I saw The Passion Of The Christ tonight

[Cayo Hueso]

Hey Ginger,

Looks like your dad is picking the quotes again.  This one was perfect.  :smile:   Woops, not this one, the one above.  woops again, this quote IS perfect!

When a well-packaged web of lies
has been sold gradually to the masses
over generations, the truth will seem
utterly preposterous and its speaker
a raving lunatic.      

--Dresden James

_________________
St. Pete Straight
early 80s

[ This Message was edited by: cayohueso on 2004-03-01 15:08 ]

[ This Message was edited by: cayohueso on 2004-03-01 15:09 ]

[GregFL]

On 2004-03-01 14:54:00, Anonymous wrote:




brains and pride can be dangerous things in the Kingdom of God ...I see all these bumperstickers reading the Power of Pride with a American Flag...He HATES pride but loves those who trust in what you cannot see...if we could see into the spiritual we'd probably all go Duh!!!

I'm going Duh right now!   Another duck behind schmary talk. Someone show me the evidence please or admit your belief system is based in family tradition, fear and societal pressure.  You have no evidence there is a god only double talk and silly notions!

[Anonymous]

God must be dead if Virgil's alive

[Dr Fucktard]

Well, I'm still here, so I guess god is dead. RIP god.

[Scott D]

Ya know, I have been thinking about all this and realized that this debate has gone on long before we ever started and will most likely continue long after us. I have been looking at everyones different thoughts and opinions about Jesus, religion, faith, lack of faith, science, and I have looked at every question that has been asked of me....some I knew the answer to and some I didn't and don't.

So I started to dig a little bit and I began talking to people that dedicated large portions of their life to theology and studies of history and the bible and began reading more myself, in a very short time period I began to get some answers to some of my very own questions about all this. See, you act as if you are the only ones that have doubts about God and Jesus or question things that are in the bible....you are not.

I believe in Jesus and I personally believe that he died on the cross for me and all of you...I also have questions and things that I don't understand though too, I am also just as human as you are. The things that I question or don't understand, I will research and try to find out more for myself but, I also have faith that I will learn these things in Gods time and not my own.

Now, I am not here to try and convince you or anyone of what they should believe in, I can only share my own personal experiences of God in my life and these facts my friend, are for real and did happen to me and I did not document them on paper. But that would not mean anything to you either as they didn't happen to you directly only me.

Let's face it, all of us in here have been let down by so many things in this life whether it be people, Straight, laws, parents, family, jobs, spouses, friends, doctors, schools etc. that we don't want to depend on anyone and we don't want to be hurt, we don't wanna have faith in anything let alone something we can only read about. So we want facts unless it can't remotely affect us emotionally, if it can affect us emotionally and there is fear in us and there rightly should be as we have been betrayed and hurt so many times before by PEOPLE, we now feel we have to analyze every aspect of anothers belief and question their intentions and judge them even if that persons very own life is a billion times better then ever before.

Greg, my question to you is why do you insult people and try and hurt people for telling you what they believe in their heart? I am not asking you this with a bad motive, I am just asking. I have watched you insult me on my grammar and poke fun at someone elses thoughts and beliefs, when neither of us did that to you when we read your opinions and what you think. I just think if I agreed with everything you were saying and expressing it with the same bad grammar, you most likely would not have insulted me....But, I don't know that for sure.

I go through my struggles in life just like anyone and there are times when I analyze and doubt my own faith and then there are times when I wanna just say fuck all this because doing what is right in my heart can be be fucking hard as hell and is hardly ever what I want to do. But, then I ask myself something when I want to question the bible...."what if the bible is right and all true?" See, if I turn my back on Jesus and God and I die only to find out that I was wrong and all this is true and heaven and hell is the final result....well I just fucked myself for the final time and get to live with that result for eternity. If I continue to have faith and learn to have faith and try to continue to improve myself and my own spiritual connection to God and try to help other people in any way I can while following my heart and simply feeling good about decisions I am making and most certainly feeling the pleasures of watching someone else grow out of their misery and unhappiness to actually have values in their own life....all because I have faith in a God of hope. Well if I die and then I find the truth is not what I was hoping for....what harm was done by me or my beliefs and my blind faith? Whats the real risk here really?

Greg, you mentioned that us christians are just scared people...that very much does apply to me as I am scared, I am scared of evil, I am scared of my own evil, I am scared of my own will, I am scared of failing, I am scared of hurting people, I am scared for other people and I will gladly and willingly "hide" behind my savior in Jesus Christ and let him strengthen and comfort me. I don't have to do all this life stuff alone anymore and I am beginning to really feel like I have a purpose in this world.

So, I want to thank you because your questions actually steared me back to the bible once again and gave me more of a desire to study and learn and grow closer to God. I was originally going to continue this whole debate and type in answers to some of your questions that I found some answers to but, I decided not to as I realized that if I could find them, you most certainly can to for yourself if you truely have the desire and a willing open heart.

Doesn't matter what info I find and post....if you believe that my beliefs are wrong and that yours are right...it won't matter what I put. But to me, it sounds a lot like you found your own higher power.....You. I am not in any way trying to bash you or insult you by saying that either, that is your God given choice. I tried that avenue for a long long time and my "holy self" failed me everytime, but perhaps you are different...what do I know. I hope and pray that all of you find the answers you all seek in your own hearts.

And Therion,
I have felt and feel your pain man and will keep you in my prayors.

Sincerely,
Scott Davis

[GregFL]

Finally, an intelligent post from the pro religion side of this debate, that is, except for the ad hominems and baiting.

A couple things, Scott. I was very carefull not to insult anyone but instead called into question your words. Read back and you will only see me questioning the arguments and ad hominem attacks and asked for evidence that was never produced.  

Second, you are welcome. I encourage thought wherever it leads to, to or from the bible, away or towards your religious myths. I just cannot stand meaningless statements like "believe in believing" and this type of crap. It has no place in an adult debate
.
I Never made fun of your grammer, Scott, I poked gentle fun at the content of some statements that were silly. That is what debaters do, question others words. this was a debate, and it was framed that way early in the conversation.Perhaps you are not skilled in debating tactics and don't understand the rules?

INever tried to hurt you only tried to make you think past the box you were thinking in. I think to that end I succeeded.

Keep questioning everything Scott. I bit of warning, tho...many of those that have "dedictated their lives" to studying religion have in fact dedicated their lives to justifying and making excuses for what is written.

Logic 101. Christianity claims the bible is the infallible word of God and that "god is good". Now, it either is or isn't the word of god. If it can be demonstrated by the bible that the writing are indeed fallible by either 1) being contradictory 2) proven false 3) indicating extreme cruelty by "god"

then the first or second statement is proven false. That is,l The bible is not the word of God or the god of christianity is not good.

Whether god exists or not is a whole different topic.  

Now, in conclusion to your response, I am not interested in finding your answers because I am an experienced debater in religion. I have likely heard your excuses (answers) you claim to have found to my questions.  I challenge you to post them, in fact, so we can talk about them.

And Scott,how much more condensending could you be with insinuating I think I am a higher power? I have found my "higher power". It is not me, it is the voice of reason and thought, skeptical thinking and logical scientific reasoning. works for me, give it a try. It makes a lot more sense than believing in supernatural beings bartering for your soul (another entity that is scientificly doubtfull) and jumping down your throat and possesing your body, lakes of fire that a wonderfull loving superpower barbeques his people in for the sin of not believing in him when he won't show himself?

How much more ridiculous can we be as a species?

[GregFL]

Also, Scott, I laid down this gauntlet early in this conversation:


"Okay, gather around and take a lesson in basic logic. Just because a story is written "coincides" with certain historical events does NOT validate the story.

It is like saying "escape from New York" is a true story because we can verify there is a place called New York.

None of the supernatural bullshit in the bible is historically relevant. None of it. I challenge you to produce one supernatural story that can be verified. I also challenge you to produce one document, written during the time of christs supposed life, that mentions him."

If I am so full of it, you should be able to rise easily to this challenge. No one has.

Yawn......

[Cayo Hueso]

I just talked to a friend of mine who just saw the movie and is a true believer. She said that one of the biggest things she got out of the movie is how far away organized religion of ALL denominations is from Jesus' original teachings.  Hell, I've been trying to tell her for years that organized religion is the root of all evil.

Like I said before, I would be great to be able to believe all of this...I've gotten a lot out of this discussion.  Nothing that has convinced me yet, guess the scientist/skeptical side of me is winning at the moment.

When we are pleading with foreign governments to stop the flow of cocaine, it is the height of hypocrisy for the US to export tobacco.  Years from now, our nation will look back on this application of free trade policy and find it scandalous.

1989 testimony before the US Trade Representative,September 1989
--Surgeon General, Everett Koop

[taureana]

On 2004-02-28 23:21:00, animals all of us wrote:

"Dear Scott,






Consider that King James, you probably have a king james bible like most do, at least somewhere nearby you might.  King James altered the bible, and so did many other kings before and after him.  Popes altered the bible to fit the needs of their holy wars.


Kings, popes, and those with the money and books and knowledge held the sway on everything and everyone below them.


I mean to say, however, that inasmuch as I believe in a Jesus and the holy trinity, I also believe that the ability to alter or retranslate stories in this realm are too possible to deny just the same as I am certain I get hungry throughout my day.


"

This is so true.  We cannot rely on the King James Version of the Bible as a basis for belief.  The translation that I use has been translated to English direclty from the original writings.  And in order to get a correct translation, one must not only translate word for word, but also look at the context of the words and the meanings behind what is being said.  

For instance, in our language we have the word "love".  I love my children differently than the way that I love my husband.  I have a love for mankind in general which keeps me from killing people and just being an outright tyrant.  I love my friends differently than any of these.  In the Greek scriptures, there are 3 different words for love.  Agape, philia and eros.  Agape is love governed by principle, or knowing the difference between good and bad.  So agape is the love that I have for manking.  It rules my conscience, so to speak.  This is the kind of love that Jesus talked about when he said to love your enemies.  (Mt. 5:44)  Philia would be the love that I have for my close friends and family members that is not sexual in nature.  It would include a personal attachment to them that is sentimental in nature.  (James Strong?s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, in its Greek dictionary (1890, pp. 75, 76)  And eros is the love between the sexes, a romantic type of love based on sexual attraction.

But you confuse me Animals, because you discredit some of the translators but then believe in the Trinity.  A Protestant publication states: ?The word Trinity is not found in the Bible . . . It did not find a place formally in the theology of the church till the 4th century.? (The Illustrated Bible Dictionary) And a Catholic authority says that the Trinity ?is not . . . directly and immediately [the] word of God.??New Catholic Encyclopedia.

The Catholic Encyclopedia also comments: ?In Scripture there is as yet no single term by which the Three Divine Persons are denoted together. The word tri´as (of which the Latin trinitas is a translation) is first found in Theophilus of Antioch about A. D. 180. . . . Shortly afterwards it appears in its Latin form of trinitas in Tertullian.?

However, this is no proof in itself that Tertullian taught the Trinity. The Catholic work Trinitas?A Theological Encyclopedia of the Holy Trinity, for example, notes that some of Tertullian?s words were later used by others to describe the Trinity. Then it cautions: ?But hasty conclusions cannot be drawn from usage, for he does not apply the words to Trinitarian theology.?

[ehm]

On 2004-03-02 06:55:00, taureana wrote:

"

On 2004-02-28 23:21:00, animals all of us wrote:


"Dear Scott,










Consider that King James, you probably have a king james bible like most do, at least somewhere nearby you might.  King James altered the bible, and so did many other kings before and after him.  Popes altered the bible to fit the needs of their holy wars.




Kings, popes, and those with the money and books and knowledge held the sway on everything and everyone below them.




I mean to say, however, that inasmuch as I believe in a Jesus and the holy trinity, I also believe that the ability to alter or retranslate stories in this realm are too possible to deny just the same as I am certain I get hungry throughout my day.




"

This is so true.  We cannot rely on the King James Version of the Bible as a basis for belief.  The translation that I use has been translated to English direclty from the original writings.  And in order to get a correct translation, one must not only translate word for word, but also look at the context of the words and the meanings behind what is being said.  



For instance, in our language we have the word "love".  I love my children differently than the way that I love my husband.  I have a love for mankind in general which keeps me from killing people and just being an outright tyrant.  I love my friends differently than any of these.  In the Greek scriptures, there are 3 different words for love.  Agape, philia and eros.  Agape is love governed by principle, or knowing the difference between good and bad.  So agape is the love that I have for manking.  It rules my conscience, so to speak.  This is the kind of love that Jesus talked about when he said to love your enemies.  (Mt. 5:44)  Philia would be the love that I have for my close friends and family members that is not sexual in nature.  It would include a personal attachment to them that is sentimental in nature.  (James Strong?s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, in its Greek dictionary (1890, pp. 75, 76)  And eros is the love between the sexes, a romantic type of love based on sexual attraction.



But you confuse me Animals, because you discredit some of the translators but then believe in the Trinity.  A Protestant publication states: ?The word Trinity is not found in the Bible . . . It did not find a place formally in the theology of the church till the 4th century.? (The Illustrated Bible Dictionary) And a Catholic authority says that the Trinity ?is not . . . directly and immediately [the] word of God.??New Catholic Encyclopedia.



The Catholic Encyclopedia also comments: ?In Scripture there is as yet no single term by which the Three Divine Persons are denoted together. The word tri´as (of which the Latin trinitas is a translation) is first found in Theophilus of Antioch about A. D. 180. . . . Shortly afterwards it appears in its Latin form of trinitas in Tertullian.?



However, this is no proof in itself that Tertullian taught the Trinity. The Catholic work Trinitas?A Theological Encyclopedia of the Holy Trinity, for example, notes that some of Tertullian?s words were later used by others to describe the Trinity. Then it cautions: ?But hasty conclusions cannot be drawn from usage, for he does not apply the words to Trinitarian theology.?



"

Wow!!! That's very impressive! You have done some studying. I'm most impressed with the way you can express yourself without being rude, tacky, or insulting!  :nworthy:  :wink:

I don't go lookin' for trouble. I just keep a little in a box should someone come by who is.
--Bill Warbis

[Anonymous]

Scott,

I appreciate your heart and note.

we are not to understand all yet...the Bible says that now we see like through a dimly lit mirror but someday we will see him face to face and know. His ways are not are ways but higher than ours..

remember when I hit on the scripture that if you can't control your passion you should get married..how opposite to the world's thinking is that..the world says that if you can't control yourself stay single or you'll hurt your partner..but the Bible says to get a partner and stay committed for life if you need to be physically passionate? Wish Christians could really get ahold of that truth.

Imagine looking down from heaven (as God) to earth and how small cities look- then imagine how small people would look - then imagine how small their brains would look.. to imagine that I would have more insight in my tiny brain than a Mighty, Living God??...the Bible teaches that in the last days they will call good bad and bad good

my heart breaks for all that have endured what I see as Hell on Earth experiences when God given protectors have been convinced not to protect you - and seeming evilness has had free run..in the name of self control-

I believe these days are difficult for children - some of the toughest ever..more influences and we hold them to such high standards..more so then when I was growing up..IMO I can see where it looks like the enemy has used this industry to destroy some of the best and brightest- some that may have had a great calling to make a significant contribution to our world have been taken out in one way or another

yet the enemys purpose has and always will be to do whatever is possible to keep creation from relationshhip with their Heavenly Father- he'll use whatever works but his intent is to keep you distanced from the truth.

The Bible also says that when talking with unbelievers it will be like you talk another language they cannot understand-  yet His heart is for all to know the Love of a Father through him..and there is only one way to the Father- through the Son

I am so anxious to get to heaven yet have to be careful whom I share that with = some have thought me to be suicidal but I actually have envied those elderly that I've prayed for God to recieve.. to be in paradise with Him..I cannot wait yet know that his timing is not mine...

I'm thankful for the peace and hope that you have found - - I pray that your words will have planted new hope and released a spirit of sonship over readers. ... for you that all that the enemy has stolen will be restored in your life.

To be a Christian is to strive to be like Christ and I see that in your posts

Lord bless you

[GregFL]

Goodness, you gotta love these swarmy statements from the post above..


"we are not to understand all yet..."

"now we see like through a dimly lit mirror but someday we will see him face to face and know"

"the scripture that if you can't control your passion you should get married.."

"the Bible teaches that in the last days they will call good bad and bad good"

"my heart breaks for all that have endured what I see as Hell on Earth experiences when God given protectors have been convinced not to protect you - and seeming evilness has had free run..in the name of self control"

"yet the enemys purpose has and always will be to do whatever is possible to keep creation from relationshhip with their Heavenly Father"

and my favorite...

"The Bible also says that when talking with unbelievers it will be like you talk another language they cannot understand"

(direct response...no, I understand the language completely you are speaking, you just aren't speaking with clarity and direction, you are rambling nonsense).

and on and on and on ad nausem...

Dear god (less), can you at least to approach this topic logically and with a sense of the direction of the debate?  We didn't ask for a cryptic lecture on being religiously vague, we asked for your evidence the bible is the word of god, or part two of the debate, actual evidence a god exists or to explain the cruelty, contradictions and scientific inaccuracies in the bible.

Save the vague preaching for those that appreciate that type of thing, please.

[RTP2003]

Greg, I tend to agree with your comments and observations, but to use logic in a debate with someone of a religious persuasion just ain't gonna work.  Ever see those bumper stickers "God said it-I believe it-That settles it"?  That is the mind-set of the people you are debating.  Of course they can't respond to you logically-- it isn't in their nature.  They threw out critical thinking and logic when they decided to bet the farm on some ancient, mistranslated, arbitrarily edited fairy tale.  Trying to get that mind set to respond to a logical, well thought out argument like the one you have set forth is like trying to run Windows XP on a TRS-80-- it ain't gonna work because the software is beyond the capacity of the hardware to handle.

I'm with you, but all you're doing in the end is reinforcing their smug ignorance.  They will pull out little phrases from their book of fables such as the one about "speaking a different language" to convince themselves that they see the "truth" while we ignorant agnostics and atheists remain unwitting tools of the "Enemy".  

I just think you're wasting your time, buddy.

[GregFL]

Nah, I am not wasting my time. This has taken very little time and thought. The principles of critical thinking are easy to translate to writing, and it is downright fun watching people scramble to justify the silly writings (giants, gods having sex with women, world floods that never occured, etc, etc) and belittle those who dare bring into question their closely held beliefs, that I might add, they for the  most part have never critically explored.

Now, the religious people who are sincere and can answer a question with "I don't know" or "I just feel it in my heart" or other such sincere emotional responses, well these people get all my respect.

Those that start by attacking, claiming they are being attacked, answer with idiotic phrases like "belive in believing"  or "to those that are not religious it is like we are speaking a language they can't understand", well, these people deserve to hear a bit of logic and reasoning injected into their twisted thinking.

Perhaps they will shut their ears and pray it away, but I like this conversation. There are all elements of humanity and science wrapped up in one little topic, and it is fun.

[Anonymous]

I'm not a bible scholar or a religious zealot, but I think the "flood" is a myth/tradition that is in lot of different religions, some in fact many older than christianity.   Same thing with the scape goat thing of Jesus.   I think I remember this stuff from religion classes in my college days.