OMG religion and politics lol never the two shall mix
I grew up in a Catholic enviroment even so far as attended a catholic school.
But freedom of choice was not my option - I don't agree with the sunday school mentality I am raising my girl up without any influences about it although she does get a little from school but she can make up her own mind when she is old enough to form her own thoughts about it - its her choice
That's fine if you think that. . then you are in the wrong thread.
Quoted from Mean_Dean
On the other side of that, though, is that people do not want to recognise that their ideas, their theories, are just that... ideas and theories and also can not hold up without faith. We aren't dis-agreeing over mathematic principles or that the sky keeps on going but about a fundamental thing that requires faith from either perspective.
WOW!!. . I'm impressed. . it is very rare to find somebody who sees that side. . it is an act of faith to believe in many things. . not just religion . . but few people recognise that. . go M-D!!
Quoted from x452
If life is supposed to be so sacred, why is their so much pain and sufferring in the world? What are the people that are dying from starvation, disease or war supposed to get out of life?
I, much like AO, was baptised at birth but have struggled with the concept of religion in my adult life
First point: The suffering in the world today is the culmination of mans efforts to rule himself for the past 6,000 years. . but this will not be allowed to continue much longer. . the pain being caused by crooked leaders and even individual criminals will be cut short when God steps in to fix things. More details when you enquire.
Second point: . . . Jesus himself set the example for baptism . . he was 30 !! not a babe. He used his adult, educated faculties to make a decision he awas willing to live up to . . and he did just so. Babies faith is in the hands of parents until they reach an age of understanding. . so if baptised parents do the right thing . . their children are counted as being of the same standard.
DEMOCRACY = Voters deciding by Poll on who will be the local member that "Big Business" will push around.
It is not religion per se that perpetrates violence, but a certain mindset that seeks to use an ideology or a religious justification to control people's thinking and restrain the most fundamental freedoms.
You have an amazing memory Suzi. I forgot any of that was there. I forgot that you had an ebroadcast nemesis back then too. It's funny to look back on now though.
Quoted from dara
How is making them believe in god an opportunity?
This got me thinking about something else kind of unrelated and after seeing people posting that they were brought up religious and found themselves questioning it. I was brought up sort of anti-religious, to beleive that religious people were a little dumb (more than a little actually), and it was from a young enough age for it stick in my head. One of my earliest memories, is of my Dad and my Great Grandmother having a pretty loud argument over her trying to tell me and my brother about God and she never did after that so it's fair to guess that she might have been told that if she wanted to visit us that she had to keep it to herself... pretty harsh I think, but that's how my upbringing went.
Anyhow, I had a really difficult time facing life and accepting the injustices of the world and have suffered quite a bit but I reckon that it was no harder than what anyone else raised religious would have faced and I've not (that I can think of right now) heard of anyone raised religious not going through a time in their life when they lost their faith or questioned it to the extent of backing off entirely and asking "Is this really the case or is it a load of crap I've been told?"
I have no point. I guess I had no reason to type that but I'll still post it. It doesn't present an argument, back an existing one, or counter anything already said.
God loves all of us. All of us here. And elsewhere. I suppose I can say that.
All people do a 'check' from time to time to see if their values are current. People who are not religious and put faith in politics etc. do their 'check-up' every election day.
Football fans do theirs each weekend their team looses.
You just happen to do yours when topics like this happen. We should be looking around the world right now and asking those in power. . What the ??' . . because things certainly look bleak recently.
DEMOCRACY = Voters deciding by Poll on who will be the local member that "Big Business" will push around.
First point: The suffering in the world today is the culmination of mans efforts to rule himself for the past 6,000 years. . but this will not be allowed to continue much longer. . the pain being caused by crooked leaders and even individual criminals will be cut short when God steps in to fix things. More details when you enquire.
Well said
Quoted from dara
How is making them believe in god an opportunity? why do people read the bible it's not like god wrote it? pfft.. religion is annoying
Because, believe it or not, some people believe there is a God, and therefore want to learn more about Him, and what He has in store for us humans.
Dara, I don't understand why you are so against religion? How has religion affected you so dramatically, that you have to hate every aspect of it?? I know everyone has their own opinion, but I just want to know your reasoning..
Because, believe it or not, some people believe there is a God, and therefore want to learn more about Him, and what He has in store for us humans.
Dara, I don't understand why you are so against religion? How has religion affected you so dramatically, that you have to hate every aspect of it?? I know everyone has their own opinion, but I just want to know your reasoning..
I'll start by saying I can probably be classed as agnostic and was bought up a strict Catholic going to Salesian College in Chadstone and Holy Redeemers for primary school. It was a few incidents at Salesian that turned me agnostic and turned my mother, who was a practicing Catholic all her life away from the Christian church, though not God per se.
I'll try to be as diplomatic as I can, which is hard for me. What crock.
How do you learn more about a god? They don't come down and say "Hey all this is me and this is what I'm on about". The only ways open to learn anything is to either research it yourself and find that religion is so full of inconsistancies and out right false premises or to unquestionably believe the teachings of the religious leaders for the church you follow. Problem is that their philosophies and historical premises for faith, and thus their teachings are being proven to be factually and scientifically incorrect on an almost monthly basis. How do you learn what God has in store for us humans, you can't?
The way I see it, there was something that took or created a singularity 14 billion years ago and ignited it. From that instance onwards the universe has been on its own to expand forever, and whatever fate befalls the isolated galaxies billions of years in the future is in no way controlled by anything divine or all powerful.
Let's expand this debate. There are an estimated 500 billion galaxies with each containing around 500 billion stars, and if string theory is correct there could be multiple universes. Nearly every few months now, around every star they closely scrutinise, astronomers find planets. The potential for life bearing planets in the universe is immense.
Now if there is an all overseeing God and creator it would be naive and arrogant to think it created the whole universe/mulitverse just for one little planet that in the universal scheme of things has the life of a mayfly. So if there is other intelligent life out there what if they are all agnostic, athiest or religions that are far removed from any of our beliefs?
Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.
For somebody who thinks 'scientifically' first, your observations about the size of the universe are valid. The Bible makes for a fascinating study. . although not a scientific text book . .it does explain where we are in this time of history. Intelligent life is relatively new in terms of the universe. . but I would ask you to stretch your imagination a bit. . . and wonder if humans are the very start of that intelligent creation. . .If God had/has a purpose and it got sidetracked temporarily (like the Bible suggests) then us humans could be the very start of future intelligent habitation of other planets . We will have to wait and see.
Of all the books of science, medicine, philosophy and every kind of wisdom, the Bible is the only one that tells us why we are here, why it all went wrong but best of all . . how it will be fixed.
BTW. . I might just mention before you scoff too loudly . . that the account of Noah and the flood caused Noahs contemporaries to laugh really had at him . . they had never seen rain before. (the Earth was encircled by a vapour canopy) In the outback of SA are underground caves that tourist guides will freely tell you, have an illogical mix of dead animal fossils . They say it was from a huge flood event. . then wait for the silence. . .The existance of these fossils cannot be described any other way.
DEMOCRACY = Voters deciding by Poll on who will be the local member that "Big Business" will push around.
I'll start by saying I can probably be classed as agnostic and was bought up a strict Catholic going to Salesian College in Chadstone and Holy Redeemers for primary school. It was a few incidents at Salesian that turned me agnostic and turned my mother, who was a practicing Catholic all her life away from the Christian church, though not God per se.
I'll try to be as diplomatic as I can, which is hard for me. What crock.
How do you learn more about a god? They don't come down and say "Hey all this is me and this is what I'm on about". The only ways open to learn anything is to either research it yourself and find that religion is so full of inconsistancies and out right false premises or to unquestionably believe the teachings of the religious leaders for the church you follow. Problem is that their philosophies and historical premises for faith, and thus their teachings are being proven to be factually and scientifically incorrect on an almost monthly basis. How do you learn what God has in store for us humans, you can't?
The way I see it, there was something that took or created a singularity 14 billion years ago and ignited it. From that instance onwards the universe has been on its own to expand forever, and whatever fate befalls the isolated galaxies billions of years in the future is in no way controlled by anything divine or all powerful.
Let's expand this debate. There are an estimated 500 billion galaxies with each containing around 500 billion stars, and if string theory is correct there could be multiple universes. Nearly every few months now, around every star they closely scrutinise, astronomers find planets. The potential for life bearing planets in the universe is immense.
Now if there is an all overseeing God and creator it would be naive and arrogant to think it created the whole universe/mulitverse just for one little planet that in the universal scheme of things has the life of a mayfly. So if there is other intelligent life out there what if they are all agnostic, athiest or religions that are far removed from any of our beliefs?
Now how are you going to argue that any of that isn't based on faith? It's also pretty much universally accepted that string theory is 100% faith based and by the very nature of it could never be proven and there is no room for 'if' in that part of your reasoning. Your post doesn't go anywhere that me saying that it was God's design does not. Can you see that it's aggravating for me to hear about your aggravation toward my faith, and then to read further that you want to persue this sort of argument anyway, after understanding that it's a two way street? All you're really doing is offering up things to be taken apart peice by peice, to be shown as faith and with good logic behind saying so without using spiritual text and within decent thought process we would all agree upon. I don't feel like getting into a string of multiquoted posts that aren't going anywhere though... not right now anyway.
On to something else though, whatever your experience was at school, sounds bad enough that I feel a little bad to bring it up and I'm sorry if something ugly happened.
Because, believe it or not, some people believe there is a God, and therefore want to learn more about Him, and what He has in store for us humans.
Many people seem to believe God is a He. If there truly is a God I would find it hard to believe God is a he or a she or is of a human form.
Religion, FMBM - For Men By Men. Most major religions seem to sideline women as 2nd class citizens. Which is very wrong. Religion is very paternalistic and sexist, we cannot trust the word of an organisation that embodies these values.
It seems the very people who have committed to spreading the 'word of God' are committing blasphemy through discrimination and manipulation of God's message.
It seems the very people who have committed to spreading the 'word of God' are committing blasphemy through discrimination and manipulation of God's message.
I wasn't being a smartass. You started out with a normal spiritual opinion, then went on to dismiss almost every religion on the planet (and possibly even your own statement in doing so, which was odd), and then claimed that the majority of the planet, 84% for those of us who understood the pie chart, is hippocritical in a way that you feel you are not which puts you in a position of superiority as you would apparently view it... and you've now reinforced that perception of that's been put out. So I think I'll leave the question out there along with this clarification and hopefully we can do this without being assholes.
Sorry, guess I took your question as a smartass remark.
I'm not saying people are hypocritical, religion itself can be hypocritical, people can be religious but not necessarily hypocritical.
At no point did I say I was superior to anyone else, let's not start making false assumptions.
What I meant was the discrimination that some of the major religions perpetrate against people is hypocritical and goes against their very own teachings of tolerance and acceptance, such as the non-acceptance of gays and branding them as sinners. The ridiculous and out-dated opposition to contraception, intolerance of other religions/lifestyles/races/ethnicities. Some religions consider women having their periods as dirty and therefore prohibit them from entering places of worship or from wearing certain clothing. The list can go on and on.
Logged
Well said 
