Hands up 'Who goes to church?'

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Interesting conjecture, Warrigal. But are religion and math really comparable?

Math is borne out by the evidence. It does not involve "codifying mystery to the point of absurdity."
All mathematics begins with an assumption, a premise. Take for example the idea that there exist numbers that are negative, that negative three is a real thing. We are happy to assume this much, and then we go on to imagine that there is some other number that when multiplied by itself will produce negative three as the answer. We call that number "imaginary". Does the square root of negative three actually exist? Or is it made up in our minds? It is of any use? Can we live without knowing whether it exists in the real world or not? Does it matter whether we have ever encountered this idea or not? If I reject the premise of a negative number or a number that is unreal does it matter to a serious mathematician?

The parallel with religious faith is strong here if you but think about it for a few minutes.
All religion probably began with primitive man living close to nature, observing the natural world, the rhythm of life, birth and death. The assumption made was that there was some purpose in all of it, that it was not just random happenstance. Does it matter if some people believe that our existence is the accumulation of untold billions of random events going back billions of years and that others see the guiding hand of something that is infinite and eternal? Something from which we inherit our best quality, the ability to love, to sacrifice ourselves for the good of others. Is there not mystery here? Is it not logical to try to discover more about that source? Does it matter if we never really know all the answers? Can we not build on the premise of divine love and seek to apply it, just as we apply mathematics, to our daily living?

Mastery of mathematics, of logic, and of rational thinking has resulted in the technological world we inhabit in the 21sr century. It has allowed us to find cures and vaccines for diseases that didn't even exist for primitive people. It has carried some of us to the Moon and back. It has also allowed us to kill one another on an industrial scale, weaponise diseases such anthrax and harness the energy of the core of the building blocks of our planet, the atomic nucleus, to threaten other nations and bend them to our will lest they try to do the same to us. Logic and mathematics has made us more powerful but it has not improved humanity all that much. We still face the same dilemma that the cave people faced. Why is there good and evil in this world? Is it something born in us? Can we overcome our worst nature and if we did, how would life be different?

Does it really matter that we do not all agree on the answers? Must we attack each other to assert our own beliefs over the convictions of others?
 
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case for many of the posters here. I will admit that I feel envy when I meet someone with pure faith; it's something I have never been able to understand but I keep searching.

don't be fool by happiness or sadness, you are not alone, faith is what you want it to be, just as anybody :)
There no such thing as a social faith club
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Isaiah 55:1-3 (NKJV) Everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk Without money and without price.
Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance.
Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you-- The sure mercies of David.
Isaiah 55:6-7 (NKJV) Seek the LORD while He may be found, Call upon Him while He is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the LORD, And He will have mercy on him or my daughters; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.
Revelation 3:20 (NKJV) Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and he with Me.
 
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What he did for us
John 17:1-26 Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You,
as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.

The Trial
Matt 27:1-27 When morning came, all the chief priests and elders of the people plotted against Jesus to put Him to death.
And when they had bound Him, they led Him away and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate the governor.
Then Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood." And they said, "What is that to us? You see to it!"
Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself.

Therefore, when they had gathered together, Pilate said to them, "Whom do you want me to release to you? Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?"
For he knew that they had handed Him over because of envy.
While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent to him, saying, "Have nothing to do with that just Man, for I have suffered many things today in a dream because of Him."
But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitudes that they should ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus.
The governor answered and said to them, "Which of the two do you want me to release to you?" They said, "Barabbas!"
Pilate said to them, "What then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?" They all said to him, "Let Him be crucified!"
Then the governor said, "Why, what evil has He done?" But they cried out all the more, saying, "Let Him be crucified!"
When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, "I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it."
And all the people answered and said, "His blood be on us and on our children."
Then he released Barabbas to them; and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered Him to be crucified.

The Crucifixion
Four aspects of Christ and his suffering;
(1)
physical suffering by the hands of men tied Jesus to post and whipped down and scorn by men for six hours non-stop after they fashion a crown and trusted upon his head, then tried by his people, and sentenced to death, he carry his cross about 3 hours across a road call by Via Dolorosa (Latin for Way of Grief or Way of Suffering) at 9 am begin to put him on the cross.

(2) physical suffering, at stretched him on the cross, drove stakes into his hands and feet and then crucifixion, was a death of slow suffocation, every time he wanted to breathe the pain in his wrist and hands, then his feet once he could no longer use the wrist and hands. From the tip of his fingers to the tip of his toes and all in between, he felt the horrible pain of crucifixion at 12 noon.

(3) All the guilt for all the sin of all his elect, God the Father said, he bore our sin in his body and said this that Jesus Christ on the cross became the object of God’s judgment and punishment. On top of that, he took our shame, guilt, sins, complaints, selfishness, pride and every drop of our faults, we are just one of these persons, multiply the guilt, shame, sins, etc. by a billion people, you and I could never begin to acknowledge it. The crucifixion was not just a man dying, it was the son of God, which hated sin, had no part of sin, which was bearing the guilt, the awesome powerful weight of all of the elect.

(4) part of his suffering was the fact that those he loved, the disciples which he ate, slept and taught with, he shared the revelation of the truth of God with them, things no one had ever heard, here he was crying out to His Father on the toughest night if it be you will let this cup pass over me, the disciples fell asleep in his moment of need. When he was hanging on the cross, he said 12 hours my God, my God why have you forsaken me, and 3 hours in hell, it was bad enough he was abandoned by his friends, but abandoned by his heavenly father, my God, my God why have you forsaken me. He knew why he came, to give his life for a ransom for many and brought up those in hell. When God saw him he saw him as sin, the sin-bearer.
All the judgment of God came upon Jesus.
All that God saw in Jesus was pure sin.
All the judgment of God came on sin that he had hated so much; the wickedness of sin poured down his fury came upon him. The object of God’s hatred and animosity.

(5) All the sin stored up all those years from time pass to the very president, and the future God in all his fury and hatred of sin came upon the Lord Jesus Christ, he punished Jesus for your sin and my sin. Everything God the Father hated about the sin he punished Jesus with, wave after wave of God’s wrath, wave after wave of God’s judgment, then it subsided and Jesus said it was finished. The final sacrifice, the atonement of the son of the elect, Suddenly it was over and then Jesus said, into thy hands I commend my spirit, there is no death like the death of Jesus, cause no one ever bore the weight of our sin or the wrath of God as he did. The grace of God the Father. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.
 
I dont go and haven't been for many many years after realising in my youth he wasn't listening to me.
Good luck to those who choose to believe, but DON'T dare to ever force your beliefs on me
Both my former wives were religious, but when the proverbial hit the fan they turned out to be the nastiest, heartless, vindictive, cold-blooded creatures I have ever encountered in my life
 
I dont go and haven't been for many many years after realising in my youth he wasn't listening to me.
Good luck to those who choose to believe, but DON'T dare to ever force your beliefs on me
Both my former wives were religious, but when the proverbial hit the fan they turned out to be the nastiest, heartless, vindictive, cold-blooded creatures I have ever encountered in my life

Greeting I know the feeling, you are not alone
John 10:10-16 (NKJV)
The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.
But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.
The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep.
I am the good shepherd, and I know My sheep and am known by My own.
As the Father knows Me, even so, I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.
And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd.
 
Feeling or seeing the presence of spiritual beings and hearing voices is a result of triggering a couple of small areas of the brain. Scientists create the God and Devil experience with tiny, undetectable to the recipient, electric currents to stimulate these areas. Medications, hormone and chemical imbalances also provide the same result. Especially the brain chemicals/neurotransmitters.
I saw life size standing in front of me (and heard loudly and clearly) God and the Devil when I took Advil. They looked like they were real, solid, flesh and blood.
My body is allergic to something in that particular formulation. After it happened a couple times never took another one and never had that experience again.
Some have the God experience leave them and never return with just a small, short term, dose of Lithium Mineral Supplement.
There are other brain transmitter chemicals that when unbalanced cause the same phenomena.
 
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Feeling or seeing the presence of spiritual beings and hearing voices is a result of triggering a couple of small areas of the brain. Scientists create the God and Devil experience with tiny, undetectable to the recipient, electric currents to stimulate these areas. Medications, hormone and chemical imbalances also provide the same result. Especially the brain chemicals/neurotransmitters.
I saw life size standing in front of me (and heard loudly and clearly) God and the Devil when I took Advil. They looked like they real, solid, flesh and blood.
My body is allergic to something in that particular formulation. After it happened a couple times never took another one and never had that experience again.
Some have the God experience leave them and never return with just a small, short term, dose of Lithium Mineral Supplement.
There are other brain transmitter chemicals that when unbalanced cause the same phenomena.
Wow, that's like....far out, man....
 
All mathematics begins with an assumption, a premise. Take for example the idea that there exist numbers that are negative, that negative three is a real thing. We are happy to assume this much, and then we go on to imagine that there is some other number that when multiplied by itself will produce negative three as the answer. We call that number "imaginary". Does the square root of negative three actually exist? Or is it made up in our minds? It is of any use? Can we live without knowing whether it exists in the real world or not? Does it matter whether we have ever encountered this idea or not? If I reject the premise of a negative number or a number that is unreal does it matter to a serious mathematician?

The parallel with religious faith is strong here if you but think about it for a few minutes.
All religion probably began with primitive man living close to nature, observing the natural world, the rhythm of life, birth and death. The assumption made was that there was some purpose in all of it, that it was not just random happenstance. Does it matter if some people believe that our existence is the accumulation of untold billions of random events going back billions of years and that others see the guiding hand of something that is infinite and eternal? Something from which we inherit our best quality, the ability to love, to sacrifice ourselves for the good of others. Is there not mystery here? Is it not logical to try to discover more about that source? Does it matter if we never really know all the answers? Can we not build on the premise of divine love and seek to apply it, just as we apply mathematics, to our daily living?

Mastery of mathematics, of logic, and of rational thinking has resulted in the technological world we inhabit in the 21sr century. It has allowed us to find cures and vaccines for diseases that didn't even exist for primitive people. It has carried some of us to the Moon and back. It has also allowed us to kill one another on an industrial scale, weaponise diseases such anthrax and harness the energy of the core of the building blocks of our planet, the atomic nucleus, to threaten other nations and bend them to our will lest they try to do the same to us. Logic and mathematics has made us more powerful but it has not improved humanity all that much. We still face the same dilemma that the cave people faced. Why is there good and evil in this world? Is it something born in us? Can we overcome our worst nature and if we did, how would life be different?

Does it really matter that we do not all agree on the answers? Must we attack each other to assert our own beliefs over the convictions of others?

Warri, I agree. I believe we all have the right to our own beliefs, no matter how irrational those beliefs may sound to others. I also strongly feel that we all have the right to hold those beliefs without being attacked because of them or have said beliefs belittled and mocked unless we are trying to cram said beliefs down the throat of another, i.e., I believe I have the right to assert that I am a Christian without someone else stating that I must be dimwitted or deluded for believing as I do.
 
I want to hear every detail and am totally interested.....What people are leaving in droves and don't want to have in their face anymore is the No show, Do nothing (as promised in the Bible), Help no one, bible gods. And weary from all of the harm, pain, despair, suffering done to peoples lives by their religions.

I am very interested in any encounter with some form of energy/spirit being....most people of any belief are! Most who have left, or never believed in, the God religions are still openly searching for the truth of who/what really does exist.
 
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I want to hear every detail and am totally interested.....What people are leaving in droves and don't want to have in their face anymore is the No show, Do nothing (as promised in the Bible), Help no one, bible gods. And weary from all of the harm, pain, despair, suffering done to peoples lives by their religions.

I am very interested in any encounter with some form of energy/spirit being....most people of any belief are! Most who have left, or never believed in, the God religions are still openly searching for the truth of who/what really does exist.

You exist and you are unique you deserve the truth, but also remember the truth is God the Father he does exist, religion only separates people, but love is true
 
It never hurts for any of us to believe. It doesn’t take any effort, money or even your attendance in church. All you need to do is to say to yourself, “I believe in Jesus Christ and accept him as my Savior.”
That's just not true. A person cannot suddenly believe something by choice. A belief is the result of processing information and reaching a conclusion. Saying something does not make it so. If that were true, you could say, "I do NOT believe in Jesus Christ and I do NOT accept him as my savior." Would that change your belief? Of course not.
 
In my experience, the very religious Christians are either those who were raised that way from birth or who have had a traumatic experience they just can't handle, hence they turn the paths of their lives over to Jesus. Neither will listen to logic, reason or common sense. Then there are those who begin sentences with, "What God meant was..." or "What Jesus meant was..." How arrogant. They have a Biblical answer for everything. However, the Bible is so full of contradictions, any point of view can be justified by "the righteous." I still haven't figured out how there can be a version (King James) of the word of God.

Ever wonder why the Bible omits so many little things...like North and South America, Asia, Australia and the better part of Africa? Simple. The Bible was written by ignorant men, 1,500 years before they figured out that the world isn't flat, who had no idea that those continents existed. God would know.

There are roughly two million animal species on earth. Two of each makes four million. How about those dinosaurs aboard the Ark Encounter? Two apatosaurus would weigh right around 100,000 lbs. At the figure of 880 lbs/day of puzzlegrass each, scientists have estimated that Noah would have had to load over 70,000 lbs. in order to feed them for 40 days and 40 nights... and that only covers how long it rained. It doesn't account for all the time it took for the water to recede. After gathering 70,000 lbs of puzzlegrass, Noah only needed to gather food for the remaining 3,999,998 animals. Problems with waste disposal come to mind. Now refresh my memory...how many cubits was the ark?

If a school with 100 children catches fire and only five survive, the Christians thank God for saving them. Predictably, God never gets the blame for the ninety five children were burned alive. Isn't everything that happens the will of God? "God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform." - William Cowper Well, William...it's all a mystery to me.

Intelligence can be a real burden at times but I'm not really worried. If God made me and I just don't "get it," I figure it's His fault.
 
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I stopped going to church because:

Even if I could ignore the amount of human suffering and death because the Bible Gods wont answer even one unwavering faith filled prayer for physical healing made by kind, loving,100% walking the walk not just talking the talk believers .... especially the babies, people who lose eyes, are seriously crippled/mutilated etc. These break my heart beyond words.

There is the Bible 2.0 barbaric, bloody sacrifice, blood atonement, eating flesh and drinking blood that we must believe in, worship, praise, LOVE and be grateful for or we aren't saved.

EEEwwwww! That should cause any rational thinking human to run like hell in the opposite direction! I did.

An awesome omnipotent, omniscience, omnipresent, all power, LOVING God has absolutely no need to have a human being savagely beaten, so much that he wasn't recognizable as a man, and hung up on a cross to die, because he is powerless to save us any other way! (this mode of killing was very common and was done to thousands of people...are they ALL our savior too?)

Yet Christians dismiss every other religion or spiritual belief as wicked, evil, pagan, of the devil, evil spirits, scary and dangerous.

The bloody human sacrifice story is much more pagan, barbaric, evil and scary then anything that every other belief system I have studied, teaches and does. Weelll , with the exception of a very few extremist Satanists/wiccans/others and just a few small tribal religions...but they at least only kill animals and then eat them as a meal after the ceremony!
 
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An awesome omnipotent, omniscience, omnipresent, all power, LOVING God has absolutely no need to have a human being savagely beaten, so much that he wasn't recognizable as a man, and hung up on a cross to die, because he is powerless to save us any other way! (this mode of killing was very common and was done to thousands of people...are they ALL our savior too?)

How is creating a son and then torturing/killing him a way to remove sin? It absolutely makes no sense. I suppose only all the previous sin was removed because ever since Jesus was crucified, there's been a hell of a lot of sinners...nearly 2,000 years worth...the same length of time people have been predicting his return.

Religion controls and seperates people...for a price. No taxes. Can I get an amen?
 
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Can somebody please tell me what is this "sin" that Jesus is supposed to have died for?
Was it something fundamental of a collection of minor disgressions ? Since I do not believe in the existence of 'God', Jesus cannot be the son of God. As I see it, he was little more than a deluded itinerant preacher who became so popular that the authorities felt threatened and decided to get rid of him. However, the PR machine swung into action and he ended up more famous dead than when he was alive. A rather simplistic view, but I think it fits the bill.
 
How is creating a son and then torturing/killing him a way to remove sin? It absolutely makes no sense. I suppose only all the previous sin was removed because ever since Jesus was crucified, there's been a hell of a lot of sinners...nearly 2,000 years worth...the same length of time people have been predicting his return.

Religion controls and seperates people...for a price. No taxes. Can I get an amen?
Amen. And more then just no taxes....easy, do almost nothing for their money, job. And the congregation pays for their 4-6 kids (you notice almost all clergy (except Catholics of course) have that many kids) to go to Oral Roberts/other expensive universities. While the congregations kids can't afford to go or need to get jobs to work their way through. Often when the clergies kids graduate they just join daddies church/ministry or start their own and never get a real job.
 
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