurts as I said before when I dismiss a creator out of the equation and just think well what existed before the Universe that had No purpose, no intelligence behind it?

So basically you admit that your belief in God is due to an underlying need to ascribe meaning to life?

[JulieB]

So basically you admit that your belief in God is due to an underlying need to ascribe meaning to life?

No I didn't say that was the reason. I looked at the argument from both perspectives and decided that

ORDER in the Universe meant an intelligence behind that ORDER.

That ORDER and the Universe therefore must have been created for a purpose, otherwise an intelligence would not have created it.

Therefore I wanted to find out the source of that Intelligence and what their purpose was for the Universe & the Earth.

Hence why I beleive I found those answers to those questions from the words he inspired men to write down about these things.

Of course you can dismiss my reasonings that's up to you, but then a man who thinks only of physical things cannot understand

a person who thinks and ponders on spiritual things as the scripture explains. I beleive there is a God - he exists and what's more a human being can develop a relationship with their Creator through prayer, study and realising how that relationship changes your life for good.

My life would be the poorer for not having a knowledge and a contentment that God has a plan for mankind, for the Earth and for the Universe.

However much mankind ruins the planet - Jehovah will not allow him to ruin it beyond repair and that matters will be put right.

As my atheist dad used to say..... "there's nowt wrong with the planet... it's the people who live on it, that's the problem"

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Replace the word 'Jehova' with 'Allah', 'Zeus' or 'Superman' and see how far you get.

[chrisp65]

Here's a scenario for people, and there's no wrong answer, so feel free to make a dick of yourselves:

Your town has a particular problem with vagrancy, homelessness and substance abuse. You've seen it, gangs of 50 year old blokes with red faces and bad beards pissed by 9:00am, cold, ill, not looking forward to another winter. In amongst them, a couple of younger people, some females.

Your local police don't have the resources to move them on all day every day.

The council doesn't have the money to set up a hostel and drop in centre.

The govt doesn't give a flying f for anyone below them.

Strangley, no middle of the road non agenda volunteer grouping has come forward with a plan. There is no impartial philanthropist riding into town. BUT. But, several groups have offered to step in and build and staff a drop in centre and overnight hostel. It has long term accommodation for those trying to get off drugs or fresh out of prison. It has first night emergency bunks for scared kids needing somewhere safe for one night. It even has a community garden where it encourages the community to grow stuff allotment style to help feed itself healthily and cheaply.

YOU are the head of planning / all powerful mayor and have the casting vote on whether to say yes to this enterprise.

Do you vote yes or no if it is:

1) To be run by the Salvation Army and they will try and persuade those attending to sit in the occassional church service? A small per centage will then hopefully become christian.

2) to be run by the BNP, they will treat everyone that arrives equally, but will distribute leaflets.

3) to be run by the local hinduh community, at a very modest profit after several lottery grants etc

4) part of a Tesco funded master plan for the whole town

for my part, I'd go with 1)

and this is loosely based on something currently happening in my town

[limpid]

Really? So the Hebrew didn't use the word "yôm" which can only be translated as what we now recognise as a 24 hour period? It doesn't use any of the Hebrew words which could mean longer periods of time and "yôm" is used consistently throughout the bibile to mean a night and a day.

As A Religious Encyclopaedia (Vol. I, p. 613) observes: “The days of creation were creative days, stages in the process, but not days of twenty-four hours each"

It's like me saying... in my grandmother's DAY ........ I'm not speaking about a 24 hour period at all am I?

It's not like that in any way. Hebrew contains different words for such periods of time. Just because the English word "day" has two meanings doe not mean that the Hebrew word translated as "day" has the same multiple meanings.

Yohm Kippur is a Jewish celebration - The Day of Atonement -but it is a festival of 10 days. When the Bible uses the same term eg in the Days of Noah, or the Days of Moses - it uses "Yohm" however as the Bible claims that the days of Noah spanned hundreds of years - then how could it be meaning days with 24 hour periods?

Yôm Kippur is the last day of Tishri. It is one day, not ten.

Are you referring to the quote 2 Peter 2:5 "Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it will be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man”? Because that's just the plural of day. Remember in this fable Noah had 3 sons at the age of 500 years old.

Also our perspective of a day on the Earth is not the same as for God according to the Bible at all.

(2 Peter 3: 8) However, let this one fact not be escaping YOUR notice, beloved ones, that one day is with Jehovah as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. . .

So the earth was created, according to this, in a time between 7 days and 7 millennia? So just possibly this could add 7,000 years to how old you think the world is? It's neither here nor there. Regardless of this, Genesis is out of context with respect to the passage you cite. You can't pick individual words written by different authors, remove the context and claim they mean the same thing. Well you can, but that's grasping at straws.

The Hebrews like the Babylonians differed to our use of day because their days started in the Evening and ran until the next evening. Ours start from midnight to midnight.

This as an irrelevance.

God used this fundamental division of time on the first “day” of the period during which he prepared the earth for mankind, when diffused light evidently penetrated the swaddling bands, thus causing the moisture-covered earth to experience its first day and night as it rotated on its axis through the light of the sun. “God brought about a division between the light and the darkness. And God began calling the light Day, but the darkness he called Night.” (Ge 1:4, 5) Here the word “Day” refers to the daylight hours in contrast with the nighttime. However, the record thereafter goes on to use the word “day” to refer to other units of time of varying length. In both the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures, the word “day” (Heb., yohm; Gr., heme) is used in a literal and in a figurative or even symbolic sense

"Evidently"? I'm assuming you are cut and pasting again as there is no part of that sentence to which the word "evidently" can apply.

With respect to Genesis, the Hebrew grammar syntax, the specific word used (day) and the clear understanding of the text all indicate the word "day" is simply narrative and cannot be allegorical.

[Kiwivillan]

**** the Salvation Army. My mum does homecare in NZ. The Sallies won the contract off the government several years ago and the workers have had no payrise in 3 years and the wage is just above minimum and the Sallies are **** creaming it off the no challenge contract. words removed!

What a rubbish argument anyway. Your trying to advocate debate about religion and falling into the trap that if people believe in hocus pocus it shouldn't be challenged because they do good things. Do you think charitable religious groups don't proselytise?

[limpid]

So basically you admit that your belief in God is due to an underlying need to ascribe meaning to life?

No I didn't say that was the reason. I looked at the argument from both perspectives and decided that

ORDER in the Universe meant an intelligence behind that ORDER.

That ORDER and the Universe therefore must have been created for a purpose, otherwise an intelligence would not have created it.

You stated this nonsense slightly differently when you asked for one example where order comes from chaos. I listed quite a few. There is no requirement for order to come from intelligence. Order just happens. Does "ORDER" mean something other than "order"?

Therefore I wanted to find out the source of that Intelligence and what their purpose was for the Universe & the Earth.

Hence why I beleive I found those answers to those questions from the words he inspired men to write down about these things.

Of course you can dismiss my reasonings that's up to you, but then a man who thinks only of physical things cannot understand

a person who thinks and ponders on spiritual things as the scripture explains. I beleive there is a God - he exists and what's more a human being can develop a relationship with their Creator through prayer, study and realising how that relationship changes your life for good.

My life would be the poorer for not having a knowledge and a contentment that God has a plan for mankind, for the Earth and for the Universe.

However much mankind ruins the planet - Jehovah will not allow him to ruin it beyond repair and that matters will be put right.

You forgot to tidy up the line breaks in these paragraphs when you cut and pasted them.

As my atheist dad used to say..... "there's nowt wrong with the planet... it's the people who live on it, that's the problem"

But in a designed universe, how could a perfect creator create problem people?

[TheDon]

So basically you admit that your belief in God is due to an underlying need to ascribe meaning to life?

No I didn't say that was the reason. I looked at the argument from both perspectives and decided that

ORDER in the Universe meant an intelligence behind that ORDER.

That ORDER and the Universe therefore must have been created for a purpose, otherwise an intelligence would not have created it.

Therefore I wanted to find out the source of that Intelligence and what their purpose was for the Universe & the Earth.

Hence why I beleive I found those answers to those questions from the words he inspired men to write down about these things.

Of course you can dismiss my reasonings that's up to you, but then a man who thinks only of physical things cannot understand

a person who thinks and ponders on spiritual things as the scripture explains. I beleive there is a God - he exists and what's more a human being can develop a relationship with their Creator through prayer, study and realising how that relationship changes your life for good.

My life would be the poorer for not having a knowledge and a contentment that God has a plan for mankind, for the Earth and for the Universe.

However much mankind ruins the planet - Jehovah will not allow him to ruin it beyond repair and that matters will be put right.

As my atheist dad used to say..... "there's nowt wrong with the planet... it's the people who live on it, that's the problem"

But once again, your "solution" just involves exactly the same problem that you decided it solves. You haven't answered the question of how everything came to be, you've just moved it.

You stated:

The difference being - if there is no creator, then the whole Universe has no purpose. I can't accept that at all. I can't accept that IT just came about end of.

Ergo your religious nature is because you can't accept that everything is without meaning. You NEED it to have a meaning, you've stated it yourself, so you've found one in religion.

There's no problem with that, many people need to see a meaning in life, but lets not try to pretend that you've weighed up facts and came to an evidence based conclusion that there is a God, because you haven't. You've simply decided there is one because by your own admission you're unable to rationalise the world without there being some deity behind it, despite the fact that, also by your own admission, you can't rationalise how such a deity could even come to exist in the first place.

This is my problem with most religious people, if they just came out and said "you know what, I don't like the idea that life is meaningless, so I'm hoping it's not and that this Christianity stuff is right" then I'd just be all "well, whatever, your choice" but instead they act like their is actual evidence backing up their beliefs, that it's not just a whim, that religion is actually a conclusion you can logically come to. It's not. It's faith, and people take it on faith because they don't like the alternative, and you know what, I'm fine with that, if only people were willing to admit it.