What do you believe? (RELIGION THREAD. **NO BASHING**)

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What do you believe? (RELIGION THREAD. **NO BASHING**)

If God is an intelligent, sentient being that created the entire universe and everything you know, you may disagree with him, at which point you should no longer disagree because you will always be wrong. It's that kind of logic that makes it difficult to really argue in favor of not believing in God. It is for that it isn't really possible to debate in favor of or against the existence of God.

Where does this "should not disagree" come from? Aside from religion?

People can live happy lives being wrong and do from whatever your moral compass might be. Even with a deity not in the discussion, there's what other people think is wrong and being wrong in their eyes. We elect leaders to represent us and make laws based upon what we think is right and wrong. People disagree on some of those things as well, but democracy isn't a 100% perfect system.

Its still the best system we've got, though, for all its problems.

I have family who, in their eyes, no matter what good I do I'm still wrong in some way and always will be because I like thinks they don't and they have ideas they have invented about my interests.

Yes, I do talk about video games and writing a lot. They see these as distractions and things I'll grow out of. I'm the artsy-fartsy member of the family, they're all about math and science. If they do something creative, its has a blueprint. Its not me, I can't function like that but they keep on believing I can by blueprints.

Its not even religion, just someone imposing their concept of "normal" on me. When I did theater, when I did newspapers and go published there was no praise for any of that that. They came out to every last soccer game my sister had, but only once to plays I was in and never got my humor.

If I had had gone into engineering or accounting they'd probably be kissing my ass right now and thinking I'm a wonderful son. But even if my life was better and I was on the path I wanted to be and successful, they would not approve and wouldn't see the value in it.

So these two people, probably the only ones I'd ever want approval from in my life, never will. It does hurt knowing that, even if they love me. There are parts of me that will always be parts of me and they'll never be able to reconcile it

Place that against a god that simply disagrees with you sometimes and loves you anyway. Maybe he doesn't like some of the things you do, but loves who you are.

Now there are some issues some people feel they can reconcile with God. I can't say what its right for sure, but religions being religions, there's undoubtedly been some manipulation of translation along the way. King James all but proves that so who knows what else they poked around with in the Old Testament. Christians aren't supposed to live by the Old Testament, but by the New Testament. It doesn't mean everything changed, but God's relationship with man changed in there. Gone was the God of flooding and plagues as Jesus took on man's sin.

Not getting preachy, that's just the interpretation.

My disconnect with the likes of Westboro Baptist Church is its like for them the New Testament and Christ don't even exist. They're just all fire and brimstone and God hates all. That's why I dislike them being associated with Christians.

What do tornadoes have to do with God's judgement? They're tornadoes. If the God I believe in is the one that is of the New Testament, tornadoes are something that just happen. They are not tools of divine punishment any more.

What I believe Westboro Baptist is is that they are not Christians, they are not a cult - they're just a well-oiled group of lawyers that troll anything in hopes of getting sued so they can exploit the First Amendment in their defense and countersue to make money. They thrive because the world is stupid enough to still give creeps of their sort attention.

And if by chance they do really believe in a god, when they meet him I hope a God lets them watch a lot of gay people go to heaven before he sends every grown-up that's a member of Westboro to hell. Its only fair.

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I for one, hope to live long enough for medical science to at least get to the point where we can actually extend lives. We're getting very close to it, and some are arguing that we may even figure out how to reverse aging and prolong our lives (if not outright become immortal [but not invincible, big difference]) in the next 20~40 years at the rate that we're making advancements.

I don't want to live longer. It just means I have to pay taxes longer.

If they do find a way to extend lives, I'm hoping for the Ghost in the Shell scenario with cybernetic bodies and brain cases.

[Malacite]

Re: What do you believe? (RELIGION THREAD. **NO BASHING**)

Christians aren't supposed to live by the Old Testament, but by the New Testament

Says who?

Jesus was really more of an ultra-orthadox Jew, the "next level" if you will, and didn't really intend to start his own religion. He was just preaching his values & view of the world, but he was still a devout Jew. But that's what ended up happening. There's a lot that Christianity interprets wrong about his teachings etc, but good luck convincing anyone of that. It's also interesting to point out that the very first Christians were in fact Arabs.

[Raydeus]

Re: What do you believe? (RELIGION THREAD. **NO BASHING**)

One would think their writers would come up with a Crisis series to fix all the inconsistencies between universes.

I mean, just from the preview it seems the Apocalypse arc will be fun, but all the series leading to it leave a lot to be desired. Plus they can't have the main hero spend more than 2000 years away just for the Apoc return. Come -freaking- on.

Then the fixes they did to recon issue 1 were sloppy at best. Issue 2 and all the spin-offs have so many contradictory settings it's amazing bible geeks aren't up in arms already. And that's not even counting fanfics, like that awful Rapture series.

(And collector editions are a freaking joke with all those worthless free Heaven entrance coupons.)


Yet they are still making money like there's no tomorrow. Go figure.

[Armando]

Re: What do you believe? (RELIGION THREAD. **NO BASHING**)

Says who?

...Jesus?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What do you believe? (RELIGION THREAD. **NO BASHING**)

Then the fixes they did to recon issue 1 were sloppy at best. Issue 2 and all the spin-offs have so many contradictory settings it's amazing bible geeks aren't up in arms already. And that's not even counting fanfics, like that awful Rapture series.

Everyone else seems to be capable of giving reasons why they believe what they believe without resorting to dropping the needle on the favorite broken record of the very particular unthinking Atheist. Its embarrassing to other, more intelligent Atheists to say such things, to be quite honest.

Its easy to say the bible has inconsistencies and if you had the energy to say it of other religions, you wouldn't dare because you don't know those religions any better than the bible. which you just assume to know because of some mild familiarity. So why are you so bold to make claims about inconsistencies about the Bible if you're not willing to cite them?

I've cited there are some potential issues, as I cited King James just seemed OK with omitting a number of books he thought didn't apply. I can't exactly peg Shakespeare for it, he was just hired to do a job. Could it be that men who wrote the books of the OT, in their arrogance of being men, wrote interpretations that placed men in the dominant role, yet the passage they cite for it ends with an inverse - "... husbands, submit to your wives."

I'm sure this was to mean that men and women in relationships should give a little when one has more expertise in something than the other and be supportive. There's also talk of an "equal yolk" in relationship - you're supposed to carry each other, not one carry the other.

And somehow all that just gets swept under the table and we just get "Wives, submit to your husbands," which has always been interesting to me. Based on what the Bible says, I'm supposed give equally in a relationship yet we have entire cultures of male dominance rather than equality that have taken mostly the last century to undo. Well, for the most part....

Because then you have these feminist hypocrites who want equal pay, equal jobs, equal treatment... until they start dating. Apparently some of them really like that the bar can be lowered for them. i personally can't stand to date a woman that expects me to have all the answers, success and keep them on a pedestal and then talk about being equal.

Cuz you know what? I can do my own laundry, cook my own dinners, clean my apartment and I don't expect someone to enter my life and do those things for me. I'd expect her to give to me as much as I do to her. I have no problem doing the gentlemanly things, but I'm not there to carry her full-time and get no support in return.

So yeah, I see some modifications of the bible going on in how its preached, but that's religion for you. Again, religion and politics are practically bosom buddies, they can be subverted for an agenda or shaping a culture. That's not spirituality, though, just religion.

As for "inconsistencies" - wouldn't different people always write slightly different versions of the same story if they saw it from a different perspective. That seems to be the case for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We can have the president of the United States come out and make a speech and it means different things to different people. That's not inconsistency and no one dares call it that - we call it a difference of opinion and perspective. Yet there are overlaps all the same.

[Murphie]

Re: What do you believe? (RELIGION THREAD. **NO BASHING**)

And there it is. I was waiting.

[lunamadison]

Re: What do you believe? (RELIGION THREAD. **NO BASHING**)

I am an apathetic agnotsic. I don't know and I don't care.