The teachings on purgatory have changed a little, but, yes, they still believe in purgatory. Protestants don't. It's either straight to heaven or straight to hell.

I don't know.

The way that the Bible describes God it appears that all that exists are demons, because it certainly portrays God as a demon as far as I can see.

God will send anyone to hell who doesn't believe an utterly insane book is his word?

I personally believe God to be far superior to the biblical picture.

So according to the Bible I'm going to hell for having simply given God a compliment.

In other words, if you dare to praise God you go to hell.

There are far too many mistakes in the bible. Im not even referring to the misogyny or the violence or hatred or poor choices. Im just talking about the little stupid errors, like bats being birds and rabbits chewing their cud. Now if someone was "divinely inspired" to write all this down, that means that God was in effect speaking through them correct? So does god not know how his animals work that he crested>? Can he not tell an avian from a mammal>?

Well, in theory, I could give small technicalites the grace of having been lost in translations.

I wouldn't nit-pick if those were the only things in question.

It's the behavior of the supposedly divine God that is totally without merit.

There are so many things that are totally inexcusable. Not the least of which is the very idea of a God who would be mean toward people who reject the Bible as being ungodly.

I see no reason to believe that a God who is supposed to be an all-wise 'Fatherly Image' would ask anyone for blood sacrifices as an atonement their disobedience.

That would be sending a horrible message. It simply says, "It's ok to disobey as long as you're willing to appease me".

That's utterly stupid, IMHO.

A truly intelligent parent-figure would ask for atonments that make sense. Such as constructive community service. Not blood scarifces. What does that teach? Nothing of value!

Clearly an all-wise divine being would be smarter than the men who made up these stupid stories.

The greatest evidence of all that the Bible is not the word of any all-wise God is blatant in the fact that the book exists to begin with.

Any all-wise God who doesn't even realize that to write a totally ambigious an confusing book would only serve to confuse people can't possible be "all-wise" to begin with.

And anyone who tries to argue that the Bible isn't ambigous or confusing can't be sane because it's crystal clear than even people who want to believe that it's the word of God can't even agree with each other on what it says.

Look at the Jews and Christians! They can't even agree on who the Book claims God is!

I'm mean if major cultures can't even agree on who the book claim God is, then clearly the book is totally ambigous and unclear.

If you ad Islam and the Koran into the mix (which I believe you must do) then it's even more insane to claim that this Mediterranean mythology has any credence at all.

Finally, and I've argued this before, if a God wrote the Bible then that God would be totally responsible if his writings are misunderstood. An all-wise divine author would be totally responsible for making sure that his book is written in a way that cannnot possibly be miscontrued to support harmful activies. Yet the Bible has been used to support harmful activities more than any other book ever written.

For an all-wise divine (and intervening) God to not blow the whistle when his poorly written book is being used to harm people would be totally irresponsible and unjustifiable.

This of course would be true throughout all of history, but it would be particularly true when men who worshiped the Biblical God used it as a guide to write the "Malleus Maleficarum".

For an intervening God to just sit by and allow that misunderstanding to take place in his name would be the most unholy act that any God could possible partake in.

As far as I'm concerned, this single reason is more that sufficient proof beyond any shadow of a doubt that the biblical "intervening" God who writes books to tell people how to behave cannot possibly be true.

For such a God to not intervene to explain to his worshipers that his book is being misunderstood would be grossly irresponsible.

You just can't have a supposedly divine God who can intervene sit by and do nothing when people who are clearly worshiping that God are committing atrocieties in his name.

That would either be a totally irresponsible God, or a God who is totally powerless to intervene.

Either way, the biblical picture of God is dead. Either the biblical God is totally irresponsible, or utterly powerless.

It's a picture of God that has proven itself to be impossible to be true.

Of course, I could give a myriad of additional reasons why the biblical picture of God can't possibly be true.

But why bother?

It's dead in water.

The Biblical picture of God cannot possibly be true.

It's not even a sane possiblity to consider.

The fact that anyone still believes in this utterly insane picture is truly sad. It only goes to show how powerfully superstition still has a grip on humanity. People would rather believe in this absurd story that face the fact that it can't possibly be true.

Christians fell in love with Jesus, but what they can't see is that even he rejected the biblical picture of God in truth. He was murdered and then used to revitalize the very picture that he denounced. The most likely scenario is that he was attempting to teach the very same things that Deepak Chopra teaches today. Eastern Mysticism.

Deepak Chopra is the closest thing you'll find to Jesus. At least in terms of what he teaches. Or course Chopra isn't alone, there are many teachers of Eastern Mysticism. Jesus was one of them, IMHO.

I was thinking this also. Why would god require a book at all? That alone is a little suspicious. Witches dont attempt to write down anything that the God or Goddess has supposedly said. They write spells and incantations that they themselves have authored and make no claims to the contrary. At least as far as Im aware of. There are always exceptions to rules.

The bible is also very confusing. I dont understand it a good portion of the time. Ive trained myself to be able to interpret the language but even then, I find it difficult to fully comprehend. When I tell a Christian this, they seem to become offended and insist that its only because I am "not saved" or that I havnt found Jesus. They insist that is the only reason it makes no sense or sounds horrible. That doesnt seem correct. To deny that a 2000 year old manuscript is not convoluted or unclear is just plain stupid.

The Catholics are the only ones that still accept the concept of "Purgatory" as far as I understand. I know this because a few months ago (not recently) we were arguing on a thread about whether or not someone will go to hell if they were a good person but not Christian. I said why would a good person end up in Purgatory and all of the Christians started yelling at me that there was no such thing as Purgatory and that was a Catholic concept and made up.

Yeah, Christians HATE the whole purgatory concept.

It's been a while since I've been in here, but I'm glad to know that not much has changed

James you're becoming wiser each time I read your posts.

If you really want to get down to the nuts and bolts of the bible and why it came to be, here's a brief synopsis...

The stories within the bible can be traced back to old pagan and mythological stories. Just change the names. Christianity was formed due to a king wanting control of his kingdom, and his advisor had come up with the "brilliant" idea of controlling them by way of their "religion". Once it took hold and others saw how much control he had over his kingdom, the others followed his ways, so they too would have the control over theirs.

I've always found it ironic that the stories of mythology have stayed in place and are even taught in schools, yet it's frowned upon to worhip Gods and there's definitely no such thing as a Goddess. The of course we have Mother Nature whom has stayed in place all through the times...hmmmmm I wonder how they rationalize that!?!

I'm not knocking those that follow the bible or those that believe differently than those of us that follow old tradition. Everyone has their own path. Some follow a path while other make one. It's all about choices. As for me...I prefer to make mine rather than follow someone elses.

Good post! Welcome to the thread.

Making your own path has the advantage that you can stray when you feel like it, or linger to smell the flowers.

Welcome here in the Other Religions Forum, a truly peaceful place.

That's an intereting point. There's some debating and mild arguing that goes on in here from time to time, but that's it. I have not gone into the Christianity forums. Does anyone know if there is a lot of fighting in there or do they pretty much all get along like we do?

No, I posted in the "Happy Birthday Jesus" thread and all of a sudden found myself thrown in there, but I just upped and ran, it's not a place I want to be seen.

I have not looked at the Christian forum and have no plans to. My guess is they argue but probably just over the different misinterpretations of scripture and the Catholics probably ignore the Christians because they are better than them.

I might go take a peek in there.

They just moved that "Happy Birthday Jesus" thread there. The one we were all arguing with Quick stepper over. Shes mean.

Oh good. That'll help me get there easier. If I'm not back in 10 minutes send help!

So she is, but the other one, who posted the thread in question, is far worse. There is a thread in politics where he said that all Islam should be wiped out to make the world a better place. Wonderful Christian, isn't he just?

Yep, just a bunch of prayer requests and debating over scripture. Kind of boring. But, no real fighting going on.

It is, however, hilarious to me to see a half naked woman quoting scripture and talking about the blessings of being a Christian. I asked about this before and no one would discuss it. Whatever.

Truly scary. Christians and Muslims both have the capacity to become very violent in defense of their beliefs.

Perhaps she is pretending to be Eve.