Opinion! An Imperfect God
 

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http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...me&ref=general

:o

Note: November 25, 2012

Well, we can't trust whoever wrote the Bible, seeing as it was them, not God, who said 'Gays will burn in hell'.

dig it. :up:

If God exist, I'm not sure how anyone can claim they know who he is. The world is filled with beliefs in God, each is right, the others wrong. Worse, even if you're sincere in your beliefs, if you're wrong, it's off to eternal torture. Admit it or not, most of us accept and follow the beliefs of the culture we're born into. Hard for me to accept a God that would eternally damn every sincere Muslim, Hindu, etc..

Seems to me man designs God to fit his cultural experience.

The bible is a hard way to know God. It you study how it was made, you know what you're reading has 1000's of additions, deletions, etc. We have no original scripts, just 1000's of copies of copies, each being changed. We know several of the NT books were not written by the said author. It's clear man changed it so much to create doctrine to fit the culture of that period for 100's of years.

Still, I like to remain humble. I follow God by my heart. more than I do words written by others. I refuse to live and judge others by a cultural code written by man to control others. Most belief systems have caused so much evil, I find it hard to see God in any of them. If God is really the way most religions portray him, I wouldn't want anything to do with him.

i consider myself Christian by my upbringing. I'll put that up front.

I believe there are signs of intelligent design all over the world and even in the universe.

I also believe every religion known to man has it figured more or less wrong.

Where religion loses me is in the 2 concepts that most all religions subscribe to that is:

1. our people have been chosen over your people for God's favoritism

2. if you dont become one of our people and do as our camp says you will suffer _______ (insert bad thing for eternity after you die)

lets face it, there are some pretty big offenders here. Christianity and Islam are way up at the tippy top of the list, I'll certainly be the first to admit it.

I think of God as the parent of mankind, God loves us, wants us to be happy and successful and achieve greatness just like a parent would. But the thing about parents is even though they love their children, and even though they want all this good stuff for their children, kids grow up to be adults. and they need the parent less and less - for guidance, advice, a shoulder to cry on whatever - with each passing year. I'll always love my parents, I'll always respect the lessons i have learned from them... but, as an adult, i am weened from them and have developed into my own man.

much like an individual, mankind has a fate, and in order to realize that destiny, mankind has to outgrow its obsessions with religion.

We have had a unique journey as a race of beings. Early rumblings of thunder and day and night, the stars in the sky, clouds, rain... we had no way of understanding these things in our infancy and we created explanations of our own that made sense to us.

Only later in our fledgling years did we discover the angry monster throwing down streaks of fire in the sky is really just charged particles releasing large amounts of static electricity.

The great mystery in life will always be, what comes afterwards. Mankind has struggled with death since the very first of our loved ones ceased to be.

Which religion is correct?

What really happens when we die?

Are the muslims right? or the Christians? How about the Budists? the athiests?

Is heaven real? or is this life just preparing our souls for transcendence into another plane of existence that nobody has even considered theorizing about yet?

men have died and discovered the answers to these questions

trouble is, they arent talking.



i have grown to enjoy this quote

"This is my simple religion, there is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is the temple, the philosophy is kindness."

i think any one true God wouldnt want all the grandiose nonsense and fanfare... God would just want mankind to love one another and be kind. and anytime you do the right thing... anytime you hold the door for someone and smile to brighten the day of another, you practice that religion.

@vendor

You're absolutely right!

Let's make it a religion!

Anybody wanna join The Church of Common Sense, and become a Nice Person?

Also, there was not one god according even to the Thora, only one of the gods who made the deal with his chosen folks that they should only pray to HIM.
And, not to forget, God had a wife. This has just been conveniently forgotten, by the patriarch religious leaders and dumbnuts (=same).

No this is no joke, i am just dumbfounded again and again by especially christian fanatics who obviously never even read the bible lol.
It is certainly easier to have other people interprete it for you, and then tell you how you have to behave, to evade beheading by other nice humans, believing in the same god with another name. :)

Amen.

God said he would send all the wicked people to hell.
Thor said he would destroy all the frost giants.
I don`t see any frost giants around.

Can we conclude then that Thor exists? :hmmm:

I saw him on TV, must be true. :yep:

http://files.sgsaveproject-sg1.webno...65912!Thor.jpg

E.T,:yeah:

Ah the Asgard, Yoo gotta love those guys! :arrgh!:

Cheers

Gary

Edit spelt ma name wrong.... DOH!

I'm just the opposite. I was brought up as a nothing, not believing one way or another. Then I was a Christian - or at least I believed so. There's always that nagging little "If you don't believe now, how can you be sure that your 'belief' was ever real?"

I don't see any, and I have to wonder if "signs" are only seen by those who want to see them...or if they're not seen by those who don't want to seen them.

As for your dissertation on the problem with religions, without quoting it I'll just say that I agree.

I used to feel that way, but of course it's hard to think of God that way when you're not sure there even is one.

I'm not sure that's true. I wonder sometimes if mankind spends his days looking for a reason, and the horrible truth is that there is no reason, everything just is.

And never found an answer; at least not one he could prove.

Where moral and life teachings are concerned? Most of them. Where God is concerned? Who knows?

All I can say for certain is that I'm in no hurry to find out.

Questions I ask every time the subject comes up. Of course none of them can prove they're right, but they all enjoy showing where the others are wrong.

Or is this life all there is, and there is no "soul" and no "preparing"?

Or not, as the case may be.

Isn't that always the trouble?

Many years ago there was a semi-humorous newspaper comic strip called 'Rick O'Shay', about an Old-West marshall. All the characters had spoof names. His girlfriend was a saloon-girl named Miss Gaye Abandon. Her nephew, who lived with her, was called Quyat Burp. His best friend was a gunslinger named Hipshot Percussion. Every year Stan Lynde, the strip's creator, did a variation on the same theme. As a boy I always loved those strips, and though off-topic I think they speak to the same themes you wrote about here.

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http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3.../Christmas.jpg



Sorry to pick apart your post that way, especially when I know you were only philosophizing and theorizing, honestly thinking out loud as it were. You just said so much that I agree with that I had to do a little philosophizing of my own.

Very eloquently Steve ... many questions and concerns were properly by past now,:sunny: