[demoness]

"We are all guilty of sin but we are all not forgiven." But why would the lord preach forgiveness if he wont forgive us? I believe if your heart is in the right place, you shall be granted forgiveness. Hardly anyone is "without sin". So that being said, i believe that god will never shun you away or forsake you no matter how bad or fallen. I mean religion is so taboo these days that if you actually have any spirituality youre labelled religious. I hardly consider myself religous at all. Fallen is more like it. I have a very objective mind when it comes to religion. I just cant "blindly" believe. I feel, rather. Phew. Im glad i got that off my chest, considering ive a hard time discussing religion. Seriously its such a touchy subject.:-)

[minx]

I don't agree with them picketing the man's funeral. Stories like that make me as a Christian cringe. Don't let fanatics/extremists deter you from God hunny. Because when its all said and done, you and I will be held responsible for our belief or disbelief in Him. I'd much rather believe He is real now and find out otherwise later than to NOT believe and find out that God is real and has been real the whole time. Just something to think about.

This is called "Pascal's Wager". Check it out on Wiki, or in Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion". Interesting stuff.

If deconstructed, Pascal's Wager is nothing more than covering your bets. It seems, actually, that going this route isn't even really "faith"...it's not wanting to be wrong, or acting in a way as though to avoid punishment. Since g*d ain't my Big Daddy, I'm not really concerned about an eternal spanking, but were somebody to be seriously defining the reasons why they believe, this argument would be the most hollow one available. No offense; it's just a really weak argument...the kind I heard in junior high when I was faced with a born-again thingie that I won't go into here.

I don't know that there are any arguments that would persuade an atheist. Faith is one of the most bizarre concepts I have ever heard of, to be completely honest. For everything else in the universe, we demand the burden of proof (thank you, ye founders of The Enlightenment, who got us out of germs, witch-hunts, and most theocratic monarchies). Yet we rely on faulty documents put together by power-hungry Catholic men, mistranslated over several hundreds of years, and some of which so far from the actual events as to be a game of "telephone".

My BFF is a total goddess-worshiper; it works for her and is about as personal and private as it gets. I don't get it, but it makes her happy. I cannot be content with notions that there is an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent g*d out there who only helps a select few...or those (as my mother would say) "who pray the right way". Eep. It just doesn't smack of love for humanity, or desire for a relationship. If that's a relationship, then it looks dysfunctional to me...and the whole "humans have a choice" thing doesn't really do right by me either, because I want to know what child in Nepal or South America made the choice to be born into poverty and die from lack of proper medical care.

And per the whole "rejecting the less savory texts in the bible", wasn't it Jesus who supposedly said he brought with him a new covenant? It would seem that he was sweeping away the stuff in the Old Testament (the fire and brimstone angry g*d) for the New and Improved Nicer g*d? Just wondering...

Personally, I'm content being a good person and working for the betterment of humanity. Once I bite it, game over.

*exits with a Ms. Pacman death sound*