Church: A Holy Place?

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Nov 13, 2013
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#1
im a christian myself, my country is one of the oldest christian countries, i know what i´m talkin about. i (used to) often go to church, pray, light up a candle, all that but the more i prayed the worse it got, can you get it?i´m not asking god for stuff like money & candy, not material things but serious things in life unlike the others, like i said, been a christian since birth, baptized, i´ve read the bible i know the know-how of religion but the more i read about religion, philosophy & occult, the more i get convinced that there´s much bigger and deeper meaning to it all, not to mention that bible is a metaphorical doctrine which was edited & manipulated as "they" wanted, they banned certain testaments by likes of thomas, maria Magdalena, judas,etc. there are more scripts like the nag-hamadi qumran-scrolls (dead sea scrolls), the stuff gnostics preached about demiurge = the evil, genocidal, power-crazed control freak god (god of old testament), then we have the creator of the universe & jesus. it´s "just" a theory but the gnostics were persued since the 1st (!) century. plus the "church" manipulated many things to their benefit, not to mention things like inquisition, accepting indulgence, rejecting/banning reincarnation, declaring any occult phenom as "evil" / "devilish", they just want you to follow blindly and give them money, church (politics) is all about mass control & brainwashing. plus i don´t really buy the image that church-supporters/goers paint of themselves, believe me, parishioners are no saints, they just do it for the image but deep in their heart they are as selfish, greedy, jealous, ignorant & simply evil as the next man, plus almost all pastors, popes,etc. are either ex-convicts, drug-addicts, corrupted or/and informants, they fact that they fled (f-l-e-d) to church to hide their true self doesn´t make them closer to god then i am. i can connect with god without (any) bearded ignorant hillbillies, remember when jesus attacked the rabbis of jerusalem?jesus himself said that when we want to conversate we should/could go to quiet place and pray with our hearts for forgiveness and glory of his majesty.i (used to) love god, been there, done that. I dont accept, respect & acknowledge the curch politics, just another way of making money off sheep.yes sheep.esp. in my country and i think all religions that we know are man made, to controll masses. I dont need no pastor or whoever to connect n communicate with god. Half of these people u see n the church on their knees prayin for forgiveness and shed crocodile tears are just zombies who have been sort of brainwashed n act n talk what them the religious leader says, damn, they didnt even read bible like this, im not generalizing but most of them oh so holy n innocent gods lambs. Think about egyptian n sumerian mythology, compare stuff n u will see. Think about the archeological finds they discover, they wont tell you the truth. Thiis stuff is way more deep n hard comprehend for our minds.where was jesus brtween his 12th n 30th years of his life?what about the gnostic apocryphs they found?what about scrolls of qumran?why is chrch banning n hiding facts?so indulgency was accepted but reincarnation, ufo n magic is satanic?please, they just want u to follow blind, maybe im gods lamb because he is g o d but a pastor or whoever never be an authority for me, on any level.
 
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BO$$

Sicc OG
Mar 15, 2011
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#2
Born n raised in the states, but my parents are foreigners from a Catholic country n they brought me up in that. I have started to think a lot like you more recently, n I feel enlightened. Now I crave to know more n more.
 
Nov 13, 2013
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#3
Born n raised in the states, but my parents are foreigners from a Catholic country n they brought me up in that. I have started to think a lot like you more recently, n I feel enlightened. Now I crave to know more n more.
the more you read the more you understand that it´s way deeper than you think.

i became sorta anti-ism to everything.

it´s a deep game and the manipulation & profit is the key.

the real truth is hidden because if we knew the truth, how much of us could handle it?
 
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May 7, 2013
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#5
church holy place? no

powerful place? yes

The spell: p-o-w-e-r
[pou-er]
noun
1. ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something.

2. political or national strength: the balance of power in Europe.

3. great or marked ability to do or act; strength; might; force.

4. the possession of control or command over others; authority; ascendancy: power over men's minds.

5. political ascendancy or control in the government of a country, state, etc.: They attained power by overthrowing the legal government.

6. legal ability, capacity, or authority: the power of attorney.

7. delegated authority; authority granted to a person or persons in a particular office or capacity: the powers of the president.

verb (used with object)

22. to give power to; make powerful:

23. to inspire; spur; sustain:

29. Informal. expressing or exerting power; involving or characteristic of those having authority or influence, as in power lunch; power couple; power suit.

Idioms
32. the powers that be, those in supreme command; the authorities: The decision is in the hands of the powers that be.
 
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May 7, 2013
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#10
christ´s teachings, morals as philosophy = yes
church & traditions = bullcrap
So someone who never existed, allegedly had teachings that you follow, and that makes you a christian?

Let me rephrase my initial question. What makes you a Christian?

What are the rules to being a Christian?

Can you lose membership to your Christian club?
 
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Coach E. No

Jesus es Numero Uno
Mar 30, 2013
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#11
This thread, albeit short, is hard to follow lol

I am a Christian, and not only that, but I strive to be like Paul would often begin his epistles, a bondservant of Christ. I spend a great deal of time studying the Bible and the more I have studied, the more questions I have, but my questions are honestly nothing like the OP is asking. My questions honestly just cause me to dig deeper into the Bible. I've heard a lot of arguments, heard a lot of apologist's responses, had deep theological discussions, criticized the way things are done in today's church and so on. I think a lot of churches aren't practicing what they preach and are peddling a false gospel, which is really no gospel at all and those people should be accursed according to the Bible.

I've been a Christian for 15+ years and honestly I probably had the most spiritual growth in the last 3 years or so. I listen to sermons usually 5 days per week, study quite a bit outside of that, and have spent countless hours reading or studying the Bible including preparing sermons and honestly, feel like there is still more than a lifetime of learning I could do and not know enough. One of the best and most fruitful prayers I've learned to do is that before studying the Bible, is to ask God to show to you what He would want you to learn and take from it. There is a lot of corruption out there, and the Bible translations are not perfect, but the teachings are perfect. Don't isolate one section of Scripture, but look at the entire context of the Bible because it paints a massive picture if you take the entirety of Scripture into consideration and it will make a lot more sense. You can read it all the way through in a month's time and think you have it, but read it again and will pick up stuff you missed every single time.
 
May 7, 2013
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#13
Don't isolate one section of Scripture, but look at the entire context of the Bible because it paints a massive picture if you take the entirety of Scripture into consideration and it will make a lot more sense. You can read it all the way through in a month's time and think you have it, but read it again and will pick up stuff you missed every single time.
This is the same mistake so many Christians and Jews make when speaking of the Koran in a negative light. Truth is taking things out of context is a human condition- it is quite easy to let opinion guide thought. At the end of the day (and often most opposite), an individuals opinion is all that really matters- you must live with yourself the rest of your life. I don't love a mystery god, and to keep it real, you must love yourself first (you must live with yourself the rest of your life) before loving anyone or anything, or your intent is not pure.
 

Coach E. No

Jesus es Numero Uno
Mar 30, 2013
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#15
This is the same mistake so many Christians and Jews make when speaking of the Koran in a negative light. Truth is taking things out of context is a human condition- it is quite easy to let opinion guide thought. At the end of the day (and often most opposite), an individuals opinion is all that really matters- you must live with yourself the rest of your life. I don't love a mystery god, and to keep it real, you must love yourself first (you must live with yourself the rest of your life) before loving anyone or anything, or your intent is not pure.
The most knowledgeable man I've met in regards to the Qu'ran was a former Muslim from Egypt who converted to Christianity and he has been an extremely effective evangelist because he knew the Qu'ran so well, that he was able to compare and contrast the attributes of God in both of the texts and the overwhelming difference was that allah is not a loving god, or one who wanted a relationship with his people whereas the God of the Bible is love and loved His people so much that He sent His Son to die in our place.

I don't agree that someone is guilty of eisegesis as a result of a human condition, but merely one of being uneducated or having ulterior motives.

The reason why Christianity (and to some extent the other Abrahamic faiths) disagree with your last point, is because we are told to focus on the eternal things and not on the temporal. To say that you have to live with you for the rest of your life and that's all that matters is shortsighted in relation to eternity. If you don't believe in eternal life, heaven, etc..., I understand, I'm just saying that is why people of a different faith may not agree. That's why Jesus said "what would it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" Your soul last forever, your life here does not. But I do agree, that you do have to live with the decisions you'll make for an eternity.
 
Jan 31, 2008
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#16
This thread, albeit short, is hard to follow lol

I am a Christian, and not only that, but I strive to be like Paul would often begin his epistles, a bondservant of Christ. I spend a great deal of time studying the Bible and the more I have studied, the more questions I have, but my questions are honestly nothing like the OP is asking. My questions honestly just cause me to dig deeper into the Bible. I've heard a lot of arguments, heard a lot of apologist's responses, had deep theological discussions, criticized the way things are done in today's church and so on. I think a lot of churches aren't practicing what they preach and are peddling a false gospel, which is really no gospel at all and those people should be accursed according to the Bible.

I've been a Christian for 15+ years and honestly I probably had the most spiritual growth in the last 3 years or so. I listen to sermons usually 5 days per week, study quite a bit outside of that, and have spent countless hours reading or studying the Bible including preparing sermons and honestly, feel like there is still more than a lifetime of learning I could do and not know enough. One of the best and most fruitful prayers I've learned to do is that before studying the Bible, is to ask God to show to you what He would want you to learn and take from it. There is a lot of corruption out there, and the Bible translations are not perfect, but the teachings are perfect. Don't isolate one section of Scripture, but look at the entire context of the Bible because it paints a massive picture if you take the entirety of Scripture into consideration and it will make a lot more sense. You can read it all the way through in a month's time and think you have it, but read it again and will pick up stuff you missed every single time.
 
May 7, 2013
13,348
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www.hoescantstopme.biz
#17
Pascal's wager is an argument that asserts that one should believe in God, even if God's existence cannot be proved or disproved through reason.

Blaise Pascal's original wager was as a fairly short paragraph in Pensées amongst several other notes that could be considered "wagers".[1] Its argument is rooted in game theory and that the best course of action is to believe in God regardless of any lack of evidence, because that option gives the biggest potential gains. Pascal's original text is long-winded and written in somewhat convoluted philosophy-speak,[2] but it can be distilled more simply:

If you believe in God and God does exist, you will be rewarded with eternal life in heaven: thus an infinite gain.

If you do not believe in God and God does exist, you will be condemned to remain in hell forever: thus an infinite loss.

If you believe in God and God does not exist, you will not be rewarded: thus a finite loss.

If you do not believe in God and God does not exist, you will not be rewarded, but you have lived your own life: thus a finite gain.

The gains and losses associated to outcomes 3 and 4 can be thought of as the opportunity costs of feigning belief and living in accordance with religious norms, since these are typically more restrictive than secular laws. These costs are finite because of human mortality. Mathematically, a finite gain or loss is negligible compared to an infinite gain or loss as would be incurred during an eternal afterlife. Therefore, Pascal concluded that it was a much better choice to believe in God rather than not. The Wager can also be seen in table form and it becomes clear that belief gives you a reward or
(practically) nothing, while disbelief gives you punishment or nothing:

Pascal's wager makes a number of assumptions about reality, and a number of theological assumptions about the god it argues for. If any of these can be shown to either be false or undesirable, then the power of the Wager for determining one's actions and beliefs is severely weakened - indeed, the argument of the Wager can be reversed in some cases and it can argue for non-belief. These mostly stem from the theological implications of applying the Wager to belief in God, rather than the Game Theory attributes and decision making process presented.

Evil

There are several ways in which the Wager can be said to promote evil.

Total self-interest

The Wager assumes that a believer will only care about maximizing their own gains.
More troubling than this are occasions where you might theoretically be called upon to hurt someone else to advance your worship of the superior entity. This forms a flip side to the argument that Pascal's Wager emphasizes belief over worthiness in that it suggests that outright evil people can gain reward and avoid punishment simply through belief. In the Old Testament there are numerous instances when worshipers had to kill and hurt others as commanded by God. In fact, there are occasions in which God was extremely displeased that they didn't take the abuse of fellow humans far enough. Even with the Pascal's Wager metric in place, one could argue that it's more moral to resist these commands for the sake of others even if it results in an infinite loss for you.

Again, it can be demonstrated on Earth that bad people who do bad things can still profess belief—Pascal therefore suggests they are worthy of infinite gain, and atheists cheekily suggest that being around those people in heaven isn't selling the whole belief thing to them very well.


The moral case for dead children

If you ask most Christians whether children who die when they are very young will go to heaven, they will say yes. So it would be most reasonable to kill your children while young (especially since children today are much more likely to become atheists), rather than risk them leaving the Christian faith.

Problem of evil

If, as Pascal's Wager must assume, God is willing to punish good people simply for a lack of belief, this would preclude God being "good" by any sense that we understand the concept of "good" — and "good" is a necessary property of God, at least as understood by Christianity. As it can be demonstrated on Earth that no single specific religion has a monopoly on good and moral people, a God that causes Pascal's Wager to be valid cannot be focused on spreading good around the world.

Various responses to Pascal's Wager involve pointing out that to be at the constant beck and call of such a clearly evil being would be less preferable to hell, and so it is favorable to disbelieve.


Multi-theism

The biggest irony of Pascal's Wager as far as Christian apologetics go is that even if it was otherwise completely sound it should then suddenly become a huge disincentive for convincing an unbiased party to worship YHWH specifically. By definition worshiping the Judeo-Christian God requires the worshipper to actively reject the existence of every other deity or potential deity thanks to the intolerance that is the First Commandment. In the absence of evidence for a specific deity, the theist-to-be would be better off directing some worship to one or more proposed deities that do not require exclusive worship. Pascal's Wager being a lynchpin of Christian apologetics (rather than being a shibboleth that must be denied at all costs) can be viewed as a case of cognitive dissonance engendered by Christian privilege.

Infinite number of gods

In Bayesian terms, this can be stated as saying non-believers attribute uniform prior probabilities to the existence of any particular god; all equal, and all infinitesimal. Pascal's Wager alone cannot update these probabilities as the reasoning applies only to the One True God out of an infinite number of possible gods. Without any further information to whittle this down, the odds of inadvertently worshiping the wrong god is a practical certainty. Only when the probability of a particular god existing increases does Pascal's Wager become useful, i.e., if one god could be assigned even a mere 1% chance of being the One True God, Pascal's Wager would present a clear benefit. Hence for anyone constrained by a bias towards a particular god, the Wager is far more clear cut and supportive of their belief.

Anti-gods

If one is willing to accept that an infinite number of deities exist, then Pascal's Wager leads to a very interesting conclusion.

First: There can be an infinite number of possible gods. Why? There are an unlimited number of attributes that a god can have. If two gods have different attributes then they are different. For example, God A hates bananas, while God B likes bananas, while God C is indifferent to bananas, while God D likes bananas half as much as God B, while God E likes bananas twice as much as God B. A different attribute means a different god; there is no limit to the size of the set of divine attributes; thus, the size of the set of all gods infinite.

Second: Of the infinite set of gods that can possibly exist, there necessarily is a god that fits any and every system of rewarding/punishing people in the afterlife. This is because, in the infinite set of gods, every possible attribute of a god must occur. (Otherwise, it wouldn't be infinite, as it would have some limit to the attributes gods can have (other than being possible).) It follows that, for every god n, there necessarily must exist a god -n, who rewards/punishes people for exactly the opposite of what god n does.

The modified Wager can be expressed in the following table here,along with more on the topic
 
Apr 4, 2006
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#19
I'm a Christian, and the Church is certainly a place of mind...

Those opposed can go fuck off..

There is nothing wrong with praying to God and no one should have to be worried about praying. However today - these Islamic fucks really have to make us watch our backs so...

An issue for sure.