Honestly Fletch, I was not dissing you. You are obviously quite qualified to engage in a theological discussion on the matter. They train people pretty well in Catholic schools. I was not trying to insult you and if I came across that way, I apologize. You always make very good points in your posts, even if I don't always agree with you.

As I said, I am a pathetic hypocrit.

I teach linguistics and English grammar.

u better believe it :flagface

Good for you...

anyone that believes in "god" is full of shit..

because of religion we had millions butchered..
fear and hatred in built into people..
priests fukin kids
torture
racism
sexism
just look at the state of the middle east,


its about time we all grow up,
and realise we dont need religion..

:321GFY religion

i spit on it

Surely an *all-powerful* and *all-knowing* being would be *above* (no pun intended) caring about whether or not we believed He existed.

I am a fence sitter. Part of me says "what a fucking crock of bullshit"...but then something happens...to me...on the news etc. that just gets you wondering..and you think you don't want to dismiss the existance of a higher power completely...so you remain suspicious and just watch....and hope to hell that if there is a God he doesn't condemn you for wondering :1orglaugh

People that rape children, kill innocent people etc. don't need religion....if they didn't have religion there would be some other cause they would do it in the name of. Priests that molest kids don't do it because they are priests...they molest them because they are sick bastards.

i admire your faith but are you not just afraid of dying or in need of making your life seem better by "believing" in something ?

the beleif in the existence of a god is based on mans fears of being alone. FACT

I would like to believe in the JW conceprt of hell too. It does seem a bit extreme to punish someone in hell for eternity for not being good on earth. The God I believe in is merciful above all else and loves all of his children, even the ones who do not believe in Jesus.

I have always thought that if God cared enough about man to come down to earth, take the form of a man (Jesus Christ), endure a torturous death, and raise from the grave to save the lost souls of men, he wouldn't be so ritualistic to only accept the souls of those fortunate enough to have accepted him while watching the seven hundred club at some point before they died. I'd like to think he died for everyone and will save everyone regardless of what they have done. I would save everyone if I was god and I believe that he is more merciful than I am. I know that puts me at odds with organized religion but I never claimed to believe those doctorines anyway.

Exactly what hell is (assuming it exists), I don't know. There are references in scripture about weeping and gnashing of teeth, which are ment to suggest that hell is physically painful. However, a soul cannot feel physical pain since there are no nerves in a soul the way there are in a body of flesh. The refenence is probably metaphoric but I really don't know what it means.

Incidently, I do not think one needs to have a completely literal interpretation of ther bible to believe in it. I believe one can see many of the stories as metaphoric and still call himself a christian.

"people believe in god only because of the devil"

Right on boobmaster!
You are absolutely right.
:)

Again, you are not separating God from those who use his name to justify the actions they do. Because a group of people do horrible things in the name of a God, that does not in and of itself mean that God does not exist. It only means that men have once again dishonored the name of God. Anyone who committs an atrocity in the name of God and claims his approval is a liar.

Good for you, Boobmaster!

Quoted for truth

if you feel god inside your heart, i don't think you'd need any more proof of its existance, you'd expirince 'him' within your existance, but somehow men kind finds god somehow distanced and apart from them. i don't understand how such distant creator can be merciful to children in putting them to life condisions we have on earth. believing in all mighty goodness of 'creator' doesn't explain why are you where you are or how you got there as a soul and doesn't show significant relation between men and god.

Man created the concept of God and an afterlife because humans can't handle the possiblity that our existence has no purpose and that when you die, that's it, that's all, there is nothing more.

Religion is the opiate of the masses. It soothes us. We continue our potentially false beliefs because the alternative is so frightening and depressing that we can't handle it.

BUT, just because you are exposed to Jesus does not mean that you will accept him and follow him!

I found this article below:

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (Reuters) -- Jesus Christ, who had exposed himself to teen-age girls on as many as seven occasions outside St. Maria Goretti School, struck again on Thursday just as students were being dismissed, police said.

But this time, a group of girls in school uniforms angrily confronted Jesus with help from some neighbors, police said.

When Jesus tried to run, more than 20 girls chased him down the block. Two men from the neighborhood caught him and the girls took their revenge.

"The girls came and started kicking him and punching him, so I wasn't going to stop them," neighbor Robert Lemons told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Jesus was later treated for injuries at a local hospital. Police said he would be charged with 14 criminal counts including harassment, disorderly conduct, open lewdness and corrupting the morals of a minor.

:thumbsup

just to throw the cat amoungst the pigeons, do you guys think the Epicurean paradox holds water?:
[list=1][*]If God exists, then he is all-powerful. [*]If God exists, then he is good. [*]If God is all-powerful and good, then there would be no evil. [*]There is evil. [*]Therefore God does not exist. [/list=1]

you "know" nothing.

you "believe"

This is no surprise.

we were dreaming of god before we realised we are god.

I have never understood this logic. If God is good... it does not mean that he cannot allow evil to exist. right?

Word.

It's amazing what the human mind can come up with. People used to worhip anything. I bet if I told kids that the stapler on my desk loved them and could grant them eternal salvation for years on end they would absolutely "know in their heart" that it was true.

Boobmaster, have you also come to your own conclusions as to what you should do to earn God's forgivness and salvation or do you go strictly by the book. If you aren't going strictly by the book, don't you think it is funny that you can come up with your own list of right and wrong and believe in your heart that it is right?

That is why we have religion. The human mind has the power to know in their heart that they are right.

looks like multiple personalities disorder where one personality trying to kill another or at least not accept the other.
on another note you can't know good without knowing bad.

That is certainly an argument that makes sense from a psychological point of view. It is true that we create explanations for things we fear and we fear nothing more in this world than death.

I have studied folklore and mythology in my graduate studies and the creation and development of certain myths are directly the result of our need to have something to hold on to in hard times. One such example is the vampire myth, which evolved during the plague years in the middle ages. People saw neighbors dying around them in village after village and had no explanation for it, nor did they have any way of doing something about it. It was much easier for them to believe that the first person who died in each village was a vampire. That way you could go into the graveyard at night and 'do something about it.'

Many psychologists have argued that the evolution of the belief in God was for the most part parallel. This is certainly true in polytheistic religious systems, where certain gods existed governing certain crucial elements in nature (sun god, rain god, etc.). However, the development of monotheism is quite different and seems to have come out of nowhere.

Judaism was the world's first true monotheistic religious system, which later gave rise to Christianity and Islam. One thing that put the Jews at odds with the rest of the world was that they believed in a single God while everyone else had a pantheon of gods, each serving different a different function (generally fertility related).

The important thing to note is that in culture after culture, indigenous religious system are always polytheistic. This suggests that when man creates God, his tendency is to create a system of many gods. It is unnatural for man to create a religious system that is based on a single god. The ONLY one known to exist is Judaism. I would suggest to you that this system is not polytheistic because it was not created by man.

People suck ass. Thats why i hate most of them.

:)

There is a psychologist, Viktor Frankl who pioneered a whole branch of pychology and psychotherapy based on the idea that people have to have a sense of both meaning and purpose in their lives to exist with any degree of contentment and happiness.

In addition to it's help in coping with loss as well as the feared finality of death, religion convienently provides provides both a sense of purpose and life meaning addition the convienently simple answers to incompresensibly complex questions... as long as you are willing to "believe"

Tell your imaginary ghost in the sky that i said
wazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz up :1orglaugh

My fellow Americans, you must first ask why do you believe that it must be true that, "If God exists, then he is all-powerful."?

You should also clarify exactly what you mean by, "all-powerful."

Then, I would like to know why you believe that, "If God exists, then he is good."

Please also define, "good" because I am pretty sure it is a relative term?

Keep on going . . .

You need to believe this, Rick. If God exists, there is no way you can justify exploiting the beheading of one of his children for money, especially when that child is seen begging for his life on the tape before being murdered. To exploit this kind of evil is evil.

the whole statement is illogical.

"if God exists, then he is good" - ? why? he might be a prick.

"all powerful" does not mean "all good" either.

being "all good" does not mean evil cannot exist or be created and serve a purpose.

this is an interesting concept.

Maybe he believes this..

"if your not going to go to heaven... why miss it by an inch"
- Sam Kinneson.

if you believed in anything you are saying, you would not be a whiny bitch and an idiot and would be the most pleasant motherfucker here.

You are an idiot!

Originally posted by boobmaster
The important thing to note is that in culture after culture, indigenous religious system are always polytheistic. This suggests that when man creates God, his tendency is to create a system of many gods. It is unnatural for man to create a religious system that is based on a single god. The ONLY one known to exist is Judaism. I would suggest to you that this system is not polytheistic because it was not created by man.



It might be except for the obvious fact that not all religions believe in a ?supreme being? or a many ?supreme beings.?

You even sound like Jesus!

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

I am selling T-shirts that read:

JESUS SAVES
YOU IDIOT!