I doubt that. But he wasn't spewing hate, he was just curious because he didn't think it sounded right.
I posted the following paragraph a couple pages back, but no one gave me a good response, so here it is again: My biggest problem with Christianity is with one of it’s central tenets. The idea that God would need his son to be tortured and killed in order to forgive humanity. Why would God need his son to be a sacrificial scapegoat for the sins of others? Why would a god require ritual killing for anything? If God wanted to forgive humanity why didn’t he simply forgive them?
God is not three beings. Stop being a heretic. God is one substance, but with three persons. God is one single entity, yet a trinity. Christianity is based off of trinitarian belief. Catholics did not 'change' the bible. St. Jerome translated it into Latin, and it is a fine translation. The bible mentions the trinity. Matthew. 28, 19: Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. (Douay Rheims version).
I am agnostic, have been for a while now, I am not ignorant enough to say that there is no god, but I am not blind enough to say there is a god.
I used to be agnostic, until I got interested in science. I was open to the idea of there being a god. Now, I am not open to the idea of a gods existence in the same way I am not open to the existence of there being invisible fairies in my house. If you could show me actual, verifiable and reliable evidence of it existing, I will start to believe in it. Until then, all the evidence we have suggests that the universe is logical, and based on set laws of nature.
No law of nature contradicts the existence of God; you're free to adopt an expressly positivist approach, but by no means is it the only one.
It's not that I can disprove God, there just isn't proper reason to believe in him in the first place.
I was taught of it in a more 3 in 1 way. I mean if you saw a happy meal you wouldn't call it a hamburger, fries, and a chocolate milk. You'd call it a happy meal. Anyway, if anything we don't change the Bible more than anything else. We update the language a bit, for instance when they changed "booty" to spoils [of war] because it fit more into our common conversation now. But we still maintain old, very unchanged copies. Not to mention Catholics, and many other Christian faiths, have been combing the Middle East for decades now looking for even older copies and translations.
Teach a lesson maybe? If you just say, "Ya, I forgive you." like it doesn't matter they aren't going to change their ways. By "sacraficing" Jesus not only does he spread the True Faith, but he creates a memorable event to reference back. And by sending Jesus he had a preacher to tell us how to properly worship and what to do and what not to do, basiclly.
It seems more incredibly, incredibly misinformed than anti-Catholic. Then they end up complaining about how we wont seriously consider the Christian Unification thing. -.- I swear, people seem to take South Park as a proper anaysis of our religion.
I think the Bible makes it rather clear that Jesus took the sins of humanity onto himself when he died, much like the ancient practice of scapegoating. If you want to consider it a sort of symbolic sacrifice, with the intention of teaching humanity a lesson, that’s fine, but you’d be contradicting the Bible in doing so.
You can't take the Bible litterally. Simply because every translation changes the exact meaning a little. Either way, I think it's perfectly reasonable to "contradict the Bible" in saying that almost the entire Human Race wasn't wiped out by some massive fload either.
If you believe it's perfectly reasonable to contradict the Bible, how are you able to base your beliefs on any of it? How do you know what parts to take literally and what parts to take symbolically? And don’t you think you're risking eternal damnation by not taking the Bible literally? I just know that If I were a Christian I would be a hardcore fundamentalist, I would read the Bible everyday, follow all the silly rules... I just wouldn’t want to risk burning in Hell for all eternity.
You take the Bible very literally in your analysis of its purpose as well... It isn't a "How to Get to Heaven in One Easy Lifetime" brochure, it's a document that reveals divine truths to man. For me, these truths point to the existence of a god that is absolutely perfect and compassionate; in other words a god that would never base the ultimate fate of the universe on a person's ability to avoid eating meat during Lent or forgoing interest on loans. A truly just god, like the God I believe in, would judge a person by no more than their own standard of what is right.
You could be right, or maybe you’re wrong, when the stakes are ultimate suffering for all eternity and ultimate bliss for all eternity I think it’s reasonable to not want to take any risks. If I believed the Bible was the closest thing we had to God’s word, I would follow it to the letter, which I think would be rational given what it says about God and the afterlife. I honestly don’t understand how most Christians seem to go about their lives without constantly fearing God and worrying about Hell.
Hell isn't some fire and brimstone palace of torture, despite what our Protestant brethren may think. Hell is simply the separation from God, brought on by nothing more than the inability to accept Him. You aren't bound to Hell by anything more than your own perceptions; so eternal damnation is very improbable. Biblical literalism doesn't help anything, and God would quite clearly not want His people to be ignorant and blind. Questioning one's faith is an integral part of Christianity. Incidentally this warped version of Pascal's wager assumes the false dichotomy that either you are right (Take everything in the Bible literally or go to Hell) or I am right (Seek a better understanding of the universe and God as revealed by the Bible [and for that matter other holy texts]) when in reality there are near infinite possibilities. For instance, God might only let radical atheists into Heaven, or perhaps everyone proceeds to Heaven upon death, or that the Greek pantheon are the real gods of the universe. The point of religion isn't to 'be right' and get your ticket to a better afterlife, it's to get a better understanding of the state of the universe and the existence of the supernatural, and ultimately to live a better life.
I'm agnostic myself, while I would like to be entertained by the possibility of a God, or something similar, I haven't found anything to convince me yet. I also think that religion was just as a way to explain our existence before science became advanced enough to explain life on earth. when I think about it, it can also be seen as a form of social control with all the silly rules in my opinion
