God and religion are two different things

I personally am and atheist but I have no problem with beleiving in god. If sufficient evidence were brought before me that he exists i would beleive, but that day has yet to come.

What I do have a problem with is religion, organizing everyone into extremeist groups and scaring everyone into obedience. What people need to do is see through these lies. I beleive that if there were a god he would not be so tyrannical as to flood the world and kill all his own creations to start with a clean slate. What would we do to someone that had a child and didn't like him so he killed and and had another (but promised he wouldn't do it again).

We would have him arrested and the police would probably take a swings when no one was looking because his crime was so sick. So what if god was one of us...he would be tried and executed for murder.

Also I dont beleive god would be omnipotent, he would make mistakes like any other(but wouldn't kill everyone because of it). Answer this, could god build a wall so high that even he couldn't climb it? you see, omnipotence is self-defeating, no one can know everything, its too broad of a statement and its bound to have an exception somewhere.

God is either omnipotent or loving but due to his history he cannot be both. If god is omnipotent that would mean that he would know before creation that a certain human would either go to hell or heaven. Now tell me, why would a loving god knowingly send condemn a human to hell, thats some really tough love? for that matter why create hell in the first place? the most gruesome and sickening forms of torture take place in hell as implicated by the bible. toture so terrible that no human could even imagine these things much less perform them. yet god has no problem condemning billions possibly trillions to this fate.

and here are some side questions to anyone who might know (and please dont quote scripture) why would god have to sacrifice his son? What would be the point behind that, i dont understand. watching man brutalize and eventually murder in the most inhumane way avilable at that time suddenly made god open the gates of heaven again? and if god closed the gates of heaven, did that mean that even those who were devout to god and spent their life helping others were also condemned to hell?

often times when faced with an attack on their religion, christians retaliate with an attack on science, saying that the big bang theory is harder to beleive than god. while this may be true, it does not mean that the universe was not created naturally. its just the best that our human minds can conceive at this point. The same can be said about god. if you beleive anything that religion says beleive that we cannot possibly conceive god. If there is a god he is nothing like religion describes him. religion was put in place as a form of control.

I dont beleive there is a god but if I did i would like to beleive that he would be a loving benevolent god that created man and is now creating other species in another part of the universe. The kind of god that when an atheist dies, is brought before him, and is begging to be spared he would comfort him and tell him there was no need to worship or even beleive in him in the first place. Who knows what he would do with him then, maybe put him back on earth, let him live as a spirit among the cosmos whos knows (certainly not throw him in an eternal torture chamber).

Nice post there.
I suppose I don't really believe in A god....I'm not about to go pressuring other people into believing the same as me which is where I think religion turned ugly. If people want to believe in YOUR God then they can do so of their own free will, if they later decide they don't think that YOUR God is the one for them then they should be free to change.

Organised religion ruins religion I think. To believe in a God you dont need to belong to a church, go to church, give money to church etc. You should be able to do it in your own home. I highly doubt that any god would send you hell if you didn't go to listen to someone rant at church every week/day.

Well I see where you are coming from, I agree, Religion is more of a way to try and guide people to so called truth. Men go to Churchs', Mosque, Temples in search for truth, and they might of think they have found it... but the truth is not that easy to see, it is covered in a vail, and only the one great God knows who truely is on the right path.

For you can go ahead and feel the power of Jesus as christians say? or feel the power of Allah? Either way its not what you feel but what actions have occured and how you have dealt with things.

"Mortal knowledge is circumscribed by mortal ignorance, and mortal comprehension is circumscribed by spiritual reality. It is unwise for mortal man to attempt the understanding of that which is beyond his conception, for there lies the road to disbelief and madness. Yet man is man and ever fated to reach out beyond himself, striving to attain things which always just elude his grasp. So in his frustration he replaces the dimly seen incomprehensible with things within his understanding. If these things but poorly reflect reality, then is not the reflection of reality, distorted though it may be, of greater value than no reflection at all?" -The Kolbrin Chapter 1 BOOK OF CREATION

IMO some atheist are more closer to the truth and on the path of goodness and greatness then the most religous person on the planet. I believe deep inside of you, you know there is something but you have been brainwashed with other peoples assumptions of what God is? Just feel and look around you, God is there but not in the form a man would think. God is also something inside of you, and something you can not see, God is mystreyous and beyond consumptoin. Forget religous things just find God, its there, buddhist, and taoist know but dont call it god, thats there own assumption, there is no real definition for God.

I hope that was clear, if not just ask questions, if you even read it and cared that is.


PS. God does not want offerings of anything, what God wants is hardwork and deticatoin and the goodness in you to be out there spreading what is right and just. Theres really more to it, but thats a start, and I am not acting like I know, I just tell you what I have discovered so far.

[edit on 17-4-2006 by trIckz_R_fO_kIdz]

Originally posted by daedalasGod is either omnipotent or loving but due to his history he cannot be both. If god is omnipotent that would mean that he would know before creation that a certain human would either go to hell or heaven. Now tell me, why would a loving god knowingly send condemn a human to hell, thats some really tough love? for that matter why create hell in the first place? the most gruesome and sickening forms of torture take place in hell as implicated by the bible. toture so terrible that no human could even imagine these things much less perform them. yet god has no problem condemning billions possibly trillions to this fate.

Couldn't have said it better myself... but my issues with religion is the xenophobia it seems to induce and the amount of illogical nonsense that most of it's followers say or get angry over...

Grown men and women bickering like an elderly couple over things which they themselves know little about, other than what they're told by other people, just seems childish...

Christians crying over the Da Vinci Code book and Muslims murdering because of a newspaper cartoon, just isn't very mature...

And I thought we lived in the 21st century...

I have long believed - and this applies only if you believe either one is important, of course - that it is more critical to be spiritual than it is to be religious. To my mind, if you are atheist or agnostic but are a deeply compassionate and loving person, then you are more spiritual (even if you don't recognize the existence of a spirit at all) than the most deeply religious individuals I know personally. Ultimately, I believe it comes down to the way in which you relate to and connect with the world around you and the beings that dwell therein. If you are 100% atheist and have zero belief in spiritual matters, souls, any deities, any form of afterlife, etc. then you can still take into account the fact that you won't always be here, and that you therefore must make the most of the time you have in order that those who come after you might have a more bearable or joyous existence than you did. I believe that's what really matters, regardless of what you believe. One thing virtually every belief system in the world (including the total lack thereof) includes is the notion that our presence here is impermanent, and that we therefore have a responsibility to live in acknowledgement of this fact, and with compassion to the extent we are able.

As for me, I believe in the connection and interrelationship of all things and the fellowship of all human beings. You can interpret that in any way you want. If to you that means a conscious entity that comprises that oneness that you can call God, that's fine; if you want to see it as the interdependence of the international community or the ways in which different cultures influence or rely upon one another, that's fine too. Any way you could interpret it is probably accurate, as I try to see it in as many ways as possible because it gives me a common footing from which to communicate easily with people of various belief structures.

i was really wondering whether everyone was as puzzled about this as I was or if someone had some kind of justification.

Originally posted by daedalas
and here are some side questions to anyone who might know (and please dont quote scripture) why would god have to sacrifice his son? What would be the point behind that, i dont understand. watching man brutalize and eventually murder in the most inhumane way avilable at that time suddenly made god open the gates of heaven again? and if god closed the gates of heaven, did that mean that even those who were devout to god and spent their life helping others were also condemned to hell?

If there are answers to these questions i would really like to hear them.

Originally posted by daedalas
If there are answers to these questions i would really like to hear them.

Sorry, but I don't think you'll EVER get that answer. You've really stumped those Christians now...

Originally posted by daedalas
i was really wondering whether everyone was as puzzled about this as I was or if someone had some kind of justification.

Originally posted by daedalas
and here are some side questions to anyone who might know (and please dont quote scripture) why would god have to sacrifice his son?

If there are answers to these questions i would really like to hear them.

Well since you want answers, I might have them, but I do not represent christians, they are on there own on that one. I wonder if any of you read my first post but oh well here we go again.

The events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus were, to say the least, enigmatic. Thousands of people had been crucified by the time of Jesus. The fact that Jesus was crucified on a cross didn’t distinguish him from tens of thousands of others. The reality is that the suffering that Jesus experienced which qualified him to be the Savior of the World didn’t happen on the cross at all, or in the flogging chambers of Pilate. The secret suffering of Jesus happened in the Garden of Gethsemane. According to Luke 22:43-44, Jesus' anguish was so deep that "his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground," an observation that harmonizes with the view that Jesus suffered most in Gethsemane during His Atonement.

Let us set the stage. Jesus and His apostles had just experienced the Last Supper. From the events of the Last Supper it is evident that Jesus knew that he was about to be martyred. He told Judas to go and do what he had to do and the Eucharist established the symbolic death of Christ for the sins of the world implying that Jesus knew what eminently was going to happen to Him and that by partaking of the Eucharist one acknowledges and accepts the suffering of Christ for one’s sins.

Judas was the nephew of Annas and a paid informant for Annas and Caiaphas. There is a new find called the Gospel of Judas, which depicts Judas as a hero having arranged with Jesus to be arrested and martyred. We have to understand that this Sadducean document was written and preserved in an attempt to vindicate their spy. None of the first generation apostolic fathers were in harmony with this text calling it a blasphemy and a distortion of the truth.

One has to ask oneself if Jesus would arrange for his own crucifixion? That doesn’t make sense on any level. The only motivation behind such a document was to vindicate the perpetrators of the crucifixion.

Everything else you asked about was in the Old Testament, which is 60% plagiarized, all the way down to the 7 day theory, which if you read into the Aztec calendar you will see a connection there, and many other things around the planet, the New Testament though is all done but inspired by many others. I hope this clears things up guys on some level.



[edit on 17-4-2006 by trIckz_R_fO_kIdz]

[edit on 17-4-2006 by trIckz_R_fO_kIdz]

trIckz_R_fO_kIdz, thanks for answering and that does clear some of it up but not all of it. What i really want to know is why god felt it neccesary to have his son executed to reopen the gates of heaven. Why would jesus have to die to make that happen?

And still looking for an answer to this one

if god closed the gates of heaven, did that mean that even those who were devout to god and spent their life helping others were also condemned to hell?

I know these are hard questions to answer and they are based mostly on opinion but i was wondering if the church gave an official reason for this or if they were just hoping no one would notice.

Originally posted by daedalas
trIckz_R_fO_kIdz, thanks
And still looking for an answer to this one


if god closed the gates of heaven, did that mean that even those who were devout to god and spent their life helping others were also condemned to hell?

No problem, but I have not really told you much of what I woud like to tell you. But I will get back on topic.

Well you must understand, over the course of many translations from the original Aramaic writing it was in, this thing about the gates of heaven was just a manifestation of false hood created by the church, so is a lot of other things, taking the bible as the only true source as the word of God would make you ignorant, but there is still some wisdom and truth left in it.

I really recommend a book called "Holy Bible from the ancient Eastern Text: The Bible translated from Aramaic "

" Aramaic was the language of Jesus. Again and again the Bible from the Aramaic have enriched the sacred writings and added meaning to our modern interpretations. There have been thousands of modern translations of the Bible which all come from the Greek version of the Bible. Greek was not the original language of most of the Bible, contrary to opinion. Nothing could be more exciting than to know the text from the original language with its language-specific innuendo, overtones, connotations and specific corrections to the original meaning. Thousands have sought additional insight to the Bible. This must be the first step in that process. This is the single most critical addition to a Christian Library.
This is an English Translation from the Aramaic and is about 1300 pages long."

This will clear a lot up for things that are not understood in the current, bible... though even then, there are still gapping holes in it. Christians will try their best to deny it, this is why they fail to answer questions, they put there belief on one single book but dare not research other text with connections. That is a problem with Religion, it can sometimes bound you to a single thing and it is not healthy. This will also cause confusion among others, they try to enforce who they believe God is, but in reality God is not what man wants it to be. There is no true nature of the One Great God we can ever understand, but we can accept the way he talks to us.

I would also like to point out, hell and heaven are just creations of man, they do not exists, hell was originally a explanation for when a mans soul falls from the goodness of god, and heaven was originally a explanation of being with the goodness of god and righteous. Later they were changed into some sort of place where people go when they die? This is true to a extent, but there probally does exsist another plan similar to hell, but it would not be as it seems, there are many hells and many heavens, one persons hell can be someones heaven. So we can not characterize these as we live on this planet, so do not worry about it. This life is just the first chapter in your journey, after this world exsist another, and if you fail to meet the requirments for the next you return to the soul sea.

"Bribery and corruption are the guiding lights of men. Women cannot conveive, for their wickedness makes barren the womb. Men say, "Where is God?". But God has withdrawn because of their wickedness. The false gods flourish and wax fat on promises"

[edit on 17-4-2006 by trIckz_R_fO_kIdz]

and here are some side questions to anyone who might know (and please dont quote scripture)

That's like saying, please tell me how to fix my car, but don't quote the manual.

Well, errr.........ahhhh..............errr....Take some freshly chewed gum and stick it to the err...ah....brake and errrr...............errr.r ahh......................

Originally posted by daedalas
i was really wondering whether everyone was as puzzled about this as I was or if someone had some kind of justification.

Originally posted by daedalas
and here are some side questions to anyone who might know (and please dont quote scripture) why would god have to sacrifice his son? What would be the point behind that, i dont understand. watching man brutalize and eventually murder in the most inhumane way avilable at that time suddenly made god open the gates of heaven again? and if god closed the gates of heaven, did that mean that even those who were devout to god and spent their life helping others were also condemned to hell?

If there are answers to these questions i would really like to hear them.

You want answers to these questions, yet you don't want scripture quoted to you, yet scripture is where we find the answers. That's something that you need to get over.

Jesus came to die for sins. Why?, because that was the answer to the problem. God wants to live with each of us. He wants us to see Him and live with Him. There's one problem, we have to be 100% perfect and holy. Not 99.9999%, it has to be 100%. We aren't, so God could have left us to die in our sins and as each dies we would spend eternity in hell, seperated from Him. God didn't want that, so Jesus came and having no sin of His own, He could take upon Himself our sin, and take God's judgement for sin. Now the problem is fixed, if by faith you accept the fact that you are a sinner and Jesus paid for your sin on the cross(in your place) then you are credited with forgiveness and will escape hell and eternal seperation from God.

To answer the 2nd question no one has ever been perfect and sinless except Jesus Himself. No amount of good works earns any place in heaven and eternity with God. Remember the standard to live with God is 100% PERFECTION. No man or woman can or has or will attain that on their own.

Before the cross, it was faith placed forward to the sacrifice that would bring those who would believe, to rightness with God. After the cross it is faith placed back to the cross and what took place for the removal of sin.


[edit on 23-4-2006 by dbrandt]

your right dbrant, i will now ask you a question regarding scripture and i dont care if you quote scripture to answer. first i will present this verse from Dueteronomy.

"Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you." -- DT.4:2

So here is my question to you. God says that we shouldn't add to, or take away from, any of his commands. Why then don't modern Bible-believers stone to death blasphemers, Sabbath breakers, and disobedient sons?

A good topic for a thread. I believe that religion is a response to a human need much like the communists called it. But the communists disdained the idea of spirit from which the need for religion comes. The communists said that the need for religion was based on mental illness literally.

The need for religion is the need to know or understand the bigger questions of course. I'm not suggesting that Christ or Mohammed or Moses did not exist either... I fully believe that they did walk this earth but do we really know them? I highly doubt that myself.

Having complete knowledge or understanding would make us God or part of God or in union with God and remove our need for religion AND Science.

One God, many religions.
Yes, governments have placed psychiatric labels on various anti-government beliefs/actions. CIA has done so, too, re world leaders.
Now, what if the need to know or understand the bigger questions was only the first question to be answered? Then, having the answer, we go on to ask the next question...what do we do with this answer?
Start with the premise that we are a part of God, God is in us, and we are only forgetting this Union with God. In this plane we will strive for knowledge, that's a given, hence science. And we shall have religions, for the moment, anyway, because we are humans and we tend to establish religions. Truly, the only thing that matters, what ultimately counts is what we do with each other.

Originally posted by daedalas

So here is my question to you. God says that we shouldn't add to, or take away from, any of his commands. Why then don't modern Bible-believers stone to death blasphemers, Sabbath breakers, and disobedient sons?

I believe I may not have the complete answer, but maybe it is. Remember we have to be 100% perfect to live with God as He desires. When Israel came out of Egypt they were to live completely for God. Sin from anyone(Jew or non-Jew) living amongst them was to be dealt with. These people who were swallowed up by the earth or stoned or destroyed etc., are meant to show us how big of a deal sin is to God. It's SERIOUS.

On this side of the cross we are in an age of grace. While we have to be careful not to allow sin to overtake us or become part of our beliefs, we are also to show mercy to others just as God has shown mercy to us.

Be thankful you live on this side of the cross.

dbrandt, I completely agree with your answer. Well put.

Maybe I can offer further illustration of your point and others in this thread with a couple quotes from Matthew. This first quote goes to the idea of the gates of heaven being shut.

Matthew 8

8 The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.

9 For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

10 When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

11 And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.

12 But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

13 And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour.

This second quote goes to the heart of your post dbrandt, that in the time of Jesus, as in today, allegiance to the letter of doctrine had interfered with the experience of faith in God.

Matthew 9

12 But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

13 But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

[edit on 23-4-2006 by Icarus Rising]