Mega ChurchesFollow

Man that's a lot simpler than the awesome transcendental analysis that I thought you were going for. I'm sad now :(



Even an analysis of the concepts that constitute free will is difficult to properly state. It's not exactly the most agreed-upon concept out there.

Edited, Dec 8th 2008 7:13pm by Pensive

Oh sure it could; we would just have to ditch providence and omniscience out of time, or perhaps just one.

I met a rabbi once that was pretty keen on the idea of ditching providence. Nice dude he was.

well, I was only using analogy, but since you mention it; consider this: If we were watching a bunch of floating living cotton ballsstay with me here and we thought that they were just regular floating cotton balls... then we would say that they were moving randomly.
Even considering that you could argue that our actions are never random but based on our thought processes... well some animal that is watching us or some infant does not KNOW this.. therefore the actions APPEAR to be random even though our actions may be quite deliberate.



Keep in mind that our thoughts are made of ions not balls.




Indeed, but I think you have missed the point entirely. Many say that there is no "some free-will", that there either is or there isn't. I disagree. Free-will is an illusion to an extent. It is an illusion as much as the physical world is.. were you to consider that the only thing that allows a thing to freely operate within depend upon a things ability to process the data around it into a recognizable universe. Now I am Not saying that a thing brings the universe into existence by viewing it.. rather brings itself into existence as an individual beyond that universe. Not even the words non-local consciousness apply because that implies normal geometry and dimensions.




Perhaps not, but some have more than others.

Ok here we go.

...but wasn't the Catholic Church was created by satan? And the image of the good ol' jesus christ you know...is in fact the mark of the beast and the plan of satan to take the true believer away from yoshua - who was in fact the true christ?


(I in fact, just made that up. See what free will can do? You can only think what your pastor tells you...and so you are restricted to the boundaries that your little mind puts up. i personally think jesus was a **** star and basically convinced a bunch of people the same way that pastors now do...be really nice to them up front and have sex with as many members of your congregation as you can. You really think they live more "righteously" 2000 years ago? It was probably far, far worse.)

You guys are so slanted in your posts. I go to Mclean Bible Church in VA. It is what some would consider a Mega Church. But they take pains to include everyone who wants to be in a small group.

Whats so wrong about having a lot of people together worshiping God? People have no problem at all throwing themselves at Madonna as she sleazes about, but you have a problem with people worshiping God? Or telling each other, "Hey, lets all be good to one another"? Really, I have to ask, what is wrong with society that they automatically think there is something wrong with that?

There is nothing at all inherently wrong. However there is also a lot of power that comes from a mega church. Instead of having a budget of 300-600 thousand you have a budget of millions. There is the possibility that the people who have power can abuse it, and with a big church it would be a lot easier to hide it.

Big churches can be amazing, they have the energy and resources, both people and money, to do a lot of good. It's just that so often power corrupts and leaders in these churches usually end up having a lot of power, even if they don't seek it out.

Speaking from a purely Christian perspective now, Being a church is about community, and a big church can hinder that. Small groups are great, but they are small and tend not to include different demographics. This doesn't make it bad per say, but I would rather have a smaller church.