hey look, that guy is playing pointless word games. religion: Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe thats you, einstein, see, remember when you said: see, jesus christ has supernatural powers. and you believe in him. using simple logic and the definition above, we can deduce that you are religious. see how that works? yunno, i realize you can make up your own definitions for words, but that isnt smart. if we all make up our own definitions, we get confused. if we all use the commonly accepted definitions, it makes communication simpler. understand? i hope i helped. praise jesus, in him all things are possible.
As I said, I was indoctrinated into the Catholic religion (although not confirmed until senior year in high school), and I questioned the hell out of it throughout life as I never felt anything during mass and, judging from the way many people around me acted during the services and in their personal lives (if people really were moved by the tenets of Catholicism they would 'religiously' attend mass every Sunday and go to confession regularly, etc), many others also felt nothing. Now you can take away a couple of things from this: 1) if you don't feel God at church, He must not exist 2) look around at the wonders of creation, realize there is a God, and find out what it takes to reach Him if organized religion ain't got it. You are right. There is nothing rational or intelligent about belief in a God or gods in purely scientific terms. In fact, Christ said you have to be like a child in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven. (you have to give up the pride in yourself and your own intelligence, sufficiency, and righteousness and accept His freely given gift) Alakazam!
well at least they pretend to worship the holy jesus (hallowed be his name). american hero pat tillman was an atheist and was killed defending our freedom, but he is going straight to hell, an infidel, a non-believer. thanks alot jesus!
oh, silly martin... We all know there are no atheists in foxholes... Pat Tillman just might have accepted Jesus in his last waking moment!
See m-w.com definition 2. Also see the latin root of religion's meaning. Institutionalized beliefs, practices, and attitudes constrain and hold back people from full fellowship with God due to pride in their own righteousness and works causing them an inability to accept the finished work of Christ Jesus.
TigerRagAndrew... Why do you go to church? To please your Lord? To please yourself? Is your church an institution?
I go to church because I want to worship Lord with my gratitude for his gift of the Savior and what he has done with my life, and I go to have our pastor explain biblical passages and help appropriate the wisdom of God to our lives. Whether that pleases Him or not is not the reason why I go. I also go to fellowship with other believers and to help raise up children in faith.
I do not know what Pat Tillman believed as far as personal faith or lack thereof. I have a picture of him in my signature because he gave up the riches of the NFL to fight for his country. Would you or I have the strength of mind to do that?
It is a building containing a bunch of believers and a pastor of those believers that has said repeatedly "There is only one thing that I hope to do, and that is ensure that everyone here has accepted Christ as their Savior. Everything else taught here is to help the believers grow up and further their walk, appropriating God's wisdom in our lives." You can argue that there is no reason to gather in a building every Sunday, and you'd be right. However, everybody needs to fellowship with others every now and then and our spirits always feel uplifted after singing praises to the Lord collectively.
