Views on Christianity

talk random
21

i can only look at the bible as being metaphorical. as such, there are some good stories and good lessons in there. but since it’s so open to interpretation, you can take any part of it and say, “it means…” to suit your own agenda.

not just the bible. pretty much any scripture has this problem. if you are a peaceful muslim, you can dig up parts of the quran that say killing a man is the worst crime. but if you are into killing, you can dig up the parts that say that if you kill such and such, you will go straight to heaven.

22

*Originally posted by NaliWarCowZ *
How did Moses spread the sea? Is it metaphorical or what
Now this is interesting. The problem is that the Christian Church has never been clear about that. On one side, they teach that God created the World in 6 days 5000 years ago, and a whole bunch of stupid fundamentalists believe it so hard that they’d probably kill anyone who thinks otherwise.

And on the other side, when you ask them how they account for the fact that we found million-year-old life forms, they say “Hey, come on, it’s metaphorical”.

:-\

Edit: crosspost, Bit

23

yeah, time is a big problem in the bible. all this stuff like “when moses was 600 years old…”

i remember asking the nuns about that when i was young. there were two possible answers - people lived longer then, or a “year” wasn’t a year. most went with the latter. so why do they call it a year if it’s not a year???

24

Well a “year” is defined as one revolution of the world around the earth. So before God created the earth, there really wasn’t a “year” (well human/earth-wise at least).

Personally I think people should find their own beliefs and not be force fed to believe certain views about a religion or be kicked out or ridiculed for it. If someone believes there is a God, but Jesus wasn’t his son, let them believe that. If someone wants to believe there is no God, they can believe that. But some denominations of Christianity (Southern Baptist, 90% of Alabama) insult other religions and try to force people to believe what they do. BTW, they are SOUTHERN Baptist because they broke from Baptists since they officially felt (until like 5 years ago) that slavery was all right.

25

but i’m kind of assuming moses and noah and all those guys existed after the earth was created, so there should have been years by then. :slight_smile: there are refs in the bible about them living to multiple hundreds of years. maybe they were just running on a different frame rate :slight_smile:

26

There is a joke in Red Dwarf…

“i’ve figured out how to serve all 24 months of your jail term in just 14 weeks!”

“All you have to do, is become a dog.”

Rev

27

My views… hmmm…

I forget what my beliefs would be called. If I am remembering correctly I am a trancendentalist. Or something along those lines.

But anywho… I don’t believe in a God. I believe every living thing on this earth is here to allow other living things to survive. People die, get buried, become plant fertilizer for plants to grow, plants feeds bugs and animals, animals feed on bugs and plants, etc, etc all down the line and it starts all over again.

My beliefs come from a lot of native american beliefs because of my mom.

The bible was too “Shady” for me, nothing ever made any sense in it. Not to mention, if you ever sit in the back of a church and watch, it is like a cult. 1 guy in the front talking and when he is done you have a whole crowd of people saying the same thing at the same time, like zombies. And then you sing songs…

28

Oofta… ok! I got a big response, let’s hope I can organize it.

*Originally posted by Phil Jayhan *
“Book em Danno” (what show is this from? can ya name it?)

Comeon now… where you think someone GOT the idea to call me that! It’s ok… i love hawaii anyways.:smirk:

SureShot
I feel that if you live your life with the 10 comandments in mind you should have a pretty good one and make some friends along the way

That is an interesting point made. Why? I don’t think the 10 commandments have any importance in this society. I mean, you say that you try and life your life with the 10 commandments in mind, I would love for you to, WITHOUT CHEATING, list the 10 commandments in order. And not “ummm… don’t watch american idol… oh yeah! And don’t worship them”. With such a great number of people quoting that we need them , and not able to even recite them themselves, they have no importance in this society. And Jesus said :

Matt 22:36-39
36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"

37Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All The Law and the Prophets hang on these 2 commandments’

*Originally posted by Phil Jayhan *

Did Adam & Eve have belly buttons? If yes, why?
**

No. How could they. Easy question.

When Adam & Eve were expelled from the garden, they met other people… who were they?

I would love to know where in the bible it says “they met other people”. I don’t recall they were walking around and then turned around and hit someone unexpectedly.

Adam & Eve had 2 children, Cane & Able. How did they propogate the species? The sons had to be doin Mom… So incest is okay at one time…

They didn’t have sex with Eve… lol. Yes they did have 2 sons. But you do not think that they had more children before or after them? Adam lived for 900 years. You don’t think that during that time that he would have more children with Eve? After man’s fall, God tells to Eve that he will “increase her pain in childbirth”. This was before ANY record of Cain or Abel. Why would God have said “increased pain in childbirth”. If she didn’t have any original “childbirthing” ? Other children came out of Adam & Eve.
Is incest ok? No. But ‘ok’ is thrown out the window after the fall of man. Everything is unclean to God and man now does what he feels like. They had never been told that it was ‘wrong’ to sleep with your family, so why would they think it was… whether or not it was against God.

  • Originally posted by ilyaslamasse*
    And on the other side, when you ask them how they account for the fact that we found million-year-old life forms, they say “Hey, come on, it’s metaphorical”.

I would like to know what ‘million-year-old’ life forms have been found by NOT using carbon dating. And even the ones that had carbon dating used, how many of them had carbon dated it … TWICE and had the same result? There is not a single instance of either of these I can say this with authority because carbon dating is an inaccurate guessing measurement. If you want more proof onto why carbon dating is terrible means for dating things, let me know, i’ll post another huge essay on it… WITH REFRENCES!!!
And the earth is roughly around 11,000-13,000 years old. :slight_smile:

Originally posted by bit-101
yeah, time is a big problem in the bible. all this stuff like “when moses was 600 years old…”

I don’t see what the problem is. People’s lifespans are getting shorter and shorter now. Heck even since when my grandparents were kids, seeing THEIR grandparents, living to 100+ as the norm. Now we are lucky to see the majority of our ‘elderly’ goin past 75 or 80.
The only reason that a ‘year’ was not a year, by our terms, is that the Orthodox Jewish calander is not the same amount of days, nor does it keep time the same way we do. Either way though, those nuns had a fluxuiating faith… definitly not good.

29

NaliWarCowZ

…I don’t believe that God covered the earth in water, because where did the water come from and go?
…Plus when the water went back down, all the trees and everything would be dead
…How did Moses spread the sea? Is it metaphorical or what?
…I don’t understand why God was willing to do all that magical stuff back then but hasn’t done anything like that in the past 2000 years when there was a real way to record it down and prove it
…I’m not going to go into great detail, but I don’t believe in a lot of the stuff in the Old Testament because some of it is so old that I don’t know who wrote about it. Like who wrote about Adam and Eve?

You don’t know how much water there truly is on earth. There is ten times more water than there is land above sea land. Most of the earth’s mountains consist of tipped and buckled sedimentary layers. Since these sediments were initally laid down through water as nearly horizontal layers, the mountains have been pushed up after the sediments were deposited*

If these mountains were again flattened out while the ocean basins were allowed to rise in compensation for this downward flow of mass, the oceans would again flood the entire earth.

God covered the entire earth with water. If not, how do you explain that every major mountain range contains fossilized sea life? On top of that, how do you explain the Mid-Oceanic Ridge?

Oh yeah… AND The sources of the water are given in Genesis 7:11 as “the fountains of the great deep” so it’s safe to say they went back into the same place they came from.

…Plus when the water went back down, all the trees and everything would be dead

Many terrestrial seeds can survive long periods of soaking in various concentrations of salt water.[1] Indeed, salt water impedes the germination of some species so that the seed lasts better in salt water than fresh water.

Other plants could have survived in floating vegetation masses, or on pumice from the volcanic activity. Pieces of many plants are still capable of asexual sprouting.

Many plants could have survived as planned food stores on the ark, or accidental inclusions in such food stores (Genesis 6:21).

Many seeds have devices for attaching themselves to animals, and some could have survived the flood by this means. Others could have survived in the stomachs of the bloated, floating carcasses of dead herbivores.

The olive leaf brought back to Noah by the dove (Genesis 8:11) shows that plants were regenerating well before Noah and company left the ark.

…I don’t understand why God was willing to do all that magical stuff back then but hasn’t done anything like that in the past 2000 years when there was a real way to record it down and prove it

It ALMOST sounds like you aren’t wanting to look. It’s like saying “show me a sign that you do exist God… ANYTHING” while having your hands over your eyes. Have you read the New Testament? That’s a very GREATLY documented piece of manuscripts that have miracles and the sort that you say you want proof for. It just depends on what you REALLY want to see. If you don’t want to see the blatent proof, no matter what I say, you will shut your eyes from it.

…I’m not going to go into great detail, but I don’t believe in a lot of the stuff in the Old Testament because some of it is so old that I don’t know who wrote about it. Like who wrote about Adam and Eve?

What great detail won’t you go into? You pretty much summed it up. Anyways, please DO go into some more detail, elaborate on your statement. I don’t understand, honestly, what you won’t go into great detail about. Moses was the one who wrote most of the Old Testament. He was not there , obviously, when things happened. God wanted to let them know where they came from, heritage, what they had to go through, and to know Him. Moses recorded it about Adam & Eve. Now that you know about it, why are you not wanting to believe it because it is old? I mean, that should make you believe in it! It has stood the test of time!

30

Danno:

As with most theologians, you speak in circular reasoning. If the world was covered in water, how could a gull bring a fig branch to the ark? Where did that bird wait out the storm that flooded the entire globe for over a month?

The Continental Drift Theory gives all the explainations of why sea fossils are found on mountain tops, and how sedimentary rock gets so far above sea level, and why we have the Oceanic Trenches.

As far as “miracles” please show 1 verified (by someone other than the Church) miracle which has happened in the last 2000 years.

The biggest problem with religeon is that it requires faith to work. Therefore you have a catch-22, in that if you don’t have faith that God exists, and that you want some sort of proof, then you are just close minded, and aren’t willing to “look” at the obviously correct answer.

Rev

31

lostinbeta1 guy in the front talking and when he is done you have a whole crowd of people saying the same thing at the same time, like zombies. And then you sing songs…

Aw… dont’ try a Catholic church next time! :beam:

32

Ah… but not as most theologians… as most people. For it isn’t just me who speaks with circular reasoning. As it can be taken as that, just as some other points can be taken as circular reasoning as well ( i know, i’m startin to draw biiiiiig circles… my EXACT POINT!!!) lol… i’m tired… i’ve been up for 36 hours straight, so excuse the brief moment of insanity.

ANYWAYS…Where could the bird have been? Well… let’s see. On top of a tree floating, inside a tree, inside the ark, on top of the ark, in a nest (you see how floatable those are!?).

33

Hey Danno,

[size=1]::Gets into off topic mode::[/size]

What part of Arizona are you from, your age, you go to school?

Sorry, I just never have seen anyone here from Arizona!

34

floatable in a storm that lasted 40 days, flooded the world, and killed everything else on the planet… except Noah, his ark, his family, and the remainders of the animals…

Now lets take a look at that… Did God make it so none of the animals had to deficate? How did they store enough food to feed that many animals? How did the populations of the world’s animals all sprout up from a very shallow gene pool?

In order to support your arguments, one has to believe that the Bible is a work of non-fiction. One also has to believe that the King James Version is a correct translation. Therein lies the rub.

Rev

35

I believe in God, I just don’t believe in most of the Old Testament. I just don’t see how I could believe in something with no scientific proof (it actually goes against ALL science) where one man said he heard something from God. I could have said I was sent by God and split the Sea just as easily as Moses did.

Ok, so the world was about how old, 8,000 years ago, the world was totally flooded. Then all of a sudden the water goes below the land masses we now know. Where did the water go that had been above the land?

What is wrong with Carbon dating? It simply takes the half-life of Carbon (a few million years) and finds how much is left. Also, where did the dinosaur bones come from? Did Moses put them there also?

How do we have pine trees? If you believe that we just appeared here when God created man, then how did pine trees survive the flooding? They can’t, so they had to EVOLVE from the other trees. How did he fit arctic bears on the arc, there aren’t any polar bears in the middle east.

I’m no scholar on the bible (especially old testament because i don’t believe in about 99.9% of it), but heres some of the stuff I disagree with:
God killed 1 year old babies because they were the first born child of someone.
People can wander a desert for 40 years (and end up in the one place in a 7,000 mile radius without oil :)).
God created the world in 7 days.

Much of it seems like a way for primitive man to show how something exists. Such as the rainbow symbolizing how God will never flood the world again.
Bad things happen because we ate off the forbidden tree.

36

One also has to believe that the King James Version is a correct translation. Therein lies the rub.

why’s that? we have the manuscripts that even the King James used to get their bible. We don’t just keep revising the King James version, we go back to our original manuscripts.

i’m gettin to the radio carbon dating in a second there CowZ…:sigh:

37

*Originally posted by dan4885 *
**Hey Danno,

[size=1]::Gets into off topic mode::[/size]

What part of Arizona are you from, your age, you go to school?

Sorry, I just never have seen anyone here from Arizona! **

Am I just ignored? :sigh:

38

Hola Compadre!

I’m from Phoenix, AZ. I am 20. I like long walks on the beach… oh wait. I have a wooonderful girlfriend and I plan to attend the rest of my college years in California. I go to a community college for the first 2 years, and then 4 more in california !!! A WAHOO!!!

So yeah… i’m poor white trash… LOVE EVERY SECOND! :crazy:

39

looks up at Dan4885’s responses

■■■■.

He has thought long and hard about this. I bet that isnt the first time he answered most of those questions :slight_smile:

Good work…

40

SureShot… huh?

That made no sense to me!

Dan349398479384 I didn’t ignore you, I just didn’t see your post till after I posted a reply!