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just curious peabody, what denomination are you? am not going to pillory you etc, just genuinely interested

just curious peabody, what denomination are you? am not going to pillory you etc, just genuinely interested

Well, I go to a Presbyterian Church, but its a fairly 'high-church' Presbyterian, more like an Anglican church. My views are pretty ecumenical, though; I don't have any problems with Catholicism (in fact, I get a good deal of my spiritual encouragement from Catholic authors).

oh right, so is that the predominant church in your local community?

oh right, so is that the predominant church in your local community?

No... the area I live in is about 110% Baptist.

so why skew the graph and go to the pres and not baptist tabernacle? Is it following in the footsteps of family or more ideological?

so why skew the graph and go to the pres and not baptist tabernacle? Is it following in the footsteps of family or more ideological?

Well, we've been going to the same church probably since before I was born... And also, I'm much more of a 'high church' person than a low.

Just curious, but is this line of questioning going anywhere?

As I mentioned a number of times, including the post from which you quoted me, my faith does not have a Christian concept of Hell, nor of any sort of afterlife including punishment or reward. One of the basic premises of Judaism is that a person should choose to do good for its own sake. How is that anything other than free will?

I thought Jews did have some consept of hell? Or is this just your own personal belief?

Ok I have a question. People like the Crusaders and in inquisition and basically every christian up until very recently has done or supported henious crimes. The church supported slavery for a long time along with numerous other things they now condem. Are those people allowed into heaven? They honestly believed they were doing gods work. If yes it means a shit load of pretty bad people are in heaven. If no it means Heaven is pretty much empty since almost everyone did or supported most of the bad shit that went down in history.

Even now how do you know your doing the right thing? Maybe God wants gays to marry and have kids and want people to wear condoms. If so it means every christian alive today who supports those ideas is going to hell since they wont confess and ask forgiveness for their crimes as they dont know they are doing wrong.

Basically Heaven is either full of bad people or its empty.

Peabody:

I'm going to try and find you really great reserch paper someone at Berkly did about 3 years ago. Basically they questioned thousends of people from every possible faith to determine if faith had any basis on things like crime/education/humanitarian work ect.

What they found is across the board everyone pretty much worked out the same. There were minor jumps everywhere. Jews may have been slightly better at education and buddists better at humanitarian work but in general it pretty even... apart from one.

Athiest were by in far the winners in almost every section. They were higher educated, gave more to charity, their crime stat was down a bit but their violent crime stat was way down.

So according to your view of only those who believe in christ get into heaven... Your leaving the best people out and letting in all the sinners.

If you say like quite a few do that, so long as you live a good life and don't believe in God you will still get into heaven because god is forgiving... If thats true Heaven is full of athiests and hell is full of christians.

*Goes off to try and find the study*

sorry peabody,was just genuinely curious, no agenda etc

I'm going to try and find you really great reserch paper someone at Berkly did about 3 years ago. Basically they questioned thousends of people from every possible faith to determine if faith had any basis on things like crime/education/humanitarian work ect.

So what?

So according to your view of only those who believe in christ get into heaven... Your leaving the best people out and letting in all the sinners.

Well, I'm sure the Pharisees were quite nice back in the day...but Christ was happy to feast with sinners. And so will I.

Teaos wrote:

basically every christian up until very recently has done or supported henious crimes.

Thats flagrantly untrue and you're intelligent enough to know that

Almost everyone around the time of the crusades supported them. Almost every Christian supported slavery at least passively when it was going on. The KKK was hugely christian and had over 200,000 thousend members not 50 years ago. Sure I exagerated that it was everyone but look at histroy and you see a lot of people have blood on their hands.

Teaos wrote:I thought Jews did have some consept of hell? Or is this just your own personal belief?

In some books opf the Old Testament outside the Pentateuch, notably Job, there is mention of Satan, but not in the "fallen angel, ruler of Hell" mindset - he is actually just used in the story as a figure to converse with G-d and debate human nature. I have yet to find any reference to reward or punishment in the afterlife. We don't believe in a soul as such, but what is called the ru'ach, which translates as "spirit, wind, breath." In other words, an animating force which comes from G-d, and which is reabsprbed into G-d upon our deaths.

To the people who ask about religion being the cause of all kinds of nasty things, I say this: religion is often the NOMINAL cause for these things, or a veneer to assuage the consciences of those who perform them, but very often are not the roots. A difference in faith does not itself cause prejudice; rather the bigots own weakness causes it, yet he may claim his bigotry is in the name of <insert religion here.> Of course, there are root causes other than prejudice - jealousy, territory, pillage, and the need to unify a Christian Europe (in the case of some Crusades.)

woohoo i made that point earlier

Oh I totally agree. I'm not saying that if you could somehow snap your fingers and stop everyone from being religious that all the fighting between people who claim to do it in their gods name would stop. But it could very well stop some of the henious crimes that are commited and stop a lot of their support.

Telling people your doing something in gods name will gain you support and help. Maybe we wouldnt have so many suicide bombers if they didnt think they were going to paradise with 40 virgins.

Teaos wrote: Maybe we wouldnt have so many suicide bombers if they didnt think they were going to paradise with 40 virgins.

Ah ah ah, Teaos. It's 72 virgins. Or, as the joke in my region goes, it's a mistranslation: They really meet 72 Virginians.