Famine
You said to me "Explain this". And now you don't even know what it is I'M meant to be explaining. And this is a deficiency in science?
Im sorry I dont get your point, lost with all the replies. All I mean is that I cant give you documentation about the place, but it really exists. Unless all the people I know who went there are just liars. They arent.
Famine
No, I got your point - even though it doesn't actually exist in reality since all of the things you mentioned have multiple independant sources and corroborative information. I was wondering what it had to do with my post which made you number it so.
What is it that I mentioned that had multiple independent sources and corroborative information?
Famine
Yes. The only reason I don't believe in God is a language issue 
It's a symptom of a disease. Using "probably" and "maybe" and "perhaps" to justify glaring factual and contextual errors. Note the thread title again? "Religion is Contrived"...
Im not justifying anything. Im giving my hypothesis about how people could understand greek, and this is why I used probably. Of course Im not going to say that what I said about languages is true, since it is not written in the Bible. Also, what makes it so impossible that people could be bilingual? Wasnt greek and important language at the time? Just like English today?
Famine
Yep. And you just answered it for me as well.
What comes before God? Nothing. What comes after God? Nothing.
Your words. Yet you find it almost impossible to "accept" the slightly familiar:
What came before the Universe? Nothing. What comes after the Universe? Nothing.
How can nothing come before the Big bang, or the universe? Big bang is an explosion that scattered substance in the whole space, which made planets and stars. Where did that substance come from? And the one that formed the last one? Im using pure human logic here, the same one people use to try to explain faith. God gives a recompense to those who believe, who have faith. If God was a man in the middle of us everyday, up until now, do you really think wed deserve that reward? What great achievement have we done? All we ever did was see God with our eyes and say yes he really exists but because we saw him. Faith is just like working. You work, knowing you will get something at the end, or else you would not work. If your boss gives you your paycheck before you start working, then did you really deserve it? If God gave us evidence that our five senses could sense everyday when we ask for it, would we really deserve going to Heaven for having faith? No, we sat on our lazy butts and waited for someone to satisfy our senses. Well this is never going to happen with God, and this is why Jesus called us to believe without seeing.
Famine
So science cannot explain things because you don't want it to?
I ask again, what has the truth got to do with your ability or desire to accept or believe it?
Truth has got NOTHING to do with my ability or desire to accept it or believe it. With our present knowledge (lets say water cycle, discovered long ago), do you really think science will ever be able to explain how all the water that covered the earth, every mountain peak, could have disappeared? You just said it, water cycle cant explain the big flood. This is why our science can not explain miracles. What use would it be to God if he kept doing things we can't notice because they happen everyday (example : a smaller flood)?
Famine
You're SO close to getting it now...
You wanted to know if danoof had ever considered where his Soul goes. I asked if you'd ever wondered where your fisnazzle goes. The questions are exactly analogous and make as much sense as each other.
Fisnazzle doesn't exist. It's a word I made up on the spot to describe absolutely nothing. You've never wondered where it goes when you die, because you haven't got one, someone else made it up and it doesn't exist. Getting it?
Hehe I thought itd be an invented word, but then my English sucks so we never know
. Anywho, what Im going to say, I read it in a readers digest a year ago.
Patients that have been operated for heart surgeries or others have reported to the doctors something weird they experienced, and this is not an isolated case. During the operation, the patients would often feel as if they were getting out of their own body, and they could really see their body lying down on the surgery table. Also, they could see doctors and nurses working around it, and everything, as if they were standing in the room. After the operation, theyd ask the doctor if (for example) he did something or said something in particular, and the doctor would say yes, meaning that the patient really saw what was happening, and it wasnt a dream. Also, some of the patients reported that they went somewhere and saw dead people they knew. No, they did not see God, but stay with me please, because Im not trying to explain something about God, Im talking about our soul. Many doctors from around the world have reported something like this, and they could never explain.
A new theory doctors have been developing is that our soul is something that runs in our cells. The cardiologists that experienced such things said our soul could actually be a substance that runs in our body, between our cells. This is their explanation. Of course, this does not explain how our soul can get out of our body, without anybody around seeing it.
The fact that the SAME thing happened to people that had been operated for the SAME things around the world could maybe explain that this is not luck, or a dream, or a coincidence.
IF ANYONE ON THIS FORUM HAS READ SOMETHING LIKE THIS, PLEASE POST A WEBSITE OR A BIBLIOGRAPHY!
N.B.: It is a bit hard to believe you have a soul if you don't believe in God, I agree.
But if someday science can explain that we really have a soul, then non-believers with such arguments would have to find something else.
Famine
Don't know if you've ever been round an angry tiger...
So, you don't know the quantities of things required but you're totally sure something of given, finite dimensions will accommodate everything? Let me help you out - not even if it were ten times the length, width AND height would it have been sufficient.
Thread title again.
You sound as if there were a million or two animal species on earth! Also, what do you mean by finite dimensions. How can a boat have infinite dimensions? Or maybe I got you wrong .
Let me explain again. The titanic had many many rooms that werent always used. For example, if you take supper time. People were assembled in the same place, eating. You could have 600 people in the same room eating, with just enough space to eat (sitting on a table, youre not 2 meters away from the person beside you..usually). So people were squeezed, even if they really werent, since its a luxury boat. You could walk in different hallways and not cross paths with anyone. The Titanic was obviously WAY too big for all the people it carried. But it HAD to be too big : its luxury. Take 3100 humans, squeeze them up (forget about human rights here) to give them just enough room to breathe and move a bit (like in a rock concert, for instance). The amount of space you could use is ridiculous! Now what if you could use three stories? The superficy is even smaller! (just like balconies or such in concerts).
The same applies to animals : some of them were bigger than us, yes. But then you have birds, etc., which are way smaller. Since there were probably not a million or two animal species (notice probably. Im not sure, just as you arent sure there was a million), the dimensions were appropriate.
Famine
Right.
So on the one hand we have the Bible as the infallible word of God which is an historical record of events, but on the other we have "oh the details don't matter, it's the message"?
Thread title again.
The Bible is not a historical record of events. 22 out of the 66 books (1/3 of the Bible) is stories. The rest is prophecies, poems glorifying God and teaching and preaching. Details in the Bible DO matter, just not everywhere. In Numbers 19, God gives the whole sacrifice ritual in detail. How it should be done, when, where, with what, who should be there, who should do what, etc. God doesnt just say the important thing is that you kill an animal. He gives details so that the people in the Old Testament could respect them, because in this part of the Bible, they were important.
When you read a story, the amount of details that are given depends on the authors style and on if you need the details to understand/resonate. The same applies for the Bible.
When we read the Bible, Satan will often distract us and prevent us from understanding. In the places where we need to pay the most attention to details, hell make us skip or say oh, I get the idea, no need to read furthermore. In other places, he will make us look for details and ask ourselves too much questions. But he doesnt make us look for details to make us understand and to make us more clever. Its his way of distracting us. Whatever we do, Satan will always find a way to get closer to us. This happens to all of us, even the ones who have been reading the Bible for years.
Famine
Merciful?
He wiped out the entire land animal population of a 24,000 mile circumference planet. What, he was only able to find EIGHT people who agreed with him, so he killed everything else?
Merciful? Sounds like a spoilt kid to me.
I could not help but notice that you keep ignoring the facts (or call them whatever you want) that I bring you, just to concentrate on what helps you have an argument.
Notice :
1) Last reply : The message? Piss the merciful creator off and he'll destroy your planet's surface... Nice message. And you want to live with this dude forever?
2) Now you say : He wiped out the entire land animal population of a 24,000 mile circumference planet. What, he was only able to find EIGHT people who agreed with him, so he killed everything else?
Merciful? Sounds like a spoilt kid to me.
Again, God is Love, this is what you ignored. In the verse I gave you (1 John 4:16), this is THE definition of God. Before being mad and destructive, God LOVES us and gives us a CHANCE (notice? LOVES and CHANCE). This is why the Bibles most popular verse says For God SO loved the world
(notice? SO loved, not even only loved). Just like a father wont spank his son for something he did right on the spot, God WAITS on us. He WARNS us. Whats merciful? A father who leaves his children grow up with influence from anyone they like, with drugs, alcohol, everything they want, without giving showing them the good habits in life and moral? Or maybe it is a father who warns his children and gives them advice, tells them to listen to him, educate them, THEN if nothing has worked, hell get mad. This is something children cant understand. Their parents spank them because they LOVE them, not because they hate them. Now you tell me God doesnt spank the people who dont believe, he literally kills them and sends them to hell. Yes, this is right. This is a difference between the analogy I used and Noahs story. God uses this story to warn us.
God also gave all the people on earth 120 years. 120 years? 120 YEARS! 120 years to repent (now he has given 2000 and counting
). Generation after generation, they kept ignoring the message. What were people doing? Exactly like some of the non-believers today : they were mocking Noah, saying he was an old man talking alone, thinking he was talking to God, imagining stuff, etc. This story is also a great example of faith for Christians : Noah built his Ark while people were mocking him. The message : no matter what people might think of you, keep your faith in God and do what He says.
On another note, you say he wiped out all the humans on earth, except eight. I think we should not see it as a BIG number of people, since Noahs story happens in Genesis, in the beginning of all the earth. They were not 7 billions on earth, like us today
If you count the number of generation/years between Adam/Eve and Noah, its clearly not a gigantic number like 7 billions or so.
Famine
Yes, God gives us animals. But notice that the verse I gave you (1 Corinthians 3:17) talks about the human body being the temple of God. Whoever destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him. God put the animals on earth and said (Genesis 6) that men should dominate on every creature of this earth. What I meant by what God gives you is your body, but I now see it sounded more like EVERYTHING, but its not everything, my bad. Also, God gave us a stomach and intestines to digest and absorb things that come from animals or vegetables. Would it be logic if He asked us not to eat anything thats alive (animals, vegetables)? Wed have to eat minerals or chemicals or wood, and wed die.
Famine
He thinks he can save lives in his messed-up teenager brain. Every teenager has a messed-up teenager brain. It's down to hormones - hormones which you believe God put there. Yet you think that God will punish a messed-up teenager for being what God made him.
People who jump in front of cars to push kids out of the way aren't thinking about their own deaths. If they were, they wouldn't do it. They are resigning themselves to the fact that they are going to relinquish their life, voluntarily, to save another life.
Relinquish their life voluntarily...
How can you think every teenager has a messed up brain? I can tell you from myself, friends, family, and many people I know, and who got through teenage, we never had the intention to suicide. I never thought I could save another persons life if I committed suicide, and I personally know nobody like that. NOT ALL the teenagers are like that. Few of them, yes. God knows how everyone of us is made. Young children, mentally handicapped people, mentally ill, etc. dont have the ability to hear and think about God. If you try to teach them anything (mathematics, language, science, same goes for God), they will never listen and never resonate. But this is NOT because they dont want to, its because they cant because theyre not fit to. (we both agree on that).
What happens if a 2 years old child dies in a car accident? God GRANTS the way to heaven to those who cant ( = because they really cant, as I explained) accept Him in their life. God allows such things to happen to people, but he also knows when you are sane enough to understand what people tell you. God will never punish somebody thats messed-up when its not even their fault. This is another way of how God is merciful.
Though the next argument is useless here, let me put it, because it resembles to how you keep replying to me :
How can someone RESIGN to the fact that he relinquishes his life voluntarily, and at the same time NOT THINK about his death? Theres contradiction here. But dont worry, I think I got your point here.
Again, the point is the INTENTION behind the idea. If you jump in front of the car because of epinephrine or without think, or just because of love for the person, then nobody can say it is suicide. If you jump in front of the car thinking that this might be a chance for you to suicide, without anyone knowing you wanted to, then this is sin. We cant try to fool God, because God knows whats in our minds. This is how suicide is a sin. Most of the time, A will save Bs life because of love or because he did not think about his own death, like you said, but this is not sin.
Were at a point where its not the action that counts (contrarily to most, if not all sins), but the intention behind it.
Famine
So you can do drugs and be a Christian as long as you're not addicted to it?
Heaven's Gate took drugs as part of a ritual, did it from their heart and believed in it. They lived in a commune to practise their religion. They also killed themselves.
Most drugs (this is another debate, though) have bad effects on your body. Some of them block your neurotransmettors (molecules), thus stopping anything thats called reflexes. Others will amplify the same thing, giving euphoria. The result is always the same : knocking something out, preventing it from working properly. You get a buzz because something in your body is not working the way it should, whatever this thing might be. Also, most drugs kill cells from the central nervous system. These cells are formed at the early stage of the fetus and most of them can never be replaced if they die. This is how a drug can affect your body, even on the first time you do it. This is why Christians cant do drugs.
But what I forgot to mention is that Jesus told his disciples to stay sober. Since all drugs get you high (if it doesnt then its not a drug) or give you a sensation thats different of when youre normal (then youre not normal), Christians cant do drugs, even if theyre not addicted to them. Addiction to something is even worse, as our body (the temple of God) is becoming the slave of something from this world. This is the freedom God has given us : serve him (which people think is NOT freedom), but stay free from sin and Satans chains (not being overwhelmed by something).
To be honest with you, I dont know who Heavens Gate are/were. But what I can tell you is that a Christian has to follow and meditate the Bible and what God asks us. Drinking as a part of ritual depends on quantities/frequency/etc. and Im not going to go into that. Suicide is known from the Bible to be a sin, its almost as obvious as if it were a commandment. God clearly said that we should NOT modify His Word, and whoever does that, God will punish Him. Im pretty sure Heavens Gate people had good intentions, until someone in the middle of them came up with an idea, and got them in the wrong way. The point here is : you cant sin, even if you think youre doing right, and expect God to be happy. Also, if you do something from the heart like you said, and that something is sin, then its not going to please God. Im sad these people gave Christians a bad image to non-believers, but this doesnt change Gods commandments AT ALL.
) - as she's passed the developmental stage and her body has dropped into its natural cycle.
and come on, devine...surely your God is telling you about that one.
