Jesus?

You fail to see where the prophesies were written before Jesus existed. If your saying that ok they were written but Jesus didnt do them but let's say He did anyway. Your admitting to the fact that Old Teatament is true then the New Testamant is just hogwash.

Jesus was in letters, half of the NT is letters to different nations telling them of Jesus's resurrection and divinity. Ephesians, Corintians, Romans, Thessalonians, etc.

It's nearly 5 a.m. here. Let's just agree to disagree since this had been nothing but a conversation between the both of us and clearly we both hold strongly to our beliefs/opinions

*** code is taking a long time to compile.

You fail to see where the prophesies were written before Jesus existed. If your saying that ok they were written but Jesus didnt do them but let's say He did anyway. Your admitting to the fact that Old Teatament is true then the New Testamant is just hogwash.

I know they were written before Jesus supposedly existed.

My argument is that the gospel writers read what the prophecies said and then could have easily claimed yup, Jesus did all that.

AHHHH!!!!! LOL! Glad that you got it!

/high-***-five

Iono if its just me or anything, but my view of religion and what things I believe in seem to me kinda screwed up (at least to me)

For some reason i believe in certain aspects of each religion, such as going to valhalla and taking part in ragnarok. believe in jesus & there being an almighty god aswell, but i believe there's also lesser gods. also believe in spirituality and i also believe in the five great elements. blah blah blah~ so whoosh its like a giant cultural pot that i believe in /shrug but iono if there's a name for it or not. if there is, tell me lol

as for the christianity bit of it, if i have to select one or the other, I'll say that im a christian. And every time I do say that or write it out it feels weird. Not cuz of my beliefs, but what I prayed for when I was back in middle school.

So now days I don't go to church or anything. The last time I stepped into a church was for one of my best friend's funeral. But anywho disregarding that. the other times I went to a church for real and actually prayed and stuff was when I was 3~7 years old.

The thing that weirds me out is that it feels like my prayers are only answered when tragedy happens. And it happened twice to me, so yeah, not a large enough sample size but its a size i want to keep only down to 2.
When I was in middle school, in the 7th grade. My grandpa became grievously ill. He was diagnosed with phenomena and stayed in the hospital for about two weeks or so. Well his condition deteriorated and was sent to a hospice. We visited him every single day while he was at the hospital and at the hospice. And while I was young I noticed something. He seemed to always be in pain while he was laying there in bed. No matter how much pain meds they put him on, I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was suffering. So that night when I got home after visiting him, I laid there in bed looking up at my ceiling while glancing out towards the window, watching the rain fall. I laid there and I turned over and began to pray that my grandpa wouldn't have to suffer anymore. Just wanted him to not suffer and live in agony. So basically my 12 year old self laid there crying and praying, my dad receives a phone call shortly after and says that we need to go back to the hospice, grandpa passed away.
So we drove back through the rain. Thinking to myself the entire drive there, was it my fault? Did my prayer actually cause this? The moment we got there, I went to visit him, and I couldn't stay in the room, I was too choked up and had to leave. So I went to the little chapel section of the hospice and stayed there until we all were ready to leave.

A few years later a similar thing happened with my grandma. I wanted her to go, to be with my grandpa. And the really awkward thing about it was that I prayed in the morning before I went to school. My dad went to the hospital to check in on my grandma to see how she's doing. She was awake and was talking to the nurses and she asked for some sprite. Later that morning I get called by my dad that grandma passed away in the morning shortly after he left when she got her sprite. So... after all that iono anymore. To me it seems like there is a higher power out there, but every time I pray, it always seems to be when I want someone i love dearly to stop suffering.

not so much really, he's being a total douchewaffle to all his old friends, and he's still a liar, so haven't talked to him much because he pisses me off, and I'd like to not punch his teeth in.

guess thats the difference between the being scientific and being religious lol

people who identify themselves as agnostics are fence sitters, that's the thing.

I would say you're closer to a Diest, as for the rest of the stuff: people can have community without religion, it's a survival instinct. As for your end statement: that would be fine and dandy, but people don't keep their illogically driven beliefs to themselves and try to create laws based on their religions, as long as that continues, the fight back against them will continue. As long as people are persecuted by their families for not prescribing to the same illogical *** they have been indoctrinated into, as long as there's people who rally abortion clinics, as long as there's an entire part of the world that wants to kill entire other parts of the world because of their "blasphemy" to their "god" the fight against religion/illogical/unfree thought will continue.

FFS!

you're one of the few who can take that response and not go into complete denial

/tipsmyhattoyousir

Jet,

/slow clap

Had you bothered to do any research into what I pointed out you, you would see where my misgivings about the OT are. You're obviously clueless when it comes to history versus theology, and the shocking thing is I gave you specific names! EGADS!

Bravo, sir! Bravo!

And what exactly would is the difference between your definition of an "agnostic-theist" and a "deist", or is it simply because you like to mock everything that is not atheist by your definition?

Obviously, "fence-sitting" has fared better for some of us.

what exactly did you point out?

and I know more than you think when it comes to history.

(I still don't know what the *** you're talking about with "names")

everyone is agnostic, nobody knows, saying it is entirely redundant, people use it as an identifier because they don't realize this and are trying to make themselves feel superior to both camps, and they aren't.

I take it that with your qualms with organized religion you have yourself a personal god, but don't really have an image for him.

basically you have faith that there is a god, but none of the ones that are already determined.

It's not a matter of "my definition" it's a matter of what the words really mean. While your stance may be illogical, you don't use it to run yours or other people's lives, so no I don't have too many qualms with it.

I have far less issues with people being illogical, and try to pass it off as being superior to actual logic. For example: "how can you not believe in a god?"

Although I rarely participate in these discussions anymore, I still enjoy reading them. Thanks for all the input from everyone involved.

Ummm...Anyone can backread...Just saying...

too lazy today or I would have already, still doesn't really pertain to what I said at all.

I think you need to cut back on the sauce, or at least share.

greatest excuse ever for a programmer to goof off

<insert obligatory .jpg here>

COMPILING!

Whenever I build this one project it takes like 10x longer than any other project. Literally takes a good 2-3 minutes to compile / open.

need more power! more power!

The dual core may have something to do with that, yeha.

lol yeah... :D

No one can prove God exists or does not exist so until then I think we can all agree that no one is going to change the others mind until the other side can prove/disprove it so I think the subject is moot...

The people who have a hard time understainding others faith in something is probably based off of how you perceive the world... It's not that uncommon for humans to want to be able to see/touch/know that something is there in order to believe that it is actually there... there are just those out there that feel there is something more or want something more to be out there... As we come to know more about the world around us it becomes easier to dismiss certain things... and it becomes harder to beleive in the unknown...

As for church and state being seperated... yes they should be... just like corporations should be too... no one should have that kind of sway over our government... People are entitled to their own beliefs though... and however they get there well you can't really forbid them from practicing religion... I can understand that people oppose certain things and they would with or without religion... but to say God is "against" it and then not try to uphold the other thing God is "against" is just hypocritical in nature... like a girl I know who's been married a couple times and had a kid outside of wedlock... she is strictly anti-gay marraige because "God says it's wrong" and I lol a litle and ask her about her multiple marraiges and kid and say well why don't you work to outlaw divorce? Or for that matter outlaw sex until marraige? if there was some continuity behind claims I could see the support for it but it's mostly just people cherry picking what they want... so it loses all credibility even as an opinion...

Keep in mind too that religious institutions also do a lot of good and take in a lot of the people we might see as unfit for society or unable to help... sure they might throw some bible verses at you while you're there but I figure it's gotta be better than the guy that looks at you disgusted or the person that turns you away because you don't have the funds or just doesn't want you there...

Like everything there is good and bad in it... Religion is not the cause for all our problems... Greed is a big factor in human nature... human nature in general is prone to making many illogical choices beyond religion... and sometimes even logical choices don't get us to where we want to be or are... and for those of you that would like to see all religion obliterated... It's not really a solution at all... It would actually be a problem... besides that... elimanation of something because you don't like how a part of the group involves themselves in something else is pretty *** up... and where would it stop?

I don't think you or most people understand that very few people are on the side that "god doesn't exist" so that's not really a large side that people are trying to get people to go to. Now let's just say "athiests" are trying to get people to go to their side, what "side" would one say this is exactly? the side of logical thought? you don't have to prove the existence or non-existence of a divine being to argue for that.

It's not that people don't understand people's "faith" but that we understand that "faith" is illogical and not a virtue, it's utter nonsense.

People can do just as much good without religion, and would do more to not be distracted by the garbage.

The general acceptance of religion leads to a larger problem of that illogical thought is the norm and requiring people to think rationally is frowned upon, that's the cause of a lot of our problems, people running with their feelings instead of their brains.

You take away the general acceptance of illogical thought, and outlaw the abomination known as indoctrination, and religion would kill itself, it's already doing a good job on it's own.

Jet, not disagreeing with a lot you say, but why do you insist that religion is the only illogical or irrational thought in existence? You seem to think that only athiests think rationally, and all athiest are rational about every subject.

Uh.. what? Check out Buddhism and Hinduism if you want to see what an abundance of texts looks like. Some of the texts predate Christianity by a good measure going back to the 6th century BC.

I pointed out earlier that even among our Bibles in the present day translation errors and transcriber bias have polluted the texts. You don't have to take my word for it either go BibleGateway different passages and note the subtle differences in the texts which could lead to wildly different interpretations.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are Old Testament copies which lend credence to the religious belief existing at the time and not that everything was true. We have texts from Hindus going back as far as the dates pegged to the Scrolls.

Also, what about the humans on the American continent at the time? Why exactly weren't they informed of your religious belief (or any Eurasian belief system) until some 1400+ years later when Europeans showed up and inadvertently/purposely wiped them out?

Were these people just not important?


Christianity was a relatively isolated religion (city-bound, mediterranean basin) until Constantine spread the belief through the Roman Empire (the same empire christians love to hate) and then to most of Europe. His actions were some 300 years after alleged death of Christ and in this time there were numerous beliefs floating around the Mediterranean.

The council of Nicea alone shows that what we know as "Christianity" already had wildly different interpretations in its infancy and the need to streamline the belief was not in the interests of any deity but men seeking control and order by establishing canon because what was left behind was anything but complete.

Just an example (related to what sparth is saying). Take any phrase you want and translate from english to japanese. Then back to english. Take the result and translate back to japanese angain and back to english. Repeat about 6 times and see what you come up with. Now imagine that done hundreds of times over hundreds of years.

I would do an example here, but on my phone and can't.

I don't by any means insist on that, reread what I said, I didn't insinuate that at all.

The second part you're pulling out of entirely nowhere, but no to that as well.

I completely disagree. I identify as agnostic, and feel it's necessary to do so. I don't do it to feel superior to anyone, I do it because there are so many people out there who claim there absolutely is or absolutely is not a God. It saves on a lot of argument to be 'agnostic'. Not always of course, but a lot of times it does. If I feel like getting in a debate about it, then we can skip passed (most of the time) the "opening arguments" that atheist vs theist always seem to get into.

Besides that, it's just easier and quicker to say, than go down the list and name all the Gods that I absolutely do not believe in.

A lot of people take that stance that they don't know... sure... but theres been a few people on this site alone that advocate the end of all religion... the only way you're going to be able to do that is if you disprove it... also, if you want to convince people to abandon thier "illogical" thinking and join your point of view you should have something more than insults lined up lol..

Faith in God is illogical... so is faith in a lot of things... Faith in general can not be counted on but every day people put it into practice... Not everything we do as humans has to be logical and in some cases the logical way won't get us to where we want to be... But I have no argument against faith in God being illogical or there is any proof of his existence beyond faith... I do however disagree that is is utter nonsense...

If people can why don't they? I mean what's stopping them? Not saying that there aren't people that wouldn't or that people are incapable... just that it's not really in our nature... we are a more "look out for number 1" species... Not to say people don't help in their own ways either...

Humans aren't purely logical beings nor will they ever be... nor do I understand why anyone would want to be... People running with their feelings instead of their brains isn't even close to being a soleyl religious thing... nor is wanting to keep the public dumb... Those curerntly in power in any structure want that for the masses... Personally I've never experienced members of the church frowning upon anyone for thinking critically... I actually know many with doctorates in the sciences... Not to say it doesn't happen, just not my experience...

For example we have many people having kids before they are ready... logically it would make sense to be financially and emotionally prepared to take on a feet like raising a child but many are just too lazy to wear a condom or don't like the way it feels... there are many other examples of people thinking with something than cold hard logic...

How would you plan to take away "the acceptance of illogical thought"? If religion is already killing itself then why not just watch it burn? Honestly I hear many people complain or say things would be better if religion were not around but I see nothing really backing that up or any kind of plan to fill the void when/if it is ever gone... mostly just yeah... we'd be better off without it and things would just work themselves out!

It's not just one post. It is from a couple of years of posting. You always associate athiests with the side of logical thinking and reason, as if claiming athiesm makes you instantly more intelligent. There are many of us out here that are personally capable of making sound, logical decisions despite being religious. We just see things differently than you.