Religion

God gave humanity to Satan as a gift and reward. God, in the beginning, created all that was. He called it Eden and put adam in it. The lower case adam, means society. God later called us Adam and Eve, to designate and differentiate man and woman. That is likely why creation of man is shown twice in Genesis. He then gave all of us to Satan as a gift and made him the ruler of this world as a reward. This maintains the illusion that God gave us free will. After all, free will means we are able to rule ourselves so God himself cannot call himself our ruler without negating our free will. We cannot do as we will if we are following his will. This is quite simple to u…

Grace relies on good information. Many Christians say that God does not send us to hell and that we CHOOSE to go there on our own. If fully informed, only the insane would reject God. Given that God wills the very best for us, and given that we ourselves want the very best for ourselves, then it would seem that no one could make a FULLY INFORMED decision against God. And if not FULLY INFORMED, then the free will defense of hell falls down. For me, this would apply to the above, given that to reject that which is (by the definition of Christians) the very best for us would imply that one is not fully informed. This argument is developed in many ways in Tho…

The latest electrical charge fired through the corpse of religion in the hopes of reviving it is the new book by Michael McGuire and Lionel Tiger, entitled 'God's Brain.' It's announced goal is to try to recover some respect for theists from atheists, on the reasoning that since 90% of the earth's population believes in some religion, it is inconsistent with biology to assert that such a large proportion of a successful species can be so defective as to be victimized by a merely stupid belief. The authors argue that there is naturally a huge amount of suffering connected with human existence, and that the natural way by which humans preserve their capacity for action am…

Okay, so this question might have been asked before but I thought I'd start a new topic (and this seemed like the best place to post it). I've read a book by Mary Ann Winkowski (When Ghosts Speak) and I'm reading another one by Sylvia Browne (Visits from the Afterlife) and I'm starting to believe that ghosts are real, and they usually are not what they are depicted like by the media. I've never actually had any personal experience with ghosts (or maybe I have but just haven't taken notice of it and forgot) but the more I read about it the more interesting and believable it seems. What do guys have to say?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism In your opinion, do you think agnosticism is a good philosophy? Do you agree with it? Do you not agree with it? Is it the best way of looking at things, specifically religion? Which type of agnosticism sounds most like your beliefs? I'm just curious.

I am currently doing a project on how Religion affects Happiness, and in order to obtain the widest data sample possible, I have posted my survey on this, and several other blogs. Please take five minutes out of your obviously not busy lifes to fill out the form, and email me the results. Any format (Word, Adobe, etc.) is acceptable, as long as it is legible. If you email me a page of obscenities, I will give your email address to everyone around me and tell them to send you the same email thirty times. The survey as follows. RELIGIOUS Scale of Happiness 1 to 100 Gender What actions do you perform in church? Sing Dance Pray Read Daydream How …

I'll offer this up as something I neither believe or disbelieve in; but a thing all of us should keep in mind and think about. "Poor Lindsey Graham". Politicians should keep their mouths shut unless they find themselves roasting on a spit. Most of the narration is done by a sweet young thing I would have loved to meet before she went,??? Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xqtYkd2gCs Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riSJcZC89Hc

Does God regularly reward rebellion? God, in the beginning, rebelled against the status quo that he had lived in for millennia. He rejected what was and created what we have today and gained a reward, pleasure. He was pleased and named it all good. To insure that the trend of rebellion continued, he brought Satan to earth and ordered him to tempt Adam and Eve. The only way Adam and Eve could know that they were autonomous entities was to go against God’s command. Satan is said to be the first autonomous entity, other than God, to rebel. He was rewarded by being named the King of this world. God’s jewel and greatest achievement till that time. This truth…

A question on God and Indian giving. You are given a gift, use it for a time, and then the one who gave you that gift takes it back without your permission or consent. In other words, showing himself to be an Indian giver. Would you call that a sin? I call it a form of lying. The giver is in effect saying, I am giving you this gift, when in reality, he is not, as demonstrated by his taking it back or away from you. If not a lie, is that a sin and what is the sin called? God himself in scriptures seems to do this regularly as he kills those he supposedly loves and takes away the free will gift he supposedly gave them. Their free will was obvio…

Should Christianity adopt Islam’s laws of sins of the flesh? There is a fair bit of noise nowadays about Sharia law. I am not advocating Sharia law for our secular system but have to wonder if Christianity would be well served by adopting Sharia law for the Church. Islam must change as it enters into secularism. It, like all Abraham based religions, need much improvements to their laws but, in terms of sins of the flesh, they may be above the Christian ethos. Abortion, infidelity, and other inappropriate sexual habits seem to be better handled by Islam. They have gone the wrong way in some of their cults, the so called rape law, exemplifies this, but I …

What if in the future it became scientifically proven that God (creator) exists? By this I mean a self conscious entity that had the ability to create this Universe that we live in. What if it was possible to communicate with this entity? What if when asked about scripture and the "Revealed Word of God" It replied that It had nothing to do with it, It never revealed anything to anyone. How would the Theists and Athiests react to this news? Since both parties would be shown to be both right and wrong in their beliefs? Yes, there is a "God" which makes the Theists right and the Atheists wrong, but at the same time "religion" has no basis in fact, making the …

Theists will never see the face of God. Giggle. As a religionist of sorts, Gnostic Christian with a touch of Deist, I have to sometimes have a giggle at the position that believers in Bible God take. Especially their more immoral positions as they accept Gods reasons for murdering or to them, just justly killing humans. It is not funny but I giggle out of sadness for theists lack of thought and morals. At the same time as I fight my own camp for their more bizarre thinking, I am attacked by atheists who see me as just as delusional as those who follow Bible God. I am in a rather unique position as you can see. Having said that, I think all theists, esp…

Hi! So like I lead a rather sheltered life, I have no television and do not read newspapers and I generally avoid anything that goes beyond my immediate existence. I love science and maths and this is why I am here, because I feel like I have a place to be able to express myself inside of a community that is relevant. I have in the past joked around with friends about the idea of starting a religion that was founded on science. I have pondered on what such a religion would be and how it wouldn't simply be another facility for education or a reason to hold weekly tech conventions and/or seminars. The details of this are rather irrelevant and I will end this with la…

To understand this thread, you sort of have to understand the logic of why the devil wants to possess souls. Presumably, it is because souls have the power to make choices and they can be seduced into choosing evil over good. But what if your soul lacks power? Would the devil give up on you then, or would he still consider it useful for some purpose?

Theists and Atheists I still do not know what can be done to eliminate endless conflicts between theists and atheists. But comments collected at several websites prompted me to compose a short on-line paper at: http://pages.csam.mo...i/theo_sci.html It can probably be used to initiate an interesting discussion here. Please share this link with those who might be interested. Ludwik Kowalski Professor Emeritus Montclair State University, USA . .

Both theists and atheists have a habit of interpreting the mythology of the bible and other religions as literal. God is seen as a physical being who lives in an actual place called heaven while the angels are seen as human-like beings with wings, etc. Although these can be helpful metaphors for visualizing the spiritual forces treated in theological philosophy, have people taken these mythological descriptions so literally as to obscure the ideas and ethics they are meant to describe? If so, why do you think literalism has become so difficult to overcome in theological discourse? Does it have to do with the rise and dominance of materialism in culture maybe?

Was our first God a man? Should our last be as well? In reading a bit of history, you will find that the ancient men of power labeled themselves as Gods. Their progeny were called sons of God. I am not clear as to why Emperors and Kings did this. Either to compete with the other Gods or to displace past older Gods. I am not sure. Perhaps people had already started to think of God and laws as the same thing. Scriptures tell us in John 1 that. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh. To me, this means that the notion of the word/law was replaced by a leader/God and the consensus required to for…

This thread is derived from another thread where it was claimed that religious logic can't be defended because it is subjective and therefore totally open to interpretation. Imo, theological ideas make more sense when viewed according to some logic than others. Arguing that God is an external entity, separate from the people who write "divinely inspired scripture," for example, doesn't make sense in the logic of spiritual inspiration to write in and of itself. I.e. if someone claims to have been inspired by God, that is in itself the essence of divine inspiration - i.e. the subjective experience of God. To apply objectivist logic and claim that there is some objective…

If heaven existed spending eternity in heaven would be very problematic because spending an eternity in heaven is almost impossible because within eternity everything possible must happen including you leaving heaven after being there X amount of time and even if you could spend eternity there. Its been proven that within eternity every possible outcome must transpire thus this means after sometime every event will occur, yet the bible speaks of a place in which you have eternal joy but it is impossible to have eternal joy because sorrow is possible so it must transpire yet don't worry joy will return, in fact it must.

Say you die, and you are confronted with this entity. Let's presume it has the omnipotence and omniscience like many gods of various pantheons do. It didn't care whether or not your worship was sincere, but it demanded it, or eternal punishment was the consequence. Would you worship it, or accept the punishment? What I'm asking is if anyone could logically accept eternal punishment that will never end over something as finite and subjective as pride or morals. BTW, this question has no ulterior motives and is not setting anyone up for anything. I do not believe in a Hell. So. What would you do?

Having read and posting on various threads where atheists have expressed their views. The Following questions seem appropriate. This thread grows out of another thread but I felt the subject needed it's own thread. When a Christian asks you to believe in God and preaches the Gospel etc to you, they are offering you a hope in Eternal Life. The questions for you are are these. 1. What is it you are offering to us when you ask us NOT to believe? 2. What advantage(s) does belief in NO God offer? 3. Why is Rejection of God better than Acceptance of God? 4. Why is Hopelessness (No afterlife) better than Hopefulness (glorious afterlife)? Let it be …

What if in the future it became scientifically proven that God exists? (By God I mean the famous one, the omnipotent, omnipresent one etc) How would you SFN athiests react in response to this revelation? How would your feelings about God change? Would you love Him or hate him? Would you worship Him or would you be neutral about the situation? What questions would you ask God if you could talk to Him?

Overall, does the belief in religion make this world a better place? What does everyone think?

When it comes to the history of religions, where to we get the facts from to establish that the things which happened really did happen? It's just that a lot of people are a bit skeptical to take the word of the Bible or the Torah as being historical evidence for things which happened in the past and I'm just curious. When it comes to history, how do we distinguish between what we know as fact and what we are uncertain of? What is it that makes the history of religion fact? I mean is it based on archaelogical evidence or through the letters from ancient peoples that have been uncovered? How do we know that Jesus existed? I mean whenever I read information from the net is …

Shall we bow down to the masses or shall we except that 'Christmas' is the way forward. I for one will NEVER stop celebrating Christmas.