BF2S Forums Jesus, Real Man or Myth?

OrangeHound wrote:

mafropetee wrote:

OrangeHound wrote:

Those same attitudes happen with global warming debates, Iraq war debates, etc .... it is an attitude that we bring into many of our debates ... call it ignorance or prejudice or disrespect, but you can't isolate this to just religion.

well... im kinda new here. leave me alone.

again, im not talking about what goes on in these forums. im talking about what goes on in the world. which we then talk about in these forums. and then mention maybe a small something about BF2. and then go back to not talking about it.

I live in Washington DC ... the political and policy debates around here are like Christian Fundamentalists debating Unitarians. 

oh geez. i cant even imagine. i live in florida... lots of "good ol' southern folk" (aka ignorant bastards) here. "ohh, you dont go to church? WELL WE NEED TO GET YOU THERE RIGHT NOW!" ... they make it sound as if its a hospitol and my arm just fell off.

Yes, Jesus did probably exist.  He preached a good message, which has been warped and twisted so that today people use it as en excuse for hate and bigotry and as a reason to wake me up at 6 in the morning.

So far over 218 votes
19% Tired of religious threads/Jesus didn't exist
11% Not sure
70% Jesus did exist, half of them think he was the son of God

Last edited by sergeriver (2007-07-11 14:24:22)

Mekstizzle wrote:

Agreed. If he did exist, you Christians seem to be absoloutley nothing like him. Especially the really evangelical "HEATHEN HEATHEN" ones. I mean what the fuck.

Take a reality check. AND WHERE THE FUCK DID THE POPE SHIT COME FROM?!

What....what the hell would Jesus think of that?

So many questions

As Gandhi once said: "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ"

QFT

sergeriver wrote:

mafropetee wrote:

sergeriver wrote:

Did I miss anything?  Now, the folks who don't go to church are ignorant bastards?  Don't try to convert the new guys.

no im saying the people who try to make everyone around them go to church and praise a lord who some of them (as in me) believe might not even exist... those are the ignorant bastards. they try to push their beliefs on everyone else without a second thought that just MAYBE people are different and thus believe different things and are entitled to do so.

and DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED on mormans. one of them actually left my friend a voicemail saying something along the lines of this: "hello, i am a member of the morman church. we have detected an evil spirit eminating from your house. to protect yourself and your loved ones, please join our ranks."

upon calling the number back, we found out that it wasnt just some prank. they really thought an evil spirit had control of her house. or at least tried to use that as an excuse for her to become a mormon. and join our RANKS? what the hell? is there some kind of morman army now?

I know, I was defending u.

ohh.. well then, thanks for having my back! +1

M.O.A.B wrote:

Catholic church is a money making buisness, seriously they have they're own damn city.

Country, I think you'll find.

Even if it is called Vatican City.

Last edited by Bertster7 (2007-07-11 15:48:54)

topthrill05 wrote:

Spark wrote:

[TUF]Catbox wrote:

I believe he exists... and if you don't... why would you trouble yourself with asking if he does or doesn't... When you see the wonderment in a little kids eyes when he sees something for the first time.... u have to know that there is a god...  and if you dont... thats cool too

Ignorance is never cool.

So now if someone believes in God they are ignorant?

And where did you get this from?

akajoneye wrote:

Braddock wrote:

akajoneye wrote:

Until you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you will never see my face in the afterlife that you "wish" about.  I'm not saying this the Bible says it. I encourage you to read 2 books:  23 Minutes in Hell and 90 Minutes in Heaven.  The 23 minutes in Hell book is really "awakening". It gives non believers a glimse into the future they will be spending with all their "cool" friends from their earthly lives.

I was raised a Catholic until I rejected all the dogma and presumptions of the church. I used to stand in church and drone mechanically with everyone else and learn my prayers by rote. It wasn't easy openly rejecting the church here in Ireland back when I did but I couldn't continue in blind ignorance.

I now reject all forms of organised religion but believe that this does not mean I am not a spiritual person. I believe we as humans are missing the bigger picture and find it easier to attribute all the amazing things in this life to an identifiable figure of some sort ...a 'God'. This whole universe is alive like a giant organism and we are all part of it, that is what I believe is 'God' and we are all part of it. This theory has similarities with strands of Buddhist thought and other philosophies.

I've read a lot of the Bible and most of it seems to me to have been translated to the point where we will never truly know what was originally meant. A lot of it is also very insulting e.g. "menstruating women should be shunned" etc. and the fact that it is undeniably edited by humans (predominantly male) means its authenticity is questionable at best.

Do you believe your God is full of love for all mankind? Do you believe that this same God would punish a person in eternal damnation or purgatory after having lived a good life and developing their intellect over their whole life and coming to a reasoned decision not to believe in a God?

You know, thats what so sad about non believers. They go through life "developing there intellect" when the easiest thing to "develop" is right there in front of there face but they choose the ignore it. What a waste of GOD's given talents to us.

Unfortunately, though I am a moderator here and I do browse the site relatively often reading threads that interest me, I do not post very often any more. However, you have piqued my interest enough for me to break my silence and bring my not inconsiderable intellectual talents to bear for the purpose of, well, I'm not sure. I am quite sure that I will not change your mind about anything, just as a man with a spoon could not hope to dig his way through a sheer rock cliff, but I do hope that I can at least influence some of the readers of this thread in a positive way.

Religion has always held a special interest for me. Christianity, in particular, for the sole reason that it dominates the culture in which I live, has always seemed somewhat peculiar. Having been raised in an era where science is just beginning to have solid answers to many of the same questions that religion sought to answer in the past, I've seen a rift growing for the last decade or so between those for whom there is only one answer to everything, namely, God, and those for whom there are many questions and seldom any satisfying answers. I tend to group with the latter. While I cannot discount that there may, in fact, be a God that watches over us and loves us and created the Earth and all the cosmos, and that everything in the Bible may be true, everything that I have seen and learned in my time on this planet tells me otherwise.

Foremost, I have seen that the vast majority of those that believe in the Bible wholeheartedly arrived at that belief through their parents, or through outreach programs designed by the church to help (or, some would say, take advantage of) those with unfortunate problems in their life such as alcohol or drug abuse. Of those that are left to make their own decisions, well, I have seen and met decidedly fewer that decided of their own accord, with a well informed understanding of life, to be a fundamentalist Christian. If you watch the clip that someone posted about the movie "Jesus Camp", you can see a snapshot of that; there are many Christian parents who, believing that they are doing their child a favor, send them or take them to places where they will never get the chance to make their own decisions, because all of their decisions regarding faith and spirituality will be made for them ahead of time. This, in my opinion, is the greatest intellectual crime a parent can commit, either as a christian teaching their child about God at an age when they are incapable of making an informed decision, or as a parent doing the same with pretty much any major life decision.

The latter of the two types of people I mentioned above, namely, those that 'find Jesus' through outreach programs, are a more interesting group. I have had the experience of debating with several such people over the years, and it strikes me that they didn't so much find religion as religion helped them change a habit that was destroying their lives. From a psychological and neurological point of view, you could almost look at it as exchanging one drug for another, replacing something like alcohol or cocaine with a belief system that will induce much the same euphoria. Now, I'm not saying that Christianity, or any other religion for that matter, is equitable to drugs, merely that those for whom Jesus or Christianity was a force that helped them better their lives would probably have had much the same experience with any other religion, as it was not so much Jesus or Christianity in particular that helped them, but, rather, a belief system that helped them override their previous habits.

I saw an interview recently with an author of a book titled, I believe, "finding happiness", and his book was premised on the notion that humans are largely very bad at predicting those things that will make them happy. He did, however, mention that the two leading methods of attaining happiness were religion and marriage. Now, if you take nothing else away from my post, take this: your experience of God as a christian is no different than any other individual from any religions experience of God. You will find many Christians who say that God brings a feeling of bliss and happiness that they can find nowhere else, to which I would say two things. One: I could lesion part of your brain and you would never experience that feeling again, which raises all sorts of interesting questions (Similarly, I could lesion part of my own brain and never feel pain again, in which case going to hell wouldn't be all that stressful. Probably far more interesting than heaven, too, from an intellectual perspective. However, I would hazard that the implications of this are lost on you). And two: the fact that people from other religions can have the same experience as you while praying to or having faith in a different God(s) is blatantly contradictory to the idea that your religion is the 'right' one. There are, if my memory serves me, studies in which scientists have demonstrated that there is no neurological difference between a Christian's experience of God and anyone elses experience of whatever God they believe in.

In regards to your above quoted post, and your other posts in this thread, I would say that you are, if not ignorant (as some would call you), misguided. You believe so strongly that you are right and everyone else is wrong that you profess you would die happily for that belief, (and, while it is not on the topic, I wonder how much encouragement it would take to get you to kill for that belief, Christian values or no) and for the reasons I stated above I would suggest that you are deluding yourself. There is a phenomenon in psychology labelled 'cognitive dissonance', which, in essence, holds that a person cannot believe in two conflicting ideas simultaneously, and if two such ideas are presented, the subconscious will destroy that idea which is less beneficial (or, perhaps, less strongly engrained in the person's personality). If I have misrepresented or distorted that theory in any way, someone feel free to correct me.

Now, my impression of you is as follows: You are a relatively young, you fall into one of the two groups I described earlier, I would hazard the first (you were raised Christian by Christian parents), and you live in a relatively homogenous area (I would guess a small, largely Christian town, or you are homeschooled). There is little point to making educated guesses as to your backrounds except to emphasize the point that there is a reason that you believe what you do, and if you had been raised somewhere else, say, in Japan or 10th century B.C Egypt, you would not be a Christian and you would thus, according to your current beliefs, be going straight to hell upon your death. If your parents had been Buddhist and raised you Buddhist from a very young age, you would, if presented with the word of God as it is written in the Bible at some later point in your life, have simply dismissed it because it disagrees with your long standing belief system.

The above commentary is not just applicable to akajoneye, it applies equally well to people from every belief system in the world, including atheism. There have been plenty of comments in this and other similar threads from atheists describing Christianity as a load of crap, which only a fool would believe in. I am inclined to agree, though I understand that, as the author I mentioned previously discovered, religion is a powerful positive force in many peoples lives, and, as such, I am of the belief that you should be allowed to believe whatever you like. Unfortunately, many religions, including Christianity, have a messianic urge built into them, which drives parents to do such things as send their kids to church and Bible study from the age of 4 onward, in which case those children never do get the chance to believe what they like, they simply believe what is necessary for them to function in their environment.

In closing, and I applaud you, the reader, if you made it this far, I would just say that there is a dangerous trend in America today. Fundamentalist Christians of the "I'm not related to a monkey!" variety are becoming increasingly common, to the point where presidential candidates, either for personal or political reasons, profess that they do not believe in evolution. I am personally a strong believer in science, and this trend scares me. Plenty of people on this forum are always railing about Muslim extremists half a world away, and how we need to protect our values and our beliefs and how they'll kill us just for believing something different than they do. To you, I would say that there is a far more pressing extremist problem here in the United States, and, from what I've seen, they're not too far away from killing or severely marginalizing people for not believing what they do, and that is deeply troubling to me.

Now, barring any serious intellectual debate, which I doubt I'll get from akajoneye, I resume my silent vigilance.

Skruples wrote:

[their lives would probably have had much the same experience with any other religion, as it was not so much Jesus or Christianity in particular that helped them, but, rather, a belief system that helped them override their previous habits.

Looks like their addicts.  Sounds feasable.  Interesting what you say about being brought up in other religions from an early age.  That should silence them for good I reckon...   People should believe in what is right for them, not what is right for others.  It seems most religous groups choose the latter unfortunately.

CommieChipmunk wrote:

Generally, I tend to shy away from reading uber long posts.  But I read yours, and quite honestly, you hit it right on the head.

Agreed!

Last edited by V1king (2007-07-11 23:36:09)

jesus was buddhist

http://buddhistfaith.tripod.com/purelan … /id59.html

sergeriver wrote:

Skruples wrote:

akajoneye wrote:

You know, thats what so sad about non believers. They go through life "developing there intellect" when the easiest thing to "develop" is right there in front of there face but they choose the ignore it. What a waste of GOD's given talents to us.

Unfortunately, though I am a moderator here and I do browse the site relatively often reading threads that interest me, I do not post very often any more. However, you have piqued my interest enough for me to break my silence and bring my not inconsiderable intellectual talents to bear for the purpose of, well, I'm not sure.

...

I am personally a strong believer in science, and this trend scares me. Plenty of people on this forum are always railing about Muslim extremists half a world away, and how we need to protect our values and our beliefs and how they'll kill us just for believing something different than they do. To you, I would say that there is a far more pressing extremist problem here in the United States, and, from what I've seen, they're not too far away from killing or severely marginalizing people for not believing what they do, and that is deeply troubling to me.

Now, barring any serious intellectual debate, which I doubt I'll get from akajoneye, I resume my silent vigilance.

Very good post dude.

Indeed. But if you could truncate some of it next time you quote it I'd be over the moon.

i belive he did, but i am not a devoted christian, i have been in some tight situations and prayed b4, but if we new that god existed then it would not actually be a faith if you get what i mean..

sergeriver wrote:

There's a Jesus College at Cambridge University and another at Oxford University, that's weird IMO.  Two of the most prestigious Universities have a College named after him.

But, since these schools were founded by the Christian church (at least that's my understanding), why would this be weird?