I'd like to know..

[Squeek]

Re: I'd like to know..

Hell, ANYONE who has questions about religion: GO ASK PEOPLE WHO REALLY KNOW ABOUT IT. They could answer any question you have. ANY question, especially the ones that commonly come up.

Why haven't we taken this stance before?

This is a classic example of 'betr go post it on ffr'

If you're questioning your faith, either talk to a priest / minister or drop the religion. It's really that simple. Nobody on this website is a priest. I doubt anyone here has even read any 'holy book' in its entirety (hey, I read FSMism all the way through.. does that count?).

And what's with all the religion threads anyway? I'm surprised religion still exists these days with all the children questioning faith on websites based on a flash game emulation of a dancing game with arrows.

[Afrobean]

Re: I'd like to know..

Of what religion dictates, I'm sure there's a passage where Jesus is supposed to tell one of his apostles something like "Whatever you release on earth, you will release in heaven" and I guess I've always taken that to be that what is decided as moral by people is what will be decided as moral in heaven. Not sure if that interpretation was from my own head or from a priest.

This is mentioned in the movie Dogma. Good movie.

That said, I always hated this idea. It basically says "whatever the church says has power over God" which to be blunt, doesn't make any sense. God supposed to be all powerful and yet he is to be controlled by a church?

Nobody on this website is a priest.

[Laharl]

Re: I'd like to know..

Umm, was that Reaper thing addressed to me?

I'm pretty sure he was referring to TheRapingDragon saying this:

The bible is held in complete control by the church, they can change it how they want and make you believe it. They can tell you what is a sin in the eyes of god, they can tell you how to repent. It isn't god telling you all this, it is the church.

As to your other comments, especially the one about faith being based on feelings, I for one understand how that goes. I'm also trying to put a stop to that in my own life because I've started to realize just how fickle emotions and feelings can be. A lot of people here fail to realize I still feel like I'm in a position where I am trying to define what it is I believe and do not believe. Some of the ideas I have concerning the faith I personally follow are considered heretical by most of the other members of my religion, and that doesn't really bother me so much. I'm just trying to be a better person.

[Cavernio]

Re: I'd like to know..

Damn you Dogma! I thought I was original.

No one said it was referring to the church. It could be referring to society.

Well, when my faith went away, ALL my emotions became ****ed up. My faith was pretty constant before then.
I'm far too much of a pragmatist to nurture my faith back to myself now though.

[GuidoHunter]

Re: I'd like to know..

Inspiration is not the same as the original source. Just because a person might have been inspired by some higher power doesn't necessarily mean that they got everything exactly from the said higher source.

In this case, yes, yes it does. You're a little too focused in your interpretation of the word "inspired". It doesn't just mean "given the general ideas". There's a reason the Bible is called the Word of God, and it's because it is full of God's words, not man's.

You accuse me of making an assumption when in discussion over religion. How about this assumption: "Everything that the Bible says is accurate."

That has absolutely nothing to do with the context in which the quote was made.

The assumption I was implying that you made was that God doesn't exist. And considering doing in an argument about whether or not what God says is real or whether or not he exists, yes, I am completely okay in attacking your assumption on the grounds that it's circular logic!

I didn't. All I meant was that everything in the Bible is second hand from mankind. The commandments are supposed to be straight from God himself.

Did you not just argue that the Bible was written by man? The basis for all sins is in the Bible. Commandments? In the Bible. Not engaging in homosexual acts? In the Bible. As such, you cannot disjoin the two. Just as the commandments came straight from God, so did all the other details of sins, so you can't say that the commandments are somehow extrabiblical or any more special than any of the others.

In recent years they haven't made literal changes, however

Or, ever. The words of the Bible have been and always will be the same.

Ever hear of the Dead Sea scrolls? You know why they're important, don't you? It's because they're parts of the Bible that the church cut out.

Right, and the pope buried them in the caves so that they would neeeeever be found and his scheme to control the world would go unruined!!!

Sure, there are old religious texts that aren't in the Bible, but they're not there for a conscious and legitimate reason. Namely, because they don't belong there. Just because a text is old and religious doesn't necessarily mean it belongs in the Bible. Ever look into why, say, Jasher's book wasn't included? How do you even know that those texts were available to be considered Biblical material? And then, now that we've had fifty years to mull over them and study them, why hasn't anyone put any of the texts into their Bible? The apocryphal books were good enough to be in the Catholic Bible, but nobody seems to think the Dead Sea Scrolls should make it.

Aside from that, they can change meanings behind things in the Bible. Isn't there something in the Bible about stoning women for being adulterers? "An eye for an eye"? psh.

Isn't there some important distinction in the Bible between the Old and New Testaments?

P.S. Eye for an eye was Hammurabi, if I'm not mistaken.

EDIT:

That said, I always hated this idea. It basically says "whatever the church says has power over God" which to be blunt, doesn't make any sense. God supposed to be all powerful and yet he is to be controlled by a church?

GROSS misinterpretation. God is by no means controlled by the Church.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

[Afrobean]

Re: I'd like to know..

Or, ever. The words of the Bible have been and always will be the same.

Oh, so the Bible is still printed in only latin?

Alternative response:

Or, ever. The words of the Bible have been and always will be the same.

Yeah, everything that's still there is the same.

God is by no means controlled by the Church.

I would certainly hope so, but I can't find any other meaning behind what was said than that.

Eye for an eye was Hammurabi, if I'm not mistaken.

It appears as though you're right. I was just using that as an example to show that things change. People don't live by that, even if it is still in the Bible.

Oh and by the way, yeah, I don't believe in God. I'm doing my best to discuss these matters as though they are absolute fact, but some things (the fact that the bible was written by man, even if they were inspired) I just can't get over. It's not like God took over their body and used their hands to write. I suppose one could argue that God is all powerful and he could control them without literally moving their body for them, but then you're throwing free will right out the window.

[Laharl]

Re: I'd like to know..

Well, we're defining inspiriation here as words, ideas, whatever you want to call them, that didn't originate or rather would not have originated with the inspired except by something else planting the idea in that person's head, that something else in this case being God. Therefore, wouldn't it be God's words despite the fact that it was written by a man?

I can't really explain it better than that. I think that part of why it's considered God's words is the uncanny ability of scripture to cause "!" moments in so many of the people that read them looking for things of that nature.

[Afrobean]

Re: I'd like to know..

:\

If I said "ok, write '2+2=4' on this piece of paper" and you write "4=2+2", would you say that "4=2+2" is my words?

God is an abstract concept. Do you believe God actually spoke to those inspired in a language that they understood?

[Laharl]

Re: I'd like to know..

Most people that claim to have had inspiriation from God claim it was more impressions on ideas, concepts, that they formulated into their own words. Did He speak as we understand speech? Perhaps. Perhaps not. We're not sure. We only know what we have, and what we take to be the word of God. Faith is an integral part of belief, regardless of what the belief is. It's just easier to define in terms of a religious sense.

I also don't understand what your example of the math problem is supposed to highlight.

[Hr2]

Re: I'd like to know..

How is someone born a homosexual is my question. A baby isn't born with the immediate thought that they've decided to like people of the same gender. Those feelings develop over time, and they CAN be controlled.

When a straight person is born they aren't born with the immediate thought that they want to like people of the opposite gender either. This occurs during puberty, for hetero- and homo-sexuals. However, it is believed that you cannot change your sexuality and that it is "hard coded" into you.

[Nyokou]

Re: I'd like to know..

When a straight person is born they aren't born with the immediate thought that they want to like people of the opposite gender either. This occurs during puberty, for hetero- and homo-sexuals. However, it is believed that you cannot change your sexuality and that it is "hard coded" into you.

That's what I was trying to say..

P.S. Dun mind me, I'm hella tired. Night.

[Cavernio]

Re: I'd like to know..

Just because you think you're inspired by God, doesn't mean you have been inspired by God. Our mind's do marvelous things. The trick every time we dream, (unless you're dreaming lucidly) by making up a reality for us. Compared to that, giving us a feeling of inspiration from God is like child's play.

[Prince_Kheldar]

Re: I'd like to know..

My opinion isn't so much, whether or not God should condemn them...it's why? If someone loves another being, why should they be denied their right to "take part in certian activities"? I'm very extreme on this topic, because if God hates someone or something for something as little as that, I'm not sure I want to worship him.

[Kilgamayan]

Re: I'd like to know..

I'd like to know why the topic creator has added nothing at all to this discussion.