Christianity?
Offline I, being a faithful Christian, have encountered God many times in my life. At first I was a non believer, I actually hated God. I hated the thought of God and all Christians. I mean, I saw Christians as stubborn people who wouldn't give up, and when I asked them about God, they would only reply to me, because the bible says so.
Well that is true, because in the bible, in Romans 1:17 it states, Christians do not live by evidence, but by faith. So there is no evidence
of God, and yes there is evolution, but there is nowhere in the bible anything about evolution. For it clearly states that God created Adam and Eve. Who did not have a million kids, but had two children, Cain and Abel. They then had kids and finally during one generation, when God led his people to the tower of babel, and people began to worship idols, he changed their language.
He made people speak spanish, hebrew, greek, chinese, all languages, which proves the diversity we have today.
I later became a Christian when my father had problems with his appedix and was emmited to the emergency room. He later had to have surgery and every single day, the nurses had to clean out the wound. This was back in Malaysia where their hospitals weren't the best. They did not use any medication on him when they cleansed the wounds. EVery single day he was in extreme pain when they cleaned out his wound with a cotton ball with no medication. He clung on to the metal bars on the windows when the performed it.
Me and my mother were devasted at what was happening, and when the doctors told us that the infection had spread down to his lower body, and they might have to perform more surgery, we couldn't handle this anymore.
A Christian friend told us to pray but my mother refused, saying she prayed before and she never saw it worked. But I decided that it was worth a try. I mean what could I lose? So I prayed for him and the next day, he called us and said he had no pain! I was overwhelmed. I didn't tell anyone about this though. The next day I forgot to pray and when my dad called, he said he was in extreme pain again and i felt guilty. I prayed again in this manner:
Dear God,
If you are really there, please help him because he hurts everyday. Please do something to help him and bring him back soon.
I did not know how to pray at that time, and when i prayed, the next day he had no pain and the doctors said that they did not have to perform surgery! I was overjoyed.
That was how I became closer to God. You see, Christianity is not about believing in God, or in Hell and Heaven, its about actually having a relationship with Him. Everyday in the morning, I will spend 5 minutes before breakfest, just talking to him. I closed my eyes and just talked, about anything and everything. I talk about my friends, my enemies, my school work, my teachers. Just a normal conversation, which ends in Amen.
A lot of these prayers were answered the same day or the following day. But also, a lot took time for the answer to become clear. Prayers are never not answered, its just sometimes God can't allow things you pray for to happen.
God's purpose in life for us is to worship Him and tell others about Him. Spread the gospel. For he gave us free will and wanted us to love Him. Why do you think he gave Adam and Even freewill? To have minds of their owns? Why didn't He just command them to love him. Well, It's like having a dog. Would you like a real dog to love you with true love, or you building a robotic dog, and controlling his feelings to love you. It's just not the same.
And when Satan decieved Adam and Eve to eat from the forbidden tree, like Satan decieves us everyday, to steal, to lie, to cheat. And when they sinned, God banished them from his garden because God is so holy, he cannot have sin near him. But, later, since God loved us so much, he sent his one in beloved son, Jesus Christ down to earth. Because at that time before Jesus, people died and went to hell for they couldn't live with God for their sin. So Jesus came down and died for us, and ressurected again after 3 days.
When Jesus Christ bled his holy blood because He loved us, He cleansed our sins and gave us salvation, and an option of eternal life, now since through Jesus Christ, we have a chance of living with God once again. But, it's entirely up to you to accept his gracious gift. A lot of people choose to fight this gift because of stubborness, because of not enough evidence, and many other reasons. Some people make their own religions to satisfy themselves because a lot of people just can't accept facts without seeing it. But thats what Christianity is all about. It's about faith. Believing without seeing.
But how do you accept God's Salvation? God's gift to us through his Son Jesus Christ? It's easy. Just sit down, pray to God and confess that you are a sinner. Ask him to forgive you and that you believe that he sent Jesus as your Savior because he loves you.
You never know when you'll leave this earth. For earth is just a preperation for our real life. Our life after death on earth. Either in Heaven with God our Father, or in Hell. You may die this week, and if you haven't truly accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, then there will be no second chance.
In the Bible, God states that Jesus will be coming back one day, and all the followers who have passed away, will rise and stand with Him, and all the believers who are still on earth, will go up with him to heaven. God will show no mercy to the non-believers, or satinists after Jesus has come, and they will spend eternity in fiery Hell.
I am only 13 years old and not as knowledgable about the Holy Bible but I plan to learn more.
For God so loves the world, that he gave his one and only begotten son...and whoever believes in Him, shall have eternal life
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ummmm Hahahahahahahahhahahaha!
Faith is believing in things without evidence - completely irrational. Or, as Mark Twain said "Faith is believing in that which I know ain't so". Whoever wrote the utterly absurd story of the tower of Babel had no understanding of how languages develop. When prayer seems to "work" it's merely a coincidence. Don't you think the majority of people in New Orleans were praying while Katrina was coming? Look how well that worked!
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
Do you really have a relationship with "Him" or is it an ideal in your head you want to believe? When you pray to "Him", what is your mental image? Are you really praying to "Him" or talking to yourself about this unknown ideal you want to believe?
Most of us atheists don't believe Jesus ever existed, and find the idea of God sacraficing himself to himself in order to set aside a rule that he made (when an all powerful God would easily be able to forgive unconditionally) completely absurd. Prayer is simply wishful thinking. Try reading the Bible sometime - as a whole it is on the same moral level as Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries.
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
Are you actually saying everyone went to hell before jesus?
Wouldn't that make god supremely immoral? Of course a reading of the OT makes it obvious the Judeo-Christian God is extremely immoral by any sane measurement.
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
I don't think you can hate something if you thought it didn't exists, but I guess you can hate the idea and christians for buging you.
You just said you have no reason to believe and the creations story has a flaw.
You just said there are so many languages because god got mad at people who were building.
That is a nice story, but have you considered that maybe he got pain killers or other things like that?
Ok christianity isn't about believing in anything, I have heard different, but ok.
For those who don't pray they leave out the amen and call it thinking and don't feel they must do it at a certain time or limited to a certain time.
Do you know why some people think all that zodiac stuff really works?
They read it an then make it happen themself or connect to something else that would have happened anyway. Couldn't that be what is happening here? Also you just said it always doesn't happen doesn't seem all that valied of an argument.
Where does it say they have freewill?
I think other people have covered these topics, I don't need add to them.
Yup I already know about that stuff, however there are a lot of other ways to go about it.
Yes I'm sure everyone here has already heard this things before, it didn't do anything to us then it won't do anything to us now.
I suggest you post at http://www.freethinkingteens.com/ from now on as that is for younger people.
I also suggest you read the things people are posting and talking about there.
And indeed they do. As do Moslems, Hindus and so many others. How eager they are to kill for their beliefs! And why should they not be, given the generous posthumous rewards in Paradise the clergy has promised them.
We are freethinkers, and we base our beliefs not on faith but on evidence. Why? Because faith is arbitrary. It can lead a man to believe in any absurdity, and it often does. It takes no faith to believe that which is true; one only needs faith to believe that which is false.
Hi, azn, who gave your father his horrible appendix problem and shoddy medical care?
Are you saying God tortured your father in order to bring you to HIm? And now you worship this monster? Have you ever heard of the hostage phenomena called "Stockholm Syndrome"? Couldn't a LOVING God find an easier way, without torturing your dad?
Seriously, God gave your dad a horrible affliction, made him suffer horribly, then magically made him better. Yeah God? Seriously? You praise God for fucking with you and your dad like that?
If I held a gun to your head and beat you every day for a month, then let you go, would you worship me?
What if your dad died -would you have been a Satan worshipper instead?
Think about this situation logically.
How many NFL wide recievers BLAME God when then drop a pass in the end zone?
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
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Oh, and it was Satan who deceived A&E? Who created Satan? Who put the serpent in the Garden?
God did.
Not only that God rigged it so that most of humanity would wind up in hell and while the few make it to heaven. God loves everyone, even the ones he sends to hell. No esacping Gods perfect love...
http://web.biblebrowser.com/romans/9-1.htm
Romans 9:1-24
I tell the truth in Christ. I am not lying, my conscience testifying with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers' sake, my relatives according to the flesh,
who are Israelites; whose is the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service, and the promises;of whom are the fathers, and from whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God, blessed forever. Amen. But it is not as though the word of God has come to nothing. For they are not all Israel, that are of Israel. Neither, because they are Abraham's seed, are they all children. But, "In Isaac will your seed be called."That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as a seed.For this is a word of promise, "At the appointed time I will come, and Sarah will have a son."
Not only so, but Rebecca also conceived by one, by our father Isaac.
For being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls, it was said to her, "The elder will serve the younger."Even as it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? May it never be! For he said to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I caused you to be raised up, that I might show in you my power, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." So then, he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires. You will say then to me, "Why does he still find fault? For who withstands his will?" But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed ask him who formed it, "Why did you make me like this?"
Or hasn't the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel for honor, and another for dishonor?
What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath made for destruction,
and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, us, whom he also called,..
I liked when Robert Ingersoll mentioned some of the really bad things in the Bible and said "If this is what you get from a book inspired by a perect God, what would you expect from a book inspired by the devil?"
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
Yea. I never really read the bible a lot when I was a Christian. Just a little from the New Testament that our pastor gave me.
I never read Robert Ingersoll yet.
I always find it odd that when a faithsufferer says that they did not believe in god that they go under the presupusition that there is a god. When I went to the Christian club and asked them what their definition of faith was, three told me that they did not believe in a god wile at the same time making the presususition that there was just like the azn wrote.
We may want to get these people make the a presupusition in their minds that there is no sush thing. Maybe if they entertain this in their minds things will follow.
Well, of course you are as there is no other kind. A rational Christian is an oxymoron.
Yes, Pshychiatric hospitals are full of people that have personal relationships with voices and visions in their head. So what?
I don't hate make-believe, but I do get irritated with adults that insist their make-believe friend is real, especially when they offer "proof" like showing or quoting a book authored by unknown writers from long ago.
At least you got that right!
With proof like that how can I argue with you?
The languages we speek today were not spoken during ancient times. Like evolution of biological things, languages evolve too.
How about your mind? Look up Pascal's Wager.
Believing that something you think causes (or prevents) events to occur is called magical thinking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking
Events like this occur everyday in the hospital. Prayer or no prayer;
You must not be famalir with the prayer study:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/31/news/pray.php
"Amen", the magic word that make the prayer work I suppose.
There are limits on God's power?
This makes God a petty narcissistic:
http://www.mentalhealth.com/dis/p20-pe07.html
I thought he commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? If you don't have this knowledge you don't have free will.
See above.
So God sent his son to die and be resurrected three days late? Not much of a sacrifice! Why couldn't he just forgive them? Why the need for blood sacrifice?
Yes, that is what faith is, believing in something with no or even contrary evidence. If God was so great, why can't he give me some way to find him that works for me? Doesn't he know that I will only accecpt valid proof! He made me (according to you) the way I am and then wants me to accecpt the one method I find invalid?
If one is to give up on evidence and rely on faith, which faith should I choose? Islamism, Mormonism, Hinduism, etc.
How can I pray to something I don't believe is real? What a cruel God!
See above.
Jesus said that he was coming baclk before all those currently living passed away! Do you believe that some of those that heard this are still alive?
Matthew 16:28 “There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
Son, are you in the right place!
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. - Seneca
My question, suppose someone you love is going
to be burned alive forever by Jesus, one of your
loved ones, a family member, your flesh and blood,
is going to be burned alive by God?
You are going to love that God?
Has not the religion gained an unearthly power
over you, if a made up God from some book
is so much more important than your family,
that you let God burn someone alive forever
and then you still love that God?