All-Purpose Religion Thread

[mjmooney]

I agree but the layout I find to be just awful ;-) It's a freaking labyrinth, the digital equivalent of the Mines of Moria!

Yes, that's true, the design is crap. But no worse than most of the evangelist sites!

[limpid]

links updated to reflect site guidelines

??? The links were fine. In fact they were better before.

[norton65ca]

Oh dear, now I have to go back and re edit again... ;-)

nah, I'll not bother.

I do understand when someone for example puts an ebay link on to a forum, those links are loooooooooong...

nuance, humour and subtlety are anathema to online communication ;-) Hard to know who's serious and who's not sometimes... :-)

[limpid]

That's why it's detailed in the posting guidelines. I wouldn't want people wandering off and applying their own interpretation of the word of mod

[norton65ca]

...as it is written, so shall it be ;-)

[ozvillafan]

...and for those of you complaining as to why one only gets the nutty Christians and why not some "mainstream" ones, the truth of the matter is, historically speaking, for 2000 years the definition of a christian has always been one who reveres the bible as the word of god in all of its super naturalness, because it reveals the "offensive" idea that almighty god, invaded history in the form of his only begotten son, fully god/fully man, supernaturally revived after experiencing real death on a real cross, and really physically resurrected out of a real tomb and really left here for somewhere "else". The essence of Christianity is this. The "moderns" who avoid the rather more outrageous aspects of the faith as delineated above, are really fooling themselves, liberal Christianity is Christianity lite, it's had its guts taken out and is a hollow philosophical shell. Christianity has always been militant, intolerant, exclusive and unrepentant. It is, by definition, a profoundly supernatural religion and when that is removed, it is, for want of a better word, nothing.

Norton - thanks for your honesty in all your posts. Given the details of your life that you have laid out I can tell how hard it was to write it and this thread is much better off for it.

I highlighted this post from your numerous ones because it sums up Christianity very well - especially "Christianity lite".

While the church has certainly been militant through history, you would know that the faith is not. It's not a call to arms, it's a call to evangelism.

Outside that, yes - Christianity is indeed intolerant, exclusive and unrepentant.

Thanks, too, for the links. I'll try to find time to read them, but you know there are as many articles arguing for as there are against. Especially when it comes to the actual existence of Jesus.

As for fear and doubts - yes, I do have them. This is what you get when you hope for something that is unseen. And lets be honest - without that hope Christianity is pointless.

And, above all, it is a faith. You are quite correct when you talk about "all or nothing" and "2 feet in". Yet I find that takes less faith than believing in nothing - which is something I tried after being disillusioned with Christianity as a young adult.

Some more questions for you OVF. (But first, respect to Norton for his frank admission and well-argued explanations. I was also raised in a pretty religious society, though thankfully not by particularly religious parents. I was 16 or 17 before I actually said the words "I am not a Christian")

Are you aware of the historical context within which the story of Jesus arose?

[The Romans had occupied Palestine and were predictably brutal in their methods, crucifying folk left right and centre. The Jews were desperate to be freed from Roman occupation, and every man and his dog was praying for the coming of the/a Messsiah. In fact there were heaps of Messiahs at the time. Some had more successful messianic careers than others. Monty Python's Life of Brian, despite the humour, paints a fairly accurate picture.]

I'm not sure what you are driving at. Is it that the Jew's need for a promised Messiah couldn't come soon enough so they fabricated the story of Jesus?

Do you accept that there are people born every decade (or even every year) who have the ability to attract Followers who believe them to be special individuals?

[Examples would be Jim Jones, David Koresh, Charles Manson and others. We only hear about a lot of them because they are particularly evil. There are plenty more that we never hear about. I personally have two acquaintances (one in Canada, one in Australia) who follow guru-type spiritual leaders]

Yes.

Why are you so convinced of the truth of the Resurrection, despite the lack of evidence, and despite the lack of repeat "miracles" in the last two thousand years?

I'm not sure what you mean by the lack of evidence. I'm assuming that the gospels are just stories and not to be trusted?

I'm also not sure what a lack of repeat "miracles" has to do with the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Why are you so convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, despite the fact that anyone can write a book, and despite the ease with which a desperate people can be persuaded of its importance?

It all hinges on Jesus. If he did not rise from the dead, the rest doesn't make any point. As stated earlier, Paul is more than aware of this.

If you imagine yourself a devout believer in the 1850's, how would the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species affect your view of the Bible as the unquestionable Word of God?

About the same as it does today. If you are looking for an argument on Evolution vs Creation that will require another thread.

I'm sure there are many people keen for the fight but from personal experience I find Evolutionists willing to read arguments against them as rare as Christians willing to read Dawkins. The arguments on both sides quickly become pointless, repetitive and hostile when coupled with the anonymity of the internet. I'd rather not bother.

[CrackpotForeigner]

Are you aware of the historical context within which the story of Jesus arose?

[The Romans had occupied Palestine and were predictably brutal in their methods, crucifying folk left right and centre. The Jews were desperate to be freed from Roman occupation, and every man and his dog was praying for the coming of the/a Messsiah. In fact there were heaps of Messiahs at the time. Some had more successful messianic careers than others. Monty Python's Life of Brian, despite the humour, paints a fairly accurate picture.]

I'm not sure what you are driving at. Is it that the Jew's need for a promised messsiah couldn't come soon enough so they fabricated the story of Jesus?

Do you accept that there are people born every decade (or even every year) who have the ability to attract Followers who believe them to be special individuals?

[Examples would be Jim Jones, David Koresh, Charles Manson and others. We only hear about a lot of them because they are particularly evil. There are plenty more that we never hear about. I personally have two acquaintances (one in Canada, one in Australia) who follow guru-type spiritual leaders]

Yes.

I was saying that, if you were the sort of bloke who fancied establishing himself as a messsiah, Palestine around the year 30 BCE was very fertile ground. If you accept the second point, don't you think it's true that some kind of a Jesus was very likely to pop up?

[mjmooney]

As for fear and doubts - yes, I do have them. This is what you get when you hope for something that is unseen. And lets be honest - without that hope Christianity is pointless.

And, above all, it is a faith. You are quite correct when you talk about "all or nothing" and "2 feet in". Yet I find that takes less faith than believing in nothing - which is something I tried after being disillusioned with Christianity as a young adult.

There's hope for you yet.

Sounds to me like you have an overriding need to 'believe' in something. But the alternative to faith is not 'believing in nothing', it's simply living. Taking an interest in the world (universe) around us. Being nice to each other. Enjoying life. Not worrying about that which we cannot control, or speculating on life after death.

I think a lot of believers think that the atheist's life is one of emptiness, anxiety, sadness, lack of hope, pointlessness.

Nothing could be further from the truth. As Norton says, if you're coming out of the years of delusion, then yes, I would imagine there IS a big 'God shaped hole' there, for a while. But it's a hole of your own making. Fill it in with facts.

Don't be a slave to superstition.

[BOF]

Exactly Mike. And if you have spent your life well, being good to other people and doing nice things and living in what a Christian might call a good way, then you never know, God might let you in heaven's back door if it turns out you were wrong all along

[limpid]

Exactly Mike. And if you have spent your life well, being good to other people and doing nice things and living in what a Christian might call a good way, then you never know, God might let you in heaven's back door if it turns out you were wrong all along

I'm not sure that Thor would care much about ho you lived.

[Xann]

Kero One -

[JulieB]

Just a post about religions in general - have no wish to enter into a heated debate.

At the last count there are IIRC over 10,000 different religions on the Earth.

All but one are based on the premise that there is an afterlife after death for mankind... whether it be to live in a heaven or many teach a hell or that you will be re-incarnated etc etc... and that man has an immortal soul.

However where do these beleifs come from?

It was Satan that told Eve in the Garden of Eden that she would "positively NOT die".. not God.

The Bible actually teaches that the human as a living soul "it itself will die" and that when you are dead "you are conscious of nothing"

For those who can be bothered to have a look...........There's a really good thread on Above Top Secret forum that nearly ALL modern day religions can be traced back to ancient Sumeria and the Biblical characters of Nimrod, Semiramis & Tammuz (where the Cross comes from).

ALL ROADS LEAD TO BABYLON

This first Holy family - a Trinity did not worship the God of the Bible just the opposite...... the Bible teaches that Nimrod "was a mighty hunter in opposition to Jehovah"

Nimrod became Baal the Sun God after his death and the worship of him and his son Tammuz forms the basis of the pagan beleifs that have even infiltrated Christianity.

I wonder how many people realise that when they see the Clergy & Politicians laying wreaths at War Memorials (Obelisks)" around the World - these phalic symbols they are praying at are actually commemerating the "pole of Baal" or Nirmod's penis??!!!

Interesting enough the teaching of the "Mystery of Babylon" about Nimrod, Semiramis & their son Tammuz is also apparently the main tenet of the Occult & the worship of Satan.

Currently speaking to the researchers via Facbeook who are investigating "Gobekli Tepe" in Eastern Turkey about the T shaped stones & some of the artifacts found at this fascinating place... and what is now officially the World's Oldest Temple". Surely the T shaped stones have something to do with Wikipedia - The Cross of Tau - Tammuz

Personally I wonder if Gobekli Tepe is a place of pilgammage & commemeration similar to what we still see today memorialised as All Souls Day or Halloween and it's interesting hearing what researchers have to say about their finds. Ancient Pagan mankind such as the Sumerians, The Egyptians, The ancient South Americans etc were obsessed with the afterlife as we all know.

Their beleifs were in complete paradox to the beleifs that the Israelites held. In fact the Hebrews were told to have nothing to do with the pagan Canaanite beleifs particularly Baal worship etc.

Only one religion sets itself apart from all the others by teaching that there is no hell & that almost every single one of mankind goes back to dust when he dies and is as nothing.

A belief that God has the power to resurrect a dead person at some point is NOT the same as a belief in an afterlife.

Hopefully this post will be seen as of general interest, discussing the topic of Religion and will not be seen as in anyway an excuse to post abusive bile, which is simply not necessary IMO.

“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”.............. ― Socrates

[mjmooney]

Just a post about religions in general - have no wish to enter into a heated debate.

At the last count there are IIRC over 10,000 different religions on the Earth.

All but one are based on the premise that there is an afterlife after death for mankind... whether it be to live in a heaven or many teach a hell or that you will be re-incarnated etc etc... and that man has an immortal soul.

However where do these beleifs come from?

Hopefully this post will be seen as of general interest, discussing the topic of Religion and will not be seen as in anyway an excuse to post abusive bile, which is simply not necessary IMO.

No, fair enough.

To answer the question: most of those religions originated thousands of years ago. Human beings have always had curiosity and an enquiring mind - it was arguably (after the opposable thumb) the single most advantageous evolutionary development we had.

At that stage of human history, we had very little information to work with - we hadn't developed the technologies or the scientific method that would come much later, with the Renaissance.

So we speculated, we couldn't do much else.

Now combine that with fear. Life then (as it is now for many) was nasty, brutish and short. We knew we would die, and it scared us.

What could be more natural than to fantasise a life after death? "A consummation devoutly to be wished" as Hamlet put it.

And those fears persist - particularly in cultures with low levels of education. The religions continue to provide a comfort blanket - not just for the eternal life fantasy, but as a social structure, a bonding tool.

The odd exception is the apparently educated USA, where (unlike much of Europe), superstition persists. There are some interesting theories about why this should be so, but I'll save that for another post.

There you go, Julie, no piss taking involved.

[CrackpotForeigner]

We all have a tendency to believe what we want to hear. We all most definitely want to hear that after our clogs have popped we'll be floating up in the clouds playing harps and generally having a super time for all eternity. Thing is it just sounds a bit too good to be true. And people who tell you that you'll only get harps and clouds if you do X are trying to control you.

[mjmooney]

Put it another way.

Most people LIKE simple explanations. They have enough to worry about just getting through the tribulations of everyday life, without trying to get their heads around hard science. And they learned this thing called 'common sense' at their mums' knees.

Unfortunately, common sense is frequently wrong, but no matter.

Given the choice between:

The Universe was filled homogeneously and isotropically with an incredibly high energy density and huge temperatures and pressures and was very rapidly expanding and cooling. Approximately 10−37 seconds into the expansion, a phase transition caused a cosmic inflation, during which the Universe grew exponentially. After inflation stopped, the Universe consisted of a quark–gluon plasma, as well as all other elementary particles. Temperatures were so high that the random motions of particles were at relativistic speeds, and particle–antiparticle pairs of all kinds were being continuously created and destroyed in collisions. At some point an unknown reaction called baryogenesis violated the conservation of baryon number, leading to a very small excess of quarks and leptons over antiquarks and antileptons—of the order of one part in 30 million. This resulted in the predominance of matter over antimatter in the present Universe.

The Universe continued to grow in size and fall in temperature, hence the typical energy of each particle was decreasing. Symmetry breaking phase transitions put the fundamental forces of physics and the parameters of elementary particles into their present form. After about 10−11 seconds, the picture becomes less speculative, since particle energies drop to values that can be attained in particle physics experiments. At about 10−6 seconds, quarks and gluons combined to form baryons such as protons and neutrons. The small excess of quarks over antiquarks led to a small excess of baryons over antibaryons. The temperature was now no longer high enough to create new proton–antiproton pairs (similarly for neutrons–antineutrons), so a mass annihilation immediately followed, leaving just one in 1010 of the original protons and neutrons, and none of their antiparticles. A similar process happened at about 1 second for electrons and positrons. After these annihilations, the remaining protons, neutrons and electrons were no longer moving relativistically and the energy density of the Universe was dominated by photons (with a minor contribution from neutrinos).

A few minutes into the expansion, when the temperature was about a billion (one thousand million; 109; SI prefix giga-) kelvin and the density was about that of air, neutrons combined with protons to form the Universe's deuterium and helium nuclei in a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Most protons remained uncombined as hydrogen nuclei. As the Universe cooled, the rest mass energy density of matter came to gravitationally dominate that of the photon radiation. After about 379,000 years the electrons and nuclei combined into atoms (mostly hydrogen); hence the radiation decoupled from matter and continued through space largely unimpeded. This relic radiation is known as the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Over a long period of time, the slightly denser regions of the nearly uniformly distributed matter gravitationally attracted nearby matter and thus grew even denser, forming gas clouds, stars, galaxies, and the other astronomical structures observable today.

and

1: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4: And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5: And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7: And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8: And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9: And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10: And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

You can kind of understand why the average human would prefer the second explanation.

Doesn't make it right, though.

We have evolved sentient brains, we should use them.

[regular_john]

Post

Your God created Satan, and is yet to do anything about him. Your God is an idiot.

[Kiwivillan]

Oh my Science, JulieB has weighed in

[legov]

Post

Your God created Satan, and is yet to do anything about him. Your God is an idiot.

Now, now

[PussEKatt]

One thing I find hard to understand is that god created man but he really did a lousy job for someone that is supposed to know everything.

I mean if you or I make something, wether its a plastic model aeroplane or a kitset kitchen/ home etc we try to make it the best that we can,right ? I mean we dont make the plastic plane using paper glue, you get my drift.

So why did god make us so that all the things that we like are harmful to us ? .... salt,chocolate,fast cars,alcahol, etc etc ?

[Chindie]

Post

Your God created Satan, and is yet to do anything about him. Your God is an idiot.

Haha you resorted to abuse, you lost the argument, god always wins! I'll be laughing at you in heaven come judgement day*

*which hopefully will be soon...