Passion of the Christ, your thoughtsFollow

OR...... a bunch of primitive tribesmen just made all this **** up because they didn't understand the world around them.

Which is inconceivable to a believer, if for no other reason than faith precludes it. Just as their faith must preclude any validity whatsoever of other religions. Christians are not the only guilty party though. Muslims are almost as famous as Christians for wars to put down infidels. Jews think the rest of us are cracked. So basicly, what it boils down to, is that even though you don't believe what they believe, you are unwilling to allow for the possibility that it is correct. And even though people of a religious persuasion believe what they believe, they are unwilling to even allow for the idea that an all powerful supreme being could reveal herself to different people in different ways. Because you all believe something, your minds are unable to allow for other explanations, and for that reason, unable to allow for compromise. As that is the case, you are also inevitably unable to co-exist peacefully. Fear and selfishness will require that you constantly go back and forth, tracking who gets what taken or given, and how much ground the other holds.

This argument can go on forever, and nothing will change. Both sides will still, in the end, completely miss the point.

This is news to me, but I don't follow the personal lives of stars. I really only watch their movies. =P

Ibzamshamgar, how come an omnicient god needs to "patch" up problems? The fall, so now they need to sacrifice. Then the Flood to wipe the world "clean". And last Jesus to save the world. What, did something catch this god by suprise and he had to come up with a fix? Why does an omnicient being even HAVE problems?

The ironic thing is we call tribes that used sacrifice as a way to please their gods primitive, yes isn't this exactly what the Christian god requires?

It is absolutely conceivable. I used to have similar beliefs when I was an athiest. But through constantly observing not only those around me, but incidents in my own life, I have come to the conclusion that the Christian God is real. I also realize that there is nothing within my power that I can do to prove an existance of this supernatural being to you.

What if you believe that your particular God tm is so badass that it expressed itself to different cultures in different, sometimes contradictory ways, and that ultimately we all party together no matter what? I don't think that "havin' religion" forces one to be sectarian.

Ok, I will cover this here for all of you people who are really the only enlightened one out there and obviously don't fit in to the myopic religious person bucket and aren't part of the problem and just wanna be happy and share the planet and party with God on a cloud over St. Peter's pearly gated super duper water slide to heaven.

/clears throat

Thank you for not being a myopic religious person, and having the ability to see past all of the differences between you and other people.

How does the old quote go? Something like...

I contend that you are also an athiest, I just believe in one less God than you do. When you understand why you don't believe in those other Gods, you will understand why I don't believe in yours.

Interesting quote, any idea who said it?

I understand why you believe, as i used to be there too

But I think we covered that in another thread

More quotes! I think I like the last one the best by Lucretius, Roman poet, who can argue with logic like that!

I think that naming your ignorance God and pretending that, having named it, you have converted ignorance to knowledge is a sorry approach to the unknown."
-John Popelish

"What is the nature of God? His nature is entirely dependent upon the age or culture that has reinvented him."
-Solomon Skink

"An error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys you capacity to distinguish truth from error."
- John Galt in Atlas Shrugged

"If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest?"
-Percy Byssche Shelley

"Those who believe in hell can never know truth, for they are blinded by fear."
-Emmet F. Fields

"The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it."
-Matilda Joslyn Gage

"It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible."
-George W. Foote

"I would not for my life destroy one star of human hope, but I want it so that when a poor woman rocks the cradle and sings a lullaby to the dimpled darling, she will not be compelled to believe that ninety-nine chances in a hundred she is raising kindling wood for hell."
-Robert G. Ingersoll

"Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that it does not believe a man can tell the truth unless frightened by a belief in God. No lower opinion of the human race has ever been expressed."
-Robert G. Ingersoll

"Over the years I realized the god I prayed to was the god I invented. When I was talking to him, I was talking to myself. He had no understanding or qualities that I did not have. When I realized God was an extension of my imagination, I stopped praying to him."
-Howard Kreisner

"Isn't it *ironic*? One of the favorite themes of the Christian Conversion Corps is that, if we don't worship a deity, we must be worshiping ourselves. Yet it seems that this is *precisely* what, in fact, the theists themselves are doing. They worship a God with the same views, ideals, even personality traits as themselves - the God in the mirror."
-Rosa Williams

"If God can do anything he can make a stone so heavy that even he can't lift it. Then there is something God cannot do, he cannot lift the stone. Therefore God does not exist."
-Lucretius, Roman poet

God isn't caught blindsided. he's omniscient. to have this answered properly you have to understand why God started this whole wacky world. God wants to be loved. just like us. after all, we're created in His image. but it's not true love if the person of your affection is just a mindless robot. it has to be a choice. so when he created man, there had to be something that would give him a chance to choose something other than God. the fruit. of course God knew what would happen. why he went ahead with it anyway, i'll admit, baffles me. but to make up for the offense, he implemented the sacrificial system so that we wouldn't have to die for our sins ourselves. remember, "blood must be spillt." for the flood, we go back to the problem of choice. people had begun to choose everything but him. except for noah. why he chose the flood? /shrug. i'd be lying if i tried to explain that. as i'd said before, Jesus was the perfect sacrifice. thru him, all sin is forgiven so we don't have to keep sacrificing animals. another way to say the same point, fulfill the law for us.

as a wrap-up, he's not trying to fix his problems. he's trying to court us. all he wants is for us to choose to love him. not threaten us. although, hell is really a scary concept. but God is love. God is righteousness. and where he is unrighteousness cannot exist.

how's that? i'm getting kinda sleepy so it might not be the most flowy answer.

As many as it takes until both sides are content?

yes. you have an enormously valid point here. i know for a fact that the only way is Jesus Christ. others will swear forever by the name of Muhammed. and so on and so forth. but i will argue the point of the possibility of revelation in different ways to different people. consider we both know a man by the name of smith that lives in maine. i say to you. "hey did you get to meet smith while you were in maine?" you reply "yeah his wife's mashed potatoes were the bomb weren't they?" i say "yeah, how is she anyway?" you say "Good, but the girls are giving her problems." i reply "Girls? smith doesn't have any girls. he has a young boy..." you answer "no, he definitely has two little girls..." i say "hmm... must have been a different smith, huh?"

i do agree that this argument will never end till we're able to see first hand. now if i just didn't have to die to find the answer.... /ponder