Yeah and what's wrong about that? Everyone should being able to choose what's fine for him.
The bible is a book written originally, i mean the Thora part at least, to give laws to men. Simple rules so that they wouldn't kill themselves for each banality.
If you wanna believe in things like you may only eat animals with hooves, nothing what grows in the sea etc... fine.
If you get attracted by "rules" like you are not to be member of god's community if your balls are scretched or not working properly (which indeed is stated in Exodus...) fine.
If you don'T get alarmed that a god who preaches modesty and poorness, commands his priests to put gold/silver/censer huge crowns, huge altars etc. into the tabernacle (i believe Exodus and Numeri and somewhere in the Deuteronomium as well... fine.

With everything being on the one hand a practical book, constitution of a state/community if you will, and everything what is plain idioty in the first part, old testament, the torah, everything gets topped by the new one.

This was written by order, just to convince all the people who thought the religion was nonesense of it's truth.
When that didn't work, they forbid everyone to read that book with free thoughts and: They didn't teach anybody how to read it. Masses were held in latin, which nobody spoke etc.
Later on, and i'm somewhere around 1480, where "Malleus Malificarum" was published, church began immensly to use it's power for plain profit, killing hundreds of thousands, millions on the way.

Ah i see i get a little confused here but my point still: I don't understand that in a world, where everybody is boasting with his "intelligents", being the master of animals, natures topmost creation... nobody (and this goes for the islamic world, just as for the hindu as well) just realizes how stupid this whole thing is. The institutionalized church... It would suffice to read those goddamn books. Read the Torah, read the Bible and the Koran or even the Vedas.... All the same, all the way, all the time...
2000 years propaganda and still going on. Killing, Murder, Battle for nothing. Instead of living in a paradise on earth, where everybody just accepts his neighbour, letting him believe or do what he wants, living in fraternity without constantly trying to be better, wiser, stronger, richer etc. than anybody else, we chose the easy way. Waiting for a paradise that will never come.

I agree with DarkHunter, that minorities get to whine and get rewarded for stuff that just goes under the bridge when it happens to majority members. Unfair!

Concerning religious belief, there seems to be an inordinate ammount of atheists/agnostics at this site. But I think that most of you are young and that is the time for questioning and searching for what you really do believe in.
After awhile events and happenstance in your life will bring you to the way of things - if for you it is God or Jesus that you see as the prime mover that is good. If you just believe in a central benevolent force that is how it shall be. But I think you'll find that there is some sort of divine intervention, if you will, at work rescuing even the clueless at times and turning the intolerable into new experience leading to untold adventure.

*Duchovney = Spiritual. I like that, thank you Olav.

Ehh it was milanius that translated it .....from serbic(?)

Anyway I won´t really participate in any religious discussions, because religion doesn´t mean that much to me. I say live and let live.......

Serbian
Or ''Srpski'' in our language

Ahhh ok thank for telling me..I actually didn´t know!..Srpski......you guys don´t like vowels do you?...just one..and in the end of the word.....hilarious!

Well, actualy we do use a lot of vowels
But not in some words. For example ''Prst'' which means ''finger''. I can pronounce it properly with ease, but it's really amusing to see some of the western people try this
Plus we have something that is called ''padeži'' that I actualy have no idea how to explain to you, being that not a lot of languages have this . Read about it here under ''morphology''.We also have a lot of dialects, and listen to this: Two diffrent alphabets, Cyrillic and Latinic.

My language is among the hardest languages in the world (obviusly).

I dunno, nearly every word we use in English today has a far different meaning then what we think it means. (I was forced to read the dictionary one day )

This post has been edited by DarkHunter: May 17 2006, 08:37 PM

Haha, what was the word?

theres :Dude = small, weak baby
Babe = (obviously) baby
Spirit = sence of belonging (I think the dictionary smokes weed)
I can't remember the rest...

How I understand these words:
Dude - A male friend said in a cool manner.
Babe - An attractive young woman.
Spirit - Ghost or any kind of ''ethernal'' being. Or in some cases a soul.

Anyway, this is a religion thread, not a language thread.
So let's swich back to religion

no,no,no,no. atheism is where you don't believe in going to your own "personal paradise". it is where you believe you die and that's that.

Actually King, atheism can mean different things to do different people. For some it just means they choose not to wrap their lives around anything proofless, for others it boldly means that everything has a biological explanation.

Looking at the word, all that's required to be an atheist is to be without god, that could mean anything, expecially since every human being believes god is something slightly different.

Thanados, I was not suggesting there was something wrong with it. Everyone has their own faith. This, in fact, goes hand in hand with my last statement, to call oneself a christian, all that is required is they follow christ, or pledge loyalty to him, or anything along those lines. I personally find it odd that people think of the bible as a source of factual information. Biblical phrases are often pulled out during debates by certain people (I know JonaJosa did it some times) but if they use that as a source of factual information, as guide to how to live their lives, why don't they follow the entire thing. My point, I think, you will agree with. People who have interpreted the bible for other people throughout history have told them what to believe, saying it all came from the mystical book. But, it's sort of like the media today, they pick and choose what to emphasize and what to totally ignore. There could be some news about famine in Africa, but most media outlets (at least in the US) won't touch it, omitting it for personal, indiscolsed reason, and pressure from different areas, most readily a result of greed.

So, it seems to me, choosing some parts of the bible to believe in, and others to assume are long forgotten codes of conduct that no long apply (even if Jesus taught them himself, as many of the omitted beliefs in modern christianity are in fact his lessons) is boat well in good, if your knowledge spans the entire thing, not jsut what church has said is true.

Face it, someone who believes in the Bible is believing in something without logic, without proof, with omly their faith, and there's nothing wrong with that, but then why pick and choose what truth is? Why blind yourself with words from a text when not every word of the text is the same thing? To believe in some aprts, and not others, destroys the credibility of the book itself, because the book is supposed to be an absolute as much as logic or faith itself is an absolute. As the guys from southpark said, "Either it's all okay, or none of it is."

It's kind of funny. I consider myself a pretty likeable person. But I'll make a friend, we'll hang out, have fun. Then I tell him I'm christian, and that's it, all the sudden I'm branded as an intolerant bigot.

In the christian comunity I'm known as a good person, and wise, so it's not like I'm slacking on any of my morals. But most friends outside that "circle" like me anyway; but some people (alot of people) can't ever get over the part where I believe in God and Jesus.

I don't "condemn" anyone direcly; if someone tries to get me to justify something t hat goes against my faith, I won't, but I don't go looking for people to judge.

I am a very tolerant person, I just wish people would tolerate me.

This post has been edited by Ereneth: May 18 2006, 02:19 AM

i am thinking about changing to chiristianity because i've been going to youth group (for those who don't know it's like a religious gathering where we learn about god and play games). i really don't care about your religion. i have friends of amny different religions. i have friends who are jews,christian,roman catholic,sic,atheist and antagonist if your kool i don't kare what your religion is.

Yeah i agree with that point. I was on my part just pointing out the maybe once "good" reasons for following such a text, and the bad/unlogic/cruel and unnecessary consequences on the other hand.
In short the bible is one of the oldest works of propaganda; when you read it, some books wrote by the inquisition, mao's little red book, gadaffis green one, even hitler's, books written by lenin or the communist manifesto - all the same, no difference. It is also the same when you watch news today. I watch cnn sometimes and they don't cover by far, what's going on in the world. BBC is the same, all the european channels either. The whole tv thing is trying to manipulate people, a single book won't do anymore nowadays; but still nothing has changed.
The worst thing about all this is though, that people think they're so smart, no everytihng, are "developped, civilized, intelligent", whereas that simple isn't true. If every person on earth would care to build up some knowledge, all this propaganda, may it be capitalistic, socialistic (which is always getting misused), religious etc. would lose all it's effect.

I am a sad excuse for a Christian, as I've already mentioned, but hey, have a Tolerance FTW.

Thank you for the translation, milanius. Sorry for the confusion, on my part.

I'm not a very religious person. I think it's realy hard to believe in something I've never realy felt or seen before. I have a lot of religious friends but I just can't seem to get into it. Mabey it's not realy something for me.
Like I've been to these meetings for students and stuff but it just gives me the creeps. I don't mean that as a joke it realy does, I felt realy sucky when I got home.

There are so many things which I don't agree with that I think it's realy hard to get myself into it. I also think a lot of people are using their religion the wrong way. Not all ofcourse like some said in the topic before, it's more like which parts you use as guidlines. But I think it's wrong to use religion for negative things, like discriminating or scaring people.

I think religion is to much about fear and stuff, about going to hell. What you can do and can't. People say it's about love and peace but if you take a closer look in the bible you'll find very little about that. For example, I had a discussion about hell with a friend of mine who happens to be a christian. The question was who should go to hell and who wouldn't.
Many people believe that only people who believe and embrace God are allowed to goto heaven. If that's the way it is wouldn't it be stupid? Would that mean that for example a volunteer who helped a lot of people in third world countries, but who happened to be a muslim, would goto hell? But a christian who is descriminating others because of things they believe which are in the bible can goto heaven just because they are religious?

It's just so weird. That's basicly why I don't realy like religions because people focuss to much on the negative. Like things you can't do, or who's going to hell and who's not. Ofcourse not everything is about that but it's just weird I guess.

Tho I respect everybody, everybody has to make the decision for themselves. If you want to believe do so ^^.

If you look at what Jesus Christ actually said ... he was giving a guideline or blueprint for living well in His Father's world. This was the simple language that he chose to explain the really mysterious world around us .. confusing at times.

He used the term Father for God and Son for Himself .. Son of Man .. is used alot. He also said that all men were his brothers. So, in the simplest of terms, He was just saying that we all are the Creator's children ... we all are a part of God. We were made in God's image.

Some of us do take this talk more literally than others, but like the Sermon on the Mount, the simple way of healing, the kind words for everyone except for warnings against those going against the natural way of things, the turning the other cheek - The Christ was an example for following to a good, enjoyable life.

I have a bible in which Christ's words alone are written in red, all the rest is black. It gives a good perspective on what the man actually said and how much the rest of the book was from other sources. I know that the whole new testament is word or mouth from several generations after Jesus. I also was raised Catholic and that's why I can't stop using capital letters when referring to God.

But all this extra drummed up stuff that the churches have embelished and added for their own benefit and toll boxes is really what puts people off. The central message is crystal and clear for good living. As for all this discussion of who goes to heaven or hell .... the good thief sat with Jesus that day in Heaven, because at the end he believed and was sorry for the bad life he'd led. Simple.

This post has been edited by Ibis: May 22 2006, 09:44 AM

This is a very good point, and I think the reason more people aren't calling themselves Christian and go to church etc., while they may still believe in God or other gods.

As a sidenote, I recently bought the CSI series on DVD, and in an episode I watched last night it ended with a Catholic priest inviting Gil Grissom to attend mass. Grissom politely declined, and explained that he believed in God, but not religion. He didn't like to be told what to believe and not. Gave me food for thought...