Evolutionism vs creationism

[JellySlayer]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it also a sin to imagine adultry, even though according to the Bible the 'Devil' puts the thoughts into our heads?

If it makes you feel better, it's only a sin if the woman is married, by definition of adultery. Single women are totally fair game. [Men too, I suppose]

Now, that's just crazy talk! Our legal system can compete
with any craziness the universe has to offer. Where I live,
you get more prison time for tax evasion than murder. You
could eat people and be on the street a few weeks later if you
get your case thrown out on technicalities. In my home town we
can't legally buy or sell alcohol, but we can manufacture and
consume any quantities we like. We can even ship it via mail.
I could go on eternally

God makes it a sin to be born, punishable by torture for all eternity...

Some other godly weirdness.

-You can't wear clothes made from two different kinds of fabric (Lev 19:19)
-God forbids you to shave (Lev. 19:27) and get tattoos (19:28)
-Cursing your parents is punishable by death (Lev 20:9)
-Having sex with a women during her period is criminal (Lev 20:18)
-If people in a town preach the worship of another God, the entire town is to be put to death, including the animals (Deut 13:12-15)

This one I'm just going to quote verbatim:
-"28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. [c] He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. " (Deut 22:28-29).

Then there's thought crimes:
-Thinking about commiting adultery is the same as commiting it. (Matt 5:27-32)
-You can't covet your neighbour's ass (among other things) (10th commandment)
-There's the whole not believing thing leading to eternal damnation.

[gut]

> Just wait until you're condemned to eternal suffering
> for the dirty words you spoke about Grey

I'll regret nothing.

> God makes it a sin to be born, punishable by torture for all eternity...

Now, that's not true. My understanding is that one is deprived of heaven only
for acting too jackass. Makes sense, as heaven should be a jackass-free zone,
else it wouldn't be heaven.

You say 'god makes it a sin', but it isn't the words of god you are quoting.
You quote the words of men who claim to know what irritates god. Is it a
wonder that much of it doens't add up?

Your ability to quote scripture really is impressive. Are you getting this
already pre-gathered from a web site, or was it just drilled into you that
much when you were young. If that kind of stuff had been drilled into me,
I'd prolly rebel too. I think it is good to remember that the bible is a
compiled work. It is highly unlikely that 100% of what's there should be.

> -You can't wear clothes made from two different kinds of fabric (Lev 19:19)

I'm a 100% cotton kind of guy. The rest of you can burn for all I care.

> -God forbids you to shave (Lev. 19:27) and get tattoos (19:28)

May as well ban working too hard... wait, they did that too! No wonder I like
this religion!

> -Cursing your parents is punishable by death (Lev 20:9)

I'd say that's too lenient unless it's death via soap vs mouth. Oddly, cursing
Grey's parents is actually encouraged. I can't remember exactly where I read
it... I think it's toward the back somewhere.

> -Having sex with a women during her period is criminal (Lev 20:18)

...and discusting. Don't forget discusting.

> -If people in a town preach the worship of another God, the entire
> town is to be put to death, including the animals (Deut 13:12-15)

Well how do you know it wasn't the animals that started the other religion? If
the people of a town are so mentally inferior that they allow a group of calves
to outwit them into worshipping (as opposed to eating) them, they deserve what
they get. That's smart thinking evolution-wise too.

> -You can't covet your neighbour's ass

I break that one all the time. Well, it's a fine ass! Still, I don't think
it'll be a problem for me, as I don't plan to appropriate said ass by ass-type
methods such as killing or stealing. Actually, that makes it more a case
of inspire rather than covet. Maybe I'll work to get my own amazing ass.

[JellySlayer]

Now, that's not true. My understanding is that one is deprived of heaven only
for acting too jackass. Makes sense, as heaven should be a jackass-free zone,
else it wouldn't be heaven.

As far as I know, the Bible never uses the word "jackass"

In all seriousness, the Bible claims that the only route to Heaven is through belief in Jesus (John 14:6 among others). Whether anything else in particular is required (baptism, communion, good works) depends somewhat on what specific denomination you believe in. I just want to reiterate this point because it's kind of important: most Christian denominations believe that what you do here on Earth makes no differences as long as you, at the time of your death, believe in Jesus as your personal saviour. They also get a bit squeamish about the point when it's noted that such requirements would allow somebody like . . . Stalin . . . to get into Heaven. I realise that you personally may not believe this; however, I contend that these are fairly mainstream beliefs in Christian circles.

You say 'god makes it a sin', but it isn't the words of god you are quoting.
You quote the words of men who claim to know what irritates god. Is it a
wonder that much of it doens't add up?

Well, if the Bible isn't true, I think it's fairly safe to contend that none of Christianity is true, given that all of the foundational beliefs and teachings from Christianity stem from the Bible. It's not really too much of a leap from there to agnostic (unless you pick up another religion instead), and the difference between agnostic and atheist is mostly semantic. [edit]Many Christians (again, not necessarily you personally), believe that the whole of the Bible is the inerrant, inspired, Word of God.

Your ability to quote scripture really is impressive. Are you getting this
already pre-gathered from a web site, or was it just drilled into you that
much when you were young. If that kind of stuff had been drilled into me,
I'd prolly rebel too. I think it is good to remember that the bible is a
compiled work. It is highly unlikely that 100% of what's there should be.

A bit of both, actually. As I mentioned earlier, I've read the Bible several times. There's bits and pieces that are memorized. There's a lot more that I can fairly reliably say "I know that there's a verse in 1 John that says something like this" and go look it up pretty quickly. It's worth saying too, that my deconversion is relatively recent, and I had prior to that been spending a great deal of time reading the Bible and various (both Christian and secular) commentaries on it, so a lot of the material is pretty fresh in my memory.

[Albahan]

Some other godly weirdness.

-You can't wear clothes made from two different kinds of fabric (Lev 19:19)
-God forbids you to shave (Lev. 19:27) and get tattoos (19:28)
-Cursing your parents is punishable by death (Lev 20:9)
-Having sex with a women during her period is criminal (Lev 20:18)
-If people in a town preach the worship of another God, the entire town is to be put to death, including the animals (Deut 13:12-15)

This one I'm just going to quote verbatim:
-"28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. [c] He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. " (Deut 22:28-29).

All of these are Old Testament teachings and, I believe are basically obsolete teachings that have been replaced by those of Christ. An example of this is when Jesus basically reduces the commandments to two; "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' "The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (NAS, Mark 12:28-31) One of the reasons Jesus died was so that we wouldn't have to be judged by Old Testament teachings and rules.

>most Christian denominations believe that what you do here on Earth makes no differences as long as you, at the time of your death, believe in Jesus as your personal saviour.

One of the reasons I like being Catholic. We believe salvation comes from faith and works so what you do on Earth really does matter. This is one of the biggest differences between Protestants and Catholics as most Protestant denominations believe in what you said, that they can get by on faith alone which then leads to paradoxes such as Stalin making it to Heaven. Though really if you truly believe in it all the whole works thing should come pretty naturally.

[JellySlayer]

All of these are Old Testament teachings and, I believe are basically obsolete teachings that have been replaced by those of Christ. An example of this is when Jesus basically reduces the commandments to two; "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' "The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (NAS, Mark 12:28-31) One of the reasons Jesus died was so that we wouldn't have to be judged by Old Testament teachings and rules.

You do realise that Jesus is quoting the Torah there, right? The footnotes on Mark 12:28-31 should direct you to Deut 6:4,5 and Lev 19:18, respectively. Both of those commandments are from the Old Testament.

As far as the Old Testament teaching being obsolete, I agree that except for a few fringe denominations, most Christians accept that those teachings shouldn't be applied today (although, many seem to have an attachment to things like the Ten Commandments, but be that as it may). Nonetheless, these things do speak about the character of God. The Israelites were (are) God's chosen people, and these are the things that He felt was important for them to know/do, and failure to follow these laws was sin. Hence while we may not follow these practices now, I think that, for example, Deut 22:28-29 does tell us something about what God thinks of rape, and of women.

[Silfir]

I think that, for example, Deut 22:28-29 does tell us something about what God thinks of rape, and of women.

No. It tells us something about what people at the time - whoever wrote Deuteronomy, probably a bunch of priests - thought of rape, and of women.

Anyway, would it be accurate to say that you believe in God, but you don't like what you have been led to believe?



The attachment of Christians to the Ten Commandments could be easily explained by the fact that Jesus repeated them somewhere in the New Testament. They are kind of a big deal like that

[JellySlayer]

No. It tells us something about what people at the time - whoever wrote Deuteronomy, probably a bunch of priests - thought of rape, and of women.

Anyway, would it be accurate to say that you believe in God, but you don't like what you have been led to believe?

Well, I can fairly definitively say that I don't believe in Christianity anymore. Christianity is, in its entirety, based off of the teachings of the Bible. I've illustrated, I consider many of these to be immoral, and many of the claims that it makes, historical, scientific or otherwise, appear to be completely false. While the Bible offers some teachings that are moral, most of these are things that we could just as easily get from secular sources. A rejection of the Bible naturally implies a rejection of the Christian faith and the Chrisitan God, since the Bible is the only source of information that we have about Him.

I can't completely rule out the existence of some supernatural agency, but I can say that at the moment I rank the existence of a god of some variety only slightly more probable than the existence of Santa Claus.

The attachment of Christians to the Ten Commandments could be easily explained by the fact that Jesus repeated them somewhere in the New Testament. They are kind of a big deal like that

Jesus discusses a few of them briefly at the sermon on the mount, if memory serves, but I'm pretty positive he doesn't quote them at length. Feel free to prove me wrong.

[fazisi]

Some other godly weirdness.

These were rules written by man for man. Like gut stated, our laws of today are pretty fucking strange. The rules written in the early old testament were the laws created to govern the people. By today's standards, some of them are outright crazy. I like the ones they have concerning stolen property though. Back then, the theif or the person responsible for the stolen goods had to pay back the owner a multiple of what was stolen.

Oh, Silfir already answered this later:

No. It tells us something about what people at the time - whoever wrote Deuteronomy, probably a bunch of priests - thought of rape, and of women.

In all seriousness, the Bible claims that the only route to Heaven is through belief in Jesus (John 14:6 among others). Whether anything else in particular is required (baptism, communion, good works) depends somewhat on what specific denomination you believe in. I just want to reiterate this point because it's kind of important: most Christian denominations believe that what you do here on Earth makes no differences as long as you, at the time of your death, believe in Jesus as your personal saviour. They also get a bit squeamish about the point when it's noted that such requirements would allow somebody like . . . Stalin . . . to get into Heaven. I realise that you personally may not believe this; however, I contend that these are fairly mainstream beliefs in Christian circles.

If you truly believed in your heart that Jesus was your lord and savior, you probably wouldn't do the things that Stalin did.

the difference between agnostic and atheist is mostly semantic.

I disagree. There is a difference between saying you don't know if there is a deity or deities and saying there are no deities.


P.S. I'm not always trying to pick on Jellyslayer, but he's the only one saying something in this thread that I can say something other than "I agree" (usually to Silfir) or "Stop trying to be cute." followed by a smack upside the head (wish I could do this to gut sometimes...)

[Silfir]

I also agree with fazisi, he's got the atheist/agnostic thing right. It is possible to be agnostic and theist, and it's possible to be atheist and agnostic. It is also possible to be either atheist or theist without being agnostic.

Could Stalin be forgiven for his crimes and ascend to heaven, if he was truly repentant? I think the message is supposed to be "No matter how deep you get yourself in shit, you always have an option". As in, you can never say "I did so many evil things, I'll burn in hell anyway, so why not do more evil things", because you always have the choice to stop doing evil, and possibly not burn in hell. True repentance doesn't come by easy though - if you only "become good" in the eye of impending death for fear of suffering the consequences of your actions, rather than true compassion for the people you had killed, I doubt that will count for much as far as "accepting Jesus Christ in your heart as your personal lord and savior" goes. I'd like to think that Stalin was beyond having compassion for your fellow man cloud his murderous paranoia.

[grobblewobble]

Since this has become a theological thread anyway I will stop trying to talk about evolution and say something about what I believe instead. I doubt anyone is interested in that crap, but at least I might offer Fasizi something to disagree with.

I have very similar reasons as Jellyslayer to reject Christianity: a God that first creates man as imperfect and then sentences those who fail to eternal suffering is an incredibly cruel God. Well, Jellyslayer already made the same point much more eloquently than I could, so no reason to dwell on it.

However, imho the existence of a world like this without any kind of deeper meaning or purpose is also very hard to accept. Besides, I feel a connection with something higher than me - whether this means I belong in a madhouse is up to you to judge. After reading stuff from different belief systems, I found something that strongly rings true with me. So I will try to explain it and keep it as short as I can.

So I believe in God. God is everything: you, me, the air we breath and the ground we walk on, the laws of nature and infinitely much more than that, up to and beyond the horizons of the known universe; it is all God. It appears that we live in a universe made up of all kinds of different things, but in a deeper sense, all of those different things are one and that one is God. Dualism is essentially an illusion.

So why is there a universe? Why is there an illusion of dualism? Why is there suffering?

Without the illusion of dualism, God has no way to express what He is. God has qualities such as being good and loving and humorous, but those concepts have no meaning in a world without dualities. So God split itself up into a of dualities. Our universe is a tiny part of that great illusion and we are part of it. We made ourselves forget that it is an illusion, so that it seems more real. This illusion of dualism offers us a great opportunity to express and experience what we are - what God is.

There is no goal that must be reached, no lessons that must be learned and God will never judge our actions, let alone punish. That does not mean there is no reason to strive to be good. Being good is a much more joyous and satisfying experience than being evil. The deeper reason for that is that we are all one, so whatever bad you do onto your neighbour you do onto yourself.

There is one poem I'd like to share (or annoy you with).

Where is the path?
- It is right in front if you.
Then why can't I see it myself?
- Because you are thinking of yourself.
And you, can you see it?
- As long as you're thinking in terms of "you" and "me", you will never see clearly.
If there is no you and no me, how is it possible to see the path?
- If there is no you and no me, then who wants to see it?