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Yeah but I don't really consider them Christian, these days you can just call yourself a Christian even if you haven't ever seen a Church or Bible in your entire life.

My sister thinks she's a Christian, all she knows about it is that there's this guy called "God" that created everything and says that you shouldn't hurt other people and all the other crap that everybody else gets fed, and like most she's never seen a Church, the only Bible we have is covered in dust and probably only been seen by my mother (It was hers) and me (Who thought it funny to deface it).

The entire basis of the Christian religion is respecting God and worshipping him for all of the good he has done. Christians would argue that God has done a lot for you and deserves your respect for both giving you life and having his son sacrifice himself for all of mankind. I am not here to argue Christianity over your beliefs but the 2 things are completely incompatible, you cannot worship God and not respect him and Christians believe that God does deserve respect for what he has done and that he is worthy of his position of authority due to his divine nature.

Faith is not logic and God rewards faith which may or may not coexist with a logical mind. Love seems more honest to God I suppose, I dunno, I am not God.

Well, one thing is that a spirit in Heaven could do nothing for a spirit in hell and truly the punishment is their fate, the nature and conditions of this punishment are not something that I know about, however, it is assumed that in Heaven you wouldn't care because you would have accepted God's moral philosophy and understanding at that point and recognized hell as a part of the nature of things and possibly a good force.

True, you could go to hell for a lot of things, however, it is generally assumed that a large part of it is the attempt to love God and follow his rules. The different churches still have many many similarities overall and I think there are special rules for virtuous people who did not know about his proper word and such. Most Christians will say that a large part of it is accepting Jesus as the divine savior and God as the divine lord and the rest comes from efforts based upon those 2 premises.


I don't think that randomly quoting somebody is something really needed or desirable on this forum. All a quote does is flaunt random knowledge and the remark that you said about this was relatively clever and could be considered a sign of intelligence anyway. My view on quoting people is that it is stupid because anyone could find a good quote but what is really important is having your own words for these ideas. Quotes were not made by an insistence on quoting others.

damnitall!!

Actually, the correct quote is "Religion is the opium of the masses." Karl Marx. Heh.

Anyway....



Hah, not saying nobody wouldn't accuse you of it, but IMO anyone who'd accuse you of blasphemy just for listening to some satanic music either a) has too much time on their hands, or b) was born with an enormous stick up their anus because their mom was raped by an ent from "Lord of the Rings" or something. Heh. Again, I can't think of any reason why people should judge and/or bash you, your opinions, or your beliefs on the basis of what music you like.



Yeah, that's why I dislike Christian morality--this "benevolent" god has deliberately made humans imperfect and therefore likely to make mistakes, and has even created a whole underworld dedicated to the cause of torturing anyone who makes the mistakes god allowed them to make by making them imperfect, and of course it's for all eternity! So god loves you but created you just to see if you can screw up big enough to be condemned to torture for all your afterlife. (I don't capitalize "god" because I think of "him" as an idea rather than a person--again, I'm a nonbeliever, so why should I capitalize it?)

No, the real reason why the Christian god takes such a harsh stance on blasphemy is to basically force people into believing in that Christian God. It's to get people too afraid to question his existance, and just do whatever the hell the bible says just in case. But since the bible is so self-contradictory, and since one of the reasons why people believe in religion in general because it's comforting (the idea that there's life after death makes death less scary, the idea that someone's always looking out for you is comforting to the lonely, etc.) a lot of people only pay attention to the parts that are comforting to them or support their cause.

[/quote]The entire basis of the Christian religion is respecting God and worshipping him for all of the good he has done. Christians would argue that God has done a lot for you and deserves your respect for both giving you life and having his son sacrifice himself for all of mankind. I am not here to argue Christianity over your beliefs but the 2 things are completely incompatible, you cannot worship God and not respect him and Christians believe that God does deserve respect for what he has done and that he is worthy of his position of authority due to his divine nature.[/quote]

Well according to God we should all be Christians, however history seems to show that having a variety of different beliefs would cause less anger in the world and Voltaire agrees "If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism; if there were two they would cut each other’s throats. But there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness." also believing in God doesn't make you more likely to treat people better, in fact there has been countless wars started because of God, not despite him.

I'm not saying I wouldn't respect him but he'd have to earn my respect just like everyone else, he hasn't done anything close to that so far, he's done the opposite. I tend to dislike people in postions of authority.

[/quote]Faith is not logic and God rewards faith which may or may not coexist with a logical mind. Love seems more honest to God I suppose, I dunno, I am not God.[/quote]

Maybe but it can't with someone always asking for more answers, faith says that you don't need proof, but some people need proof and it would be stupid to send them to Hell just because they don't have any.

[/quote]Well, one thing is that a spirit in Heaven could do nothing for a spirit in hell and truly the punishment is their fate, the nature and conditions of this punishment are not something that I know about, however, it is assumed that in Heaven you wouldn't care because you would have accepted God's moral philosophy and understanding at that point and recognized hell as a part of the nature of things and possibly a good force.[/quote]

What, a moral philosophy of "They deserved it"?

[/quote]True, you could go to hell for a lot of things, however, it is generally assumed that a large part of it is the attempt to love God and follow his rules. The different churches still have many many similarities overall and I think there are special rules for virtuous people who did not know about his proper word and such. Most Christians will say that a large part of it is accepting Jesus as the divine savior and God as the divine lord and the rest comes from efforts based upon those 2 premises.[/quote]

What about people that are misguided? Told that if you (For example) hurt this or that person or thing that it is what God wants you to do? Or even forced? I can imagine tons of ways that you could be forced to do something that God wouldn't want you to do but you'd have to do them anyway or things that might be in contradiction to other things that it says in the Bible (For example) doesn't it say in the Bible that Witches should be killed? "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"

I don't think that randomly quoting somebody is something really needed or desirable on this forum. All a quote does is flaunt random knowledge and the remark that you said about this was relatively clever and could be considered a sign of intelligence anyway. My view on quoting people is that it is stupid because anyone could find a good quote but what is really important is having your own words for these ideas. Quotes were not made by an insistence on quoting others.[/quote]

That was just a joke. I don't and never have used quotes as evidence, just to show my position better.

Gladly

[/quote]Hah, not saying nobody wouldn't accuse you of it, but IMO anyone who'd accuse you of blasphemy just for listening to some satanic music either a) has too much time on their hands, or b) was born with an enormous stick up their anus because their mom was raped by an ent from "Lord of the Rings" or something. Heh. Again, I can't think of any reason why people should judge and/or bash you, your opinions, or your beliefs on the basis of what music you like.[/quote]

Don't forget about the "Evil" influence it has on young people, the almighty Pie Graph shows without question the validity of fearing the kid who listens to ICP, Marilyn Manson and various other "Goth" bands. http://www.redmusic.com/goths/character.html

[/quote]What i'm getting at is that God seems to take a harsh stance on blasphemy, why? Why would he care? If someone said that I didn't exist or that I was stupid or weak I wouldn't torture them for an eternity and God wouldn't allow it anyway he wouldn't like it, yet it's alright for him to do it, that's just like the parent saying to the child "You can't do that" and the kid asking "Why? You do it" the parent is being hypocritical.[/quote]

[/quote]Yeah, that's why I dislike Christian morality--this "benevolent" god has deliberately made humans imperfect and therefore likely to make mistakes, and has even created a whole underworld dedicated to the cause of torturing anyone who makes the mistakes god allowed them to make by making them imperfect, and of course it's for all eternity! So god loves you but created you just to see if you can screw up big enough to be condemned to torture for all your afterlife. (I don't capitalize "god" because I think of "him" as an idea rather than a person--again, I'm a nonbeliever, so why should I capitalize it?)[/quote]

Yeah, that's another thing that's always annoyed me about Christianity.

You don't capitalize "God"?! BLASPHEMY!! No doubt you'll go to Hell for that.

[/quote]No, the real reason why the Christian god takes such a harsh stance on blasphemy is to basically force people into believing in that Christian God. It's to get people too afraid to question his existance, and just do whatever the hell the bible says just in case. But since the bible is so self-contradictory, and since one of the reasons why people believe in religion in general because it's comforting (the idea that there's life after death makes death less scary, the idea that someone's always looking out for you is comforting to the lonely, etc.) a lot of people only pay attention to the parts that are comforting to them or support their cause.[/quote]

If you choose to only limit Christianity to only include the psychotic, counter intuitive branches, and then someone does something contrary to that, then yes, they will seem like they aren't Christian.

But by the same token, I could say that any Stop sign that is not an Octagon is not really a stop sign.


That seems to be very close to saying that the only real christians are the ones that are more or less like the Roman Catholics.

As I see it, the defining characteristic of christianity is Christ, and following what he said. That he's in the name kind of implies he's kind of the important thing there.

Well, the problems with one belief lie in the fact that people are corrupt, the one church, the catholic church became prone to corruption and abused its religious powers, 2 churches would vie too much for believers but 30 churches would lead to such a weakness in faith that no church could attack another without being destroyed. The fact is though if we were all true christians then there would be no problems, the problem lies in the fact that not all people are going to ever be good and ungood people are attracted to power, this leads to them becoming church leaders and oppressing the masses. Believing in God can lead to treating people better, the problem lies in people that only serve God due to the goodies but don't truly believe in him. There is a psychological difference between a true believer and one that is there because of the social nature of things and such, the former is more tolerant and benevolent while the latter is the one that is hateful and looks down on others. The problem with religion ends up being its abuse, not that it is evil in itself. Organized religion is a place that has a concentration of power and if it was led by good men it could go good places but if it isn't then it could start insane holy wars. Besides, just be aware when you blame religion for wars that religion can often times be the tool to incite a war caused truly for secular reasons.

Yeah, well, I guess your problem with authority positions is your own but to say he has done the opposite either shows an incompatibility of philosophies or that you are biased against God. God is the creator of the world and the architect of humanity, according to the holy books he even sent his son to suffer for our sins and he supposedly loves us. I mean, if you took all of that to be true then that would seem to adequate reason to respect him because that is an impressive resume, however a bias against God would mean that you would not so would incompatibility of beliefs. I use bias in the kindest manner in this regard, you can substitute any other term or say that it is a similar bias to one to the tooth fairy, I don't really mean to insult many of our atheists or agnostics or anything.

Well an organization that requires faith requires faith. If they cannot provide that then it is not stupid. The entire idea of faith is to believe and trust in God, if you cannot do that then he cannot really reach you. Some people cannot love, if anyone knew that then would they marry them if they were in their right mind?

The moral philosophy that they had a choice and that they did not choose goodness. I suppose you could say that they deserved it, I do not know the nature of hell, or its duration or anything of that nature.

There is a bible and a sense of ethics to deal with these problems, it is these problems that theologians argue though. A true Christian would try to do the best thing in terms of the Christian morality which means that if they truly and honestly believed that a person was a witch and on logical grounds felt in danger then they might be justified in killing that person. This is assuming that witchcraft is considered logical by this person, however, the intent is what matters in these actions, a Christian must do anything possible to avoid killing an innocent but accidents can occur and getting into heaven never meant you were smart, only that you try.

Ok, a subtle humor I suppose. Ok, just wondering as I think that some people on the internet are really that arrogant.

Yeah but I don't really consider them Christian, these days you can just call yourself a Christian even if you haven't ever seen a Church or Bible in your entire life.
[/quote]

If you choose to only limit Christianity to only include the psychotic, counter intuitive branches, and then someone does something contrary to that, then yes, they will seem like they aren't Christian.

But by the same token, I could say that any Stop sign that is not an Octagon is not really a stop sign.


That seems to be very close to saying that the only real christians are the ones that are more or less like the Roman Catholics.

As I see it, the defining characteristic of christianity is Christ, and following what he said. That he's in the name kind of implies he's kind of the important thing there.[/quote]

Well "Christianity" has changed alot since it fist started out, I think that the people who stick to the way it was originally are the only true Christans, sure you could make a stop sign round and it would still be a stop sign, but if you started making it blue and then changing what it said to "Wait" would it still be a stop sign or would it be something else? That's what has happened to Christianity in my opinion. It isn't even Christianity anymore, just lots of this person said this and that person said that so it must be true.

No if there is some thing out there i do not think it cares what you listens to.
And to answer one of the posters on this thread.
For those who have no need for a church but still think a God or Gods exist. That view is called a Deist or deistism they think that god made the world and allows it to run itself. Or that god is Nature, They think god rarely if ever takes notice of humans. Reason not messages from preachers or a bible is the basic element of this view. Many of the enlightenment leaders were Deist. So were some of the founding fathers of the United States They had seen what church and state together had done in Europe and did not want that for the US. Thomas Paine, is one person who had this view read the Age of Reason and his other writings.

Well, the idea of Christianity is to achieve moral perfection, and no it does not necessarily mean sameness because for every moral decision we make there are many amoral decisions, ones that have no bearing on what kind of person we are ethically, and there are many factors that are not moral.

If that is not an impressive resume then what is? It is a heck of a lot more than you or I could have done. Getting rid of all of the sins in the world with a snap of the finger would be a massive breach of free-will, and the origin of sin also is a result of free-will, your complaint is that you want a God that would mind control us into his dominion. Does the origin of God really matter? The point is what he has done, not where he came from. What does it matter how he became the creator of the world, the thing that matters is that he did it. He might have been able to clamp down on all creation and make us all his pawns but he did not do that, he gave us free will, the freedom to screw up and as a consequence we also must take responsibility for that. Is a world where we serve him and have no thought something that appeals to you? I insulted you by offering a viewpoint? Christianity is a black and white religion, I cannot add grey where none was meant to exist.

Well, really a lack of faith typically comes from a desire to not have faith just like a lack of love comes from a desire to not love. The point of the matter is that they are saved from hell by their faith, if they have no faith then there is nothing to save them. By your argument Stalin would probably go up to heaven, because I doubt that he could understand religious morality either(he understood the importance of religion but I don't think he could get morality due to his nature). The fact of the matter is that being saved is partly based on a desire to be saved. God is not going to radically rework somebody's mental make-up in an instant just to get them into heaven, besides, the eternal torture could even be seen as a distance from God and such a torture would be a choice made by the souls of the individuals, I mean, it is fair enough to say that God should not force anyone to be close to him even if it is beneficial.

Eating a dead kitten is not wrong at all, I mean, I eat dead cows already and I don't think that kittens really are more special than cows do you? The only reason you would say that they were is simply because they are cuter in your opinion and you like kittens or something. However, I fail to see how a hamburger is morally superior to a kittyburger, they are both comprised of dead animals and they both would be edible and probably have some nutricional value. If somebody does not want to be saved then we are not going to force them into this. Having faith is a choice. Good is the moral LAW defined by the bible, your complaints are like saying that a cop has no right to give out speeding tickets because someone was not paying attention to the street signs. Yeah, people can be placed according to what they have done, it has nothing to do with robotics and everything to do with law and moral absolutism which is what Christianity promotes. Trust me, I am not insulted and this is not really my religion(I stated that a while back), I just have some exposure to the ideas and think I can understand them relatively well.
That is what they meant by witchcraft. I don't really think that they were hunting Wiccans and I don't think that they knew about Wiccans and I don't think that witches really exist. Witches by their definition would be people who did make deals with unholy powers. What do you mean "what the hell?", if their definition of a witch was somebody that consorted with unholy powers then that is their definition and destroying servants of their greatest foe would not be considered a bad act and if they believed that such a being existed and destroyed what they honestly believed to be a witch after being as careful as possible not to randomly kill someone(God does not promote witch hunts and random murders) then they would probably not be judged as wrong because by their biblical beliefs they would be right, it is just that if they kill without worry of hurting the innocent they are not acting morally.

Well, the idea of Christianity is to achieve moral perfection, and no it does not necessarily mean sameness because for every moral decision we make there are many amoral decisions, ones that have no bearing on what kind of person we are ethically, and there are many factors that are not moral.

If that is not an impressive resume then what is? It is a heck of a lot more than you or I could have done. Getting rid of all of the sins in the world with a snap of the finger would be a massive breach of free-will, and the origin of sin also is a result of free-will, your complaint is that you want a God that would mind control us into his dominion. Does the origin of God really matter? The point is what he has done, not where he came from. What does it matter how he became the creator of the world, the thing that matters is that he did it. He might have been able to clamp down on all creation and make us all his pawns but he did not do that, he gave us free will, the freedom to screw up and as a consequence we also must take responsibility for that. Is a world where we serve him and have no thought something that appeals to you? I insulted you by offering a viewpoint? Christianity is a black and white religion, I cannot add grey where none was meant to exist. [/quote]

And what did he do to get to the way he was? Did he have to fight his nature? Did he grow and change and see things from others perspectives? No, he was just there. I'm more impressed by someone losing their legs and compensating by using their arms instead, or an artist losing their arms and finding out how to paint just as well with their mouth than some all powerful entity that just decied it was lonely or needed some love and just snaped it's fingers, my point is he isn't doing anything beyond what he would naturally be able to do, people do that all the time though. Really? It's not like he just told them to jump off a cliff, he just allowed people to be able to go to Heaven right? Anyway depending on who you talk to Christ IS God, so you'll have to be clear on what specific belief you're talking about. This website you're currently on is FULL of people that are obsessed with things that have no importantce to anyone but them, why are they obsessed with it? Who cares? I don't some people want to know everything thing they can, why? Who cares? Maybe someone does care about why they think that, but they aren't sitting at a computer chatting to a 17 year old child about Philosophy and Religion. He could have just as easily created a Paradise where everything was perfect, in fact he apparently did, but it got messed up by what, some angel named Lucifer? Why not just use some of that good old God power to make it evil proof? Sure that might sound stupid but why couldn't he? It might have been a veiw point but it seems pretty thoughtless to me. I'm not asking for it to find middle ground, but when they say that they want to be moral they should stick to it, unfortunetly "Moral" can mean a billion different things to a hundred different people.

[/quote]
Well, really a lack of faith typically comes from a desire to not have faith just like a lack of love comes from a desire to not love. The point of the matter is that they are saved from hell by their faith, if they have no faith then there is nothing to save them. By your argument Stalin would probably go up to heaven, because I doubt that he could understand religious morality either(he understood the importance of religion but I don't think he could get morality due to his nature). The fact of the matter is that being saved is partly based on a desire to be saved. God is not going to radically rework somebody's mental make-up in an instant just to get them into heaven, besides, the eternal torture could even be seen as a distance from God and such a torture would be a choice made by the souls of the individuals, I mean, it is fair enough to say that God should not force anyone to be close to him even if it is beneficial.[/quote]

Have you ignored what so many people on here have said about their experiences? There are tons of people on here that can't understand the idea of love at all, but would want to, I myself have trouble understanding love, does that mean I don't want it? No, people all over the world right now are studying faith to try to understand why some people have it, you can't say anything about humanity with certanity or you might as well say that all violent people like being violent, or all people that do nice things do that "Out of the goodness of their hearts". Stalin might have been a bad person, but do you know why he did what he did? You can't just straight off call someone "Evil" or "bad", even Hitler had his reasons, it's not like he just up and decided to kill a bunch of people, he was pushed, just like you were pushed into being the person you are today.


[/quote]
Eating a dead kitten is not wrong at all, I mean, I eat dead cows already and I don't think that kittens really are more special than cows do you? The only reason you would say that they were is simply because they are cuter in your opinion and you like kittens or something. However, I fail to see how a hamburger is morally superior to a kittyburger, they are both comprised of dead animals and they both would be edible and probably have some nutricional value. If somebody does not want to be saved then we are not going to force them into this. Having faith is a choice. Good is the moral LAW defined by the bible, your complaints are like saying that a cop has no right to give out speeding tickets because someone was not paying attention to the street signs. Yeah, people can be placed according to what they have done, it has nothing to do with robotics and everything to do with law and moral absolutism which is what Christianity promotes. Trust me, I am not insulted and this is not really my religion(I stated that a while back), I just have some exposure to the ideas and think I can understand them relatively well.
That is what they meant by witchcraft. I don't really think that they were hunting Wiccans and I don't think that they knew about Wiccans and I don't think that witches really exist. Witches by their definition would be people who did make deals with unholy powers. What do you mean "what the hell?", if their definition of a witch was somebody that consorted with unholy powers then that is their definition and destroying servants of their greatest foe would not be considered a bad act and if they believed that such a being existed and destroyed what they honestly believed to be a witch after being as careful as possible not to randomly kill someone(God does not promote witch hunts and random murders) then they would probably not be judged as wrong because by their biblical beliefs they would be right, it is just that if they kill without worry of hurting the innocent they are not acting morally.[/quote]

Actually Witches did exist but they didn't make pacts with the Devil, they worked with herbs and did other stuff I am not so familiar with, but they were deffinitly not "evil", at least in the sense that it wasn't a requirement, "evil" can be found anywhere and everywhere. That was just to show my surprise. So what if someone isn't innocent? It's state law that you don't kill ANYONE except in self defence.

Okay deus_ex, just to clarify something for you. When you're quoting, type [ quote="INSERT NAME HERE" ] without the spaces between the brackets. Then, after that bit, you put in what they said (and what you're quoting). After the quote, put [ /quote ] without the spaces between the brackets. Put your response to the quote after the [ /quote ] (without the spaces). Sorry, I've just been having a lot of difficulty reading this thread because of badly-coded quoting madness... o.O

lol, I think I figured it out already, thanks for that though, i'll have to remember it.