doom_sayer

yup... leave it to alberta! this province (yes i currently reside here the the graveyard town of medicine hat) is getting to be more and more like the united states all the time. come on everyone! nevermind how ridiculous the reason... sue! sue! sue! while we burn fossil fuels to generate electricity and push for legislation that excludes the poor from decent health care benifits!

i wish everyone a very merry christmas. have a blast celebrating new year's too.

damn... i was rather enjoying this thread. oh well.

i can only speak for myself, but i hardly think accepting science's answers can be considered faith. you said yourself that faith needs no proof, where science is all about proof. it is far from perfect because it is so young, but it still depends facts. my only criticism of faith is that it is extremely dangerous. i for one, will not believe something because someone tells me to. i need to investigate for myself. we must question everything put to us. if religions were so righteous, they wouldn't fear scrutiny as they do. religion is not the same as faith. and if so many believers were so certain, why is it that they all still fear death? i'm sorry, but anyone (intelligent) who believes what they were taught by religious leaders are simply not going to find the truth of (because it's the only religious litterature i've read) the bible. EVERY take on it is nothing more than interpretation. so, who's interpretation should you accept? your own, or the one given you by people who take your money? religion is a scam.

you got it! i'm already beginning to love this forum. too bad i gotta work in the field today.... in the meantime, for those of you who think the thing to do is have someone else tell you the meaning of the teachings of the bible, ie. a PRIEST... go piick up a copy of tao te ching . the lessons are the same, yet a little easier to make sense of. with time, anyway. it's at least as old as the biblical scriptures, and comes from a culture that's much older than our own. all gods die to give way to new ones.... they DON'T exist!

The gospels seem to indicate otherwise. Christ himself indicated otherwise. jesus didn't write the bible either. in fact, none of the letters jesus wrote throughout his lifetime even made it into the bible. the new testament was written by fanatical disciples. did the burning bush actually speak to moses? no. what i'm trying to get at here is that we need to apply present day common sense in order to understand the lessons of the bible. for instance; it's far more likely that jesus swam to the fishing boat rather than litterally walked on water. if such miracles don't occour today, they didn't occour then. fables.

i think it's religion that taught these morals. it was the church, afterall, that decided 'witches' should be burned at the stake and tossed off cliffs. these things aren't endorsed in the bible, old testament or new. don't be confused when you read about bad things happening therein.... they are lessons to teach us consequence. an eye for an eye doesn't mean you should take the eye, it means you should take no more than an eye for an eye.

I do! where did you come by this information? it's certainly not stated anywhere in the bible.

so god wrote the old testament, did he? are you sure about that? because i'm pretty sure people wrote it. and no, jesus is not god. he is (supposedly) a part of the holy trinity... they are three seperate things- father, son, and holy spirit. by the way, jesus was no more the son of god than i am, or anyone else for that matter. he was a great man and a great teacher, but no more than a man.

it shouldn't matter if i agree or not. i don't know who claims 'God' wrote the bible. it was written by people. old testement and new. therefore, the source is man. we certainly should not trust what the church teaches. they don't know shit. galileo will tell you all about that. and yes, i have ideas that throw faith out the window in favor intelligence (not that i claim to have an abundance of that!). all you need to do is think about how things work now when thinking about what happened back then. i know a fable when i read one!

aren't all concepts concepts of man? how is god any different from the dead gods of the past like zeus or ra? has anyone here (while in a lucid state of mind) ever had a direct conversation with god? i personally believe that we are at a turning point in our civilizations development. we are finally learning to let go of religion for a more reliable source of knowlege. science. the new new testiment of the bible will likely be far less filled with magic. unless that is we blast ourselves back to the stone age and have to start over again. in which case, many of the technologies we have now may be viewed as magic and miracles.

earlier in this thread someone mentioned a verse in the bible that was drilled into them at bible camp. they were made to repeat it over and over. this sounds like a brainwashing tactic. cults, which in reality all religions are (some are just more popular than others), feed on fears and weaknesses to gain control. religion, government and organized crime all operate the same way. one is only more righteous than the next because of it's size and power, which is directly related to the fear-strings they each tug at. if science ever discovers "God", i seriously doubt the definition of that noun will remain the same.

i'll admit that i'm pretty far out there, but you'll go some to convince me that fire is not a living entity. it must breath and feed. it grows, reproduces and struggles for it's own survival. i believe nature be capable of thought- far more complex thought than we are capable of, in fact. because we aren't aware of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. perhapse somewhere in existence there is something that decided to create our universe, but in reality it's no god. if it is, than gods are just other forms of 'life', and if there is one, there are more. based on what WE can observe there isn't just one of anything. but what can a primative creature like man know anyway? we're only able so see three colors! the important thing for us to do is forget our pride and fears, and strive for nobility. if we have a creator, and supposing i could converse with it without going instantly and TOTALLY mad, then it's just another being. it may deserve praise and respect, but not worship. after all, if the same laws apply to it as us, it evolved from a primative form of life just as we are doing. no life is greater than another.

my own foolish illusions of freedom.

sorry. what the topic should read is; 'WE are all going to burn in hell'. we have a far more reliable system than religion (which in today's corrupt state hardly seeks more than power) to find answers to the big unknowns; science. personal spirituality is more constructive and more rewarding. and it doesn't feed on fear as religion does. we don't do much by way or rectifying our sins against man, or those of 'God'... sins against god are sins against the planet and all that dwell on it- our true life giver. you should have read on. we don't see things like talking burning bushes in life today unless maybe we're on mushrooms. they didn't then either. then again, fatigue dehydration and starvation can all induce hallucinations (or as the natives call them, visions)- all of which moses no doubt suffered from when he saw the burnng bush. none of these such stories in the bible are meant to be taken quite so litterally. they are fables that were passed word-of-mouth for generations. much like famous gladiators were said to be giants in regions they've never visited. goliath was likely an abnormally large man and david was a child with a weapon. logic, and it can be applied to all the stories of the bible. now to quote myself; these places don't exist. you're taking the words in the bible far too litterally if you believe they do. our generation will suffer in hell because of not only our own self indulgent apathy, but because of the same apathy of generations of people before us. the so-called "end of times" warnings in revelations have been coming to fruition for centuries. we are just now coming to the end, and so we are the lucky bastards who get to witness hell. heaven and hell occour here. they are nothing more (logic, remember) than the end result of our own collective actions. our civilization will die, but the species will live on. the bible knows this, because it has happened before. and it will happen again.