There are many Christians all over the world including China so I really don't understand that statement'

As for embellishing the stories. Why is it people will believe a document as fact that we only have found one of or a fragment of as long as there is no super natural and take it as fact for that period in time but scripture that has many copies found saying the same thing is unbelievable?

Really Wiki? You wont believe the Bible because of revisionism and they just make it say what they want it to, yet you want me to believe everything that is in Wikipedia and take it as truth? I am sure who ever wrote that has no agenda.

I am not trying to make anyone believe as I do. I am fine if you don't. I just am trying to get you to open your eyes to the fact just because we believe it does not make us idiots.

This seems to be a really popular thread...

I'm a guy who use to play Earth 2025. I'm looking for an alliance. I know the rep casher strat decently but I am rusty.

Is this still an Alliance thread or am I in the wrong place?

lol this was never an alliance thread.

and i would like to say there is one piece of astounding proof that god does not exist.


Tim Tebow.

lmao now that's funny Pain. /me giggles. At least I think you were trying to be funny if not it made me laugh.

all that praying and he got nothing :P

im afraid i have developed a cynical view of some science . we are told for example the theory of evolution is a fact , and while i agree that the facts seem to bear the theory out , niether I or any of us posting here was there when various dinosaurs ended up in rocks or mammoths in permafrost . however , just to qualify that i dont actually disbelieve the theory i am prepared to act as if its correct , however , if someone comes along with a time machine and sends cameras back disguised as trees and we get pretty time lapse photos of aliens playing with their latest planet seeding project , im willing to accept that might be true too . even mathematics is in for some challenges as einsteins theory seems under fire with faster than light particles detected in tests several times now . now THATS a theory i want to see dubunked as then getting to livable systems in space would be possible .

You forget all the people that were praying for Denver to lose Pain?


I guess I better say that's was a joke people. I don't think God cares who wins.

time space and matter----creation. time was started and is ended by the maker of it. the maker is outside of it. He made himself a part of it so that we could know him. We do not wont to know him. We like to make it up as we go along so make it nice it wont last long. Christ is God or a mad man ,its your call.

No, I'm saying that that life is the same to god in that it's created by human fantasy, and devoid of any legitimate proof of existance. However, I do believe there may be aliens. I am not saying there is with certainty, but if there is, they may as well look as we imagine orcs as any other way. From the looks of the world, any resemblance from a divine creator to the abrahamic god seems pretty far fetched.



Because arguing that there must be a god because we can not fit all the pieces of the puzzle doesn't prove anything, since there is no way it could possibly know everything, regardless of if there is a god or not.



Yeah, we may never know this, and I agree that it seems off the table as compared to much other knowledge. But your argument stems from a certain assumption that the universe started at zero. Thus havn't you already claimed knowledge of this one thing you just said we're not likely to ever figure out?



It would be a violation to the universe as we know it, but once again, we don't know everything. I've said nothing about creation from nothing, that's your concieved only other possible alternative. I simply say we do not know, and we shouldn't base knowledge on argument springing from not being able to imagine it being any other way.

Then how come "gods chosen people" chosed to disregard him as being such?



I'd be poised to agree... If he actually did this for me in person. A god comming to visit one i person would surely turn the minds of even the most staunch atheists. Sadly, god chose to restrict this blessing to the natives of an roman province some 2000 years ago. The only account he gave us is this book written by mortals that themselves claimed to be inspired by god. What makes this account different from all the other "holy books" claiming to also be inspired by their own true god?



Atleast he/she is upfront about it. It's kind of ok to accept that if you really believe in your favorite god, not much you can do about it after all. On the other hand we have softies who seem to think "oh, surely this god of mine can't be all that bad? I'm sure we just missinterpreted it. We can mend it in some way". Those piss me off, wake up...



Hint: supernatural



You don't need to, look it up for yourself in your favorite revision. KJV (1987 printing) has it formulated equally hard to dismiss the notion that they though their god was one among many.

And yes, I should try to post more often, and less when I do :P

Your first two points are not proof against theism as my points aren't proof for theism.

I see a repeated theme here - we don't know and in some (one?) cases we may never know. That is why it makes sense to keep an open mind and be agnostic.

I always thought that the most basic statement is science is "I don't know"

Until a scientific method is created to prove or disprove anything the "I don't know" statement must be maintained shouldn't it?

Here's the thing about that argument. Anyone who has experienced life understands that the universe is not fair or equitable. If those 5 billion people go to Hell is it fair? AFAIK neither the Bible, or any other sacred text, (nor do natural laws for that matter) have any sort of fairness doctrine.

I would even go so far as to say that the God of the Old Testament explicitly exhibited his unfairness.

After Adam and Eve pissed him off he pretty much told humanity to piss off until the Tower of Babel when humans tried to get too big for their britches. So he got even more pissed and scattered humanity to the wind. THEN they really pissed him off so he killed everyone except 8 people in the story of Noah. It was not until Abraham made a pact with God that God really gave any sort of grace or protection since the original Adam and Eve and even then it was ONLY for Abraham's descendants. Much of the Old Testament is littered with stories of God helping his chosen people slaughter the neighboring tribes etc... from that point.

Then along comes Jesus and God throws everyone a bone and says you can follow me and get to heaven. He never said it was fair or that everyone would go (in fact it's still stated that most people would NOT go). I'm not sure where you get the impression that God should or would be fair. Everything since the Garden of Eden when man effed up has been explicitly stated to NOT be fair.

This entire thread is a stupid argument. Yeah, that picture is a million ways wrong, but all these other arguments are also dumb.

But the point is it makes no sense, why would any diety create a race of people and then only tell a couple guys over in one corner of the world about himself, and see if everybody else will believe those guys, and condemn them to eternal suffering if they don't

It's completely stupid, immature, and illogical.

And different from what almost every religion says about their dieties.

It makes sense to me. Immature when viewed within the lense of humanity I may give you :P

Not sure why this sequence of events is hard for you to follow:

God creates man -> Man pisses God the fluff off -> God says fine assholes you're on your own -> Man says "Thats fine! We're going to work together to kick your ass!" -> God says "oh yeah KRAKOOM!" -> One man says he's sorry and makes a covenant with God -> God blesses his descendants and gives the bird to the other humans -> God eases up a little with Jesus and says anyone can come as long as they follow him

Makes perfect sense as far as a linear narrative to me.

For the record, I'm agnostic, but I was raised Catholic. We cannot know if God exists, so you must have faith in either option of existing or not. Immanuel Kant long ago came up with the idea of Anonymous Christianity, which basically said there is a way for non-Christians to attain salvation through Christ other than direct acknowledgement that Jesus is the Son of God.

As for the statement that Christianity is the only monotheistic religion that believes in a personal relationship with God, try looking up Janism.

agreed :)

Surely somebody OTHER THAN one of the least literate societies of the time (isreal, before they wrote things down) would have noted these things?




If anybody was actually around to witness creation in such a fashion, it should be in our oldest records... babylon/egypt

I love how people try saying the Hebrews were illiterate when it has been proven the written Hebrew language is at least as old as Egyptian hieroglyphs possibly older.

"Prof. Steiner, a past fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University and a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, has deciphered a number of Semitic texts in various Egyptian scripts over the past 25 years. In his lecture he interpreted Semitic passages in Egyptian texts that were discovered more than a century ago, inscribed on the subterranean walls of the pyramid of King Unas at Saqqara in Egypt. The pyramid dates from the 24th century B.C.E., but Egyptologists agree that the texts are older. The dates proposed for them range from the 25th to the 30th centuries B.C.E. No continuous Semitic texts from this period have ever been deciphered before."

Taken from this link: http://www.eurekalert.org/...007-01/thuo-pmi012907.php

Qzjul: there is some evidence that our oldest records are not actually our oldest records. Google Gobleki Tepe. Moreover it's not like our records of ancient Sumer are anywhere close to comprehensive either.

we are running around in circles...

I refuse to believe in any Religion, however I don't mind the positive impacts it has on people, and if people actually NEED to think there is a reward for being good then that is their choice and is much better than having them being amoral bastards.

What I don't like is people that think that Religion is the reason mankind has morals and that without it we would be doomed to run straight to a wall(kill each other), animals have empathy and as such we can agree that having a code of morals of what is good and bad for our "clan" is just the result of evolution and natural selection, the very definition of common sense, and god had nothing to do with it; and in reality is commonly used as a means to disturb what people should perceive of what is acceptable and what isn't.

The worse crimes of history have always been committed in the name of God and religion, Christianity high up there on the charts, and for that very reason, I say fluff you to all religions, and to the true god I would say nothing, because if he is real he wouldn't interact with us for anything other than his amusement.

Both have there level of faith and facts to support their claims.

Is The Big Bang something of Fact or Do I just have Faith that it happened?

And if so what went bang if nothing was there to go bang?

If I remember what I was told in school right the big bang started with all the matter in the universe contained within a space I could hold in my hand. Do the God haters believe that also?

Nevermind the stuff in mrford's pic, I feel stupider for reading the rest of this post

On a slightly different topic, came across this and thought I'd share it with the people here.

http://www.samharris.org/...m/the-fireplace-delusion/

F***ING MAGNETS, HOW DO THEY WORK

Nice link tertius

It's a fact that once upon a time there was a huge snail called Jeremy. About the size of your hand, Jeremy felt that he needed to expand. He thus blew himself up, creating the universe as we know it.

Hey all, Sorry I've been gone and missed soo much, There's too much to go back and adress everything so I'm just going to come in with a nice clean new fresh start.


1. I consider myself a Christian Agnostic.
This seems contradictory. Well, read on for a second.
I come from an evolutionary point of view. I understand all things evolve, even how humanity understands "God". How we view God, now, is different than how we viewed God in pre-writing days.), and someday humanity will view God different than now. How we view God is very much based on our culture we grow up in, and when in the human timline we are born.

KNowing that, I do my best to work with ideas/concepts of God. For example, I understand, that Tradtional Christianity has a very "Greek" view of God that's more based on Plato and Aristotle, than any Jewish thought.

But I also understand that Post-modernity is rapidly rejecting a Greek philosophical foundation thaat Western Civilization has been built on, so we have churches preaching about a type of God, people can no longer ascribe too.

So, I do believe there is a God....but I DOUBT I can ever truly know what God is. ALl I can do is work the best, with what we have in our time, place and culture. Knowing that my views will evolve and change.

I used to believe God was a big white male in the sky with a huge Penus.
I now approach God from a metaphor of an energy that permeates all things.

I used to believe God was all powerful.
I understand that the Energy of God, can only do so much and what it can do requires partnership, which we as human beings are often missing our que's on.

I used to believe God knew the future.
No longer, This energy may be able to detect possibilities, but doesn't have an "all knowing sense of the future."

I also used to believe in dualism (great Greek concept see Plato's Cave) and the accompanying physiecal/spirutal world divide that says phsyical world= bad and corrupe and spiritual world= good, (unless you are talking about the Devil and his minions (again GOd/Satan anohter dualism.)
Heaven/Hell-another dualism

What if there is no dualism, what if all things are interconnected,
What if thigns can be good and bad?
What if there was no Satan (I can make a strong case for this) and no Hell.

But wait, Christianity depends on a boogeyman and a dungeon to scare people into believing.

Why not have a posiitve view, and say Jesus' teachings are worth following b/c of the words they contain?
So see yet another evolution.


From this point of view, who cares if the bible is Scientically accurate....its not about that,

Its about the stories of a people responding to the world around them.
It contains good and bad.
It has God evolving over time from a jealous teeanger that says kill them all, to the metaphor, GOd is love.


We do the best with what we can, We find the great teachers found in all the great traditions and find the idea that their teachings can point us as human beings to be the best we can be.


This is why fundamentalists find evolution so hard.
Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism can't function as they do if creationism isn't true. SO they get lounder and shriller as they become a smaller and smaller part of the population decade by decade.

Now, am I wrong! Most probably yes! But through the teachings of Jesus, I find a message that commands us to work for a world without hunger, thirst, an imperative to take on unjust systems, a place where GLBTQ people are treated equally, a place where all people have access to health care and a home to sleep in at night.
A message of loving others as I love myself.

A message of a utopian vision that CAN happen on our world, some of it in our lifetime. That in my opinion is what it is really about,

who care about heaven or hell, I'll be dead:)

without hunger, you'd forget to eat.
without thirst, you'd forget to drink.

without God, you have all sunday free!

Duke Nukem Forever download is 9% complete.
and you can't free up Sunday just from lack of belief in God.