I can see you two sitting around, passing a blunt, complaining about your jobs like this is a shitty Kevin Smith movie.

"I hate my job. I'm tired of filing paperwork"
"Yeah, well, you try walking on fuckin water, lady. Puff and pass."

That sounds a heck of a lot like all those Twilight Zone episodes where the guy offers someone something and in the end it turns out to be Satan.

You neuter animals with your teeth and a hunting knife?

I LOL'd. Yeah, I said "LOL'd." What?

So we should do the same, according to the Life of Jesus?

Now I see why you guys voted for Bush. ^_^ (ITS A JOKE. CALM DOWN)

Can we talk about Mohammed yet? I'm Jesused-out. He's a pretty boring guy.

You do have a choice. But whatever. I'm not going to preach to you about it. =/
Is THAT what they're telling you these days?

So I guess those commandments are pretty null and void anymore. ;_; I kinda liked those.

Those little commandment thingys are guidelines on how God wants you to live. You can break all of them and still get into Heaven.

Theres something very wrong with your religion if you can break "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and still get in line for Saint Peter's list.

You trying to tell me John Wayne Gacey is in your Heaven?

It's complicated. I'm not copping out. It just is. Christ is the fulfillment of the Law. What this means is that, basically, the law is obsolete, not because its meaningless, but because you don't have to deal with it anymore. He pays for all of your mistakes. It's like when a kid breaks a window. Instead of suing the kid, the parent pays for it. Jesus is your guardian who pays for all your broken windows, if you accept that He can and did.

It's such a great example of how loving Jesus really is. He wants you to get into Heaven so badly that He made it pretty much the easiest thing ever, even if you're a murderer.

Besides, being a murderer is kinda moot when you're an immortal soul, floating around the Nth dimension.

Then I love the fact that people who work in the Peace Corps or people like Ghandi are in such good company as Hitler or serial murderers.

Why the fuck was Satan cast out then? You can't have it both ways.

Satan was cast out because he wanted to usurp God.

Hitler was vehemently anti-Christian, so no worries there.

The point is, Lehah, that we all deserve to go to hell. Yeah, even Ghandi, probably. How can you really judge the man? You only know the great thing he did. Maybe he was a shit as a kid. Who knows? The point is, if God sent everyone to hell who deserved it, he'd be pretty lonely up there. But He's takes us as we are, so long as we genuinely want to be with him.

As much as I think perspective is good, I think respecting people's decisions, and respecting them as intelligent human beings able to make their own decisions is good also.

So while someone might ask me if I have accepted Jesus into my heart, or hands me what is essentially a Christian propaganda comic book while I'm on the job, I am probably not going to entertain it as the life-changing event evangelism would like it to be.

Spreading the word of God can be accomplished just as well by serving as a living and constant reminder-- an example of what Christianity can foster inside our hearts and souls.

I am not Christian. I don't think I ever will be. But I don't think either extreme, either dismissing the religion out of hand, or extolling its virtues consistently to unreceptive people, allows for that large degree of human capability.

Fuck you, cynics. Stop treating everyone like they're a stupid asshole and you'll stop creating stupid assholes.

You've got a point, Skex. And I'm far from innocent here. I think we'd all do well to give each other's culture/religion/whatever more than a passing thought, for the sake of general peace.

I like how your ideology is full of shit.

I don't know what that means, but I'm guessing you're asking why I can't judge but God can? Which is kinda obvious. Omniscience and all.

Oh, and try not to make an ass of yourself. I have no problem thread banning you.

Care to elaborate on this highly intelligent, well-thought-out and thought-provoking sentiment?

To believe in God is to make an exception as he is a entity separate from the existence of Man and Nature. A special exception can only be proved in a special manner - you know, you need pretty overwhelming facts to back up pretty overwhelming truths. Your faith - Catholicism - is thusly only then a true and factual one when special effects, appearances of God, miracles, are believed in. (Have either of you seen a miracle? And I don't mean giving birth or a nice sunset either)

On the other hand, your belief in God is identified with the belief in the world around you, where the belief in God is no longer a special exception, where the being of the world takes possession of the whole person, there also vanishes the belief in special effects and appearances of God.

The theory of God is wrecked, is stranded on your belief in the world, in natural effects as the only true ones - that the world is a literal thing, as opposed to miracles, which are not to be proven literally. And here - the belief in miracles is no longer anything more than the belief in historical, past miracles, (unless either of you have witnessed something utterly unexplainable as to only be available to the theory of God) so the existence of God is also only an historical, in itself atheistic idea.

Or the Bible/Ressurection? Which I'm sorry to say has some secular historical backing. Not to mention the Dead Sea Scrolls which predate Jesus and contain numerous prophecies about him.

Thats moot. I can make 5000 predictions and I bet you someone in some way-off future will say I was right about something, even if they had to stretch the truth to get it to fit.

It's a matter of figures, odds, numbers.

Not to mention, the Bible's "secular backing" is somewhat iffy given that the Bible was written how long after the death of your Lord?

Am I the only person reading this and going in the back of my mind, isn’t it just a tad supercilious of the human race to conceptualize an entity that can create an entire universe as physically anthropomorphic. Or, does the various references of “he” in this thread isn’t to be taken in a literal context? I seriously can’t tell with Christians most of the time.

Thats another part of the silliness of it all.

The universe, we imagine, is centered around us. Its the way humans think. Everything is here for us. Maybe we're just the only animals on the planet that have the ability to reason and use logic to such levels. Maybe thats why we have the superiority complex. Its a curse if you ask me. ;_;

Scientists once thought that the sun spun around us, too. Oops. They were wrong.

We are not the center of everything. The sooner we learn this, the sooner we can make a little progress. ;_;

Would you prefer "It"? I fail to see what difference it makes whether we refer to God as "He" "She" or "It."

It would explain the psychology of a person who cast a perfectly good angel out of Heaven for trying to advance himself in the ranks of Heaven.

It's not like angels are easy to come by. I think God must be a man. He sucks at politics. ;_;

Everything you say about God is a metaphor, including the pronoun "he" because He is, by definition, unlike anything in the natural world and therefore outside of our combined experiences and beyond literal description.

Satan wasn't trying to advance, Sass. He was trying to take over. It was a failed coup, essentially. God gave him power second only to His own and because of pride, he believed that he was actually stronger than God and wanted to destroy Him. He failed and paid for it, along with the 1/3 of the angels who followed him.

I just want to insert a comment, and that is that we are not 100% sure that this is really the case. There are things hinted at here and there throughout the books of the prophets which suggest some sort of falling out, and there really is nothing in the bible to contradict what Minion is saying, but it certainly is not blatantly said in scripture. What IS clearly said though is that satan's desire is to oppose and attempt to thwart God.

I guess you should take the Bible as a metaphor, then. =/

Fyodor - I was taught that Satan was a fallen angel. I don't know what Bible you're reading.

Who can blame him? With a dude like God in power, I would try to take over, too. Telling people weird shit. Come on. If you want to convince people, you've got to make the story believable!

Thats fucking awesome, dude.

But, you know, theres no such thing as pure good or evil. I bet Satan is a fucking softy.