Thoughts from a former Christian

Please read the entirety of this post before replying, ill try to keep it as short as possible. Despite the message, I am not trying to offend anyone.

I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian home. Growing up, my idea of God was shaped around this mindset, and I tried very hard to adhere to the lifestyle my church promoted. I did everything you were 'supposed' to do - quiet times, prayers, etc, but never seemed to feel the 'personal relationship' with Christ I was so often told about.

Around age 18, I drifted from the Church to follow my own heart, and in doing so began to question many of the things I had been taught growing up. This is easy to write, but it was probably the hardest thing I have ever done. To go against everything my family and respected friends told me was no easy thing, especially when I held a deeply ingrained belief of eternal punishment for going 'against the Word of God'.

I simply could no longer accept the 'blind faith' that is so strongly admired by mainstream Christianity. The more I thought about it, the more Christian 'faith' seemed to be nothing but blind ignorance surrounded by attractive words and emotional music. Faith is inherently a personal thing, so how can adopting the views of others (the Church) equate to being a 'faithful servant of God'? After all, if we all possess the Holy Spirit, isn't the best way to discover God's heart to look within?

I have since come a long way since this mindset (a topic for another thread), but last night I attended a Christmas Eve service at my former Church, and was greatly troubled by a message that seemed to encourage everyone around me.

The basic idea of the sermon was, in a nutshell, this: the world is fallen, and will remain a horrible place until Jesus returns. The pastor quoted verses from Isaiah and Daniel, and spoke often of the 'miracle' of prophecy in the Bible. This may sound like the extremist views of a small church in the middle of nowhere, but that is far from the truth. The service we attended was one of 6 delivered that day, each to an audience of over 5000 people. The pastor was formerly the leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the attendees were predominantly members of affluent, educated families.

After leaving the service, my parents asked me what I thought if the message, and I did something I don't often do for fear of causing family strife: I spoke my mind.

How can a defeatist attitude be welcomed by so many people with open arms? How can words of division, spoken under the guise of 'faith' and 'belief' be interpreted as a message of love and hope? How can everyone not see how these beliefs have resulted in the death and suffering of so many precious lives throughout history?!

My parents responded as I expected they would. As Christians, they put their faith in the Bible, the 'Word of God'. And thus, the purpose of my topic:

How is belief that the Bible (or any other Holy book) is the 'perfect Word of God' anything other than idolatry?

Despite my division with organized religion, I still admire Jesus in a way I cannot express. What's funny is, I never really felt I 'knew' Jesus until I stepped away from the Christian indoctrination I was raised to adhere to. To me, the beautiful thing about Jesus was his message of love. When asked what the greatest commandments were, Jesus replied: love The Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself.

I think if Jesus were around today, he would be ashamed and infuriated about what his 'followers' have become. Christians use lines of scriptire to deny love to an entire subset of people (gays). Our 'Christian' nation, capable of relieving the suffering of so many fellow humans, instead uses its energy to wage war and create division. Our very society is structured in a way that encourages greed and deception!

But this is all fine. After all, we are helpless until Jesus comes back.

Go eat your unleavened bread, drink your wine, and give thanks to God for sending his son to save his misguided creation.

I used to think it was enough for me to follow my own heart and discover my own truth, but I now see this was just me being a coward.

The deification of the Bible (or Koran, or Bhagavad Gita, or...) not only bastardizes the beautiful teachings these works contain, it allows an ignorant, arrogant world view that may very well result in our destruction as a species.

To allow these views to further propagate is not only irresponsible, it is dangerous. I urge you, I BEG you, have enough faith in yourself as a human being to recognize that it is time to move forward as a species.

In the true spirit of Christ, I wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Originally posted by ddaniel

How can a defeatist attitude be welcomed by so many people with open arms? How can words of division, spoken under the guise of 'faith' and 'belief' be interpreted as a message of love and hope?

Because that is what has been repeatedly pounded into them, throughout years and years of conforming.



[color=777777](Obviously, you're talking about a lot of people, so I will just say 'Most'....)
'Most of them did not hear what you heard. They hear the words, but don't actually stop and think about everything that is actually being said.

You were paying attention, and using your own mind, whereas many of the other people were likely just sitting there smiling, thinking about how much they love their families, their christmas presents, and their christmas dinner... mmmmm leftovers....





...and I'm staying away from part 2.

Originally posted by ddaniel
Despite my division with organized religion, I still admire Jesus in a way I cannot express. What's funny is, I never really felt I 'knew' Jesus until I stepped away from the Christian indoctrination I was raised to adhere to.

OP, loved your post, especially your focus on Jesus' views on love...

My first thought after reading was this:

Are you aware of what is REALLY going on in the "church?"

Everything I have studied tells me that most denominations have been infiltrated which is why they bare no resemblance at all to the early Church.

"90% of the Southern Baptist hierarchy are Freemasons. There is also a high percentage of Christian leadership from the Lutheran and United Methodist churches are Masons. This would explain why Ecumenism has spread so easily. ...the goal is to infiltrate it with their compromising philosophies and attempt to destroy the Church from within."

Infiltration of Freemasonry

What if I were to tell you, that there is a vast Satanic conspiracy to deceive the masses of every society on earth? What if I were to tell you that the top leaders of the world’s religions were in league with the Devil? Would you think I’m crazy? I would! Yet, the truth is stranger than fiction! You have been lied to my friend. Few people in the world today are aware of just how much Satan has infiltrated organized religion. Link

"Every major religion in the world has been manufactured or infiltrated by the Illuminati to enslave and brainwash society. In essence, religion was the first form of mind control. The indoctrination of the masses by a "Trojan Horse" false religion has allowed the Illuminati to take control and work in secret for many, many years." Link

OPUS DEI-- War on Protestantism

The Vatican has infiltrated, or neutered and spayed, virtually every denomination and organization in Christendom. Various means have been used, but Opus Dei has played a major role in this.

Virtually 100% of the world's seminaries are in the pocket of the Roman Whore in that they use her Bible via the Alexandrian Gnostic Greek texts.

I am fully persuaded that Opus Dei and the Jesuits have already planted many of their agents in Baptist and Fundamental churches and schools.

I am convinced that many Fundamental Baptist churches are NOW pastored by Jesuits and Opus Dei agents. Many deacons and Sunday School teachers are now inside the Baptist movement teaching doctrines of Rome. You need to read the following articles so that you can watch for the signs that you too have an hireling planted in your church by the Vatican.

OPUS DEI-- War on Protestantism

"Today the religions of the world remain a major tool of the Illuminati agenda. They maintain the climate of unquestioning, unthinking, ignorance, and their pseudo-morality provides a veil of hypocrisy, behind which the most sickening abuse of children can be hidden."

"Some of the most famous church "leaders" and evangelists on the planet are Illuminati operatives who use religion to manipulate and brain-wash their followers while engaging in Satanic rituals that beggar belief."

"But the mass of unthinking followers in any religion are merely the fodder and the screen behind which the real business goes on." Link

reply to post by BrokenCircles


Thanks for your reply.

I agree that many simply go through the motions (sheep) but my experience with the church leads me to believe there are a great number of inquisitive minds within it. Their personal convictions, however, are ultimately held up against the Bible as a standard, and the message of the Bible is thought to be what the established Church says it is.

As humans, we naturally trust those around us, and naturally doubt our own convictions. This is how the phenomena if group think develops.

If enough of these inquisitive minds were exposed to the truth and had the faith to follow their own convictions, we could finally bring about some real change!

reply to post by Murgatroid


Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm somewhat aware of the Church conspiracies.

Admittedly, I'm not well-versed enough to respond directly to the information you posted (thanks for giving me some good reading material!)

I have, however, followed this site (and similar sources of information) long enough to recognize that conspiracy theories are often an attempt to simplify an ugly and complicated situation. In other words, they can act as a scapegoat.

I have no doubt that religion has been used historically to control people. Heck, just look at the founding of the Catholic Church (Constantine knew what he was doing).

I don't believe that is the case in this situation. I know the pastor personally, and have all of my life. He is doing what he legitimately thinks is God's will. The problem as I see it is that his actions are based not on his faith in God, but his faith in the Bible.

Christianity deifies the Bible, and when you deify symbols that are open to interpretation (namely, words), you are setting up a recipe for disaster

I didn't come to faith until later in life and that may be why I see this from a completely different perspective. I never followed anything "blindly", but I sought out to learn why Christians believe what they believe, and read the Bible to see what it said for itself, and because of that I just see something else.

I believe you said that the message you heard was that of a defeated attitude, and and I don't know about that. Sometimes the truth is a bitter pill to swallow, but it's good for you nonetheless. Jesus didn't teach a message of "you're all screwed guys, quit while you're ahead", if that were so, why did the church spread over the world the way it did, with men losing their lives at the hands of violent, "religious" men? It appears as if jesus' cowardly disciples were empowered to do things that these ordinary men would have never done on their own. Jesus apparently believed that we couldn't help ourselves, and or he wouldn't have come to teach, lead, and and lay down his life as a ransom for many. The problem is many in the church stop there.

Granted, the church has been blamed of sitting on its hands for a long time here, especially those with Calvinist leanings, and essentially laying the burden on God while they have pot luck dinner. But I read about a different church in the Bible, and I see people laying down their lives for their enemies all around the world, even here in America.

The gospel, how as I read (but don't regularly see around here admittedly), is one of power, and a power to affect change, and something I have experienced myself, I and have seen worked out in the most depraved of men in my short lifetime. And, I myself have been able to help many men regenerated and changed.


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Originally posted by ddaniel
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm somewhat aware of the Church conspiracies.

Admittedly, I'm not well-versed enough to respond directly to the information you posted (thanks for giving me some good reading material!)

I have, however, followed this site (and similar sources of information) long enough to recognize that conspiracy theories are often an attempt to simplify an ugly and complicated situation. In other words, they can act as a scapegoat.

Christianity deifies the Bible, and when you deify symbols that are open to interpretation (namely, words), you are setting up a recipe for disaster

Yes, conspiracies can in fact act as a scapegoat.

In this particular case, the quotes I posted above are NOT conspiracies.

They are FACTS...

There IS a difference, and you need to learn to TELL the difference before you can learn the truth.

Once you learn to discern the difference between a hoax and a cover-up, things get easier.

Religion IS a massive form of mind control, there is no question about that fact.

Because of this mind control, most "Christians" don't understand what Christianity actually is.

It's as if they were indoctrinated in some type of cult.

What I am saying is that religion is mostly lies, those lies are GOING to influence what you believe.

Religion and truth are opposites.

Religion HATES truth...

Here are some excellent examples of what I am trying to say:

Originally posted by wjones837
I didn't come to faith until later in life and that may be why I see this from a completely different perspective. I never followed anything "blindly", but I sought out to learn why Christians believe what they believe, and read the Bible to see what it said for itself, and because of that I just see something else.

By 'blindly', i mean that most people base their beliefs on those of others. This is necessary to a certain degree, but without personal conviction and experience, such belief js irresponsible! I applaud your personal quest for truth, but do you base your belief entirely on the letters contained in the Bible? Most Christians know little to nothing about how the Bible was assembled, yet proclaim it to be the 'Word of God'!

I believe you said that the message you heard was that of a defeated attitude, and and I don't know about that. Sometimes the truth is a bitter pill to swallow, but it's good for you nonetheless. Jesus didn't teach a message of "you're all screwed guys, quit while you're ahead", if that were so, why did the church spread over the world the way it did, with men losing their lives at the hands of violent, "religious" men? It appears as if jesus' cowardly disciples were empowered to do things that these ordinary men would have never done on their own. Jesus apparently believed that we couldn't help ourselves, and or he wouldn't have come to teach, lead, and and lay down his life as a ransom for many. The problem is many in the church stop there.

You're correct that this is not the teaching of Jesus, but is currently the teaching of the Church. We are 'born into sin', and helpless without a savior. Fundamentalists believe the world will not be 'cleansed of evil' until the end times and e second coming: that is by definition a defeatist attitude!

Jesus came with a message of love and acceptance for all, not condemnation and judgement.

Granted, the church has been blamed of sitting on its hands for a long time here, especially those with Calvinist leanings, and essentially laying the burden on God while they have pot luck dinner. But I read about a different church in the Bible, and I see people laying down their lives for their enemies all around the world, even here in America.

The gospel, how as I read (but don't regularly see around here admittedly), is one of power, and a power to affect change, and something I have experienced myself, I and have seen worked out in the most depraved of men in my short lifetime. And, I myself have been able to help many men regenerated and changed.

 

Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

 

You're ascribing morality to religious conviction, to which there is no correlation. I agree with your interpretation of the Gospel being one of empowerment, but Christianity today is far from the message I see in the gospel!

reply to post by Murgatroid


Thank you for another thought-provoking post. I enjoyed the videos.

I need to sleep, but will read up on the links you posted, and look forward to further discussion.

Strong conviction, religious or otherwise, always leads to morality. The question is only what morality?


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

I don't know what the point of these kind of posts are unless it is seeking approval or praise for saying what is generally accepted by ATS peers.
As you say you were bought up a fundamentalist Christian, I find it astonishing that you hadn't heard the content of the sermon before. In a nutshell, the Bible tells the story of a fallen world, saved by its own creator though the ultimate sacrifice, and that ends when the enemy is defeated when the creator returns. Even with a basic understanding this should be obvious.
Despite the ignorant posts by others who seem to have decided that other Christians blindly accept what is told to them without question, this is not the case. Granted, there will be some who do follow a faith unquestioningly, but it is illogical to assume the same mindset for all.
OK, you've lost your faith, so what now? Do you act like some kind of arrogant superior looking down at the ignorance of those you once counted yourself a part of? Do you assume through your own misunderstanding that those same people have a defeatist attitude (even though it is apparent that you lack the basic understanding of what they are supposed to be defeated by)? Or do you ask the Holy Spirit to open up the scriptures to you so that you can see how ridiculous your opening post is, and find the truth that is in the Bible, which will truly astound you if you rely on it, rather than the teachings of men/churches

Originally posted by ddaniel
reply to post by Murgatroid

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm somewhat aware of the Church conspiracies.

Admittedly, I'm not well-versed enough to respond directly to the information you posted (thanks for giving me some good reading material!)

I have, however, followed this site (and similar sources of information) long enough to recognize that conspiracy theories are often an attempt to simplify an ugly and complicated situation. In other words, they can act as a scapegoat.

I have no doubt that religion has been used historically to control people. Heck, just look at the founding of the Catholic Church (Constantine knew what he was doing).

I don't believe that is the case in this situation. I know the pastor personally, and have all of my life. He is doing what he legitimately thinks is God's will. The problem as I see it is that his actions are based not on his faith in God, but his faith in the Bible.

Christianity deifies the Bible, and when you deify symbols that are open to interpretation (namely, words), you are setting up a recipe for disaster

You won't have your doubts and misunderstandings much longer OP, Our Lord is going to show you personally
He is real. There is one divine plan and you will have to decide yes or not for it. God honors free will.

Remember, remember, God's presence in the most Holy Eucharist is true.

The Bible is a construction of Man, not God.

What most people in Christianity practice is based on the letters of Paul, not the teachings of Jesus. If we study the teachings of Jesus alone, they do not match with much of what Paul writes in his letters, which unfortunately form bulk of New testament theology.

There is a lot of problems with the Bible; The book prepares the world for birth, life and death, of a Savior, then leaves 18 years of his life completely missing and unaccounted for, and dilutes his teachings after the fact. Many of the books are questionable in origin, and plagiarize earlier cultures and societies for source material. The people that created and assembled Bible benefited greatly from the product they produced afterward, and went on a campaign of murder and censorship as soon as the Bible was completed to stamp out competitive or contradictory text and theology. We can read about this occurring across History from Emperor Constantine in the mid 300 's AD until today.

There are too many questions that come up when we inspect closely, and this is where blind faith requirement comes into play. When a body of work cannot stand up to scrutiny, then even more questions must be asked. In fact Jesus instructs us to study, research, and meditate on the Word.
Blindly accepting Faith is ridiculous notion and never promoted by Jesus, it is people managing Religion that ask blind obedience, lest people find the truth.

Keep asking questions, study where the Bible actually came from and how it was created. This is the beginning of Faith.

My personal observation of this world, most are too lazy and or distracted by useless worthless nonsense to search for any truths. Much easier to accept someone elses' canned version of the truth, hope it's right and get back to being distracted from life.

Truth is, you can never know anothers' mind or heart, accepting a claimed truth by another as your truth is pretty irresponsible. Just because someone wrote something down in some book, does not mean they can't be wrong, or worse. Moses could have been nuts, or he could have just stumbled upon a great way to manipulate others for example.

The more distractions, the lazier and distracted we get as a whole, and real progress slows down. People need to start thinking outiside the box again, and making progress or we are doomed.

Originally posted by ddaniel
Please read the entirety of this post before replying, ill try to keep it as short as possible. Despite the message, I am not trying to offend anyone.
This is easy to write, but it was probably the hardest thing I have ever done. To go against everything my family and respected friends told me was no easy thing, especially when I held a deeply ingrained belief of eternal punishment for going 'against the Word of God'.

I simply could no longer accept the 'blind faith' that is so strongly admired by mainstream Christianity. The more I thought about it, the more Christian 'faith' seemed to be nothing but blind ignorance surrounded by attractive words and emotional music. Faith is inherently a personal thing, so how can adopting the views of others (the Church) equate to being a 'faithful servant of God'? After all, if we all possess the Holy Spirit, isn't the best way to discover God's heart to look within?
The basic idea of the sermon was, in a nutshell, this: the world is fallen, and will remain a horrible place until Jesus returns. The pastor was formerly the leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the attendees were predominantly members of affluent, educated families.

How can a defeatist attitude be welcomed by so many people with open arms? How can words of division, spoken under the guise of 'faith' and 'belief' be interpreted as a message of love and hope? How can everyone not see how these beliefs have resulted in the death and suffering of so many precious lives throughout history?!
How is belief that the Bible (or any other Holy book) is the 'perfect Word of God' anything other than idolatry?
To me, the beautiful thing about Jesus was his message of love. When asked what the greatest commandments were, Jesus replied: love The Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself.

I think if Jesus were around today, he would be ashamed and infuriated about what his 'followers' have become. Christians use lines of scriptire to deny love to an entire subset of people (gays). Our 'Christian' nation, capable of relieving the suffering of so many fellow humans, instead uses its energy to wage war and create division. Our very society is structured in a way that encourages greed and deception!

But this is all fine. After all, we are helpless until Jesus comes back.

Go eat your unleavened bread, drink your wine, and give thanks to God for sending his son to save his misguided creation.
The deification of the Bible (or Koran, or Bhagavad Gita, or...) not only bastardizes the beautiful teachings these works contain, it allows an ignorant, arrogant world view that may very well result in our destruction as a species.

To allow these views to further propagate is not only irresponsible, it is dangerous. I urge you, I BEG you, have enough faith in yourself as a human being to recognize that it is time to move forward as a species.

In the true spirit of Christ, I wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Alright, I'm commenting after having read your post twice. I don't believe that you are going against EVERYTHING your friends and family told you, you at least kept the bit about Jesus' message of love.
Jesus spoke about eternal punishment, as did others in the bible, but I assume you already knew that.
There is no such thing as "blind faith" if a blind person leads another blind person, BOTH will fall into a ditch.
Faith is not without evidence, it is not without works, and it definitely requires knowledge, a lamp unto our feet.
The church's view of God is not the same as the bible's, the old testament is sorely neglected at church save for a few well known stories and uplifting verses, they don't tell you that it's WRONG to give false hope. And in the fact that they do admit that the world is fallen and will stay fallen until Jesus returns is not giving false hope, it is not a defeatist attitude, it's the spirit of truth, and truthfully, the vast majority of us including myself aren't likely to be considered worthy to escape the horrible things that are headed for the world.
"We" most certainly are not helpless, thankfully you seem to know that.
Our "Christian" nation is run by Satanists, luciferians, whatever they want to call themselves. Please, with all of these dangerous views floating around keep in mind that if you can agree that Jesus is real, if you've got the true spirit of Christ, then try to understand that Satan is not a myth, there really ARE ravenous wolves in sheeps clothing, there really are tares among the wheat, and there really are false prophets. And to believe so isn't having a defeatist attitude, evil people really do exist, it's just a fact to be aware of, BEWARE of the yeast of the pharisees, of their hypocrisy, be aware.
I believe that the bible is true and that people should actually read it, understand it, and implement it, though too many skip the understanding.

Originally posted by JackMack
The Bible is a construction of Man, not God.

The laws of probability have proved that to be completely impossible.

In other words: it is scientifically impossible for your argument to be correct.

Which is WHY you gave no evidence to support it of course.

This makes it very obvious that there is ONLY one possible reason that people can believe all this...

Because of the deliberate lies that all of us have been fed by religion, education, science, and media, etc. which have ALL become Illuminati mind control tools.

Without understanding WHO exactly the Illuminati are and WHAT their agenda and goals are, you are GOING to struggle to make any sense out of all this.

Their lies have effectively BLINDED the vast majority of people in the world.

Their greatest weapon is the FACT that everything is a LIE...

The chances of just 48 out of the 456 prophecies being fulfilled in one person are 1 in 10 to the 157 power.

That's — 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

"All this illustrates why it is absolutely impossible for anyone to have fulfilled the Messianic prophecies by chance. In fact, a leading authority on the probability theory, Emile Borel states that once we go past one chance in 10 to the 50th power, the probabilities are so small it's impossible to think they will ever occur."

LINK

"...once we go past one chance in 10 to the 50th power, the probabilities are so small it's impossible to think they will ever occur....Mathematicians generally agree that, statistically, any odds beyond 1 in 1050 have a zero probability of ever happening.... This is Borel's law in action which was derived by mathematician Emil Borel....

Here is one last illustration of the immensity of the number 10 to the 157th power and why the science of probability shows we are dealing with the miraculous… Imagine one ant traveling at the speed of only one inch every 15 billion years. If he could only carry one atom at a time, how many atoms could he move in 10 to the 157th power of years?

He would, even at that incredibly slow speed, be able to move all the atoms in 600,000 trillion trillion trillion trillion universes the size for our universe, a distance of 30 billion light years! Again, by the laws of probability, all of this means that it is simply impossible for 48 prophecies to be fulfilled by chance. LINK

I posted in your other thread,the duplicate one that got closed.I see a member was concerned +accused you of turning your back on the Holy Spirit.I find this very sad,in fact im not ashamed to say i have tears as i write this:You see,what the Christians call the Holy Spirit,can more accurately be described as THE VERY SPIRIT OF LIFE ITSELF.Its in the eyes of an innocent baby,its the planting of a tree,instead of chopping one down,its in the warm friendly smile you give a tired or sadlooking stranger.Its in the hearts of firemen who would discard their own physical life in a heartbeat to rescue a child-or an elderly person.Its the hope and the spark that makes people get up in the morning,even though their lives are unhappy and has almost no quality.Its wanting no death,no destruction,no corruption of people and the planet we call home for now.Its the fervent wish to help,to rescue,to ease the pain,to uplift and not tear down.You find it in the strangest ways and places-like the one out of 4 burglars who convinces his buddies Not to kill the home-owner that returned unexpectedly,even if there's every reason to believe they'll get away with it-because he feels in his heart that its wrong to kill.Don't try to put that kind of force in a box,its like trying to diminish the sanctity of life itself into something small enough so that you feel comfortable with it.The Spirit of Life can be witnessed in action every day,if you look,and its NOT just for Christians.As Yahushua is,for everyone willing to step out of the petty rigid confines of a religion,and have the guts to see for themselves,who and what there all really is.

reply to post by sinthia


Well said, that is the major problem today. Main Stream churches are dictating what believers should believe. God gave each man and women free will and the ability to learn. The Bible clearly states that as you mature in the word the truth will be reveiled. Seek what the words says by doing your own research and you will easily be able to see the truth.

Regarding Homosexuality, IMO the Bible is quite quite clear, it is a sin. Sin is a personal decision and who am I to seat in the judgement seat. I have gay friends, I have expressed my opinion, it is their choice and I do not treat them any different from any other person.

My daughter has a rather radical church in Georgia, my kids were not raised in a Bible believing home, they have found the truth on their own just as I have. Be wary of churches, there are few that are scriptually correct.

reply to post by Murgatroid



The Bible was assembled by people, mostly corrupt people. If you don't know who Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria under Constantine the Great was, then you should read up a bit. He is the main architect of today's bible. Jesus didn't assemble the Bible, people from 326 AD through the next several hundred years fought wars and held councils to determine what you would Believe. It was voted, agreed upon, packaged and marketed to public by leaders of organized religion.

The very word Byblos, for which the Bible is named, is Phoenician. Many of the stories in the Bible; Noah, Jonah, Jezebel, etc, are Phoenician, not Hebrew. They were plagiarized from Phoenician, Akkadian, Egyptian stories and fables, then incorporated into Old Testament and into the New as well.
This is Historical Fact...not fables, not myths...we can read the story of Gilgamesh written hundreds of years before Noah is supposed to have existed, so we know where writers of Noah stole the story from. Ancient Hebrews borrowed ideas and fables and myths from Sumerian and other sources.
These are facts, not conjecture and do not require faith, just research.

We have advantage today due to resources and scholars that provide access to ancient scrolls and comparative religious studies. It should not shake your faith, but strengthen it. If the truth causes an issue, there is little more that can be said.

Although I'm not a fan of any one organized religion, I can't say that I'd yet identified it as one big ready-made excuse, but you're right!

Don't understand? You don't have to!
Don't want to try? You don't have to!

I recently attended a funeral in which the person presiding over the ceremony couldn't decide whether the experience of being a living human being was a gift or a curse. One minute it was God's greatest gift. The next minute, we were all born into a cruel world. Then God wants us home. Then God wants us to experience the greatest gift of life. It was more confusing than my stint as a born-again Christian.