So do you believe in God?

Remove all ads!

So a serial rapist (which imo is the worst crime that can be committed) gets caught and convicted, and I'm supposed to believe that he's worthy of love and forgiveness because he accepts his crimes?

Well your god can love him if s/he wants and anybody who wants to can, but to me the best thing for the human race would be to show justice to his victims and terminate him.

 

I once heard about a priest who lived in L.A. with his young son.

One day when his son got home from school he had forgot his key to the front door so he went to a neighbour. He rang his door bell but he (the neighbour) happened to be high on crack so he shot the boy.

Later he addmitet to the crime and got a sentence for it. The boys father was angerd offcourse but just for a while, for around three weeks. The he went to the "neighbour" and told him that he had forgotten him of his deed.

When asked why he did this he replyed:"I did it because if i didn't forget him my life would just consist of hating this man, I had to do it to continue my life".

A wise choice? Perhaps, perhaps not, but few could have done it.

 

Disbeliever. I do not believe in God, and in truth the concept of a God or creator does not enter my thoughts except when visiting this website.

On an aside, I do quite like the following paradox, although I'm sure there is an easy rebuttal.

"God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, he is weak -- and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful -- which is equally foreign to god's nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?"--Epicurus (from "The Epicurus Reader", translated and edited by Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson, Hackett Publishing, 1994, p. 97)

 

@ Stardust
Great example. Yes, it is a wise choice that most could never make. I don't think I could be so forgiving but therein lies one of my own weaknesses.

@ DS
You see, I said God says all are worthy of love and forgiveness because it is possible for that person to change. (We as human beings are not so accepting) No one is the same from birth until death and that person could truely repent and turn from his/her previous behavior. We are still expected to take responsibilty for our actions and pay the consequences.

 

In Babylon the jews were mixed by the people of king Cyrus, which were followers of the zoroastrianism. In the zoroastrianism there was a strong belief in messias and before the two religions were mixed the judaism didn't have a story of a messias AT ALL!.

Moving towards my point...

How can the jews claim that they are waiting for messias when they borrowed the idea from another religion? Even more important how can they christians claim that messias came to the earth when the entire concept was stolen?

I do not whish to offend anybody, I merely wish to present accurate facts.

 

@Stardust: You seem to be claiming that only the entity that has a purely original thought can follow it, and that no variation is ever allowed. Who cares where the idea of a messiah came from? Certainly not the people who are waiting for theirs to arrive, nor the people who think they've already found the one they need.

Religions grow and evolve and live by encountering other ideas and incorporating them as necessary. To do otherwise would be a quick path to stagnation and obsolesence. It's been a hallmark throughout almost 6,000 years of peripatetic history that the Jewish spiritual leaders have found ways to embrace new schools of thought, encountered as groups of Jews joined new societies, but do so in such a way as to retain the essential Jewish nature of belief.

 

@Wiley That's your belief not mine, and very convenient repent, you get parole

 

"If God exists, he doesn't care."

Kurt Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan

I'm agnostic -- the proverbial fence sitter. I don't know whether or not God exists, although the evidence seem to be against Him/Her in my mind.

 

I believe in God. I am a Christian. I used to call myself a protestant, but now I believe that everyone who feels like a real @ss because of his sins and that Jesus died for him/her, is part of my church, whether he is a RomCath, a protestant or anybody else. That is the core.

According to my bible, Isaiah clearly speaks about a messiah and he lived before Israel and Judah were taken away to Babylon.

 

Goli Ironhead:

Remember that, according the current accepted theories (or atleast my understanding of them) we are living in an infinite universe. Given infinte space (and add to that time as well), even the most highly improbable thing (life, for example) is bound to happen. And happen many times over.

Add to this a set of common rules that govern the universe, such as the laws of physics, and you have a sure recipe for the creation of things such as planets.

 

I think Terry Pratchett put it best when describing the Discworld, it went something like'a dis!

Since the universe is infinite and has the potential to contain _anything_, it eventually does.

So if you pick a direction and keep going who knows what you could possibly find? Maybe even a god... or gods?

 

I've come to my answer by actually praying about it and trying to live the commandments. It worked for me, maybe it can work for you too.

In this case it is not only wagering your soul on whether God exists, but which Ideal of God is the right one as well. I've made it clear where I've places my bets.

It's the same God, but some people focus on different parts of these teachings.

You must not be watching the same news cast that I am...

I don't blame the Muslim world at large for 9/11, I blame Osama Bin Laden for giving the orders and the terrorists themselves for shedding the blood of thousands of innocents. If you call that a cop out, then I ought to support genocide. Sorry, I'm not interested in shedding innocent blood myself.

Repentance implies that he confesses and forsakes his sins, and that he no longer desires to hurt people again. Until he undergoes a true change of heart, you have every right to be wary of this individual. Further, he must submit himself to the laws of the land in regards to his crimes and answer to them for his offences. He's still going to prison...

Incorrect. The animal sacrifices performed by the Jews in the Old testament, which go back to the time of Adam and Eve and their ejection from the Garden of Eden, symbolized the promise of a Messiah, who would die for our sins...

I'm not convinced. There are still some things that cannot be compromised for religion to be pure. The Ten Commandments predate Hammurabi's code. Those ten commandments do not change when they meet another religion...

Been there, done that, don't want to repeat the experience, but I recommend repentance to all.

Couldn't this be designed and put in place by God?

 

Babylon was founded 2300BC and fell 612BC. As far as I know "the" messias didn't live BC. Another intresting fact about the bible is that ir was written. 367 AD. It was ordedrd by the new emperer of rome, Constantin. "He" put it together from diffrent writings that had been written not so long after the death of Jesus, but still after his death.

So the bible could basicly be a instrument to control the feeling and lives of people. I'd like to refeer to book one (genesis) verse 3:1 - 3:2, In which god tells Eve that she must always abey her man and will have to endure geart pain when she are giving birth to her child.

This is one of the most commmon lies, when the jews got home from babylon (freed by Cyrus) they begun sacreficing lambs to be forgotten by god for thier sins, not before not after. On the mountain of Sion there were a temple on a altar in it they cut the throat of thier finest lamb and let the blood flow out on the altar while asking for forgivness.

 

Umm.... yes. It could also be placed by a giant gopher wearing a father christmas hat and a green wig, while singing viking drinking songs. But that's not really the point at all. What I was saying is that, assuming for argument sakes that there was no divine intervention, given infinite space and time, planets and, more importantly, life are highly likely to happen.

 

Bows down and woships Bluu, the giant father christmas hat and green wig wearing, viking drinking song singing giant gopher, the creator of the universe and master of all time and space.

Although there have been a few excommunications of people arguing if it's a clown wig or a shaggy long hair hippie wig and if the father chrismas hat is the traditonal green and white color or the new Coca-Cola inspired red and white.

 

While I'm sure that both of you -- Aikanaro and Rotku -- are not ignorant or evil, I think that saying for sure that you've really arrogated yourselves by saying that there is certainly no God.

Your comparisons are similar to Russell's teapot (Wikipedia it or something), but first of all -- God is less a frivolous being than monkeys or ninjas, since most people think of him as simply an all-powerful, all-good being.

But more than that: just because you haven't got any proof God isn't there doesn't mean he's not there. Yes, in fact, a monkey ninja or a groundhog or a teapot could be drifting somewhere near Jupiter. I can't prove it, but you can't prove me wrong. (It's just that that theory is not as good or useful, as, say, the theory of evolution.)

This is why I believe agnosticism and nontheism to be more logical and scientific beliefs. Regarding monkeys and teapots in space, I don't know if they exist, and I don't particularly care.

I think atheism "bridges the gap" like religion does. Theism nowadays, I think, takes a (Kierkegaardian?) leap of faith that God exists; atheism takes a leap of faith that God couldn't exist at all. But that's just my opinion. Maybe Richard Dawkins or the ghost of Carl Sagan has something to say to me.

 

Actually most athiests are borderline agnostics. If you could PROVE to an athiest that a god exsists they would believe however they believe that with no proof there is no conviction. The argument is simple in that if there is no evidence of something existing then it doesn't.

 

Hokay, Ive taken that statement out of context but I find that argument illogical. Science is constantly finding new things, new species, new theories. My reaction to the above statement is:

Does that mean the specie didn't exist until it was discovered? Science is not an absolute.

 

@Nakia

He surely ment that he wouldn't beleve that it exsisted. If I told you that space exsisted but I din't have proff you surely wouldn't belive me, would you?
When a scientist makes a discovery he says: hmm so this bug (for example) exsists not I have proved that it exsists because we din't know that it exsisted before he discoverd it. Why would he sit on a chair and think that it exsisted before that he had seen it?

Do you belive this: You can become inmortal if you travel fast enough, because it will stop the flow of time.

 

Stardust: You seem to have made the assumption in your arguments that the Bible is wrong (which I actually agree with). You appear to be refering to other sources that are not immediately recognizable to everyone else.

Clearly in Genesis we can read about Abraham's sacrifice and his son asking 'Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?' This is obviously a sacrifice. Abel's sacrifice is also in Genesis -- there is some disagreement as what was sacrificed, but many believe it was the best of the newborn animals he tended.

Genesis is written by Moses after the exodus from Egypt -- this would place animal sacrifice well before the timeframe you mention.

It really depends on which resource you believe -- but you will not get far if you entirely discount the bible as a credible reference.

Also: could you please use the spellchecker or a dictionary?