Christianity vs. Catholicism: which is religion?Follow

1, they are not my friends, i just have the missfortune of living in the same mess as them on board.

2, You right they do not do a very good job of reflecting christ but then i would say that over half of practicing Christians don't either. There is a whole load of nasty predudices in the Christian faith that directly oppose the central message.

that is my main reason for objecting to Christianity in particular and organised religion in general.

3, By Christian belief i will go to hell (or at least Purgatory), regardless of how well i live my life because i do not believe in God or that Jesus was the son of god, i even have doubts that a "Jesus" figure exsisted in the form that is represented in the bible (Miracles put aside).

So i am damned, while a mass murderer would be fine so long as he begged forgiveness, before he died.

4, If you use your faith to make you a better person then fine, i just know that the majority use it to hold onto fear of those different to themselves, and use it as an excuse to persecute them.

No reasoned person would argue against Homosexual partners having the same rights as Hetrosexual partners, because it is meerly equality.

A Christian should be able to raise themselves above hatred and allow others to live happy lives, some do but many use an ancient paragraph (one amoungst many that condem the most bazaar things and are ignored totally) to promote missunderstanding and hatred.

That is why i hold the Christian faith in general in such low regard.

Homosexuality is just one amoungst many such issues i might add.

Ok as near infinate as makes no difference then.

why do you say that i believe there is no magic or Miracles?

Just because i know the biology of how my son was born does not make it any less magical to me.

That i found my wife in the crowd is a miracle in a very real sence to me, just because i don't believe in god does not make the world around me any less wonderous.

If you had seen some of the sights around the world that the navy has shown me you would perhaps understand the true beauty of the planet, but then perhaps not...

Some people would rather stay in the same town and nurse thier hate and believe that because they believe in a god, it's all fine. While in the next breath they condem thier nieghbour because he is in love with a man not a woman. Or because he shares a religion with Jesus not them.

Still others would believe they if the fly a plane into a building they will be rewarded with Paradise.

Wonderous as it may be. There is really nothing miraculous or magical about it though is there? You're talking simple biological functions and mere coincidence.






well, waht are you made of? waht is any physical matter made of? It's not physical.

I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about but I'm gonna take a crack at it. I can call myself a taco all day long. I can tell everyone I see that I am a taco. I can walk around wrapped in a wax paper wrapper. I can slather myself in sour cream and salsa every night and sleep under a heat lamp. I can do this every day of my life and it still doesn't make me any more of a taco than you.

To be a Christian is to walk in the ways of Christ. It is to follow his teaching and accept him as a savior. Christianity is a way of life moreso than a label. To truly follow Christ is apparent to those around us. It is reflected in our actions and what leaves our mouths. This is not to say that Christians do not stumble. Christians are sinners just like everyone but it's how they handle that sin that makes the difference. Christians are not perfect people but they always strive to be better people.

If we are getting into a serious discussion of philosophy and religion, I recommend (to those interested readers) The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 23: History of Political Ideas, Volume V: Religion and the Rise of Modernity. It examines religion as it has been created by cultures throughout history and draws a sort of map to trace to path of the human understanding of the world and how it relates to religion.

This is true if you attribute the constraint of time to God. Then everything must be preplanned for him to have infinate knowledge. Fortunatly, God is not constrained by time. Humans very much have free will, however, without the bearing of time you have already made all of your decisions when time is irrelivent. Every moment of your existance has already happened. It simply exists.



Because it's simple it must not be true?

there's always room for Jello


for are you not still connected to yourself in that Timless "form"? Of course you are, because you are YOU.

Most religions believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-present God. If God is all-knowing and created everything, then God must know what you are going to do with your life, every decision you will ever make and every thought you will ever have. So, he must have known this when he created everything, because he is all-knowing. This means that he created all of your decisions you will ever make at the time of creation, and you have no say in the matter. I believe that is the logic of the argument.

As far as I know in the three zoroastrian religions the single god is omnipotent and omnicient. If you are all powerful and know precisely what is going to happen and you created everything then you are directly responsible for everything that happens. In these religions for god to not control humans would mean that he is not god, for they define god as being all powerful and all knowing and the creator.

When an artist paints a picture do you praise the artist or the brush?

In these religions, although it is not said, god creates you knowing you will go to hell/purgatory/etc. He creates you having the ability to prevent this as well. So god/allah/ywhw creates some people to suffer eternally in these religions, yet they claim he has an undying love for his people.



Enjoy the straw man fallacy much? Tell me where I asserted that becuse it is extremely fitting to everything we would want it to be that it was not true. I am asserting though that these points do favor the arguement that religion is artificial. I have declared a possible purpose with clear intent and gain. That seems like a reason to invent something to me.

That's exactly my point Soulshaver.

If I punch someone in the face am I not responsible for my actions? I am indeed. I am responsible because I am fully aware of what will happen because of my action, I am fully capapable of preventing the action, and I myself instigated the action. Ergo I bear all responsibility.

You are still trying to think within the bounderies of time. You are still making the decisions. You percieve them to be in order with accordance to time. You also percieve space in between these decisions. That is because the concept of time applies to you and me as a boundery. It does not apply to God. He has created you, watched you grow, and seen your fate all in the same moment.

Think of it this way. You drive a go cart around a track. No matter what you do to that go cart (i.e. go fast, backwards, spin out, shut it off) you are still on the track. The track is the go carts boundery. As far as the go cart is concerned that track defines everywhere it will ever operate.

Now just because the go cart is contained in that boundery doesn't mean that is the only place that go cart could operate, The go cart could theoretically operate anywhere, in the parking lot on the moon, even out in space. But an artificial boundery has been defined for the go cart to help give it purpose.



Taber you misquoted me, I never said Tarv's friends weren't Christians.

Anyone up for some go-kart off-roading?

Here let me try another analagy. I have a box of crayons and a pad of paper. I select the purple crayon and draw a picture with it. In the picture I draw little people, I draw shapes, trees, all kinds of things but I only use the purple crayon.

Now one of the laws of my picture is everything is purple. The little people in my picture know no other color, they don't even have a concept of color because everything is purple. Everything they ever see or experience is purple.

Now does that mean that I can only draw in purple? Couldn't I grab any other color and draw another picture with it? I am not bound by the law that everything is purple like the stuff in my picture. I have defined their world but I am not bound by it, they are. If I tried to explain the concept of the other colors they wouldn't even understand because color has no meaning to them.

huh, this



seemed like a denial of someone's Christianity to me. But, if you aren't claiming that Tarv's friends aren't Christian becuse they aren't good people, then you aren't guilty of the no true Scotsman fallacy.