Tribo,
As you can probably tell my religious opinions are not set in stone. I appreciate any opinion that has thought behind it since what I am used to getting is "because that's what the Bible says" I am much more of a believer in logic.
spreid

I have found logic to be quite flexible and changes with the basic premise, but I too insist on logic, however flexible it is.

I will not be satisfied with "because that's what the Bible says" either.

I have been past that for a long long time.

JB

i agree that mans logic has great flexibility also within the bundries its used, but nothing beats real core truths.

Real core truths is a concept that I have a hard time wrapping my mind around. It seems so subjective, Even in the hard sciences truths have a way of changing, like it was once known as a truth that the sun circled the earth. As a matter of fact I was read somewhere there there is only one statement has always been true and will always be true. It is "this too will change"

spreid

Einstein said: "there are 2 infinite things, the universe and mans stupidity - and i'm not sure about the universe". hahaha

core truths to me are things such as gravity and other natural truths.there are no man made truth's, just suppositions based on inferior information gleaned from expierential knowledge contained within our environment. Take the environment away and we would all think differently.

But is gravity a truth? Do you accept the possibility that in some place in the universe or some other universe there is no gravity? I also heard speculation that there is no gravity the earth just sucks.
spreid

I don't consider gravity to be a core truth, but more of a law in a particular space-time environment. There may be other environments that have no gravity or that have a different kind of law that keeps things in a certain kind of order.

Each space-time environment (or universe) will have its own set of laws that govern it to serve the needs of the incubating life forms there.

JB

Hmmmm?

The Special Theory of Suckativity by Albert Hoover.

He proposes that the world was created in a vacuum.

Gives one pause for thought.

Well there are a myriad of serious flaws with the biblical portrayal of God. Flaws that are, in my humble opinion, entirely irreconcilable.

I could write a book as large as the Bible itself just to state them all.

However, just to pick one out for an example, the biblical God clearly told people to stone their unruly children to death. This cannot be denied. It's clearly in the Bible that God instructed people to do this. Even though this goes against his commandment that thou shalt not kill. But never mind that for now, there is an even more profound and perverse connotation associated with this,...

It suggests that God believes that unruly children are not salvageable. Why else would he suggest to kill them? Therefore it teaches us that it is senseless to try to reform unruly people, and that they should simply be weeded out of society because they represent bad breeding stock. They are good for nothing and should be disposed of like weeds in a garden. They should be plucked out of humanity and tossed onto the compose heap to rot.

Now many biblical enthusiasts will argue that I'm putting more interpretation onto it that was originally intended. But I claim otherwise, if God teaches us to murder our unruly children then this is what he teaches. And clearly he must want them removed from society to as not to contaminate others and/or possible hurt others. So we should be killing all unruly people. After all, he didn't give an age range. All people are children of someone. If they become unruly at anytime in their life they are still children to their parents and should be killed.

But this teaches that people aren't worthy of reform. It teaches a lack of tolerance, patience, and understanding. It teaches that it's ok to kill your own children in spite of the 10 commandments which say thou shalt not kill. Clearly this is an exception to the rule.

In fact, what most people aren't even aware of is that Jesus himself gave support to this when he reprimanded the Pharisees for not obeying God's law in this matter. Jesus also said that he did not come to change the laws of the Old Testament. So followers of the Bible today should indeed still be stoning unruly children to death.

Also, why would an unchanging God change his desire in this matter? If there was ever a time when he wanted unruly children killed then this must be what he always wants, otherwise he would be a God who changes, thus flying in the face that he's supposedly an unchanging God.

The Bible is just so full of holes and mixed messages that it's impossible to follow. Where in the Bible did God tell people to STOP killing their unruly children? NEVER! He never instructed them to stop! Therefore anyone who believes in this doctrine must obey this directive or recognize that they are indeed refusing to obey God.

The religion is untenable. There are too many things like this all throughout the Bible.

If we can know anything with absolute certainty we can know that the Bible is not the word of our creator. That we can know with certainty, and the reason is simple,... in order for it to be true God would have to be completely different form what the book claims! It's a totally inconsistent contradiction. The book claims that God is all-wise, all-powerful, all-loving, all-merciful, all-perfect, etc., but then it has this God doing really horrid things that only a God who is heartless and pathetically unwise could do. The Biblical God uses violence to solve every problem right up to, and including the crucifixion itself! The God never matures beyond an archaic medieval mindset, which only reveals who the true authors of these stories were.

Clearly the stories did not come from any all-wise supreme being.

because i just wouldn't believe it if i didn't believe it!

That's so true.

And people who don't believe it would have to lie to God to pretend that they do.

That's the whole problem right there. I'd have to lie to the biblical God to pretend that I believe those stories.

Trying to believe things that fly in the face of what they claim to be is impossible.

In truth, believe is not a choice. You can't simply chose to believe in something if you truly don't believe it. At the very best you can pretend to believe it.

From my point of view that's what 'faith' is all about. It's pretending to believe in something that in your heart you honestly know you don't believe.

Just rambling here.

But seriously, how can you choose to believe in something that makes utterly no sense to you? You wouldn't truly be believing in it, all you could possible do is say, "Ok I'll pretend it's true for the sake of potentially winning the prizes it offers".

I think that's where 99.9% of most religion people are at. They simply pretend to believe in something in the hope that it might be true, when deep down in the middle middle of their hearts they know is nothing more than hope.

Faith = Hope.

That's what faith is. It's the hope that something might be true since we clearly don't have enough evidence to know it's true (i.e. to truly believe it.)

That's really the only kind of faith that anyone can have in God.

Abra, you can't force faith......

You can't be born of God by trying to be....God has to do it.

Abra..God is just waiting for you to stop telling HIM how much you know about Him....and instead, God is just waiting for you to step out of the way now....and ASK God to reveal Himself to you....and THEN God will show You Who He Really Is.

The Holy Spirt is a Gentleman you know..and won't force you to believe...but the Holy Spirit will draw you,once you get out of the way ....and let go now......and let God .

Where do you get off claiming to know what my relationship is with God?

I don't tell God anything of sort.

The Bible is NOT God.

It's a book that was written by malicious men who had an agenda to instill guilt and religious bigotry in its readers, and they were very successful with their brainwashing techniques. If they had any clue how many people they actually duped they would be laughing their buns off. I'm sure they never dreamed that modern men in the 21st century would still be gullible enough to buy into their prejudiced lies.

I don't tell God how much I know about him.

But people who claim that the Bible is the word of God certianly DO!

They're the ones who are telling God that he has to be like ancient idiots described him. Not me.

They're the ones who are telling God what he has to be like.

In fact, I refuse to be so arrogant. I allow God to be whatever God is without trying to tell God that he has to conduct himself according to manmade myths and superstitious.

I set God FREE to be whatever God is.

To force the Biblical persona on him would be blaspheme on my part.

On the contrary, I try to get people to realize that they shouldn't be telling God what he has to be like. Christians are always trying to tell people that they know what God is like.

Just like you're trying to tell me how I should interact with God. But where do you get off thinking that you have a better relationship with God than I do?

You are so right sister

I think the only thing everyone most likely agrees with is that God has to be nice.

If God isn't nice, then God would be nasty and a nasty God would be a demon, not a God.

So just knowing that God is nice is all I need to know.

It's the ONLY piece of information I need.

And any books that claim that God told people to stone their children clearly can't be from God, because stoning children is not nice.

God has to be nice.

That's all you need to know.

You can pitch out any books that claim otherwise.

No one has ever been persecuted for saying God is bad but many have suffered for saying God is good.

The ultimate heresy is to say "In the end,God will save all".

core truth's to me, as i speak of them, are those that apply to here or in our solar system that we have explored in one way or another. Gravity exist there and here. Does it exist through out the entire universe? that i don't know for sure. does weather exist through out the universe on other planet's? again i cant say.But seeing what we can see from Hubble and other sources - the bulk of solar system's seem to behave in a way much like ours so i would say for this universe it probably holds true through out.

but what i was mainly getting at, is that they are core truths for us.here,now,and always have been since its beginning. Which is something we cant say about mans ideas of what mans core truths are. That was my intention's of comparison, not as a perfect acceptable gravity is everwhere and consistent statement. or that it could not change. Just as what we can know in a non changing way here as to speculative teachings of man as to what mans truths are for here and now. which will forever be in flux. In otherwords - non reliable info.