Im drinkin' with you and Satan

No place for me in gods holy crowd.

Marcus

I cannot fault the points you make in your post except the above,,,

Yes you would think actions speak louder than words etc etc, but when it comes to religion, there is what i call the 'puppet factor'. So basically your actions mean nothing because your just following orders. People tend to respect the actions of an individual far more if the actions are inspired by that individual and not actions that are copied and cloned from somewhare else.

In the initial OP's thread, my crisisism is exactly this, he is just copying and cloning his words from elsewhare,,,, where is the heart? you have to put yourself into your witnessing or it is indeed as you say "pointless".

If heaven hasn't shipped in the beer.
then maybe there not ready for my rising up.

Marcus

PS if the beer offends you lord, can i just bring one bottle of alcohol free champagne, just to crack open for my party.

Wouldn't serving beer without drinking any, be hell anyway??

Two brothers died in an accident together. One brother was good, the other was not so good!

The good brother apon arriving at the perly gates looked down and saw his bad brother holding a beutiful woman in one arm and a giant keg of beer in the other.

Astonished, the good brother asked Michael the arch angel, how come he gets that beutiful woman and a keg of beer?? Michael answers him... "the keg of beer has a hole in it and the woman does not".

I love the Futurama and Sealab episodes brought up. As to why some Atheists feel the need to argue, I think you are doing them a little injustice. I think it has to do with

A: Religious people tend to have very poor arguments, and to those with a philosophical bent a bad argument is like a sore tooth you cannot stop tonguing. It hurts to even think about it, but you just cannot leave it alone.

B: Generally the religious people do not seem particularly well informed on religious issues, and even the ones who do actually know their own religious texts well are typically completely ignorant of its history and particularly ignorant about other religions. I was friends with a Catholic Bishop once who said to my face, when asked to explain how the Quran doesn't have a more straightforward claim to being the word of god (i.e. if you accept the arguments Christians use for the New Testment, and let those fly for the Quran, it geneally comes out looking more authoritative (more sure of authors, better documented development, less change over time etc.)).

To which he replied, "I have never been the slightest bit interested in Islam". Now it would seem to me if you are going to claim to be a Chirstian, a religion based on the idea that that god revealed himself to the Jews, and then changed his mind and corrected them, you sure as hell would want to make sure there haven't been any other more recent updates (i.e. Islam and Mormonism, etc. etc. etc.).

Because of this there is a tendancy to try and teach them.

C: A lot of people really do believe religion in general is truly harmful. It makes people sacrifice large amouonts of money/time/pleasure in this life, for rewards they won't ever recieve. Lets a lot of them ignore injustice and malice in the world because god will just sort it out in the end. (Yes I know there are a good portion who ae moved to do good work, but I am talking you average surburbanite, in this the most religious industrialized country which by far devotes the least amount of GDP to charity). And it just generally breeds hatred and mistrust among people. And just to be clear I am being fair I also think the whole idea of nationalism/nations/patriotism is fairly harmful. It is not as though I am very easy on any of our archaic social institutions.

Institutional ineritaTM, fucking up the world since 3500 b.c., gotta love it.

This seems to be a reoccuring statement on this thread. I will ask the question would a perfect God also have the qualities of righteouness and justice? I see a common misconception about Christianity that God is ultimately responsible for sin and judgement. God originally created man to walk in perfect fellowship and love with Him. Love is an action and a decision, if there were no choice would there be love? Do you love the people in your life that you love because they forced you to? God gave man the choice to walk with Him in perfection or choose to disobey Him. God gave man all of the things he needed, but forbid him from eating of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. Man when tempted by the devil choose to eat of that fruit. Here man's disobedience cursed him and just as God had warned he would surely die, not only physically but spiritually being seperate from God. This was the consequence of man's action. God is perfect and sin can not enter His presence, He also is just and righteous and sin requires punishment. Ultimately a sin against an infinite God requires an infinite punishment. To say that God would be perfect and ignore justice would be a logical fallicy as part of being perfect is a quality of justice. Since that fall man has been cursed by his own doing and living in sin. Evidence of this is all around us. For all the readers of this, have you ever stolen, lied, lusted? Have you done ever done anything that you have morally regretted? There is not one person who is perfect, all have sinned and fall short of God's glory. Since God is perfect, other qualities he posseses are mercy and forgiveness. The problem however was that the price of sin had to be paid. To quote Newton for an analogy, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" The equal and opposite reaction of sin is death. So how then can we be freed of these consquences? This is where Christ, God's son enters the picture. With the need for a punishment God took that punishment Himself. He came to earth in humble setting of being born a man and suffering in a cursed world just as we have as a result of our sin and man's fall. The contrast is that He remained sinless for he was the one to receive the reaction (or consquence) of our sin which is death. Only the death of the sinless could solve the problem of an infinite sin which is rebellion to an infinite God. God choose to go to the most drastic measures in order to free us from Hell. God's will is not for people to spend eternity in Hell but for them to be saved from it. This is His Mercy and Grace provided to all who accept Him. Once again God gives us the choice to repent and accept Him or reject Him. These are not the actions of a vengeful and hateful God but a God of mercy and love.

Why do I believe this and not discredit it as a big fairy tale? Every bit of evidence I see points to the existance and truth of the Bible. The biggest thing for me is seeing the actions of God in my life and the lives of those around me. I remember clearly the changes in my life that followed after making the decision to repent and accept Christ as my Lord and Savior. Most notably that I felt a sense of peace and love in my heart that was not from me. I remember laying in bed at night and feeling a love for God. The key words in the sentence before the last is that it was not from me. I also began to have a desire to serve God and follow Him that was not my own. There was no reason for me to be changing in the way I was other than the presence of the supernatural, that is the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life. I had not at the time begun to study the Bible any more or attend church or Bible studies any more or done anything that would cause that change in my life other than my acceptance of Christ. I definetly do not think the OP was wasting their time.

You'll notice that I specifically worded that to address a certain type of atheists, not all atheists or even all atheists that argue on message boards. There are certainly many well spoken atheists that discuss religious matters for the reasons you mention, I've no beef with them (and used to be very active as exactly that kind of person). What I'm specifically talking about is the anti-religious parallel of the incoherent fundamentalist internet Christian (not to be confused with the many well spoken Christian posters one can find). They, like their counterparts, are characterized by overuse of capital letters, a complete absence of clear logic, and a vehement hatred of the other side. Much like the OP of this thread might well be considered an embarrassment to reasoned and intelligent Christians, the type of atheist I was referencing is generally an embarrassment to sensible atheists (like you and me, I dare say).

Clear?

Yes, well, I learned that from my wife (now ex), Leah.

I was outmoded, under-powered, and plain too old after all (among other things).

But where God is concerned, He calls the shots, He makes the rules, and HE dictates to an absolute degree.

I have searched, and I have researched.

For myself, I am a Christian because of that.


Those of you that want to deny, or to ignore, or to circumvent?
In the end, He will still have the last word.

Because...

His Word,
is the Law!


No one can get around it.
No one can circumvent it.

It just IS.
And, there is evidence, bordering upon proof, if you really seek to find.

You don't want there to be an afterlife. And, in some ways, neither do I.
I feel as though I am lost - in this world, and/or the next.

Be that as it may, I will still hold to what I know to be TRUE!

The Lord is God.
The Lord is One.

And, Jesus is the Lord God Almighty.

No, I am not God.
In fact, I don't think I would want to be.

But, I am a part of God. And that is what matters most.

I respect your beliefs as well.
But, as the OP indicated, one belief and following will lead to eternal Life - the other will not.

And, it is we who choose what we believe.

Sorry, I don't eat pasta.

Thank you. You obviously deserve my respect, since you thought about what I was trying to say with these pitifully inadequate words without going spastic (as do so many of those who secretly want to be God, and secretly seek the ultimate power through pretending to be part of a religion).

I agree following one belief will lead to eternal life, at least in metaphor - because I tend to believe if we have a purpose at all, it is to be ourselves; what God made us to be, not what others want us to be. I like the idea of individuation as a means of staying close to God. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individuation] and I quote "those processes through which differentiated components tend toward becoming a more indivisible whole"

I don't agree that "the other will not" - That's a dangerous dichotomy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichotomy] - a dark pit I refuse to fall into again. If someone else's belief is inspired by God just as surely as God is the creator, then saying theirs is false is, conversely, saying that my own is false ... very dangerous stuff to play with.

I leave that decision up to God, and I'm scarcely dumb enough to try and tell God what to decide ... at least not twice  

I think we have enuff of a common agreement to be friends.   Thanks for taking time to reply!

It's not God that sentences you to hell, it is the denial of God that is hell.

Heaven and hell are not physical places. They are a state of being. Heaven is the presence of God. If you choose to deny or reject God then you condemn yourself to the absence of God.

It's like light and dark. Dark is the absence of light.

God bless you all.

So ... ah ... do you believe in reincarnation yet?