No Pun Intended but our churches our going to hell!

Ironfist: I think your guessing sounds pretty messed up. It must be hard to beleive in a "God" that just stands by and looks at your misery. Doesn\'t seem like something that helps you at all.
But if you want to suffer a bit more now then you can send all your cash and belongings to me and you\'ll will feel so much better later on in "heaven"

If you were looking for the truth, wouldn\'t you consider all possibilities? And wouldn\'t you look into all of those possibilities? I didn\'t want to just blindly believe what others were saying anymore, so I had to look into things myself. And because I was open minded to both sides, science and religion, I had to do research in both. If I didn\'t use religious books while researching religion, than I wouldn\'t have been giving both possibilities a equal chance of being true.

Sounds fair. But I\'m interested in one thing: When you compared your religion against other religions, what made you decide that your was the "correct" one?

IronFist are you Mormon?

CIRCLES AND CIRCLES AND CIRCLES AND CIRCLES AND NOT ONE LINE

INTERSECTS WITH THE MAIN POINT

Originally posted by FifaSeriesFan
WTF?!?

Gay bishop vows to stay with partner

LONDON (Reuters) - Sex and homosexuality have ignited a heated debate within the Church of England after its first-ever openly gay bishop vowed to stay with his male partner, testing the tolerance of senior church members.

Defying calls by some within the Anglican church that he should stand down, newly-appointed Jeffrey John, 50, said he had no intention of quitting his post as suffragan (assistant) Bishop of Reading.

"We will remain together," John told Thursday\'s Times of his 27-year-long homosexual relationship.

"The relationship has not been sexually expressed for years. The love and commitment are, if anything, greater," he said.

The controversy surrounding John\'s appointment -- backed by some bishops but questioned by others -- has renewed divisive debate among Anglicans grappling with questions of sex and homosexuality, a particularly sharp thorn in the side of the church, especially in recent months.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the world\'s 70 million Anglicans, expressed dismay last month that a bishop on Canada\'s west coast had decided to authorise blessing ceremonies of same-sex couples.

And earlier this month, New Hampshire Episcopalians -- a U.S. version of the Anglican Church -- elected their first openly gay bishop.

John\'s appointment drew difficult questions from several other bishops, who this week published an open letter expressing their concerns:

"Dr John has many admirable qualities for the work of a bishop. But the issue is \'what is acceptable sexual behaviour in God\'s sight?\'" part of the letter read.

Defining acceptable sexual behaviour has never been easy for Anglicans.

"The official position is that the church is in the middle of a long-running debate about human sexuality," Church of England spokesman Steve Jenkins told Reuters.

The church\'s 1991 policy paper "Issues in Human Sexuality", which allows gay relationships among the laity but demands that gay priests should be celibate, has hardly clarified the issue or calmed debate.

One church member who asked not to be named said:

"This case may be just what the long-running debate needed to move forward".

Wasn\'t this the church founded by King somebody because he wanted to divorce his wife? Why do they really care what their priests do? and that church has 70 million members?!!? Geez!


Eric Jacob

Politiepet:

Originally posted by politiepet
So....if I get this right, we should all be jealous of those starving, hungry africans?

Not at all.  We should be thankful for the good lives that we have.  It\'s true, the challenges in our lives are not nearly as miserable as the people\'s who are starving, freezing, and homeless.  But we all have challenges.  Just because our challenges are not the same as those people\'s doesn\'t mean we can\'t get experience and grow from the hard times in our lives.

and on another note, how is evolution any more man\'s guess than the bible theorie? please explain

That was exactly my point back on page two.  To the non-believer, both religion and evolution are just theories.  Because they are just ideas, one is not more likely to have happened than another.  So a person should not be surprised when someone believes in religion over science, because they are just both theories -- just ideas of where we came from based on evidence.

But to the believer, the "Bible theory" isn\'t really a theory at all.  It DID happen -- FACT (in the believers eyes).

Bjorn:

Ironfist: I think your guessing sounds pretty messed up. It must be hard to beleive in a "God" that just stands by and looks at your misery. Doesn\'t seem like something that helps you at all.

Well how much could you improve if you had someone else walking besides you doing everything for you?  It is because God loves us, and because he wants us to grow, that he does not step in and make everything perfect for us.

But if you want to suffer a bit more now then you can send all your cash and belongings to me and you\'ll will feel so much better later on in "heaven"

My money situation is bad enough as it is -- but thanks for the offer.  

When you compared your religion against other religions, what made you decide that your was the "correct" one?

I would be lying if I said that I didn\'t have at least a little bias towards the church I grew up in.  But I did look at the other churches, and the other beliefs, and they all had slight problems with them, or small things that I just didn\'t agree with.  My church exists because all of the other churches were supposedly not completely correct -- and I tended to agree with that.

But all the studying and comparing religions in the world couldn\'t give me the answer.  If it could, then there wouldn\'t be any doubt by anyone of which church was true.  The real proof came to me when I did as the Bible and Book of Mormon said.  I asked God himself.  If a person really wants to know the truth, and is willing to put forth the effort to find out, then God has promised that he will tell that person the truth through the Holy Ghost.  It wasn\'t until then that I knew without any doubt which church was true.

Cyrus:

IronFist are you Mormon?

I\'m a bit hesitant to say, because just about everyone in this thread thinks I\'m crazy.  But yes, I am.  I think most people already knew that from previous threads anyways.  That\'s why I used quotes from the Book of Mormon and D&C in some of my posts.

Ironfist:

The real proof came to me when I did as the Bible and Book of Mormon said. I asked God himself. If a person really wants to know the truth, and is willing to put forth the effort to find out, then God has promised that he will tell that person the truth through the Holy Ghost. It wasn\'t until then that I knew without any doubt which church was true.

So “God” spoke to you through the “holy ghost”? What happened?


Ironfist:

That was exactly my point back on page two. To the non-believer, both religion and evolution are just theories. Because they are just ideas, one is not more likely to have happened than another. So a person should not be surprised when someone believes in religion over science, because they are just both theories -- just ideas of where we came from based on evidence.

But to the believer, the "Bible theory" isn\'t really a theory at all. It DID happen -- FACT (in the believers eyes).

I have some problems with your definitions here. In science a theory is something that explains many facts, i.e. the theory of evolution explains a lot of facts. However a theory can be changed or replaced if new scientific evidence was presented that contradict the theory.
The religious creationism isn’t much of a theory, it can’t be changed, it is written as a “fact” and no amount of scientific evidence could change it… it has already been written as a “fact”. A “fact” that can’t be proven true, so not a fact actually.

So you are really trivialising when you are writing like that, or should I say, spreading disinformation.

Would you like the schools to teach medicine by the use of supernatural forces as witch doctors do?

Ironfist - I try and stay out of the religious threads and actually avoided this one until the day I posted that The only thing my dad taught me that was worth anything was " Dont talk religon or politics with you friends" so I dont. I was baptised mormon and stayed active from 7 when I was baptised to about well just before my mission so you know when that was. Was I trying to make a point hmmm I guess not. Just testing the fact of weather or not I could still pic em out..

Originally posted by FifaSeriesFan
holy shit! (no pun intended)

I\'ve started a full scale global religious war!

Damn right you have :rpissed: :mecry: and seeing that its you I’ll be round later to show you what the Spanish inquisition did to people they didn’t like  

:moon:

You have studied deeply the spanish inquisition or what ooseven?

Bjorn:

So "God" spoke to you through the "holy ghost"? What happened?

I then knew what church was true.  That\'s what happened.

Actually, I would prefer not to talk about it, but I can tell you just what the Holy Ghost is and how it communicates with people if you want me to.

I have some problems with your definitions here...

Speaking of trivializing, who\'s the one who brought semantics into this debate?  I don\'t mean to be misleading, and I especially don\'t mean to spread disinformation.  I am not even the one who started using the word "theory" to describe the beliefs of religious people.  I just continued to use it because that is what others were using.  I guess you are right and it is not a theory at all.  It\'s just a set of beliefs.

And the use of the word "fact" was the wrong word to use there, but I used it to emphasize just how much the religious people believe in what they believe in.  To them, the truth (God) can never be changed -- it will always be the truth in their minds.  Hence the word fact.

Would you like the schools to teach medicine by the use of supernatural forces as witch doctors do?

I don\'t understand.  Why are you asking this question?  I just can\'t see the context of it.  But to answer the question, of course not.  They should continue to teach what they know works.

I don\'t think IronFist means science as a science isn\'t fact, more like the big bang and evolution and such.

EDIT - since I don\'t think you got my PM, Iron, what happened with the mission? When are you going? I myself have my 1st interview this week, so expecting about 3 months or so and I will be out.

Eric Jacob

And after every single one of these threads it turns into the same outcome.

ehh, this one has remained pretty calm, nothing like the 400+ thread on religion of old.

Man those were fun times.

I got it, but your PM is full so I can\'t reply.  I even made a thread in OT saying "AlteredBeast -- clean out your PM."

So clean out your PM.

BTW, how was getting your wisdom teeth out?

sorry man, I deleted some messages, please try again.

not bad, though. I got about 10 shots and then they pretty much just popped out. They were already erupted so they came out nice and easy. Odd trying to get used to not having those teeth back there, those suckers were huge!