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I don't understand religion.

  • tcarrier32
    heres some food for thought.

    www.disinfo.com/2010/12/astronomers-find-first-evidence-of-other-universes/

    did god create more than one universe? did he/she/it form many co-existing universes?
  • CenterBHSFan
    tcarrier32;604911 wrote:heres some food for thought.

    www.disinfo.com/2010/12/astronomers-find-first-evidence-of-other-universes/

    did god create more than one universe? did he/she/it form many co-existing universes?
    Didn't read the article, just going by your question: It's hard to tell. Our science is so limited, that we actually know very little. While I guess I have faith in science, I always keep in mind how limited it is.
  • rydawg5
    The only flaw I'm seeing in religion (I guess Christianity) is sin. This could be a flaw of man instead of God, but there is an elephant in the room on this one.

    Flaw #1 - Our Culture, not God, defines the greatness of what a Sin is and isn't.

    Example: (IF Culture/Society is okay with it, it's not a sin. As Culture progresses our sins progress.) - Slavery, Multiple wives, etc --

    Flaw #2 - If Culture cannot relate to the sin, the sin is greater, if a majority struggle with the sin, it's just a battle (Even if that sin is a commandment!)

    Example:
    A. Eric, struggles with telling white lies, and lusting over women at work even though he is married. He comes to the pastor and tells him this, the pastor has a discussion with Eric and 10 other men to address this issue. Realizing they all struggle they ban together and realize that it's just hard and they aren't perfect.

    Result: Breaking 2 commandments (Commandments are the highest of the high in the world of what God views as Sin)

    B. Darron, a single guy, struggles with lusting over men. He doesn't understand why but he just wants to be intimate with them. He goes to the pastor and tells him that he is gay. The Pastor tells him that this is an evil that we need to address. The type of evil that is unnatural in the eyes of God an abomination. THe pastor is deeply concerned with this gayness spirit entering the church. He has never once thought a sin of this evil would enter his church...

    Result: Darron is probably guilty of a sin of lust.

    As Christians, you accept sins as battles, even if they are commandments, because we all find common struggles and tempations. However, if something is alien to your personal struggles, you are instantly on some kind of new evil level. "Wow how could the devil get to him that way" --

    Just retarded..
  • dwccrew
    jmog;604849 wrote:Not necessarily true. The first few chapters in Genesis maybe. However after that most of the Bible is written by first hand accounts and the rest by second hand accounts. It was not passed down from generation to generation.

    Now if you want to talk about translations and their possible mistakes in interpretation then that is a different topic altogether but the notion that the Bible is like a book of stories just passed down by word of mouth is hogwash.

    What I meant was through misinterpretation, the stories can be changed.
  • CenterBHSFan
    rydawg5;604956 wrote:The only flaw I'm seeing in religion (I guess Christianity) is sin. This could be a flaw of man instead of God

    I think this is exactly what is applied to alot of "sins". Alot, not all, are man-manufactured guides, and not God guides.
    For example just take a look at Leviticus. How much of those laws were made by man and how much by God?
  • tcarrier32
    CenterBHSFan;604933 wrote:Didn't read the article, just going by your question: It's hard to tell. Our science is so limited, that we actually know very little. While I guess I have faith in science, I always keep in mind how limited it is.

    understandable.
    however, i am not a religious person. while i understand that we have not fully unearthed the evidence we need to know for sure one way or another, i find the two theories on the origin of the universe in the article to be fascinating.

    if you are feeling in the mood, you should check out the article. Shows a collision point where multiple universes have collided. Whether or not it is two co existing universes or a previous universe that is coming through on those images we will find out with time.
  • O-Trap
    tcarrier32;604911 wrote:heres some food for thought.

    www.disinfo.com/2010/12/astronomers-find-first-evidence-of-other-universes/

    did god create more than one universe? did he/she/it form many co-existing universes?
    Fascinating article!

    This kind of stuff always excites me, because it tells us more about the universe in which we exist.

    In a way, I suppose this begs a few questions, but I don't think they're necessarily for this topic.

    I do hope that pastors, preachers, etc. engage this and don't shy away or vilify the topic (as is often done). The scientific fields are FANTASTIC ways of learning about our world, and even beyond it, whether it's a cosmic coincidence or an ordained creation!
  • jmog
    tcarrier32;604911 wrote:heres some food for thought.

    www.disinfo.com/2010/12/astronomers-find-first-evidence-of-other-universes/

    did god create more than one universe? did he/she/it form many co-existing universes?
    What I read in that article is someone measuring microwaves and made wild jumping conclusions/assumptions about what it meant. Unfortunately, as a scientist, I see this a ton in academia especially. They extrapolate minute data into wildly inflated claims.

    I'm not saying the data isn't VERY interesting, but it doesn't really give any proof of anything.

    I'm well aware, having taken a few theoretical physics classes, about the theories of multiple universes, and they are all very interesting. This one is as well. Interesting theories do not equal fact like most laymen seem to accept them as.

    Also, as a scientist and a Christian, it boggles my mind to think of the unimagineable power that God must have expended in creating the universe, and that power would have definitely caused many "ripples" in the space/time continuum and background radiation, etc and we as humans are just now gaining the technology to see things like this.

    I, like O-trap, find these things fascinating for sure.
  • jhay78
    dwccrew;604820 wrote:Although I am a believer, I don't necessarily believe in everything taught in church or in the Bible. The Bible is a bunch of stories passed down for millenia. It's like the telephone game, not too mention how things get lost in the translation of the text.

    Also, in the above quote, not everything asked is given. People pray and beg for loved ones not to die of disease (or the loved one prays for themselves), yet they do.

    IMO, the creator gave us options and abilities and freewill and we have to find our own way to the creator.
    On the quote from Matt. 7:7,8 - it doesn't say one will receive the very thing he asked for, only that he will receive.

    As for the Bible being handed down over the generations, the New Testament, compared to other ancient literature, was settled way nearer to the time of the events it describes, and has way more manuscripts confirming it. The mistakes in translation, etc. are very minor and have almost no bearing on the theological message of the NT and the Bible in general.
    The OT is more complicated, but was settled before the time of Jesus and the apostles (see the almost identical comparisons of OT manuscripts with the Dead Sea Scrolls- esp. Isaiah). If you want to debate the transmission of the OT before the destruction of the Temple/Jerusalem in 587 B.C., then that's another issue.
    dwccrew;605051 wrote:What I meant was through misinterpretation, the stories can be changed.

    Again, that could be debated for the early stages of the OT, but hardly at all for the NT.
  • Thinthickbigred
    @friendfromlowry I think for alot of people religion is a comforting factor in there everyday lives . I myself rarley ever go to church . I havent read the bible all the way through .. I have looked at a few passages but not much .. i have prayed from time to time either for myself or another but not much I can say ...
    I have watched a few different TV preachers and I believe some are down right crooks and others truely have good intentions.. .. Maybe some of us havent found the right messanger for us . I saw this one guy on tv a few times a local preacher I think his name is Bill Anzovino from Ohioville Pa . His show was and maybe still on wtov9 in Steubenville on Sunday mornings. He caught my ear with his down to earth talk and he put his preachings in a everyday type speak . He spoke of Karma in a sense but did not use that word obviously . He did say I rememberd was that things that we say transend into our everyday life . I cannot recite what exactly he said because its been awhile ,I dont want to misquote him ,but he had some good messages that made some real common sense to me . Now practicing those things is very difficult for me at this time ........I dont think you need chastised for your comments on your true feelings .. I dont think you need to be told if you dont get it you never will . I am not a religious man ,but I dont believe god gives up on people like people give up on themselves. If some of the people above me who more or less tossed you to the curb or simply dismissed you as lost were truely religious ,they might have a positive approach to your questions .. I hope you and I both find peace brother ..
  • O-Trap
    Thinthickbigred;609468 wrote:I dont think you need chastised for your comments on your true feelings ..
    How much can we actually control about our feelings anyway?
    Thinthickbigred;609468 wrote:I dont think you need to be told if you dont get it you never will . I am not a religious man ,but I dont believe god gives up on people like people give up on themselves.
    Sounds like you know him more than you think.
  • Timber
    Our pastor always reminds us that we should:
    Thank God in all circumstances, not for all circumstances.
    That we all will spend eternity somewhere, and we can do that with God, or separated from God.
  • Thinthickbigred
    O-Trap;603488 wrote:I suppose I can chime in on this.

    I grew up in a Christian home as well. My father was a pastor, and my mother taught the children's choir for many years. I knew the right answers. I knew how I was "supposed" to act, and I even did so most of the time, church or not ... and I did it for one reason:

    I felt like I was supposed to.

    Truth be told, I didn't believe in ANY God at all, or any non-physical reality for that matter. I couldn't tell many people this, of course, because my dad was "the pastor," and if it got back to people in the church, it would (unjustly, I might add) reflect poorly on my dad in their eyes. In my mind, whether I believed or not, I had to act like it, because I loved my father, and I would NEVER want to see him criticized or defamed because I happened to not believe what he did. Still, though, it gnawed at me incessantly. I would ask questions in Sunday school or even to some of the pastors, and I always got quaint, token, cop-out answers (such as the one mentioned in the original post, which I got several times).

    I went to college and I fell in love with philosophy ... metaphysics. I LOVED the notion that truth could exist apart from what could be observed physically, but instead be observed reasonably. I began to get militant about it, and I found a nice, anonymous outlet for it: teh interwebz.

    I went on a particular message board (called NationStates) and I would intentionally search out Christians, well-educated or not, and I would argue with them. I never got upset. I never called names. I tried to remain respectful of the person with whom I was arguing. The truth is, I wasn't looking to argue for argument's sake. However, I wanted to find someone who I felt could hold their own in an academic forum, and I wanted to see holes punched in it. In retrospect, a message board probably wasn't the best, but the logic I saw there was head-and-shoulders above what I saw on the Huddle (no offense, guys). I never came across anything that wasn't without major problems or appeals to authorities I didn't accept (an appeal to a supernatural authority over natural law, for example, was logically possible, but I had no reason to start believing it: Occam's Razor, if you will).

    I decided to go to college and major in religion, thinking I'd (a) come across the best defense of religion from people with Doctorates in it, and (b) if I could put to rest the best defense that religion had to offer, there would be no doubt in my mind that I was right.

    For the first semester, things were fine. I would occasionally argue in class, though I had to admit, even at the time, that the professors sometimes provided fantastic, logical defenses for a certain belief. I at least developed a healthy respect for them, as they were the first people I'd ever heard that seemed like they could indeed hold their own in academia.

    However, because my purpose there wasn't necessarily to get good grades, they suffered a bit, and I was assigned an academic mentor. He was one of the professors from the Religious Studies department, but he was also the Dean of Students and the Vice President of Academic Affairs. I was a little surprised that someone with so many hats had time to meet with a student every week.

    In any case, I did meet with him every week, but I found myself talking more about religion and faith than about my academics, though they did go up. At the end of the semester, I had found that I was enjoying talking to him. He respected my view, and he handled my questions with genuine care, not with trite little responses, but with well-thought-out responses that provoked me to think. It was so enjoyable that I found myself looking forward to Wednesday nights, when he and I would meet.

    Over the final two years of my college, I continued to meet with him. By the last semester of my senior year, I found that our discussions had made sense, and that over time, I had come to believe not only that a God-serving worldview was correct, but that I had somewhere along the line accepted much of the Bible as truth (at least, in the ways it is intended to be) and that I was a Christian. Not because I had been told so since I was little or because I wanted some mythical reason to believe, but because over the course of three years, I had come to be CONVINCED that there was a logical, rational reason for God's existence, and that the reasons for believing such were good reasons.

    I don't know when it happened. It wasn't some grandiose emotional experience or instant faith-filled inspiration. It was over the course of several years, and just somehow during that time, I had come to be a "Christian."

    I don't believe it's "just faith." That was one of the big cop-out answers I'd had from one of the pastors at my old church. I am more of the persuasion shared with an old friend of mine, a pastor from Warsaw, Indiana. His name is Kondo Simfukwe. He borrows shamelessly from Greek philosophy, and doing so, he says:



    The truth is, I am only a Christian today because I was engaged with the validity of it over time, through genuine relationship, and on terms I accepted. He didn't spout the Bible to me, or any Josh McDowell or Lee Strobel. He used people like Albert Camus, Edmund Husserl, and even Carl Sagan. Then he showed that he could actually reason for himself in our discussions. THAT was what was so refreshing to me. No regurgitating anything from Answers In Genesis (in fact, he wasn't even a young-earth creationist). Answers that showed he had been thoughtful on the same questions I was asking ... and had refused to accept trite, Sunday-school-esque answers.

    That man was Dr. David Plaster. His character was almost irreproachable. His love for learning was undeniable (the man spoke 7 languages fluently, for example). His kindness was unusual. He was, in my opinion, the perfect example of who a person should be. Hard working, always learning, and showing an abnormal understanding and love for others ... all because it was his duty as a human being.

    Dr. Plaster left this world in March of 2010. I had a really rough time, and I attended his funeral in bColumbus, where he had been the pastor for the Columbus Grace Brethren Church for about a year (after he left the college). He was an amazing man, and I owe much of my worldview to him. Ultimately, God has really helped me believe, resolutely, what I do. But God used him to reach me, and Dr. Plaster did his work well.

    I have no doubt that upon passing away, he was greeted by the words "Well done, my good and faithful servant." I miss him, and I try to carry on in a way that would make him proud, which means that whatever truth is, I should pursue it. However, he also showed me that a strong, thoughtful, intellectual mind can arrive at Christ-centered worldview.

    Sorry that was so long, and I'm sure at least one of you will give the stereotypical "tl:dr" response (Prick! ;)). I just thought it an appropriate time to share my story.

    best post I ever read on here or jj
  • Buckeyechick
    OP you may want to try reading The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.
  • O-Trap
    Buckeyechick;616204 wrote:OP you may want to try reading The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.

    Ugh, I thought that book was a joke.
  • Buckeyechick
    O-Trap;616519 wrote:Ugh, I thought that book was a joke.

    Why so?
  • O-Trap
    Buckeyechick;616535 wrote:Why so?

    I could find at least one hole in his logic on each page. To someone who believes already, it may be very reaffirming to your faith, but his "case" doesn't stand up against any kind of real scrutiny. Same goes for Josh McDowell, who is better at keeping Christian teens from having sex than he is compiling "evidence" for God.

    People like Dr. William Lane Craig, Dr. Alvin Plantiga, and Dr. J. P. Moreland are head-and-shoulders above the pop culture theologians like that.
  • areyoukiddingme
    O'Trap,

    Respectfully, if you can find a hole on each page, start by stating them. I'm not saying the entire book is without some scrutiny, but most of that book offers solid, theological answers.
  • ernest_t_bass
    O-Trap - I respect your intellect on a lot of this stuff, but one thing you have to realize is that most people aren't of the same level. For some people, that particular book might be their "answer." I think stating something like that (holes in logic, etc.) only hurts, more than it helps. For some people, their faith is purely enough, even though you hate hearing that. Not everyone needs "proof" or "evidence" of God existing. Again, I respect (and appreciate) your logic and thoughts on the subject, but I just think that everyone needs different types of affirmation.

    Respectfully, I think you're coming off as a little pompous.
  • Con_Alma
    O-Trap;616545 wrote:I could find at least one hole in his logic on each page. To someone who believes already, it may be very reaffirming to your faith, but his "case" doesn't stand up against any kind of real scrutiny. ...
    Theologically, does not "believing" come from the Holy Spirit as a gift as opposed to some rational thought process?

    I ask because it's my understanding that one cannot think their way into a Christian faith. It doesn't mean that study and investigation should not exist but rather that true faith does not emerge from it.
  • Thinthickbigred
    ernest_t_bass;616645 wrote:O-Trap - I respect your intellect on a lot of this stuff, but one thing you have to realize is that most people aren't of the same level. For some people, that particular book might be their "answer." I think stating something like that (holes in logic, etc.) only hurts, more than it helps. For some people, their faith is purely enough, even though you hate hearing that. Not everyone needs "proof" or "evidence" of God existing. Again, I respect (and appreciate) your logic and thoughts on the subject, but I just think that everyone needs different types of affirmation.

    Respectfully, I think you're coming off as a little pompous.

    I dont think he is comming off that way . He isnt telling anybody how to think or to change the way they think ,he was just telling his story is all . Everybody is indeed different and has different levels as you put it of affirmation . If you incite some thinking for other people isnt that positive ? Its about finding peace at what ever level you are .
  • ernest_t_bass
    Thinthickbigred;616670 wrote:I dont think he is comming off that way . He isnt telling anybody how to think or to change the way they think ,he was just telling his story is all . Everybody is indeed different and has different levels as you put it of affirmation . If you incite some thinking for other people isnt that positive ? Its about finding peace at what ever level you are .

    Oh, I'm not referring to his story. I'm in agreement with you. One of the best things I've read on here, and one of the most sincere.
  • CenterBHSFan
    Fortunately, there's no set right or wrong path to God.
  • Skyhook79
    CenterBHSFan;616722 wrote:Fortunately, there's no set right or wrong path to God.


    Yes there is.
  • Skyhook79
    O-Trap;616545 wrote:I could find at least one hole in his logic on each page. To someone who believes already, it may be very reaffirming to your faith, but his "case" doesn't stand up against any kind of real scrutiny. Same goes for Josh McDowell, who is better at keeping Christian teens from having sex than he is compiling "evidence" for God.

    People like Dr. William Lane Craig, Dr. Alvin Plantiga, and Dr. J. P. Moreland are head-and-shoulders above the pop culture theologians like that.


    Thats your opinion. I'm sure people could find holes in Dr David Plasters words or the 3 authors you listed.
    Matter of fact the only book and Author that you can't poke holes in the logic is the Bible. I know thats probally a "cop out" answer for you but if there are holes in the logic of the Bible please let me know.

    I just finished reading Francis Chan's "Crazy Love" and would reccomend it to anyone, also Miles McPherson's "Do something" is an excellent read.