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If you are at my house, you are at my mercy. And by the way, I have done this and it went well. They left with something to think about.
It depends, on this forum, it is opinion, belief based writing, so yes, I won't deny my beliefs and I will let the posters know what those are, just as they will let me know theirs. Besides, isn't that what all this is about anyway?
SO then you would be open and ok with being say at my house and at my mercy, being an atheist and having a talk or lesson if you will?
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"It Can't Rain All The Time"
(set 25 days ago)
Location: North Pacific
15,754 posts, read 7,589,592 times
Reputation: 2576
Quote:
Originally Posted by ptsum
actonbell, I mean you no disrespect and you are entitled to believe as you do but I ask you to think about the process in which you gave your daughter and granddaughter their choice, I'm not saying you did anything wrong because it was what you were taught and in the same respect you taught your daughter as you were taught and your daughter taught her daughter the same and by that there was no choice unless they were also taught about other different religious beliefs, you see you were not given a choice because you were taught a specific way by your parents and yes you accepted it, but you did the same for your daughter and so on, so as you can see there was no real choice unless you were taught about other religious beliefs.
Well thank you I appreciate that. My daughter is an atheist. So much for my influence. If you wondering if she has a mind of her own...you should be around during our phone conversations.
No, not really. I don't read it, and I see no reason to try to be better than other people or spread "the message".
I'm fine if I get the reward and everyone else gets the punishment. My major reason for "believing" is to avoid a potential punishment. If there is no God, then I haven't lost a thing.
I mean no offense and I don't mean to disrespect you. Please don't take it that way. Avoiding punishment was at one point my main motivation for "believing." Especially when it came to the idea of being tortured for billions of years with no break and no end on the horizon.
I also would hear the message that God loved me. Something just wouldn't sit right. Believe it or not, a lot of Christians do not like the idea of eternal torture. I can not bring myself to believe in a God who would torture people for all eternity just for "getting it wrong." I find it to be excessive. Although scripturally speaking, it is not required for one to believe that anyone who doesn't say or think the magic word is going to be tortured non stop for billions of years to be saved. My question would be, "If God is loving, why would he torture people for an honest mistake. (I do understand that Atheists are convinced of the non-existence of God or at least that there is insufficient evidence for the existence of God. In fact, if I was raised differently, I might have been an Atheist myself, the same goes for all the other devout Christians. if we are right, we should consider ourselves fortunate instead of getting all arrogant and puffed up) After a while, I had to read the Bible (cover to cover) to see what it really says.
The Bible always refers to the "reward" as everlasting life. The punishment is often refered to as everlasting destruction. (which could mean being destroyed forever. The word everlasting itself and related words have multiple meanings that doesn't necessarily mean "with no end")
What kind of rubs me wrong is when preachers change the term from everlasting life to everlasting joy. The problem is that if we were to have people being consciously tortured for all eternity that would mean that the sinners have everlasting life as well. It is just an everlasting state of torture. The only way to get everlasting life is through Christ according to the scriptures. If one does not accept Christ, he does not have everlasting life. If you are alive, you are alive, no matter how joyful or miserable you are.
Whether I am Christian or not, that depends on who you ask. I'd say that I love Christ and I try to follow him. If the churches knew what I really believed, they would kick me out in one second. But then again, churches would kick Jesus out too. (Jesus had his run ins with the Pharises who look and act a lot like the preachers and pastors of today's Christianity)
My current stance on God is that I do believe in God, I do believe in Christ, but we are all part of God/Christ. In the event we wrong others, we wrong ourselves. We punish ourselves. God would have to be existence itself. The Law would have to be "Love "Life" and Love others because they are a part of life."
I guess I would've been an atheist, but something in my subconscious tells me that there is more to life than what we can experience with our 5 senses. At this point, no one can come to a conclusion. (not even me)
Of course I'm rambling. But I see life as a question and I believe that it is a small likelihood (very small) that we are ever going to find the answer.
If you are at my house, you are at my mercy. And by the way, I have done this and it went well. They left with something to think about.
It depends, on this forum, it is opinion, belief based writing, so yes, I won't deny my beliefs and I will let the posters know what those are, just as they will let me know theirs. Besides, isn't that what all this is about anyway?
If you come to my house you are not at my mercy and I would not ever speak of my religion unless someone wanted to know and even then it would be only as information, not conversion.
People are capable of thinking, learning about religion and what they want to be on their own.
Every time I have found myself in a conversation with a Christian it always ended up with them going into prosletyse mode. So I now I do not even discuss religion with anyone I know is a Christian.
It's really simple and has already been covered by other posters here. If I had any Jews, Pagans, Heathens, whatever, etc knocking on my door and trying to shove their religion down my throat, maybe they'd get "attacked" more.
Why do some Christians always misuse words such as attack, bigot and intolerance? Nine times out of ten, from my experience, this "vicious intolerance" is something along the lines of me saying I'm not interested in your beliefs when asked; I think they're a bunch of hogwash. Oh, will the persecution of Christians ever end
It's insulting to any group of people who have suffered because of real bigotry and intolerance. I'm talking about being a minority or woman in pre-civil rights America, Japanese-Americans during WW2, the Trial of Tears, etc. You know, real discrimination?
Now, if I were to camp out hiding some place one Sunday morning waiting to ambush some believers on their way to church for no other reason than them being Christians, then perhaps you can properly use the words hate and intolerance.
Until then you can, quite frankly, cry me a river.
"I am sure not all Christians are the same, what would you have us do, list individually their names, or add on a long disclaimer every time we talk about Christians (about how not all Christians are the same)."
I do that sometimes, but then again, there are some people that just want to take offense. At that point, they are just putting you down to make themselves seem better.
I mean no offense and I don't mean to disrespect you. Please don't take it that way. Avoiding punishment was at one point my main motivation for "believing." Especially when it came to the idea of being tortured for billions of years with no break and no end on the horizon.
I also would hear the message that God loved me. Something just wouldn't sit right. Believe it or not, a lot of Christians do not like the idea of eternal torture. I can not bring myself to believe in a God who would torture people for all eternity just for "getting it wrong." I find it to be excessive. Although scripturally speaking, it is not required for one to believe that anyone who doesn't say or think the magic word is going to be tortured non stop for billions of years to be saved. My question would be, "If God is loving, why would he torture people for an honest mistake. (I do understand that Atheists are convinced of the non-existence of God or at least that there is insufficient evidence for the existence of God. In fact, if I was raised differently, I might have been an Atheist myself, the same goes for all the other devout Christians. if we are right, we should consider ourselves fortunate instead of getting all arrogant and puffed up) After a while, I had to read the Bible (cover to cover) to see what it really says.
The Bible always refers to the "reward" as everlasting life. The punishment is often refered to as everlasting destruction. (which could mean being destroyed forever. The word everlasting itself and related words have multiple meanings that doesn't necessarily mean "with no end")
What kind of rubs me wrong is when preachers change the term from everlasting life to everlasting joy. The problem is that if we were to have people being consciously tortured for all eternity that would mean that the sinners have everlasting life as well. It is just an everlasting state of torture. The only way to get everlasting life is through Christ according to the scriptures. If one does not accept Christ, he does not have everlasting life. If you are alive, you are alive, no matter how joyful or miserable you are.
Whether I am Christian or not, that depends on who you ask. I'd say that I love Christ and I try to follow him. If the churches knew what I really believed, they would kick me out in one second. But then again, churches would kick Jesus out too. (Jesus had his run ins with the Pharises who look and act a lot like the preachers and pastors of today's Christianity)
My current stance on God is that I do believe in God, I do believe in Christ, but we are all part of God/Christ. In the event we wrong others, we wrong ourselves. We punish ourselves. God would have to be existence itself. The Law would have to be "Love "Life" and Love others because they are a part of life."
I guess I would've been an atheist, but something in my subconscious tells me that there is more to life than what we can experience with our 5 senses. At this point, no one can come to a conclusion. (not even me)
Of course I'm rambling. But I see life as a question and I believe that it is a small likelihood (very small) that we are ever going to find the answer.
I tend to think of us as God's lab rats. He couldn't really care any less about what happens to us.
Well thank you I appreciate that. My daughter is an atheist. So much for my influence. If you wondering if she has a mind of her own...you should be around during our phone conversations.
Know one's knowledge is limited.
I applaud you for that and for having the open-mindedness to accept it, not many would....
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