Mako, I appreciate your help , but I really think you went over board on calling her god make believe. If 101 believes in him, then he is as real to her as your Creator . I don't make fun of him do I, so don't make fun of her god.

You are right LC, 101 I apologize, I let the heat of the descussion get to me. You know that I normally don't openly belittle your beliefs, just as you don't belittle mine. Please forgive me and slap me if I do it again!

Oh well I could not think of another analogy at the time. spur of the moment thing.

It is okay yall. I am fine.

Cool as a cucumber

I'm cool with that.

Dude what have I said that was rude? Honestly I don't think I have. I was just expressing my beliefs, no different than anyone else here. Rudeness is not something I am known for.

So I apologize if anything I said here was rude to you.

You haven't been rude, I guess my description of what a snappy comeback is, was a little eh..ah lame . Maybe someone can come up with a better one? Incidentally LC, the nodding smiley at the end of a post is MINE! LOL

I am just excited about my faith man, meant no harm by it!

101 thats fair enough, I think one should research all sources put the concepts to practice and decide what is true based on your own autority your own inner truth, God is in the profound and the profane , based on your own personal experience I'd say you have yet to remeber who you are and have the joy of discovery to look forward to. Your just staring out religion is only a starting point its main message is it reminds you of what you are not, its not who you are, the truth stands on its own we are only trying to share with you what we've discovered and encourage you to be brave and have a look around because many of us know the joy of self discovery, you seem to be crippled in fear , its not an insult its what is being given off, everything is a sin to you even thinking of yourself as christ like all you say is I shouldn't do this, Namaste Sheri


Cranston great posts thankyou for your insight.
Mako ditto to you friend.

Matthew anything or anyone that you are worshipping incliding jesus is a misunderstanding Jesus never asked for worship again have you explored other sources of Jesus teachings?? The bible is by far the worst , as cranston is pointing out about the New testament Matthew. Lots of kids do stupid foolish things then they grow up thats what you have done , We need to know who we aren't in order to choose who we want too be.

Forgive my awful spelling I know I know Spell check

I don't worship Jesus because I feel that I have to. I want to worship Jesus. I love to worship Jesus. I try to make everything that I do throughout the day a praise to Jesus. My love for Jesus overflows fro me in song and sometimes even dance. My God may demand worship, but I gladly give Him that worship anyway. I love to sing of how awesome He is. I wish you knew Him the way I do. The debt that Jesus paid by dying on the cross, I can never repay. His grace and mercy allow me to keep from getting what I deserve, HELL! I will praise the Lord at all times, He's good!

Matthew why would you want to worship anyone or anything Isn't that the meaning of the 1st commandment. you Jesus a great disservice when you Martyr him, Jesus was honored to die for his cause just as many others have been, he understood life is eternal that death is simply a door way and he lived his life with no fear, How do you live your everymoment in worship of Jesus??Namaste sheri

Sherri I have thought about reading some of the books Holy Blood Holy Grail and others (the ones of Mary Mag) I think she is a very interesting woman. I would love to learn more about her. I haven't ever researched other religions because I am only 22 and I have lived a sheltered life( very greatful) Bacca said i must live in disneyland. Well she is partly true because I choose to see everyone as happy and everything good even if it may have evil in it. But what Hyper once told me is that there is no evil or good. that they can be either or. although he worded it so much better.

People would never believe that a television or computer just created itself without any form of outsite intelligence yet people constantly choose to believe that life (something far more complex) just created itself. why is this???
If a computer, telephone, car or televisions are designs then something as complex as a human or a plant must be too, surely!

P.S. I'm NOT religious and do NOT believe a word of the bible but God 'as a creator' I believe holds some truth.

paulo0512@hotmail.com

paulo,

this comes up quite a lot, and i am too lazy today to answer it agian so may i suggest you check out the following:


The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

by Richard Dawkins

An in-your-face atheist in the witty British style: "I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence." The explanation of evolution that the LA Times called "one of the best science books I have ever read".

Of course he was made up by man always creates a god for something he can't understand.

I believe in god and actually pray every day but I do not go to church. I have come to find that church is filled with all the people I despise the people who take religon a little to far and make it EVERYTHING soon they are committing lude acts that they say is "in jesus name" I am christian born and raised but I do not believe in everything a christian is supposed to I guess. I just think every religon kind of strayed from the main point and are now power hungry... what I mean by that is trying to gain more and more followers any way possible and blasting others for having different beliefs. I believe god watches over us and wants us to live a good happy life which I try to do. Like you Sheri berri I believe in love and am filled with it, I am always helping people with different problems they have and find it rewarding in my own way. If that makes any sense

God is loving. He isn't going to force you to do anything you don't want. You don't want to follow God, fair enough. So why would you want to be in a place with Him for eternity then?

Because God is love, light, truth, life etc. that also means you'll be away from all of that, but God's just giving you what you've always wanted, right.

Regards, PA.

God offers, all you've got to do is reach out and take it.

To use an analogy, if I offer you a present, you've still got to reach out your hand and take it, right. If you don't then you don't get the present. So call that conditional if you will, it's the same thing.

Regards, PA

And they don't see the redemption of humanity either. The cycle throughout the Old Testament (Sin, Judgement, Grace/Redemption). They only look at the middle of those three and say "Oh God is a little meanie, isn't he"

Regards,

PA I say God is love, truth and joy the godself inside you, I like yours too


IMO that which is God(all that is) would have infinite power there would be no need to employ the weak manipularion of force, That which is truly divine has no needs vulnerabilities or vested interests. Negativity originates from the minds of men, Godself is revealed innately by love and peace, Man manufactorors an endless array of False Gods all of whom demand worship and sacrafice. The original purity of the bible (if it was) has been lost in translation, the many deviations are blantant and easily ad readily apparent to anyone with the littlest bit of spiritual intuition or a basic sense of ethics, PA Love would be the only message from Divinity anything else is from somewhere else, We are all love!!!! Namaste sheri

im trying to catch up iv been on other threds so im puting out several points but not quoting cause i don't know who said them and im not taking the time sorry.

Jesus is worthy of worship for He is one with the Father and the One true God

The Bible is the most well preserved anchant text and our current scriptures are almost word for word exactly the same as anchent copys found.

and i love how every one who doesn't believe in God tries to give rules God should follow, if there is a God that created us, is alknowing, have a better idea of the proper way to be a God, just asking?

truth may I suggest that you read the post by etvisitor called The one truth that gives you a truthful account of jesus. I'm to tired to explain the meaning of "I and the father are one the things you see me do you will do also and more is the original meaning of that statement Namaste Sheri

how do you know it is a Truthful acount?

thats agreat question because it contains a message of love and i know my nature is love and i recognize that what I am sorry its not more profound I have an internal guidance system inside that lets me know we all do you know the truth when you hear it how do you know the truth???? Namaste sheri

earlyer you were talking about not being able to touch faith. well the way you claim to know what is truth.. is faith. I too recognize truth and the bible i recognize as truth, every word. and the message of love you speak of is what i see through out the bible. when you see i see love.

Truth, very nice post..

Only once in the NT (John) is the trinity mentioned and as PA has pointed out in the past, that is believed to be a later insertion. Jesus himself often denied his divinity (this is assuming that he ever really existed) and many of those first early adherents accepted him as a prophet, not as a godhead. Jesus is no more worthy of worship than those other sons of their gods, Mythra, Apollo, Osiris, Krishna, Erakles, ect.

How do you know yours is a truthful account? Your gospels were written at least 2 generations after the fact and most likely 3 or 4 generations afterwards. It has been shown that legends can grow up around vernerated individuals in less than a year. Mexicans, who adored Billy the Kid, were (within a year) already passing stories of miraculous appearances of the Kid, stories have been circulating about Elvis since 1978 and continue to circulate. He is even accepted as a God by one nutcase cult. Your gospels were written by unknown authors (sorry, but Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were assigned as the authors around 180 CE) who were not eyewitnesses and by the timing of their writing, had no access to eyewitnesses. The gospels were not written as biographies (all together they only cover about 8 weeks of his life, where is the other 1656 weeks? Surely in that much time something reportable must have happened), they were written as recruitment brochures. Trying to put down the other statement by asking if the poster knows it is truthful is letting your posterior hang way out, your information has no confirmation and with two of the gospels heavily copying the first (Mark), it seems that their validity is highly questionable.

I too recognize truth and I see the bible as a fraud. If the bible is the truth, then you must worship Satan. Satan has never bragged of committing any reported evil, nor can we say that he has ever communicated with mankind through a book of scriptures; but we can lay mass exterminations by his own hand, mass atrocities at his bidding, acceptance of human slavery, lies, creation of evil and creation of sin on the doorstep of YHWH (aka Jehovah), with his son following on and telling us to hate our families, buy swords and be ready to use them, and that he comes to turn brother against brother, father against son. If that is the truth and good, I shudder to think what lies and evil is! I have long maintained that faith has no place in a religion. If faith is required to accept a religion, it is because there is no evidence that the religion is the truth and is (more often than not) a fraud perpetrated by the power hungry. Just remember that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoist, Hindu, etc all have faith in their religions also!

I thought this was all about personal opinion. God is as real as you are to me.



God IS the same as He has always been. It is a common conception that the Old Testament is gory and bloody, while the New Testament is filled with love happiness. My understanding of the Bible shows the same loving creator in the Old Testament as in the New. But of course this is just my opinion

Regards, PA

Anything in the hands of the wrong person can be considered evil. Dr Seuss can be considered evil when put in the hands of a maniac. Hop on Pop - hmmm, I can think of at least two ways this can be wrongly taken. Perhaps we should get rid of good ol' Dr. Seuss too

Regards, PA

Thank you Matthewgoad. I am glad you have the courage to say this so bluntly and truthfully. Many of the teachings of the Bible are hard to understand, and not always palatable. I like your last statement. Who am I to go against God? The King! our Lord and Master.

Regards, PA

I like that PA. Sometimes I guess we could take anything out of context. Making it bad. Hop on POp. That is too funny.

Here is a list of only the killings by your god or at his bidding. After looking through the first 14 books of the OT, I became so disgusted, that I quit searching. If the god of the NT is the same god of the OT, I pray to the Creator for your soul, for surely you worship the Evil One! Here is the list:

Genesis 7:4, 19:24, 38:9-10
Exodus 4:21, 4:23-25, 7:3, 7:13, 9:12, 10:1, 10:20, 10:27, 11:10, 12:29-30, 14:4, 14:8, 14:27-28, 21:25, 22:18, 22:20, 31:14-15, 32:27, 35:2
Leviticus 10:1-2, 20:9-12, 20:27, 21-6, 21:9, 24:16-24, 26:22,
Numbers 4:14, 4:20, 22:1, 15:32-36, 16:26-35, 16:41-50, 21:6, 25:4, 25:9, 31:14-18
Deuteronomy 13:1-5, 13:6-10, 13:12-16, 17:2-7,18:20, 21:18-21, 22:13-24,
Joshua 6:21, 7:24-26, 8:24-40, 10:10-11,11:8-21, 11:20,
Judges 3:31, 4:17-23, 5:24-26, 15:14-16
1 Samuel 6:19, 12:11-12, 12:15-18,15:3, 15:7-8, 16:21-22, 25:22, 26:34, 27:8-11
2 Samuel 24:1-15,
1 Kings 8:63, 14:10, 16:11,20:28-30,21:13, 21:21,
2 Kings 1:10-12, 9:33-37, 10:7-8, 19:35
1 Chronicles 13:15-20, 21:1-14, 28:6-8
2 Chronicles 21:14-19, 25:11-12, 36:16-17


Mind you, some of these may be nitpicking, but they are still murders committed or instigated by YHWH, and this list does not include the moral wrongs that he advocates such as slavery and inequality of the sexes

As I said in a previous post somewhere, there is a three/four stage cycle continually repeated throughout the Old testament. Sin - Judgement - Repentence - Grace (though repentence is not always there).

People often focus on the Judgement aspect of the Bible and fail to factor in firstly the people's sin, but more importantly the grace/redemption of this punishment.

The pattern in the New testament is remarkably similar. Sin - judgement - Grace. The judgement of God is promised, one way or the other. And the Grace of God through Jesus Christ.

Yes, I know I'm preaching. the point though is that the pattern and cycle in the two Testaments is the same. It IS the same God.

Regards, PA

If you will check, a lot of the killing is not necessarily aimed at the Israelites!

Mako

There are references to the Father the Son and the Spirit through out the OT and NT. starting in Gen 1:1, and even his disciples worshiped him "my Lord my God" and he did not stop them, if he was not God then He was no prophet. Jesus fulfilled ALL of the OT prophesy which pointed toward the messiah of Israel, who would be worthy of worship.

I asked How she knew it was truth to help explain that she believes through Faith just like I do. and I believe we all do. when we accept George Washington was the first president we put our faith in the writers of history.( it could all be a hoax)

matthew mark luke and john were not assigned later. others were assigned later to compile the writings of matthew mark luke and john which had been written earlyer.

as far as the acuracy with which they were written of the true accounts,
any inacuracy would have hindered the spread of Christianity due to Roman and Jewish athoritys who stoped at nothing to suppress it.
the worst event in christian history was when Constantine ( a Pagan Roman emperor) decided Christianity would be the religion of Rome and the start of false christian began.

and to continue with one of PA's thoughts of why God does what He does. i Believe we place to high an importance on this short life. when suffering comes we ask why me God, well why not me I'm no better than anyone else. why do "good" people suffer, ...who is "good". why does any one suffer,... suffering is our perception of things not going our way, and why should things go our way. you can't disprove God or the bible by the fact that people suffer, or that people incorrectly follow them. you can only prove they are not the way you would want them. but then who cares other than you how you want God to behave

So when are y'all going to break out the tambourines and sing?

"Courage to say this so bluntly and truthfully." Firstly, this is the internet, there is no courage required to post anonymously on a forum. Secondly, I haven't seen too much religous censorship around these parts. Its not like there is a moratorium on opinions and beliefs, is there?

You choose to believe that the creator is your "lord and master", so be it. Worship your god as you think best. Although I find it odd that such 'humble' believers, feel themsleves to be so superior to the rest of us. Eh, c'est la vie.


Good journey.

and not Only Isreal sined

you can simple look at the flood account all others pale in comparison to global killing. but if God is all knowing and Just than He would know whether they deserved it. and If hes not than He is not God

i agree not much courage is required

i can only speek for this humble beleiver (and not as humble as i should be considering things i've done) but i have never once claimed or felt superior to any one based on my beleifes, i feel we are all equally unworthy of a God who is far superior

@ ?truth? -- so what. If your bible is accurate, your god openly sanctions murder, war, and (to me) senseless killing.

It is rather revealing that you find that your god is 'justified' in this.
Perhaps we should bring back stoning adulterers?

Strange you should pick that example. Did the babies sin? Did the little puppies and little kittens sin? Why did God destroy all life (except for Noah and company)? There must have been some very sinful animals and plants on this old world! This all-knowing creator of the universe would have known that all he had to do was design a virus that was human specific, 100% fatal, make Noah and his family immune to it, released it and spared all the other life on the planet. You have effectively shown that your god has no sense of fairness, that he punishes the innocent as well as the guilty, that his main characteristic seems to be a blood lust that is nearly insatiable!

I never claimed it was. sin, judgement and grace go beyond the scope of just the Israelites believe it or no.

That wasn't the point of my post JMPD.

It's not always easy, especially to oneself to say that parts of your faith are difficult to accept. Sometimes I even find myself trying to rationalize God's actions in the Bible. I stop myself whenever I do this, but it's sometimes hard. The courage to stand up and say to oneself "This is difficult to accept, but you are God and I am..... well, not God. What you say, goes".

Does that make sense?

For the record, I do not, nor have I ever claimed superiority to anyone. I am unsure where you imply a superiority complex.

Regards, PA

i pick this example for that reason there was no more all incompasing judgement.

i do not know why He chose this method, but i believe God has the athority to do what He choses with His creation. if i create something i can destroy it if i chose. the reason it is wrong for us to murder is that by doing so we act as God. just as i would be upset if you burned a peice of furnature i created, but if i chose to i could burn it my self. (side note: i'm a furnature maker)



not only sanctioned but demanded in many cases,
(none senseles to God) judgements
if the bible is accurate

Isn't "humble superiority" implied by your whole system of beliefs?
"we are all sinners" We must be redeemed to be worthy of heaven" "we are 'saved'" "only the 'chosen' can enter the kingdom of heaven"

There is, inherently, a certain smugness of the 'chosen' who feel that their beliefs trump those of all others. Even if it isn't as blatent as a childs cry of "nyah nyah! I'm better than you!", it is still there, as an emotional undercurrent. A glamour, if you will, to the 'poor martyrs of christianity', who have suffered for their faith. As if christians have a monopoly on suffering for their beliefs.

Someone once told me that they discarded Christianity because they felt that it was a religion for the oppressed. In this, he explained, it was because the whole thrust of the message was: Don't despair over your lot in THIS life, for you will be rewarded in the next. As long as you believe and obey.


good journey.

the aspect of being chosen rather tanh chosing God is debated even in the church, and if we are chosen i believe it is because of His knowledge of our willing ness to accept by faith (which my by a weakness) but by no means a superiority.

mako, Just for the record Truth and i were talking about another topic I wasn't saying the bible is truth it is not in my opinion the way i feel is prety obvious I think. Namaste Sheri


Faith may be the same as truth to you but not to me If a message only contains LOVE only not fear not worship not vengence not punishing then I incorporate the message into my life and try it out and see the experience it brings me thats how I then know something is truth, I want to be clear that I'mnot talking about blind faith or blind trust.

PA The evilness of the bible cannot be compared to HOP on pop give me a break, although I do agree that anything in the wrong hands can become evil, the bible stands on its own it doesn't matter whose hands its in that being said it becomes even more heinous in that case it would be highly unlikely for hop on pop to become that twisted. Its just a way to deny the obvious .


Man created the bible man is saying that on Gods orders Man is required to kill worship and kill always because God supposedly gave a message to his people , come on this is the most blantant bunch of garbage ever written I can't help but wonder who would be so gullible to buy it and publically proclaim it to be truth, waht kind of humans are we here????

And this sentiment, is exactly what I'm talking about:



Sorry ?truth?, but you expressed just what I was trying to illustrate above. You believe your faith is the 'correct' one, and fear that others will fall into the punishment that you fear. While I appreciate yours and other concerns for my spiritual well being, it is not necessary from my POV. I do not fear the journey, nor am I doomed to eternal hellfire, or any other nastiness.

To me, all faiths and belief systems are equal. As long as they bring you comfort along the journey. We are all on "the Way", just differnet paths. Some may parallel for a bit, some cross and re-cross others. But in the end, they all lead home.

good journey.

faith is not truth

truth is made evedent by faith. ei if you believe in evolution you put your faith in the scientists that explain their findings, or if you are the scientist you put you faith in your own ability the interpret your findings correctly. the only way to know truth with out some aspect of faith. is to witness for you self.

i don't see a message of killing and beleive this is truth

i see and have been shown Gods mercy and love in my life and in the Bible. and know it is truth, then i understand the death in parts of the bible as judgment from a rightious God. just as i some time must punish my daughter, in punishing i show my love for her more than letting her continue it the wrong direction. as she grows in understanding, i punish her less and let her discover things for herself. just like the bible early in the creation God had to Punish more to keep man on the right path untill man grew in his understanding.

your belief that there is "not" one correct way is just as definitive as my belief that there "is" one correct way.

but in your belief what is reason to share what you believe.

Here's my point, I have no courage apart from God.. I am nothing special apart from God. But with God I can do all things. I am someone with Him. He can accomplish much through me if I am willing.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1, NKJV