What do you believe, or not? Another religion thread ... (Page 3)

I believe everyone's opinion and view in this thread is valid.  I also believe that those opinion's loose their validity, when they discover one very important thing.  That thing is a personal relationship with Christ.  I know its corny, unenlightened, and just plain dumb....to someone that doesn't have that personal relationship with Christ.  When you do have that relationship, you understand someone that follows these other discipline's to a "T", they are probably very good people and are an asset to society, and many are good friends of mine.  I count myself to be very lucky to be their friends, but unfortunately, they are going to regret their decision, for eternity.

I also believe that I am disappointed that no other Christian has come forward to share their beliefs.

Sorry.

Everyone, get together and start jumping on me and telling me I am stupid, it doesn't bother me, I have read the book and I know who wins and how it ends.

Train hard.  Jesus saves!

Why would you assume that others would attack you for your beliefs? It's not a competition to see who has the best or most valid belief system.

By the way, it also wasn't offered as an opportunity to tell others they are mistaken in their beliefs - or will regret their beliefs, for that matter.

The question was 'what do you believe?' It wasn't 'what do you believe of others who don't believe as you do?'

I am enjoying reading everyone's input about what they believe.

Wow.  I was OK with whatever you believed right until there.....then you just lost me.

Sometimes I wonder if we are actually in hell. 

Most times, I believe that we are here for a reason (probably to learn something).  While I don't think our lives are scripted, I do think things happen for a reason.  I believe in the after-life (because I don't want to think of the alternative). 

I just can't believe that all that we have, all that we've become as people and creatures of earth, and the universe, is by chance.

I don't believe in invisible supernatural deities, and certainly not ones who can hear your thoughts and sometimes grant wishes; whether they be called Thor, Orisis, Santa Claus, Jupiter or Jeshua.

I have learned enough about evolution to be comfortable with the evidence, process and the explanation of how the amazing variety of life got here on this planet. 

I don't believe in god.

I believe in ZOD.

Seriously though, I am a rationalist.  I believe in reality (as best as I can percieve it).  I am open to believing in anything, but as Carl Sagan said: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

I really like this line. If this is the best that a fair and loving god could do, that's really depressing and more hopeless than thinking there is no god. 

In my own view though, I have very few answers to the questions of the universe. I know there are certain ideas (infinite time or the alternative of a beginning and end to time, boundaries of the universe or the alternative of no boundaries, the concept of a soul and the afterlife) that I will never have a sufficient answer to due to lack of evidence or possibly just a inability to comprehend the answers. I think that human existence as a whole is best decried as random. Who you are born as, born to, raised as, etc is just all a random mess. I see life as a series of small choices made in the presence of a series of larger uncontrollable events.

I do know though that organized religion is not the answer to any of my questions. It's not that I have anything against organized religion, it's more of the people associated with it. For me it really comes down to the judging and hating displayed towards those that are different, the elitism that comes along with being "saved", the lack of responsibility in making choices in life because it's all god's will, the self-centeredness that is prayer, and the feeling I always got when in church of attending a social club more than a child of god going to worship and connect. I know this doesn't apply to everyone and is mostly based on my interactions with Christians, but for a group of people aspiring to be children of god, it's just too much. Even if I had evidence for believing, I would struggle with being associated with organized religion. 

It's also very disappointing to me that the religious choice for many people seems to be something that is arrived at by default instead of an honest search for an answer. For many it seems to be just something else you are born into or worse, something you cling to for fear of what it would be like to not have the happy ever ending story of heaven. 

Sorry for the long rant. Lortab (wisdom tooth extraction) seems to make me wordy and unfocused. 

I am not going to "jump on you and call you stupid".

I am, however, going to disagree with you. I believe that the construction of a "personal Jesus" is flawed and simplistic. It implies, for me that there is an "end" to spirituality, and I believe that humans are incapable of realizing "all". We don't know what we don't know, and probably cannot at this point in our evolution conceptualize something greater.

We have been the recipients of occasional great insights, Abraham, Mohammed, Jesus, Siddartha Gutama, and probably a few that we ignored, but I don't believe that's all there is to it. I believe that what we know is all that we can know until the next insight comes along. Call it what you will, because the name of it is not what it is, merely what we call it.

Now, I am going to add that the passive-agressive :

"Everyone, get together and start jumping on me and telling me I am stupid, it doesn't bother me, I have read the book and I know who wins and how it ends."

does nothing to move the conversation forward and reflects poorly on you.

The Architect, from The Matrix Revolutions.

"Everyone, get together and start jumping on me and telling me I am stupid, it doesn't bother me, I have read the book and I know who wins and how it ends."

This statement was intended to be tongue in cheek, didn't come off very well, I apologize for that.

On the other hand, when someone comments on a topic such as "What do you believe, or not", as a Christian, that person is often times singled out and treated poorly in the conversation, and I am aware often times they deserve the treatment, but not always.  I stated in my original post that there are really good people of every faith and that they, in my opinion are assets to society and to me as friends.  My post was not trying to attract zings at myself, or other Christians, and realize that my comment above might have made some think that was the purpose.  It was simply to state what I believe or not.  And what I believe is that your spiritual choice, Christian, Hindu, Buddhists, whatever, if followed make you a really good person.  The only problem ( I believe) is that being a "really good person" isn't enough.

Merry Christmas

Good thread and it is interesting reading everyones opinions on religion and their beliefs.  I have to say, I am much more comfortable talking about politics or just about any subject other than religion.  I'll just say that I do believe in God and I belong to a church and leave it at that.

I have read evey post in this thread and I appreciate everyones contribution.

Now you've done it.

Esposito scores on the rebound!

Ever since I was a small child I could never wrap my head around the notion of a loving creator who would sentence his beloved creations to an eternity of suffering simply because they didn't accept Jesus as their savior. Surely there must be people who live their lives just as Jesus taught, but they just never heard of him. Millions of humans lived before the time of Christ or were never exposed to Christianity. Some very good people. People who live lives better than some Christians. Maybe it's my Catholic upbringing and the idea that one can repent and be forgiven at the last minute. A sinner can get Last Rites and be absolved of a life lived way off the path of righteousness, but a Buddhist monk who lived a simple life of peace and prayer will be left to an eternity of hell, or purgatory at the very least? I don't buy it.

That reminded me of C.S Lewis' argument that based on all the evidence Jesus was either a lunatic, a liar, or Lord.  Jesus believed that he was the Son of God.  There's no evidence that he believed that he was merely a spiritual teacher.  There were plenty of those back then.  The spiritual revolution he caused was of a different order of magnitude.

Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

If Jesus isn't the Son of the Living God, and my Savior, then to hell with him and everything he taught.

Veni, veni, Emanuel.
Happy Advent!  

Lewis makes a decent point.  However, if you do not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, your opinion of him is not constrained by His intentions.

Or you believe that we are all sons of God, made in His image and likeness. Did Jesus himself ever claim to be the only Son of God?

I totally get what you're saying Don, and that's the Christian take on it. The root of my question lies in "Is what we believe all there is, or is it all we humans can handle at our current stage of development?" In saying this I am not in any way trying to denigrate anyone's current beliefs, just asking the question.

I'll go further and say that if there is some truth to which we are not currently privy, would its revelation necessarily negate current belief, or could the larger-than-what-we-know-now encompass and embrace current belife harmoniously?

Or you believe that we are all sons of God, made in His image and likeness. Did Jesus himself ever claim to be the only Son of God?

Man has been somewhat egotistical at times when he/she attempted to explain creation and develope religions.  The idea that humans are in any way "god-like" doesn't say much for God does it?