And if so, which religion is right? Discuss. Show your work and use examples.

If this has been discussed before, feel free to lock it up.

He's atheist and going through a pretty rough time at the moment

oh man I HATE when they say that.

There has to be... how else could the Wings win the Cup?

do christians think that Buddhists are all going to hell for not believing?

I think you guys think Christians give more thought to others than we really do.
Granted... some sects actually do spend a lot of time on this but not all Christians.

In a nut shell... the only way to heaven is by accepting Jesus Christ as your savior. Those who do not... will not get to heaven.

At the church I go to ... we rarely if ever even speak of Hell or try to decide who may go there. We accept that we are all sinners and use the scriptures to remind us of how we should conduct ourselves.

Perhaps Buddhist get to go to a different heaven. I don't know. They at least appear to be at peace within themselves and with others. I like that. (I actually only know 3 buddhist so my pool of knowledge is shallow)
Not trying to get under Crow's craw here... but I seriously think non-believers think we think about them more than we do.

Now... Southern Baptist absolutely do. That's pretty much all they do... they feel the charge to convert the world and witness to everyone.

But it wouldn't be fair to assume that although a Baptist is a Christian...not all Christians are Baptists and think about this often.


Did I effectively avoid answering the question? lol

somehow i think there's a big invisible SW up there somewhere

OK, another question for the Christians of the world.


What happened to the Mayans, Native Americans, Indians, Tibetan, etc. over the past 2000 years when they died if they had never even heard of Jesus because of being secluded from information, did not have written language, etc.


This is a serious question.

My belief or lack there of I guess, is that if there is a God and a Heaven if your merits of how you spent your life will outweigh your sins then you will get to that special place. Now I know this does not say this anywhere, but I cannot believe that if I live my life to its fullest, honestly, helping others, being the best Husband and Father I can, that if I do not go through a ritualistic ceremony that I would be excluded from Heaven.

For the most part I live my life as clean and honest or more so than most God fearing, go to Church every Sunday, people. I cannot grasp that they can do all these terrible things (adultry, cheating, swindling, :insert dishonest item:) but go to Church and it is forgiven and they will get to Heaven, but I, who have done those things, will not.

This is actually a huge issue for my mother in law, who is very religious, even though she loves me and knows how good of a parent and father I am, thinks I will not go to Heaven.

I believe I've seen lois explain this before, and I'm paraphrasing here from what I remember, so I could be wrong, but I think he had said that the rule is that if you really have faith and want to believe in the proper god, then jesus, or god (I can't remember which one) will come to you and you will see the grace of god or what not. now to me, this is the most unbelievable thing I've ever heard (and I don't know of a single recorded instance of somebody spontaneously generating jesus without outside influence), but I believe that is the going explanation. please correct me if I'm wrong though.

There is no evidence of a God or Ultimate Creator. The most common argument is that since the earth is complex, there must be one. It is a huge fallacy since God would ultimately have to be very complex raising the question, "Who created God then?"

Natural Selection explains everything perfectly.

Use your own moral compass to guide your life.

Yeah I have heard this too. But I am completely discounting it, because there is no recorded proof that I know of that any of these civilizations having experienced this.

Then if he came to them on their death bed, wouldn't that be the same for everyone then?

Contemporary Chrisitan belief is that the people who died without the opportunity to accept Christ are still lost. This explains why we were given the commandment to preach to all the world the gospel.

Some believe that God will judge people based on how they would have responded to the calling. Being God He would know, so His judgement would be right every single time. I tend to lean this way because that's the kind of God we serve. It fits better into His Character that He would look for reasons to forgive, over reasons to damn.

It is interesting to note that in the 1800's the world's population was less than 1 billion, and now it's over 6 billion. So most people that have ever existed have been alive in the last 200 years.
Unless you believe that hogwash that people have been around for 50,000 years.

Is there a God: Yes

Which religion is right: Christianity

Discuss: It's pretty cool, God forgiving you and stuff

Show your work and use examples: I was lost, and now I'm found. I was blind but now I see.

Discussed before: Maybe, search function is your friend.



Good luck uncovering the secrets of unifying theory, while trying not to destroy the earth.

if by hogwash you mean fossil records then the number is more like over 100,000 years ago.

is there anything biblical to back up the first part (or any other theories as to what happens for that matter)? I remember lois talking about what I said above, but I don't remember if it was biblical or just his belief, but I'm inclined to believe it was biblical given how literal he tends to be with it.

interesting, i didnt know you could just bend ideas about how god operates to better fit your beliefs.

Why? You bend logic to fit yours.

Some of the areas that are silent in the Bible are often attempted to be answered with similar problems and how they were dealt with.

It is largely held that the 3 days Christ was in the tomb were spent in the place between heaven and hell where the Jewish faithful were waiting for their Messiah. This would have only applied to the Jews who held to the faith. This comes from parables Christ spoke about and other references. I believe this to be true.

Catholics got purgatory from this. Something not supported because the Bible says :"Man is allotted once to die, then judgement" But it's not hard to see how they made the connection. It is pretty much discredited in the protestant camps because the whole point of Christ's blood was to cover your sins, not cover 'some' of your sins and you need to be punished for other ones.

I have heard Lois' explanation before, and like I said I don't see where it is outside of Biblical possiblities, in other words it doesn't contridict what the Bible says, but it would be extra-Biblical in that the Bible is silent on the subject. Given that I wouldn't bet the farm, but if it turns out to be true,it won't change my faith either way. Kind of like UFOs.

300,000 if you believe Richard Leakey's son.

I don't see how you can say that the watchmaker theory is invalid because of the Who made God question. Couldn't God have been made by something else, and we would still be subject to God as our creator?



I think perfectly would be a stretch since you need a beginning and you don't have one. Nor do you have any reason to obey part two of your statement.

Part one. You make my point. If complexity is the argument for God, then it's a valid argument for God having a creator, and that one having a creator and so on. Do you see how ridiculous that is?

Part two. I have a beginning. The big bang. Natural Selection has nothing to do with that. Believing the world is 6000 years old is plain stupid.

As for part two about having a my own moral compass I'm confused. What morality do you have that I can't?

Knowing that when I die that I'll turn into ant food I look at life a tad differently than you obviously. I think that what does carry on is how you conducted your life while you were alive and the influence you have on humanity after you're passing. Escpecially when it comes to kids. I have two great ones and knowing that I had an influence on them and that it will carry on is very comforting. I don't need visions of granduer and streets of gold to give me comfort in life.
'
You can call me faithless.
I believe in hope and love.
That's faith enough for me.

No because you are making the assumption that since we can look at creation and see the need for a creator, therefore we must have a need for a creator for that one etc. That is your conclusion. I don't see that at all. There is a perfectly balanced universe, chaos will never fall into balance, but balance will fall into chaos. Therefore there must be a reason for the balance. I don't have to have a reason for the reason, I just need a reason for the balance. You are making a straw man to try to get around the incredible complexity of the universe.



But believing that from a great big empty space of nothing, there was an explosion that filled the universe with matter, energy and order...that's not plain stupid because...?



I don't claim to have a morality you don't have. Many non-religious people I know are much more moral than some of the Christians I know.

I'm asking where the value to any morality comes from. In some cultures it's perfectly moral to kill another man and take his wife as long as he's from another tribe. Morality that is relative isn't really morality, it's just social pressures.



As stated earlier, I agree there are many people who are better humans when appyling a Biblical morality stick to their lives, than some Christians. If you are one than obviously you make the world a better place.

And as far as the age of the earth.

How old was Adam when God made him?

I think everyone agrees that he was a man, not a zygot flopping around the dust. He didn't gestate in a shoebox.

How old was the first tree when God made it?

It probably was fully formed, tall and if cut open would probably have rings.

The first riverbed was probably fully eroded into the gorund to give it a direction, unless you think God was unable to make the riverbed while creating water.

The first mountain was probably supported by underground magma displacement and teutonic plate shifts.




So how old was the earth when God made it?

aaaawwwWWWWW??

Red- You really make no sense whatsoever here but I'll still try to respond. You don't know how to follow a logical conclusion. If you read what I wrote and then re-read your post I think you'll see it. I was making a simple logical conclusion that complexity is a really bad argument for an Ultimate Creator.

Blue- it's not stupid because it's logical and vastly believed by intelligent people instead of fairy tales.

Yellow- Yeah but we're all still going to burn in hell

Green_I will agree that social pressures does influence morality, especially in children and that's a shame.

Red is the color of communist, the god-less political system that kills people by the bus load.

I think Freud might have something to say about your subliminal choice there.

But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar


If we are created by God, then why do you assume we get to disregard Him because your earth bound wisdom says He must have a creator also? The assumption that Him having a creator doesn't trump your responsibility to him as your Creator.

So your logic, while making sense to you, doesn't flip my skirt much

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9xpw9vsJkgY&feature=related

BG TY for answering my question.

One of the explanations I have always liked in regard to the age of the earth and the existence of god is:

It is said the God created the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th (am I correct on the gist here religious people?). Is it possible that a day to God was a billion years to a human? And that he is currently resting, hence the reason that we do not see a noticeable presence of God right now?

Just wondering out loud....

I don't have a clue why you brought communism or Frued into this? I'm not the one saying there is an ultimate creator, you are.
I said that the most popular argument for God was that the earth is complex. If complexity is a prerequisite to having a creator then it is a logical assumption that God would have one since he would be even more complex. If it isn't an argument then don't use it anymore. Go back to saying things like "Just because I do believe" or whatever.

I knew you wore skirts though, faggot, ha ha.

If he is so powerful why does he need to rest?

Hilarious!

Again, you are saying exactly what I am saying. We're both saying; 'I don't agree with your conclusion about the Watchmaker argument'.
It doesn't make sense to me to believe that you get to decide that if God has a Creator than you don't have to answer to Him. Nor does it make sense that you need the existance of God to fit into your criteria based on a level of intelligence that is clearly earth bound. To argue that you know the structure of all things well enough to be able to say that 'complexity means random chance ie Natural Selection because if it means creator than there would be endless creators' is not logical enough to me to give it any merit.


Build a bridge and no calls you BG the Bridge Builder,

But you wear ONE skirt...

The union

The one day to God is a million to us theory is one that some cling too to align both evolution and creation.

Pesonally I don't buy it because it requires that the word for day be changed to fit the need, not the context when it is used in the Old Testmanet. OBV the same word for day when talking about a guy going to the next village wasn't 1 billion years. etc.

I know it make me look dumb to believe in a new earth. I've had Catholic family member tell me I am an embarressment. So I asked him to compare checking accounts and asked my college grad brother in law; "Who's embarressed now?"

( although right now I have about $4K to my name liquid so I got nothing to brag about, but it will drive some people crazy that I am bragging about being rich so I feel the need to grant them their desire because I'm a giver. )

On a more serious note, if you are a jedi ( as a lot of people are nowadays ) does this mean your god is george lucas or luke skywalker? and if the religon breaks into factions, will some worship han solo, kath...jabba the hut etc etc

I wondered thats all

none of this nonsense proves anything and its sad that you think it does. i like that question on the end as if you have made some big argument. i can see you smiling and saying to yourself "lets see what these people and their "science" think about this LOL!!!" as you wrote it.

Actually while I was writing this I was adjusting my skirt because I've put on a few pounds...thanks for reminding me.

And I'm not trying to prove anything. God is the one that said He made the earth about 6,000 years ago. He's the one with the burden of proof not me. I'm just saying I trust the Big Guy's got an answer.

Sorry but we are not saying the same thing. To clarify for peeps that haven't heard this before.

Guy walks through woods and finds watch. It is a natural assumption to assume it was created than coming together randomly through evolution. This argument is used often by creationist to say that since the earth is complex it is a natural assumption to assume it was created.

I say that they are ignoring Natural Selection when assuming the earth was created.

I am also saying the watchmaker is a great argument for there not being a God. I'm using the Ultimate Watchmaker argument. If complexity means something was created and so on...

I tend to believe that the earth is made out of material which is pretty damn old. I have a baseball bat made in 2006. If I tested the wood it would tell me it was made 300 years ago. Except it wasn't. I think it shows Gods sense of humor that he chose to use really old shit instead of creating new stuff.

If and when I meet him, he will have an answer, if I even bother asking. I mean, at that point, what for? I do hope I get the chance to tell him how funny it is that a certain sector of society works so hard to disprove what they don't believe in, and even funnier how he kept them going in circles. The thing is, though, I don't think he will agree with that thought, I think he will say something along these lines: "No. I didn't plant anything, didn't try to fool anyone, I just did what I did and there you go. If they decided to find reasons not to believe,they found them. If they wanted reasons to believe, they found them. It was all on them. The heart wants what the heart wants." I tend to believe God is laughing but when it comes down to it the answers are very plain and simple. I truly believe that if science wanted to prove God it could, but while science may be pure in in it's goals scientists are not, and when it comes to God what you seek you will find. You can either find God or not God, it's all up to you. Thanks God for that.

Like I said, it's all about the heart. You obviously want to see things a certain way. So, do so. Enjoy.

I can tell you this, for a surety- you are not special. God has no plans to try and help you believe- unless you want to. If that's the case, he will find a way. Good luck.

Nobody? I believe I have delivered the knock out punch. Game over.

cult-speak

This always shows your clear lack of ability to counter a point or thought process. Like,just invoking the word cult proves a point or something. All it does is show your dismissive nature of anything God, and when backed into a corner, its' "Cult speak." Very intelligent.

No offense but both sides of the God/No God argument spew off lame one liners.

None taken. Just pointing out to him.

for the (literally) ninth or tenth time, that's no less ignorant a belief than literal creationism. some dating methods use molten/cooked rocks, dated from when they obviously solidified in place - ON EARTH - billions of years ago. then you have the continental drift/plate collision mountain-building followed by erosion filling the oceans with sediments cycle that has obviously been going on for billions of years. and then the entire fossil record of the evolution of higher life forms sequenced perfectly from older to younger rocks over the last 500 million years or more. there is also irrefutable evidence the sun has been burning for billions of years etc.

either god is a sadistic trickster who intentionally created the earth in a precise manner so the evidence would indicate it's billions of years old, or it IS billions of years old. stop with the young earth from old materials thing. it's idiotic.





cult-speak

cult speak = "objective external evidence doesn't matter, just listen with your heart and you will find a way/reason to believe". that's typical cult methodology.

you and BG are both saying exactly that.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void.


There is no possible way to put any sort of time period in those words,it is as vague as can be. It basically says, God did it, not when. It could very well have been millions of years ago. He could be a trickster, but only to ythose who are dumb enough to spend all there time trying to disprove him. The heart, remember?


You can pretend all you like that the Bible paints some sort of timeline when it comes to creation that is based of of years,minutes, hours, etc., but it doesn't say that so I don't do it, why would you?

O.k. You win. Enjoy it. You have 60 some odd years left to enjoy it, then eternity to wonder what the hell went wrong.

"But, the carbon testing!!!"

"Bwahahahahahahahahaahahhahaahahahahaha."

nm