I don't find it hard to believe that there are limitations and mistakes to the existing translations of the bible. I do believe that it is very easy to get carried away and make the words say what you want, though. So to Kedo15 I would say be careful in believing an alternative translation so completely.
Seriously ,i appreciate the sentiments. Let me tell you this quick story...after I heard this serpent seed doctrine for the first time,from some guy I ran into,I thought he was nuts.But I have always been interested in The Bible even though i quit going to a baptist church when i was 13 and so i wrote down some notes ,ran home ,looked in my strongs concordance and found the words there just like he said.This was before the internet so I had to write all this down. I carried my couple of pages of notes to a Baptist church were a couple of guys I knew from high school had just finished seminary school and were going to be preachers.I expected them to laugh me out of the place and call me a nutcase.One of them says "that is pretty accurate" I said"It is accurate? the other guy says" yes ,but it is too controversial...you teach that...your congregation will be gone and you will be looking for a career as a U P S driver before dinner." "OH "lol
Sorry for the delay I-like, I must've missed your post when I was scanning through the thread... I'm only going on how god is portrayed in the bible. I didn't make it up, it's all there. I'm sorry, but the bible just doesn't portray god in a very positive light. Religion has done good things, but has also done much to divide the world, and keep it in a state of ignorance. You can see this in action with your very eyes, with the fight between creationism and evolution. First rule of Fight Club: never talk about Fight Club. Why is life, civility, and love an exercise in ego when you take out the concept of god? Do you think that because I don't believe in god, then I cannot truly understand the value of loving my son? Or that because I think there is no eternal soul that lives after the body dies, there is no point in treating my fellow human with respect? Why would you think this to be the case? On the converse, why do you feel like the only point in life is to serve a judgemental god? Isn't this kind of minimalizing your own life's worth? I'd like to think that there is more to life than to be a servant to a supernatural being. Christians do not seem to value life to it's fullest when they treat it as some kind of preparatory phase for an afterlife. No, the complexity of nature is not random. It is due to a process called natural selection and evolution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution We were not given free will. We were told to do something, or die. A metaphor for this: I have a gun to your head. I tell you if you don't give me your wallet, I will kill you. You give me your wallet. So even though you gave me your wallet and lived, you could've chosen not to, and died. Did you really have "free will" in this case? Sorry man, it's not just god I don't believe in. It is all supernatural beings and concepts. I'm never closed to the possibility of anything, but without evidence, all concepts of the supernatural are just fiction. Filling up the gaps of my knowledge with wishful thinking is not a path I wish to pursue, not matter how nice and comforting it may be to some. If any of these authors or philisophies could show any proof that they are correct, I would be open to it. But they cannot. All religious concepts are created by the imaginations of men, and should be treated as fables and parables; not as historical reporting. Some have value as a means of teaching good solid moral principals, but not as any sort of explanation of the laws of the universe.
Ditto. You're going on how you see God portrayed in the bible and how you've been taught God has been portrayed. It really seems like a narrow understanding and it seems exploring other religions / practices would give an additional point of view. You do seem very closed to the idea of God, while at the same time being open to many of the things that I think define God. I often think of the world before Jesus and the world after Jesus. Despite Christianity's many flaws and moral shortcomings, the world really seems a more civil and safe place because of many social traditions that derive from Christianity and in a broader sense, religion. The fight between creationism and evolution seems pretty silly to me and in my mind is the result of human misunderstanding. How did Fight Club become so big if no one talked about it. :thumb: Why does it matter? The result of good or evil actions, the result of inflicting love or inflicting pain; both meaningless. Why love your son? So his memory of you will be rosy? So he won't have psychological issues? So what if he has psychological issues? In the end, the result is the same? Without God, morals are arbitrary and really meaningless. What is the value of loving your son if there is no God? What is the point of respecting your fellow human? This is a genuine question, please don't scoff. If I don't respect my fellow humans and there is no God, are you really telling me that I should care that you, or even society, disapprove? I don't feel like the only purpose in life is to serve a judgmental God. I feel like life is about realizing one's potential, embracing one's connection to God, and ultimately overcoming one's shortfalls as a flawed human. Ultimately I accept that I will lose my ego and become one with God and that all that I am is a part of God. Whether there is a heaven after Earth, of that I am unsure, but I do believe that being good and overcoming shortfalls, ie "sins", is embracing God, because I believe that will combined with goodness are the portion of God acting through each of us. Maybe joining God is joining nothingness and stillness and being able to accept that; if there is a heaven I think that is only a step toward the final stillness that Buddhism talks about. Yes, I have heard of both, but it seems unlikely that all this occurred by chance (randomly) because all the components that allow and make-up life occurred together on a planet just the right distance from the sun. Water in itself seems like a miracle because it behaves so uniquely. It seems like quite a stretch to believe that all that we know is the result of something random. Last I checked we all have free will and it seems we have something that other animals do not. I'm not acting you to believe something based on faith. Have you tried meditation and astral projection? These are things that with practice you can experience on your own. I imagine every religion has a component of mysticism that is palpable. If you have not exhausted that route I cannot consider you a true agnostic. In the same way, most believers are not true believers. I just don't think this is true. Try mysticism, which is probably frowned on by fundamentalist churches, in most, if not all cases. I think most are familiar with people talking in tongues, being touched by the spirit of God, religious ecstasy. I've only experienced that once and it still moves me to this day. That is only a fragment of what is out there. PS - I do know that science tries to explain everything away, but just because there isn't proof of something doesn't prove that something doesn't exist. I think science is far too closed to possibilities and far too unwilling to consider alternate explanations of folklore and religious beliefs that don't necessarily contradict scientific findings. Cynicism seems too prevalent in the scientific community.
