he is right red, the magic man ascended to the right hand of his father in heaven to take his part as 1/3 of the holy trinity. and also god had sent him to be killed by us because we are sinners because he made us in such a way as to allow us to lie to each other and do a couple other sins and whatnot. in fact, the first sin we humans did was eat an apple when were not supposed to. yunno, because it was from the special tree of knowledge and knowledge is bad. god hates it when women eat apples from that tree. he loves that tree. but it is ok, when god realized we were apple-eating *******s, he figured out that if he made himself up a son then had us kill that son (his ONLY son mind you, because he is too lazy to make another) then we could be forgiven. yunno, i dont see how it is a sacrifice for god, to kill his son, the son just came right up to heaven afterwards. god lost nothing. and even if he did, he could have just reversed time or made another son. superman can reverse time by flying backwards around the earth. i bet god could do that. but i dont like to get bogged down in the deets! all you need to know red is that jesus died on the cross so that your sins could be forgiven. blessed be the name of jesus. so stop yer crazy talk and go ahead and believe the good news of our lord. or literally go to hell. literally.
probably my favorite modern thinker is richard dawkins, and i mention him here all the time. i just found this video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6690702357039658996 i would make me happy if people watch it. it says what i want to say better than i can say it. i think the sort of discussion in this video is basically the best thing that could happen to the world right now. "part of growing up is killing off the virus of faith with a good strong dose of rational thinking. But if an individual doesn't succeed in shaking it off, his mind is stuck in a permanent state of infancy, and there is a real danger that he will infect the next generation."
Nice video so far. I feel sorry for people who regard their lives only as preparation for an afterlife. The question I get all of the time as an Atheist (converted from 23 years of Baptist, mind you) is "Doesn't the idea of no Heaven or afterlife depress you?" Consider the Christian belief: a small percentage of people will make it to the blissful existance in Heaven. Everyone else will suffer horribly forever. So that means most of your friends, family, and just plain ole' people you enjoy hanging out with have a good chance of meeting this terrible fate. No religions really agree on what can be done to avoid the fate, so its a crap shoot of who you know is gonna suffer. This is faith based, there is no way of observing this process. Consider the Atheist perspective: You die. Blank. That's it. Your conscious no longer exists. There is no sadness or regret because you have no concept of anything. It is nothingness. It is hard for the living to accept that it is over, but in death you have no concept of anything; no way to observe that you are not alive anymore. So no pain, no regret, no burning in Lakes of Fire. Nothingness. "Eternal Life" was achieved by reproducing and passing your DNA and Genes down to the next generation of you. What sounds like the better choice: the possibility of bliss in Heaven while most of the rest of the world suffers forever, or nothingness by the complete loss of any form of conscious thoughts, feelings, or memories? I don't think Atheism is depressing at all.
Just because you've convinced yourself of something doesn't make it true. (The same is true for myself... just making the point). Either God exists or He doesn't. Either Christ lived and died on the cross, or HE didn't. We don't get to decide whether or not there is an afterlife just because the idea of it isn't palatable to our logical thought process.
Of course we can't know the true answer, so all we have is our beliefs. I don't understand what is different about his view from any religious one, except he used logic to reach his instead of accepting what someone else told him.
I wasn't trying to say any viewpoint is untrue. I consider myself a logical person and I rely more on what I observe and experience than what is told to me, but who knows for sure? I do know that I don't want to rely on the text of an ancient people that has been altered, translated, and modified over the course of centuries to be my guide on how to percieve the modern world. When it comes down to it, we don't really know who wrote most of the Bible. Most of it is oral history that was written down centuries later. Most of the events were not witnessed by the people writing them down. We don't know why certain letters were chosen to be in it, and others weren't. I have found that most people that believe in the Bible aren't actually aware of its origins or evolution, which is the first thing I would check out if I was going to commit myself to its teachings 100%. The difference is that I don't pretend to know all of the answers, unlike religious leaders. I am merely stating what is the most logical conclusion to me, because inevitably with any discussion I get into with Christians comes the question "Doesn't the idea of ceasing to exist when you die depress you?"
If that's all they can come up with, then there's no point in getting into a discussion. Clearly those people only "believe" because they are "hedging their bets" as it were. I have no problem with such people being criticized because their belief system is no belief system at all. What troubled me about your paragraph (and the opinions of a lot of atheists) is that they have come to the logical conclusion that there is no God due to the centralized teachings of faith systems not agreeing with their personal outlook on life. (e.g. "I find the idea of original sin and son-killing stupid... therefore it cannot exist")).
I wanted to address this in a separate post. The whole of Mosaic law of course in no way applies to the modern world. It was given to a certain set of people, God's chosen which would lead them to the knowledge that the only way they could earn righteousness was through Christ. It did not apply to the world writ large. After Christ came, the law was fulfilled in Him. The Bible serves in its entirety to point you to that truth. Christian demonations (NOT A TYPO!!!) that spend a bunch of time beating people over the heads with laws and regulations from the Old Testament (Baptists) are missing the point entirely and are driving people out of the church. The whole point of Christianity is to trust Christ as life. That is, "Christ in you, your hope of glory". If we do that, the rest will take care of itself.
The problem is that most of the supposed first-hand accounts in the Bible were not first-hand accounts. They were either collected from other writings, or penned down decades later. So who is to say that the concept of Christ as expressed in the Bible is the true Christ? This is interesting stuff, especially the origins of each book in the new testament... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible
Um, not really. It's the lack of ANY sort of evidence at all, other than the Bible, that any of it is true. That is all. There is no more evidence. It has nothing to do on my outlook on life, because for most of my life I believed in God 100%. But I started looking for evidence, and there was zero. Zilch. Unless you know something I don't? Any my point of view isn't from ignorance of religion or God, I know far more about the good book than almost any Christian friend I know.
