That's s pretty inconsistent belief system, then. "We only believe God when we don't know what he's telling us, because when we do have his word, his script doesn't make sense."



So you don't believe that reptiles preceded birds?

I don't understand what's so bad about Hell.

Also, I don't understand what's so good about Heaven... from what I've heard of heaven, you go to this cloudy place with golden roads n shit and you basically stay there FOREVER. Sounds like a horrible form of torture. Heaven = Hell.

Reincarnation, anyone?

"I don't know" is my answer. I just don't know. Sorry!

Heaven is a spiritual place, there are no golden roads "'n shyt". It's literally impossible to describe, so Heaven was shown to people in an anthropomorphous image so that we can comprehend a tiny bit of how Heaven is.

Heaven is a place free of sin. Free of pain. Anyone who has experienced real pain would know that eternal joy would definitely not be a "boring" place to be.

Hell is simply the absence of God. I believe that there is no literal fire or brimstone, but a pain so great that it could be likened to eternal burning.

It's not a physical pain, though. It's mental pain. Personally, I think Hell is an eternities worth of regret. You have forever to think about how short your life was. You get to think about how many times you were offered a chance, and you refused.

Regret is a pretty crappy feeling.

-edit, Sorry Diana. I did it again. :(

Just out of curiosity.. who do Christians believe wrote the Bible?

I always get this confused... Is Jesus God's son, or is Jesus just the human form of God himself?

(copied and pasted from my first few posts)
We are taught that the Bible is God-Breathed. It is known that the Bible was superintended ( God guided the authors to write the story ) composed, ( they were active, not passive ), without error ( perfect ) and that they were the original writings.

So being that the Bible is God-breathed, it means that God breathed his word into the authors.

Cliff notes: God's words, Human writers. Jesus did not write any of the books of the Bible.

Jesus was God in human form. He is likened to being the Son of God.

At least you're candid about it.

If I don't know about something, I'll try my best to research it and find out. If I still don't know, then I won't answer on it. I think it's best that way.

At least you aren't making crap up, unlike a lot of other people

^ I hate it when they do that. When you try to ask christian leaders in churches and teachers at school that are huge christians and they can't answer anything, so they just say "Well you have to have faith..." blah. Why can't you just say "I don't know." ? What's so hard about that?

Because faith is the only way towards salvation. Faith that you will be forgiven, faith that there will be better times, and faith that Christ is guiding your life and watching over you constantly.

You have to have faith.

^ That doesn't really have anything to do with what I was saying.....

Also, I believe that the only reason we have faith is because our lives are just so horrible that we use faith as a comforting blanket to hide our problems. I think faith is making us horrible people because some of us just believe that He will forgive us and we'll get to live in eternal peace and happiness regardless of what we do down here.

Also, for catholics, there used to be a place between heaven and hell (i forget the name... pulchetry? IDk...) but the catholics decided to remove this place from their teachings.

That doesn't seem right to me. Why does the church have the power to change the bible? That's going against god?

Purgatory...

^ ya.

I'm simply saying that you need faith. I agree with you, if leaders don't know what to say, then it's best not to say anything at all.

Also, people who think like that are completely wrong by Christian standards.

If you were really sorry for what you've done, you would make every effort not to do it again. You would lessen whatever activities you do, or whatever it is. And eventually, you'd stop.

You can't sin with the mentality of going "Oh, it's okay, I'll just say my prayers afterwards."

I am a reformed Christian. I believe that the reformation was essential to the advancement of Christianity. You'll have to speak with a Catholic about that. Try James.

So would you say that understanding Christianity relies heavily in your spiritual connection with God, as opposed to analyzing the religion through Biblical text and historic references?

It depends on your relationship with God. Some people are meant to be scholars, and some people are meant to be farmers.

I think this quote rings true for this part.

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.

C.S. Lewis


-edit

But mind you, I believe everyone should wholeheartedly study God's word. But some people just aren't cut out to do it all the time. Genuine faith and humbleness is most important.

I haz quetshunn.

Why do we celebrate Jesus's birthday on December 25? I think it's safe to say that everyone knows that he wasn't born on December 25.....

September 29, 5 B.C.

It's just a designated date, I guess. I always wondered that as well. But I guess it's as tradition goes...

PAGAN HOLIDAY OMG

what's the citing for september 29th?


i knew it wasn't dec 25th, obviously, but i've always read that the real date is debated and no one was for sure the exact day.

They found out mid/late 08, but i dont know if it is sept 29

It's September 29. It's debated whether it's 5 B.C. or 3 B.C.

damn for real, (lol prob not, since nothing we're discussing seems to be) i wanna read about this and how they figured it out now.

edit @ emberfly

can you give a source you're getting this date from?

^haha, yeah i'm not 100% sure, but i saw some headlines on fox or some news channel.

Not really about the September thing, but I thought it'd fit in a way anyways. Jesus couldn't have been born in December.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsha...s-a-gemini.html

http://www.new-life.net/chrtms10.htm

http://www.khouse.org/enews_article/2005/1008/

http://www.biblicalfoundations.org/?p=148

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

your third link says "Jesus’ birth most likely took place in late November of 5 B.C." and the forth doesn't say september 29th either.


i'm gonna keep reading around. you know, so i can try to figure out the date of the birth of someone i hardly even believe was born. why does this shit always capture my attention and make me study it

Meh. Idk. I just went by the first source. I didn't want to have to research

lol of course

czar khasm?

i don't understand the question

because 2+5 = 7



















lmao, you thought i was serious huh

you're a f*cking moron.
& that's why... you'll stay a f*cking moron, for a very long time.

No one knows exactly when Jesus was born.

no shit, i already said that before when people were claiming they did.

lmao

lol..that was funny, but still..c'mon nate. I know you're pretty witty, and have an expansion of vocabulary you could use instead of "you're a f*cken moron"

go easy on the littleboi

Marketing, pretty much.

Around the time Christianity was getting its start, the cult of Mithras was incredibly popular in the Roman Empire. Mithraism is, by all accounts, a pretty f*cking awesome religion; many of its celebrations involved a lot of drinking and orgies, things that would really let us all cut loose today. Anyway, in order to compete with Mithraism, Christianity's founders realized it had to offer something different, so it went the opposite direction and claimed that a lifetime of piousness and modesty would allow followers to reap great rewards in the afterlife. (Christianity was, in fact, one the earliest cults -- and certainly one of the most high-profile -- to preach that restraint now would lead to eternal salvation after death. Most other religions certainly preached about the afterlife, but very few cast it in terms of "heavenly perfection vs. a pit of boiling lava".)

Anyway, around December, followers of Mithraism held a huge festival to celebrate the end of the harvest season, which, of course, involved a lot of drinking and sex. Christianity wanted to be different, but its followers knew that they had to have an equally awesome celebration in order to draw supporters. So, in keeping with the theme of eternal salvation, they cooked up this festival that honored their "god", of sorts; however, instead of wine and orgies, they concocted this scheme in which they convinced people that worshipping this baby now would, of course, lead to something much better down the road. Essentially, you had you choice: drunken revelry now but eternity in hell, or modesty now and eternity in heaven. As it turned out, they (slowly) one a fair number of converts with this pitch.

I'm sure there're other reasons that led to Christmas as well, but the rivalry with Mithraism was most likely a pretty big factor.