So I went to church tonight....

[Kynosaur]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

The scientific community is entirely more likely to be truthful than a book compiled of ancient Jewish writings and more "modern" Christian writings of only about 2000 years old.

It is entirely more likely for someone to compile, print and bind a dictionary than for a print shop to explode and for all the contents to fall back to earth as a printed, bound dictionary.

It is entirely more likely for someone to construct an orrery than for all the model planets, gears and motors to fly together and make a working orrery by themselves.

It is entirely more likely for a higher being to create the universe than for a spontaneous explosion of gases to cause everything and everyone to suddenly come into existence by itself.

No, I forget why he put boundaries to the human couple

That's what I was talking about.

[kid_merkury]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

First time EVAR going on a Wednesday night, and the first time I've been since about 4th grade. Really not what I expected....

I didn't have to dress nice, there was PING-PONG and FOOSBALL, and they played real music. It was Christiany, and I don't consider myself "Christian", and I wasn't really feelin the music as much as others were, who were, for example, waving their arms in the air, pointing to the ceiling, and jumping in their overwhelming faith. Not a bad thing, but just something I wasn't as in to.

Afterwards, we watched a video that's in a series that I guess tries to clarify the Bible. This video was talking about getting into heaven and what it took to be a true Christian, etc....

Now, I didn't go to profess my Christianity. I, by no means, consider myself a Christian.... I think of myself as spiritual. I have my own beliefs, and I figured that going to church could possibly expand my horizons. It did. It made me think. I liked it. I liked it enough to share it with you guys :P

I guess I liked it really because the people there weren't judgemental or forceful. I really turned myself away from religion because of a personal experience years ago with people who were really just dicks about me not considering myself Christian and not going to church. It was a really good experience... not boring like I remembered church to be.

SO... uh, I guess.... uh.... What's church like for you guys? If you don't go, why don't you go?

I grew up being a "pk" (pastor's kid) - and my dad always taught me that we aren't supposed to judge. Nor are you supposed to be oppressive about sharing your faith. It sounds like you went to a youth group night, but they seem to have a good grasp on how to act, according to what you said.

Do you know what kind of church it was you went to recently, and what kind of church you went to when you had your bad experience?



-Merky

[FaulkApsargs]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

If you ignore everything else i right, read this. I challenge one person to answer me the following loophole.

Okay so Christianity states that God loves us all, and that we will go to heaven if we only choose to believe. In fact thats the ONLY way to go to heaven, we MUST believe.

So what if 3 year old child is killed in an accident? Having not yet reached an age where he is capable of making the decision to believe in God or not, does this mean he goes to hell? He spends 3 insignificant years on earth and now he's going to burn in hell for more then 100000000000000000000 years? Infinitys pretty long.

More realisticly, what about people born across the globe, in third-world countries? Millions of these people simply will not have the chance to ever be exposed to christanity. Its not part of their inherent culture, many people simply don't know what it is. This means they're all going to hell? I thought God loved them? He didn't even give them a choice! They simply were not born under circumstances where Christanity was ever exposed to them, so how should they know better? This doesn't make them bad people.


An interesting theory i've heard is that there is one God, that goes by many names. Jesus, Buddha, Allah, just different languages and interpretations. I personally still don't believe it, but at least now there's some logic going on.

http://www.comparativereligion.com/neverheard.html

Also, I sigh at the amount of ignorance in this thread. If anyone cares for my two cents', I think a "god," if you will, does exist. Theories of the origin of the universe, specifically Hawking's (when the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics are applied), even point to it. I can elaborate if anyone would like.

[Afrobean]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

Because they did the one thing He told them not to do. Therefore mankind lost direct "access" to God, which is why people nowadays find it so easy to dismiss the possibility of the existence of some higher being.

The world as it is causes these things to be illogical. It's not our fault if your god made the universe in such a way that a person thinking with only logic would come to believe that he doesn't exist.

It is entirely more likely for someone to compile, print and bind a dictionary than for a print shop to explode and for all the contents to fall back to earth as a printed, bound dictionary.

Don't try that **** on me. Regardless of the complications of things, the fact is that it exists. We know it exists, because here we are. Therefore, the small probability that would result in this naturally is irrelevant.

For example, a person might have a 1 in 1,000,000,000 chance of winning the lottery. But if you meet a person and they say "I won the lottery look at how much money I won", you can't say "NO YOU DIDN'T, DON'T YOU KNOW HOW UNLIKELY THAT IS?!"

It is entirely more likely for a higher being to create the universe than for a spontaneous explosion of gases to cause everything and everyone to suddenly come into existence by itself.

It's not that there was an explosion and matter came into existence from nowhere. The idea is that all the matter of the Universe was once contained in an intensely small point. Something triggered an expansion (this is where you godfreaks can fill in your own answer, because we really don't know), and all of the matter spread out, wherein elements and compounds showed themselves. Over time, a very very long period of time, on a tiny little insignificant speck rock in an insignificant solar system in an insignificant galaxy, the elements fell into line and something happened (hi godfreaks) in just the right way and simple single cell organisms developed. These single celled life forms lived simply for a long period of time until they somehow (hi godfreaks) developed into multi-cellular organisms. Microevolution leads to macroevolution, eventually these orgasnisms reached outside the microscopic world. Over time, many different plants and animals branched off over a very long period of time. After a very long time, the animal life became so developed that they came up with what is now recognized as intelligence, potentially through microevolution thanks to differences in diet. Over time, these intelligent animals developed culture and standardized language.

So we are a success in this. But we are but a single instance of such a chance occurrence. Yes the chances of this success may be incredibly minimal, so by these same rights, there must certainly be failures across the Universe. In fact, we can look to our own solar system and see planets like ours who failed to develop life, even in the case of Mars that was potentially favorable to the process at one point. It is even potentially possible that the success we developed may be unique across the entire Universe.

ps again let me point out that I don't have a problem with beliefs and such as that. I only have a problem with people who deny SCIENCE. And FaulkApsargs, go ahead and elaborate- I'm always interested to hear more about holes in science where a Creator can fit in, even if I don't even believe in it myself.

[Grandiagod]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

Please, I'm not trying to boast, but I study the bible from my own part, and I can safely say that it does not contradict itself. Also, you're link says,

The bible is consistent with it's meaning, it's just being interpreted wrong. You have to take into account which profet wrote what, when, and to whom the message was directed, and why it was directed to them. Lets take for example this:

GE 2:15-17, 3:4-6 It is wrong to want to be able to tell good from evil.
HE 5:13-14 It is immature to be unable to tell good from evil.

Genesis never says that being able to tell good from evil is bad. Simply, Jehovah (God) put boundaries to the first human couple (I forget why).

Acts referrs to one being able to tell what's good and bad. Luke wrote this in Rome (31 B.C. - 61 C.E.), in order to continue the history of primitive christian faith in order to have the fundamentels for a congregations.

You guys don't dig deep at all. Just because you're against religions, doesn't mean you should be against the bible. Just because you're mad the bible doesn't mean you should read everything that talks against it and automatically accept it. Get your facts straight first.

Sorry, but that site is wrong. I see multiple of texts that are implied the wrong way. There are some that I can't say off the top of my head what they meant, which means researching them. I just used the one above as an example. Once again, investigate!

your one poor example (once again dying because eating fruit of knowledge = inconsistent with other verses)

How about actual verses that say contradicting things?

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/by_name.html

[Afrobean]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

I don't have a problem with those "continuity errors"...

The book was written by many different people over a period of a very long time. Shoddy worksmanship on their parts, but I'm sure that's why most of those contradictions exist. I mean, hell, the writers of the New Testament couldn't even match the mood of the Old Testament. Not very skilled writers.

[Grandiagod]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

I don't have a problem with those "continuity errors"...

The book was written by many different people over a period of a very long time. Shoddy worksmanship on their parts, but I'm sure that's why most of those contradictions exist. I mean, hell, the writers of the New Testament couldn't even match the mood of the Old Testament. Not very skilled writers.

Continuity errors in a book that claims it's divinely inspired would definitely worry me if I was basing my life off of it.

Plus I was responding to "THE BIBLE HAS NO CONTRADICTIONS I KNOW I'VE STUDIED THE BIBLE MYSELF"

[Afrobean]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

Yeah, sorry, I look at the book in the same way I look at The Odyssey, The Iliad, or... um... Beowulf.

8)

[MalReynolds]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

I have a very simple belief system:

I don't worry myself about God. I worry about people. It's my belief that humanity, as a collective, is pretty dumb. Individuals have the capability of being smart, but mob rule is prevelent. I trust people only to make bad decisions or decisions that suit them the best. The same is true of me -- I think if myself as charitable, but I do go out of my way to help people because it makes me feel good.

In short, everyone is dumb except me because I recognize how dumb everyone is and everyone will inevitably make the wrong decision and humanity is kind of not worth fighting for.

I was chatting with a friend last night. She asked me why I was so paranoid.

I said, "Because nothing matters but the moment, and when you stop having moments... when you stop, you stop. In 100 years, people won't remember me or care about me or you or us, but it helps me deal with everything, the collapsing nature of life, if I believe the world is out to get me. Helps me feel special, because in 100 years... Won't feel so great anymore."

And then she said, "Unless you buy into eternal recurrence."

But my point stands.

AS FOR GOING TO CHURCH!

When dad left mom, she found God for about 3 weeks. I didn't dislike going, but it didn't really do anything for me. I used to go with my grandmother, as well, but I found all the kids there to be really creepy in a Village of the Damned kind of way.

[FaulkApsargs]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

Alright, then.

First, here's a link to Hawking's lecture on the beginning of time, because there is no way I can explain his theory as well as him.

http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/lindex.html

But, for those of you too lazy to read it, I will attempt to summarize. First of all, Hawking suggests that the 2nd law of thermodynamics (disorder always increases with time) is evidence enough that the universe has not always existed, because if it had, everything would be MUCH more chaotic than it is, and there would be no way that our little planet would be able to sit in its orbit long enough to bring human life to the point it's at now. He also says that in an everlasting universe, everything would be the same temperature, and every line of sight would end on the surface of a star, making the night sky as bright as the sun. So, we can clearly see that the universe had to have a beginning and is, in fact, relatively young. But how did the universe begin? Well, Hawking says it was with a singularity, or "The Big Bang." It's been observed that galaxies are steadily moving apart, and if we plot their separation as a function of time, we can see that at one point in time, all the matter of the universe was condensed into one little point, which is a singularity. He says that the laws of physics break down in a singularity (which I'm not sure how he knows that) and because of this, we'll never know anything about anything before the singularity, if anything existed at all. So, the singularity was the beginning of time. At this point, we can refer to the 1st law of thermodynamics, which states that energy cannot be destroyed or created, and wonder where the MASSIVE amount of energy in our universe came from if the universe is not eternal. Energy cannot be created, so really, where did it come from? This is one hole in science where some argue that a "god" could fit in. Also, we all know that the odds of everything randomly falling into place for Earth to exist the way it does are terribly low, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't happen over time. However, we know the universe is relatively young, and that only makes the odds that much lower.

I think the scientific evidence for intelligent design is too convincing to ignore, but that's just my opinion. Oh, and I hope that all made enough sense.

[Grandiagod]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

[QUOTE=FaulkApsargs;2834196]

I think the scientific evidence for intelligent design is too convincing to ignore, but that's just my opinion. Oh, and I hope that all made enough sense.

While most of your evidence relies on a god of the gaps mentality (eg. We don't know yet how it happened so goddidit, which has no factual or logical basis whatsoever) and I take intellectual offense to that. This seems to be a discussion about a personal christian god, not an ambiguous eternal force.

[Izzy]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

Evolution is close to scientific fact as gravity. Before you make the comments that it isn't i suggest you go learn what evolution is. Which is what a theory is.

[Grandiagod]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

Also am I the only one who finds it odd that the universe has to have a creator but god just can exist all over the place uncaused defying supposed creationist logic because they've built an invincible imaginary friend?

[Izzy]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

Also am I the only one who finds it odd that the universe has to have a creator but god just can exist all over the place uncaused defying supposed creationist logic because they've built an invincible imaginary friend?

If you were, this would be a sad world.

[FaulkApsargs]

Re: So I went to church tonight....

[QUOTE=Grandiagod;2834206]

While most of your evidence relies on a god of the gaps mentality (eg. We don't know yet how it happened so goddidit, which has no factual or logical basis whatsoever) and I take intellectual offense to that. This seems to be a discussion about a personal christian god, not an ambiguous eternal force.

There is somewhat of a logical basis, though, because, according to modern science, the laws of thermodynamics can't be broken.

Please, don't take offense and don't be hostile. I never understood why people always get so heated over debates of the such. Let's all keep it chill. =)

And yeah, the thread seems to be about Christianity, but someone asked me to elaborate, so I did.