Not a conspiracy theorist, however..

[NewlySenior]

One of the alarm bells for Christianity is that it condemns non-believers. If you don't believe in the same God, it's hell and damnation.

That's the base issue that prevents me from embracing any Abrahamic religion. They all (Muslims, Christians and Jews) worship the same god. Their holy books are literally the same book with a few changes made by "men of god"

And yet they bomb each other....

Stupid.

 

[VaughanJB]

I mean, I have all those questions too, but I'm pretty good with letting the mystery be a mystery. Perhaps I'll find out someday, probably not. Meanwhile, it seems that science enables us to learn a lot about our universe. I'm sticking with science.

There are some things we'll never know. I don't think we'll ever know what caused the Big Bang, what there was before it, and so on. It's unknowable. But science can narrow the gap little by little. When we look at how much we know today, it's truly amazing. Our first ancestors came around 6m years ago. The first homosapian was only 200,000 years ago. The first satellite was sent up in 1957. The computer revolution started in the 1960's.

In other words, the Universe is estimated at something like 14 BILLION years of age, and we've only had the ability to send satellites up for 66 years! Everything we know, from speech to nuclear power stations, to the man on the moon, we have achieved in 200,000 years, from sitting around a fire in forests, to our concrete jungles. It's not a small amount of time, it's not the blinking of an eye, it's impossibly small. A tiny tiny fraction of time. If that isn't amazing, I don't know what is.

 

[Debrah N.]

The prophecies
They're so precise, covering hundreds/thousands of years
Mainly the books of Daniel and The Revelation

Well thanks for replying. It's been a very long time since I read those so I'll just take your word for what you understand about them.

 

[Debrah N.]

I mean, I have all those questions too, but I'm pretty good with letting the mystery be a mystery. Perhaps I'll find out someday, probably not. Meanwhile, it seems that science enables us to learn a lot about our universe. I'm sticking with science.

We'll all learn someday and it's not unthinkable that whatever source has brought this miracle of a world and universe into being operates within the realms of the science that we now understand and far beyond our understanding.

 

[Gary O']

I am also confused by the idea of free will. The point of free will was so we had a choice to follow Gods word, or choose not to. Fair enough, but since the penalty paid for not following is extremely harsh, it's like we don't have free will at all - who would choose burning in hell forevermore? Since God gave us the ability to choose - a God-given right - why punish us on the back end if we go east instead of west?

We do have that blessed power of choice

We've been told, the results of sin is death
It's not so much a penalty, but more a result
(like global warming)

We've been given the ten commandments

Much like dealing with our children;'

'If you touch that hot burner on the stove.....you'll get burned.
Your choice'

The results of touching the burner is getting burned

Pretty simple stuff

 

[Rose65]

Not a conspiracy theorist but there are questions in life that don’t add-up.
i calimed to be a christian based on upbrining, lack of exposure to any other type of belief system. I question the validity of faith and reality. It is said among believers that Jesus was sacrificed so believers can have communion with the father. Why do Christian’s praise Jesus for his love when there is no evidence of his to be had?

There is no evidence that faith-based religions produce the promises and solisitation asked for by humans. I think prayer is something other than religious duties of organized religions. It has nothing to do with religion, prayer is a time to reflect, restore balance and ground yourself in the moment. I view this as communicating with life and whatever is managing all that is or god.

Most of my life I have tried to conform to church religion, preacher religion, organized religion to realize none of these religious variants work for me and was led to believe it was my fault for thinking differently.

When I post something of this nature on SF, members have told me to get over it and reprimanded my actions out of disgust for my thoughts and words. I am sorting things in my attic and writing them down helps me take out the trash.

It is good that you are thinking it all through.
I suggest you talk to a vicar, go to a house group or just anyone you know who is a Christian. Try an Alpha course maybe.
The Bible is full of answers if you read it with an open mind and with guidance from someone who has good knowledge of it.

The evidence that Jesus Christ is real is in the faith of millions. It is in the testimonies of those whose lives have been transformed. However, you must work this out for yourself as faith is such a personal thing.

 

[Rose65]

I honestly don't know what I am, one minute I am an atheist, the next I don't know. What I see that turns me off is people who claim to follow Jesus Christ then use the old testament to hate so many others.

Don't look at people, look instead directly at what Jesus said and did.

 

[Rose65]

I was raised in Christianity. I started questioning religion at age 10 and gave it up around age 14. There's nothing wrong with questioning at any age. Some folks just don't seem to have the ability to believe in a god or gods. I tell folks I didn't get the god gene. My parents supported my questioning, and though I think my mom would've liked it if I was a believer, I just wasn't. Sometimes I think it would be nice to be a believer but I'm not capable of it. I've managed to live a full and mostly happy life regardless.

It is not this life that is the question, this is over soon enough. The question is our eternity, for which a lot of people do not prepare at all.

 

[Warrigal]

Ruth 1:16
And Ruth said: “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.

For me, this is the greatest story of love in the Old Testament. Love, loyalty, a bond between women through thick and thin.

Why not concentrate on messages such as this, dear Ed? There are so many acts of love, why concentrate on war?

Thoroughly agree and would add the bond between David and Jonathon is another example of brotherly love and loyalty.

 

[Mr. Ed]

What gets me was the exceptions that ultimately forced me into accepting christianity without any other source of a belief system. Back in the day entire communities worshiped and adopted whatever god and the preacherman had to say. Since biblical education was ordained to gods chosen ones, no one questioned the validity of the words and testimony of the clergy. Society placed the holy one on a celestial pedestal for the comedy pamper. My dad had lots of perks because of his role in the community.
Its funny when he died prior to death he arranged his own funeral, choosing the music, the singers, the speaker and even an African American woman because of the way she prayed. I call this narcism. He called it a celebration of life, I refused to stand and my hate grew.

 

[oldaunt]

What gets me was the exceptions that ultimately forced me into accepting christianity without any other source of a belief system. Back in the day entire communities worshiped and adopted whatever god and the preacherman had to say. Since biblical education was ordained to gods chosen ones, no one questioned the validity of the words and testimony of the clergy. Society placed the holy one on a celestial pedestal for the comedy pamper. My dad had lots of perks because of his role in the community.
Its funny when he died prior to death he arranged his own funeral, choosing the music, the singers, the speaker and even an African American woman because of the way she prayed. I call this narcism. He called it a celebration of life, I refused to stand and my hate grew.

It appears it isn't the religion you have an issue with, its with your father. The religion part is just incidental.

 

[Teacher Terry]

I'm sad for you. Apparently sitting in church when you were being raised didn't do you any good. It's not "religion" that has caused so much hate, pain, suffering and death, it's the devil and people who follow him instead of God. Good luck, you're going to need it. I'll put you in my prayers, you need a lot of work.

Don’t be sad for me because it’s all just a way for early man to explain phenomena that we couldn’t understand because people were uneducated. So men wrote a book to explain it to the uneducated masses and included a moral code to live.

They also decided religion was a great way to control people as well as to fill their coffers. The Catholic Church for example is very wealthy. Then they realized it was also a convenient excuse to start wars and disguise that the real reason was to conquer others and take their property and wealth.

Religion was handed down through the generations and people use it as a crutch. There’s something very comforting about many church songs and the rote responses from the congregation.

Things that we are taught as children are often difficult to discard as adults because it involves questioning beliefs that we were taught as being true. It’s not different than believing in Santa but at least in that instance adults own up to it being a falsehood.

When horrible things happen people say it happened for a reason or it’s god’s plan. Life is random and there’s people that are pure evil. Read the god in the Old Testament if you want to read a horror story. People say turn your problems over to god. What they really mean is I am too intellectually lazy to think about this.

I love John Lennon’s song “Imagine.” He imagines a world without religion and other entities and it’s truly a better world. The best people I know help others and do wonderful things not because they are trying to buy their way to heaven but because they have empathy and love for others. That’s a world that I would prefer to live in.

 

[OldFeller]

You'll find peace of mind once you realize that your truth resides within you and not outside of yourself.

I think of Religion as a groundwork that gets established early in life to give people a moral basis and make them aware of their responsibility towards others. As we age, we come to understand life on its own terms and we decide what's right for ourselves.

 

[Mr. Ed]

I have gone through times like you describe, where always, my last thought at night was 'I wish I could die'. That went on for years actually. And like you, not because terrible things were going on in my life, I was just tired of (in my case) being in a world where there is so much pain and hurt going on all around.

I think what helped me start to feel better is I began to wonder if I had just worked myself into a habit of feeling blue all the time. Gradually over time, I've learned to say to myself, when those intruding thoughts and sadness try to creep in, "I don't want to think about that".

I think there's something about saying those words to myself that helps to create new pathways in my brain, so right after I say that, I make a point of putting my mind on something that can make me feel good. A good memory, a song that makes me smile, a video I find inspiring, someone I love, anything as long as I don't follow that little creeping grey shadow that's trying to pull me in. Maybe something like that would help you.

As to the rest of your comment, if you want to have a chat about that sometime, that would be an interesting conversation and one that I'd certainly be up for.

Most of the time I can stop intrusive thoughts, however, at times when these thoughts sneak into my natural flow of reason. The human brain is one of a kind and perhaps the most loving and deadliest muscle in the universe. Weapons of Mass Destruction, The effforts of the brain have devised countless ways to inflict pain and cause death and destruction.
When negative thinking overrides my composure I remind myself with a slight tweaking of my thought process I can turn water into wine, not really but the miracle of reprogramming your outlook on life carries a similar possibility of a miracle within your brain.

 

[VaughanJB]

We do have that blessed power of choice

We've been told, the results of sin is death
It's not so much a penalty, but more a result
(like global warming)

We've been given the ten commandments

Much like dealing with our children;'

'If you touch that hot burner on the stove.....you'll get burned.
Your choice'

The results of touching the burner is getting burned

Pretty simple stuff

It's not so simple though, is it? If it's boiled down to "If you touch that hot burner on the stove.....you'll get burned", then what's it got to do with a God at all? Our bodies will burn if you hold them in a flame.

Then you say "We do have that blessed power of choice". How is it a blessing if the result of going one way is heaven, and going the other is eternal damnation? What's blessed about it?

It all sounds like a penalty to me. There's only one good way that leads to heaven, but myriad ways to get eternally damned. It's all a test. But no-one would choose eternal damnation. So why even have the ability to curse yourself if it's not conformity? If I were a God type, I'd create a world where good prevails, not one where the good can be decimated by someone thousands of miles away.

I also want to say, these types of discussions are dangerous because it can come across as though I'm attacking your personal faith, which is not my intent. You believe, and I fully accept and respect that. I just want to make sure you know that I'm not trying to be persuasive. Just noting my point of view and compare and contrasting to your own.

 

[VaughanJB]

You'll find peace of mind once you realize that your truth resides within you and not outside of yourself.

I think of Religion as a groundwork that gets established early in life to give people a moral basis and make them aware of their responsibility towards others. As we age, we come to understand life on its own terms and we decide what's right for ourselves.

Can't really agree with that. You can teach a moral basis for life and responsibilities without a God entering the equation. These things are not unique to religion.

I wonder how many believers there would be if children were not allowed to enter a church until they were 16 years of age? How much is a real belief, and how much is following the indoctrination being brought up in a church brings.

 

[Gary O']

I also want to say, these types of discussions are dangerous because it can come across as though I'm attacking your personal faith, which is not my intent. You believe, and I fully accept and respect that. I just want to make sure you know that I'm not trying to be persuasive. Just noting my point of view and compare and contrasting to your own

No worries there
We are just stating our opinions
No bashing
No debasing
Just our opinions, our stance

 

[Gary O']

If I were a God type, I'd create a world where good prevails, not one where the good can be decimated by someone thousands of miles away.

Not following your train of thought, there.
Pretty sure good does prevail

 

[oldaunt]

Where does good prevail for a parent of a murdered child, or a rape victim, or a bombed-out country?

 

[OldFeller]

Can't really agree with that. You can teach a moral basis for life and responsibilities without a God entering the equation. These things are not unique to religion.

I wonder how many believers there would be if children were not allowed to enter a church until they were 16 years of age? How much is a real belief, and how much is following the indoctrination being brought up in a church brings.

I don't see where I stated that God was a necessary component of anything. I do believe i said what I saw as religion's role in a person's life should they have been raised under one.

 

[VaughanJB]

Not following your train of thought, there.
Pretty sure good does prevail

Good doesn't always prevail. Bad people do bad things to others with no penalty.

On the other hand, I can see if you believe in a God and Heaven and Hell, then I suppose you'd say good always prevails because good people go to heaven, and bad to hell. But for non-believers, that doesn't apply.....

 

[Gary O']

Where does good prevail for a parent of a murdered child, or a rape victim, or a bombed-out country?

I'm referring to heaven and the new earth

Not the one we're in now
This temporal life here is a train wreck

 

[VaughanJB]

I don't see where I stated that God was a necessary component of anything. I do believe i said what I saw as religion's role in a person's life should they have been raised under one.

I wrote that based on this line: "I think of Religion as a groundwork that gets established early in life to give people a moral basis and make them aware of their responsibility towards others."

Can you have a religion without some kind of God or deity?

 

[VaughanJB]

I'm referring to heaven and the new earth

Not the one we're in now
This temporal life here is a train wreck

True.

But again, as a non-believer, this world is all I have. Heaven is, for me, wishful thinking, a flight of fancy. It's not real. As such, the price we pay for doing bad things are what happens in the here and now. On my side of the fence, the concepts of heaven and hell are delusions that are used to excuse many sins.

 

[OldFeller]

I wrote that based on this line: "I think of Religion as a groundwork that gets established early in life to give people a moral basis and make them aware of their responsibility towards others."

Can you have a religion without some kind of God or deity?

If religion has any value to society, then it is to establish a groundwork that leads to civility in dealing with others.

Since I was raised in a country where religion has been a dominant

I wrote that based on this line: "I think of Religion as a groundwork that gets established early in life to give people a moral basis and make them aware of their responsibility towards others."

Can you have a religion without some kind of God or deity?

Who cares? When you grow up, you decide the role of everything you've been exposed to in your life time and give priority to what matters the most to you personally. Any religious training is just a part of your story if has been.