[mjmcchesney]

What about the Rat Allah?

[Rat]

That's what I like about rats. There's no god figure, well not that we know of, anyway.

[ March 29, 2002: Message edited by: Rat ]

[Omi]

Newbie in progress.

I wrote a really, really long summary of my opinion on this matter. If anyone cares to take a look, I would really appreciate it.

I've taken the liberty of uploading it all to a webpage, so it won't clutter up the forums. Coresponding to this is another article, which I would really like if some one clear things up for me.

Thank you.

[Steven Stahlberg]

Good stuff, sincere, intelligent and to the point.
About the christian faith, I'm not a christian, but I do think Jesus was a real historical person - those 4 accounts of his life in the New Testament should be taken as eye-witness accounts IMO, subject to all the problems that plague any eye-witness account, but at least not total fantasy. So it would seem at lest faintly possible that he might have been who he said he was.

About blind faith - I personally don't think that's good. My attitude is, use the scientific method in any search for knowledge, examine all the facts you can get, sort them according to reliability, then formulate a theory - but be always prepared to change that theory if new facts come to light.
This can be used in matters of religion as well. I can't say I know that God exists, and I certainly can't say I know God doesn't. Nobody can. There is no proof one way or another.
But there are lots of little indicators, bytes of information that point in one direction or other. So I look for these, and form a theory. I've been doing this for over 30 years.

So you can imagine the kinship I felt when I recently discovered the Baha'i faith, which teaches "independent investigation of the truth" - meaning each person makes up their own mind, in their own time, without any peer pressure or hard-sell or screaming preachers or crap like that (in fact there's no clergy at all). They also stress the importance of religion AND science to each other, and the importance of balance in all things. Gotta love it.

About omniscience and pre-determination and all that, what if everything is pre-determined? Who cares? If it all ends with all of us going to heaven for eternity ("hell" doesn't exist IMO), then I'm all for it. In any case, I wouldn't live my life any differently.

Look at it this way - you're God, and for some reason you suddenly create a gaggle of sentient beings who are all perfect and can't sin. There's no death or disease or pain at all.
Huh?!
So what do these perfect creatures do all day? They can't strive or struggle for anything, that would mean pain. They can't compete, that would mean struggle. So they do... nothing. for eternity (remember, no death?) ARGGG!! Sounds like hell to me... totally pointless too.
At least with what we see around us, we can imagine some sort of growing process, souls maturing and learning... bla. [shrugs] Who knows.

[the_monkey]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Steven Stahlberg:
About blind faith - I personally don't think that's good. My attitude is, use the scientific method in any search for knowledge, examine all the facts you can get, sort them according to reliability, then formulate a theory - but be always prepared to change that theory if new facts come to light.

---

"prove all things, hold fast to that which is good" 1 Thess. 5:21

i think that sums up the entire "blind faith" issue.

[Rat]

Steven has the Baha'i thing right on. I've been taking Baha'i classes since my grade one teacher told my mom about them. Basically, what they believe is that "God" sent messengers in a progressive order, like grades in school, each one adding a little more to what the others had been saying.

That's what I understand from the short lessons about it in between longer ones on Baha'i marriage and important dates.

[Unsound]

Which version of the bible did you get that from? I have the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-21

(16) Always be rejoicing. (17) Pray incessantly. (18) In connection with everything give thanks. For this is the will of God in union with Christ Jesus respecting you. (19) Do not put out the fire of the spirit. (20) Do not treat prophesyings with contempt. (21) Make sure of all things; hold fast to what is fine.

[the_monkey]

i got it out of one of those gideon bibles, im pretty sure its the same in NIV.

ive never heard of the new world translation before. but the verses you quoted are almost identical.

[Dr. T.J. Eckleberg]

Speaking of the Bible, has anyone ever noticed how much violence, pornography (by Christian standards) and racism there is in the Old Testament? For a religion that preaches family values, Christians carry around a strange guidebook. Do kids discuss Lot sleeping with his daughters in Sunday School? Do they cover the part about God sending the two she-bears to kill the children who made fun of ugly old Elijah? This stuff worries me. A holy scripture should be something to be shared, not rationalized and apologised for.

[Omi]

In my opinion, Jesus could have lived and was a very warm person (like the Dalai Lama). But about all the mericals he did, I'm not sure about. Ever heard of Hisenburg's (sp?) Uncertainty Principle? That's another thing I operate on, if I don't know if something exists or not, I'll assume both.

But it's just my perference that God doesn't exist. So, at least for me, he doesn't. In the end, we believe in whatever we want to, I just wish everyone has a happy life.

And about predetermination, I actually do believe in that, accept I call it Karma (though I don't believe in reincarnation, I just like the name ) and whatever happens happens. My Nirvana is in life, whatever comes after it will take care of it self. I'll just make sure I enjoy life while I still have it.

quote

Quote:

Look at it this way... Huh?!...Sounds like hell to me...

Well, that sort of sounds like heaven to me, or what impression I have on heaven: no competition, no struggle, for all of eternity.

Actually, I think God was bored so he created us to play with. j/k!

[dead]

quote:

---

Originally posted by social drone:


has anyone read the king james version of the bible cover to cover?

i have, and ill tell you...you are all full of shit.

---

Sweet one, guy. You have the charisma of a cult leader.

[Queezy]

So these progressive revelations, would they just be another poor way of telling the world that God does exist? Seems to me every time a religious question is brought up about the Bible Christians go out of their way to invent something new to help sheild Christianity. Do you guys even realize your making excuses? "Well sure the Bible advocates killing, but progressive revelation d00dz!' Where in the Bible does it say anything about that? Message is kill the non-beleivers. The Bible is just a show of how fucked up society was back then. It's not the word of God or anything like that.

We don't need religion, we need morals.

[Dr. T.J. Eckleberg]

Stephen - First of all, let me say that I am impressed with the job that Bahai has done in trying to wrap up all the loose ends of the world's religions. Universalist Unitarians are trying, unsuccessfully, to do the same thing and many of my atheist and agnostic friends attend UU churches. Unification is a good thing.

However, I do not agree with you that self-reliance as a result of an atheistic world view can ever be a crutch. In fact, it seems to negate the definition of a crutch. If I see myself as the author of my own fate, then all the responsibility for my life's direction falls squarely on my shoulders. That's not a crutch.

I firmly believe that atheism isn't for everyone. It takes guts to accept responsibility for your life, without a devil to blame or a god to turn to. You have to remember that atheism is not a faith, it's a lack thereof.

Now agnostics are a different story. I can't stand fence sitters. They remind me of the parable told by Mr Miagi in "The Karate Kid". They stand in the middle of the road waiting to get run down by oncoming traffic.

For everyone's information:
Just like you can't assume that someone is a believer simply because they say they are, you can't assume that a person who calls himself an atheist is really an atheist. HEAR ME NOW: People who hate God are not atheists.

Real atheists laugh at these people.

Many of my best friends are believers, simply because I'd rather hang out with a Christian, Jew, Muslim etc. who truly believes and practices their faith than an "atheist" who is simply a lapsed believer.

[Giant Hamster]

Religion killed Jesus, The Bible calls all women whores, Priests molest children, certain churches are still known to castrate choir boys, God already told you that you can't find him in a physical location so there's no need to goto church, and there are so many damn version of "The Truth" that the only logical explaination is that they're all lying.

If we're made in the image of God - we ar gods ourselves.
You have to power to do whatever you want...you just have to figure out how. A lot of the reason you can't is just because the words and emotions to express certain powers are not in our language anymore. It's difficult to do something you can't talk about.

So: Be your own god, make your life better, don't go against anothers will(really the only good rule in life), and don't worry about dying...you don't have to.

PS: It was really you carrying god's fat ass through the sand.

[Veen]

If you don't believe in God, what do you believe in? Evolution? rofl. You can't prove evolution. If you ask me evolution theory (religion) is far more ludicrous than any creation theory.

There are several "versions" of the bible. You know how the copy of a copy argument goes. The king james version is generally held to be accurate to the original manuscripts. Anything can be taken out of context and that is where a lot of misunderstanding comes from. The average christian isn't going to have all the answers you want. It's the pastor/preacher that has studied the bible and should be able to explain the when, where, why, how and what. Thats what church is for, so the pastor can teach those who want to listen. Of course as with all things undertaken by humans there will be corruptions and flaws in the system. Keep your mind open and keep questioning and you'll find you're answers.


Some specific responses.

"If we're made in the image of God - we ar gods ourselves"
An image of a thing is not that thing. Don't fool yourself twisting words.

Omi-kun :
God created Adam, not as a child, but as an adult, intelligent and free-willed. God told Adam that if he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the punishment was death. By disobeying God he and all his children were cursed. God hates sin. It was because of sin that God destroyed the world with a flood.

Think of it like this. If you had child and you watched that child do terrible, evil things. He ignored your commands and wishes. When that child came to you he kicked and bit. What would you do? You would punish the child.

I don't think it's possible for a human to fully understand God. Just as a child won't know why it's parent insists on holding hands in a crowd, we can't know the full nature of God.

Like I said above if you really want answers seek out someone who has studied the subject you question. Or even better, do some serious study yourself as well.

[Steven Stahlberg]

Hey, listen up - I'm not a christian! How many times do I have to say that? I'm of the Baha'i faith, which has the same relationship to Islam as Christianity has to Judaism.

Progressive revelation means much more than making excuses for the christian bible. It means every single one of the major religions are true, right for their time and place, each stemming from one of God's messengers, what some call prophets. Buddha was one, so was Krishna, and Jesus, and Muhammed. The last one was Baha'u'llah. But I don't want to explain all this here, people will accuse me of proselytizing, please go look it up if your interested, I have a link on my About page (at the bottom):
my web page

[edraket]

Just some loose remarks that came to mind while reading this thread...


About religion causing wars..
PEOPLE cause wars. They fight over their differences. What usually defines a seperate culture is its religion. Thus you might say they are fighting over their religion. But I have yet to find out about a religion that preaches in it's scriptures to go out and kill other people. It all comes down to the imperfect people that folow the religion.

I get really sick and tired of people saying religious people are just sheep and blabla while they themselves have adopted a belief system as well. So many people quote science as being the only truth while they have no actual understanding of what they are saying. Sure it sounds logical in the simplified version that they got in highschool but they have never questioned it. Never looked at other possibilities. Never looked at the things science can't explain. Just like the hard core religious people that where brought up in whatever church and never ever wondered if what they believed might not be true.

Our capitalist system has taken over many qualities that religion would fullfill in the millenia preceding it. But when that system fails what do we have? What goals (and what morals) would we have in life if our money is suddenly gone?
I am sure a lot of people are thinking right now that this is bullshit. But just look at what happened after the wall street crash and you will find a story of the western people feeling completely lost and throwing the world into turmoil. (Which btw was predicted long beforehand by great thinkers like Carl Jung)

So yes I do believe that religion is a necessity to our society.


What I also wanted to point out is that I do not agree with the way people here describe religions so seperately as if they were seperate entities. Ignoring the fact that they usually are an evolved system that has its roots in many other earlier cultures and shares those roots with many other religions. To me they are all the same thing basically. Just in a different form.
People also look very much at a prophet as being the defining factor of a religion. Which automatically means that if a religion doesn't have a prophet it isn't a religion by their standards.
Which leads me to this question to Steven Stahlberg: Where do any of the pagan beliefs fit into your theory on religion? Most of them (except for Wicca maybe) lack any type of prophet and deliberately avoid them or any other form of centralised leadership.

Ok..so far my points...

[Giant Hamster]

Veen - But I AM God, Trust me on that one.

[Steven Stahlberg]

quote

Quote:

Which leads me to this question to Steven Stahlberg: Where do any of the pagan beliefs fit into your theory on religion? Most of them (except for Wicca maybe) lack any type of prophet and deliberately avoid them or any other form of centralised leadership.

I agree 100% with everything else you wrote.
To adress your question, IMHO there've been only a handful of messengers, perhaps more than 6, certainly less than 20. No more is needed, since each one has such a huge impact on the period and place.

Now I would guess a religion not directly based on the words of one of these messengers is not to be taken too seriously, I mean come on, satanism? Norse mythology? Any one of a thousand cults started by a guy who's simply insane in the membrane, or wants some easy pussy and money? You may want to categorize all religion as superstitious crap, but you must admit there's a big difference between Islam and that Jones guy who fed cyanide-Koolaid to his followers in South America.

So some religions stand out as different from all other belief-systems today - Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Baha'i faith. These all have VERY similar teachings, if you just look at the basics (they all have a form of the Golden Rule for instance). There are also other religions, such as Sikhism and Zoroastrianism, with similar teachings, likely they are related somehow.

How does paganism fit in? Perhaps as some say people were simply searching for truth and meaning, and not being able to find the facts they made some up. Perhaps just for fun at first, round the campfire.

Who knows, I'm not trying to explain all of human religious history, just letting you know what I've read in some books on this subject, you can check them out yourself at the Baha'i website, and probably find stuff that I haven't.

Veen - no proof for evolution? Yeah rrrrright...
So (without quoting the bible, please) what proof do YOU have for creationism?

[Rat]

There were 12 "messengers" I think. I have them written down somewhere, but those that I can remember offhand (in no order) are:

Christ
Mohammed
Zoroaster
Krishna
Baha'u'llah
Buddah
Joseph (I think, I'll have to check it)

Sorry for any misspellings.

[Impaler]

Stahlberg: You really enjoyed Madame L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, didn't you?

[Rat]

That was a good book!

[Steven Stahlberg]

I'm sorry to say I missed that book, in fact never heard of the author even. I should get it for my kids, it seems to be a classic.

[the_monkey]

steven, just out of curiosity what makes you disbelieve the credibility of the old testament? you seem to believe that Christ was who he said he was, and im assuming that you believe everything he said was true as well. (please correct me if my assumptions are wrong). anyways, acting upon that assumption, i feel like i should point out certian passages.

in matthew 5:17, Jesus supports the credibility of the old testament, saying that he has come to fulfill its prophecies.

in 2 timothy 4:15-17, it says, "all scripture is God-breathed". meaning that it is of God himself, and therefor, quite reliable.

maybe im getting off topic, perhaps i should email you and we can disscuss this further?

[Steven Stahlberg]

I think this is still on-topic, and anyway it's rather interesting.
Ok, so speaking just for me now, not for anybody else, yes I do think more likely than not Jesus was who he said he was.

But I just can't see the Flood as actually happening. I can't take seriously the myth of Adam and Eve, a talking snake and a fruit. Genesis must be seen as a parable, not the literal truth. Same thing with Noah's ark. I could go on and on, basically it boils down to - either you trust in your own senses, and the power of your mind to sort and synthesize information, to perceive and make sense of the world - OR you take the OT literally.
IMO you can't do both. The two approaches to life are mutually incompatible. (Please note though, being religious is not necessarily incompatible with science.)
Taking the OT literally means throwing out all science, logic, perception. I think God gave us this incredible brain power to actually USE it. I don't think God went around creating false clues to test our faith or something, that would make a lie of existence...

So why did Jesus say what he said? Don't know. Maybe he didn't, maybe those words got put in his mouth by transcribers eager to validate the previous writings.
Or see it like this - what should he have said? Should he try to explain to these rough and ready tribes people that only part of their precious religious writings were true, that much of it is parable and distorted myth? How many would have followed him after that?

On the other hand, you may be right, and I could be totally wrong, who knows?

[Rat]

Well, the great flood...someone's supposedly found a huge boat in the mountains of some small country that's as far away as you can get from the ocean.

The whole Noah's Ark story wasn't originally from the Bible. It dates back farther than that.

[Giant Hamster]

Well, I'm God and I know you're all pretty close...but you're still not correct.

[Basse_Ex]

quote

Quote:

And if someone takes the crucifix and urinates upon it, taking pictures, the offense, if such was made public, would be widespread

I'd just like to point out, if no-one has mentioned it before, that someone has done just that(This might be what Mjmcchesney was reffering to)

Andres Serrano did a series of photographies called "PissChrist", where he placed crusifixes in urine.
The effect was a beautiful yellow\reddish hazy hue tinting the pictures. Looks very sacred actually. A 1000 photoshop filters couldn't have produced a better effect. Absolutely beautiful.
Obviuosly,the church were not very happy with the pictures. They made quite some noise.
Funnily enough, Serrano claims to be a catholic himself. Not a good catholic, but a catholic anyhow. He claims his point with the pictures were not to piss on Christ, but more to show that all of Gods creation is beautiful, even piss. He also claims that he was somewhat shocked at how mad the christians got. I don't know how much faith you can put on that last statement, since Serrano has always been good at getting shock-responses, and even if it isn't something intentional, he must have had figured it out by that time.

Anyhow... beautiful pictures.

[Coaster]

Supporting religion with references from the bible doesn't seem to help does it, after all,its the bible I question.

But in that sense.. oh! look what I found just sitting there on my desk! Its a bible from some sort of ancient religion! Lets beleive its 2 thousand year old reasoning because we're all humans and fear change! Wow, according to this I'm God, now lets not question it because after all its a really old book. And in it it says I was nailed to a tree to save you all! Wow, that really means it shouldn't be questioned! So spend all of your free time talking about me and worshipping me! NOW!

[the_monkey]

quote:

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Originally posted by Coaster:
Supporting religion with references from the bible doesn't seem to help does it, after all,its the bible I question.

But in that sense.. oh! look what I found just sitting there on my desk! Its a bible from some sort of ancient religion! Lets beleive its 2 thousand year old reasoning because we're all humans and fear change! Wow, according to this I'm God, now lets not question it because after all its a really old book. And in it it says I was nailed to a tree to save you all! Wow, that really means it shouldn't be questioned! So spend all of your free time talking about me and worshipping me! NOW!

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dude, i was only questioning stevens system of beliefs. i was not defending or trying to prove them. please read into the disscusion further rather than make assumptions.