The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Say, yin'z (that's proper Pittsburghese, like "pop") Orthodox Christians still believe the Bible is God's divine written Word of God, right?

At that point it becomes an issue of personal space and privacy and doesn't really give them the right to continue on if I refuse to hear any more of their message.

Absolutely right. If you politely dismiss them, they're violating your privacy if they persist.

Personally, I've never been asked to go away but have gotten in some heated arguments, not recently though until a few days ago on these forums. I was censored by the admins today. That was my fault. But I think everything might have been brought back into order if I wasn't censored just after I admitted my fault.

Originally Posted by Jeebizz And the reason I say the Trinity can be tricky because of the idea that Jesus is God's only son, and the Holy Father & Holy Ghost, but then if they are part of God, or then multiple Gods even though there is supposedly one God? Remember just because Christianity tends to denote itself as monotheistic, that doesn't mean that at some point it doesn't cross that line or at least blur it, and that is usually because of the Trinity.. .. Bleh, but really lets not go too much into that, nobody's head needs to explode or anything.

The trinity is easy. When you hear 'god the holy ghost' replace that with 'god the mother'. The trinity is just as theological way to reconcile egyptian/proto-semetic triple gods (father, mother, son) with this new fangled 'monothemism'.

Originally Posted by Jeebizz Jesus is God? But Jesus is God's son so only God can be God but....Huh?

Arianism-

The Arian concept of Christ is that the Son of God did not always exist, but was created by—and is therefore distinct from and inferior to—God the Father.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism

Thats just the easy way as well, the gnostics had some more complex ways of dealing with the same issue.

bluegospel
Broaden your mind. Read about other mythologies, other religions, and rid yourself of the idea that the Bible is the word of God. It's the work of men, edited and mistranslated many times over many centuries. A few books to get you started:
The Masks Of God (4 volumes) - Joseph Campbell
The Gnostic Gospels - Elaine Pagels
The White Goddess - Robert Graves

Originally Posted by brianL bluegospel Broaden your mind. Read about other mythologies, other religions, and rid yourself of the idea that the Bible is the word of God. It's the work of men, edited and mistranslated many times over many centuries. A few books to get you started: The Masks Of God (4 volumes) - Joseph Campbell The Gnostic Gospels - Elaine Pagels The White Goddess - Robert Graves

The problem with getting others to "broaden" their minds is they challenge you to "open" yours. As I've noted previously people that deny the existence of any gods are typically as hidebound by what they disbelieve as those who profess faith in one of the established religions. You can't prove a negative so if no gods exists there is no way to prove it. You can only say as I do that I've not seen proof enough to make me think there are. While I don't believe there is an all powerful being that created everything I also don't preclude the possibility. Even if you subscribe to the big bang theory you still have to wonder where the primordial atom came from and why it exploded. Some suggestions are that it is an endlessly repeating cycle (the universe contracts back after billions of years then re-explodes). Interestingly to me this is similar to what Hinduism suggests about how everything that has been done has been done before and will be done again.

Big Bang is part of religion.

Originally Posted by H_TeXMeX_H Big Bang is part of religion.

Big Bang is part of science. While there may be those who have "faith" in science that doesn't make it a "religion". I refer you back to the dictionary definition rather than political/theological attempts to pretend it means something else.

Big Bang is a part of which religion?
The one Einstein followed?

Originally Posted by MensaWater The problem with getting others to "broaden" their minds is they challenge you to "open" yours. As I've noted previously people that deny the existence of any gods are typically as hidebound by what they disbelieve as those who profess faith in one of the established religions. You can't prove a negative so if no gods exists there is no way to prove it. You can only say as I do that I've not seen proof enough to make me think there are. While I don't believe there is an all powerful being that created everything I also don't preclude the possibility. Even if you subscribe to the big bang theory you still have to wonder where the primordial atom came from and why it exploded. Some suggestions are that it is an endlessly repeating cycle (the universe contracts back after billions of years then re-explodes). Interestingly to me this is similar to what Hinduism suggests about how everything that has been done has been done before and will be done again.

But answering a question like how the universe began with appeal to a supernatural cause is not any sort of explanation. There's an infinite number of hypotheses we could think up about how the universe began. The bearded guy in the sky hypothesis is no more compelling that the crafted from the bones of an ice giant hypothesis.

I don't preclude the possibility that a monstrous space unicorn is plotting the Earth's destruction from the center of the Andromeda galaxy either, but it's hardly something to build one's life around, or indeed give much thought to. If religious belief was not afforded any sort of special status and treated like any other non-evidence based belief people hold, then relaxing into peaceful agnosticism would be a more tenable position.

It's not interesting at all some Hindu myth superficially corresponds to something that might be true. Even if we knew that a cyclical model of the universe was true it wouldn't be interesting. Out of all the thousands and thousands of spiritual and religious claims made, surely some of them will bear a resemblance to what is actually true about the universe. Claiming otherwise is no different than claiming Nostradamus predicted 9/11.

The trinity is easy. When you hear 'god the holy ghost' replace that with 'god the mother'. The trinity is just as theological way to reconcile egyptian/proto-semetic triple gods (father, mother, son) with this new fangled 'monothemism'. Quote: Originally Posted by Jeebizz View Post Jesus is God? But Jesus is God's son so only God can be God but....Huh?

Actually, the Trinity is a Judeo (sic)-Christian doctrine (yes, not lexically) from the Bible, as early as Genesis 1:26, where God said, let "us" make human beings. This language is used everywhere throughout the Bible--I use this example because it's the first instance, about 2 millenia prior to Aria.

Again the Trinity is a Judeo-Christian idea, i.e., Biblical (I understand the term itself is not used in the Bible). The Bible doesn't give any inference that the Holy Spirit is a mommy. In fact, as a third person pronoun, he is almost always referred to as "he." Except rarely, the Holy Spirit member is referred to as "it," due to his relative intangibility, but usually "he."

Originally Posted by bluegospel Actually, the Trinity is a Judeo (sic)-Christian doctrine (yes, not lexically) from the Bible, as early as Genesis 1:26, where God said, let "us" make human beings. This language is used everywhere throughout the Bible--I use this example because it's the first instance, about 2 millenia prior to Aria. Again the Trinity is a Judeo-Christian idea, i.e., Biblical (I understand the term itself is not used in the Bible). The Bible doesn't give any inference that the Holy Spirit is a mommy. In fact, as a third person pronoun, he is almost always referred to as "he." Except rarely, the Holy Spirit member is referred to as "it," due to his relative intangibility, but usually "he."

The poster was referring to the fact that ideas akin to the Christian trinity are common to many pre-christian mythologies and did not originate with the Bible. As with many things, Christianity borrowed from earlier religious ideas.

bluegospel Broaden your mind. Read about other mythologies, other religions, and rid yourself of the idea that the Bible is the word of God.

I've done that and will continue to do that. But where can I possibly begin but Mesopotamia? If I spend my brief 80 or 90 years studying the science behind my pinky finger's fingernail, I've learned a grain of sand's worth of the wealth of wisdom behind that section of science. I've studied Mesopotamia quite carefully, from a historical and archeological perspective (but am by no means, in those terms a "scholar"). I can only specialize in a few areas of life. Based on my experience, the Bible contains the richest & best history--a written record spanning from about 3000 years before our time all the way to the judgment and renewal of the creation.

3000

Yes, God created a work-in-process, an earth embedded with lots of real dinosaur bones, etc.

Guru Registered: Oct 2005 Location: $RANDOM Distribution: slackware64 Posts: 10,074 Blog Entries: 2 Rep: Reputation: 565Reputation: 565Reputation: 565Reputation: 565Reputation: 565Reputation: 565 Big Bang is part of religion.

Did you ever hear that in a "whisper?" I almost bought that before they taught me it in elementary school.

Not sure what happened there. Try again.

Big Bang is part of science.

Did you ever hear that in a "whisper?" I almost bought that before they taught me it in elementary school.