Originally posted by LadyV
....it really burns my broomsticks!

LOL! That was funny *wipes a tear*. Ah boy, is it okay to laugh in here? Am I not being PC if I do?

Looks like the gloves are coming off now! I think I've got the list so far:
1. Hypocrisy
2. Stiff doctrine (laws)
3. Preachy churchy

What other misconcep..er... problems with Christians?

Originally posted by saint4God


What other misconcep..er... problems with Christians?

None....at any rate...your fine in my book!......Like stated above...I just usually seem to meet up with the ones that are judgmental and holier than thou......heck....I have a few of them in my own family!

from earlier:
I've also been told that I [and others] must be morally bunkrupt for not believing in god.. who's bashing who? The 'persecuted christian' card gets a bit old when there are christians doing the persecuting.

Originally posted by topsecretombomb
they merely love to sin or just plainly dont want to be united in such a way. sad actually. another reason is they may believe/enjoy participating in many immorral things which go against the bibles scripture. if they wish to live a short life of sin and an eternity in hell thats fine with me

Thanks for proving my point. You have made assumptions about people you don't even know.. with.. biggotry which Jesus did not teach. Are you pretending you are actually moral?

Since we are making a list, my major gripe with them is they have historically been resistant to change and have got in the way of science and any other teaching that gets in the way of their beliefs. Burning things like Alexandria's library is bad. Most religions are like this though because people always seem to do stupid things in the name of god (terrorists anyone?) and leaders are very good at using god to talk them into doing things they probably wouldn't do otherwise.

[edit on 27-12-2004 by Trent]

"Preachy churchy's" relates to the pushy annoying mob who come to my door and wont take a hint most sundays! LOl

Originally posted by LadyV

Originally posted by topsecretombomb
non believers only bash people of god or christians because they see evidence of a divine being existing and wont allow it to register in their minds. they merely love to sin or just plainly dont want to be united in such a way. sad actually.

What a bunch of pahooie! I can't even believe that you believe that bs! I am not a "sinning" (using your faiths word) type of person and I am not a Christian....it amazes me that many Christians think that because your pagan...you sin al the time! The thing is...most of the Christians "I" know, drink, party, have sex while not married, go to strip clubs, view pornography, smoke...the list could go on and on and on...

Oh yeah! But then their forgiven!

I want to address a couple of things. True christians are not devine, but we live to live for God who is devine. A true christian will still retain the ability to sin. We must still live in these corruptible bodies and face temptation by the world and satan, and we still sin, but it should be less in frequency and intensity. True christians put there trust in the Savior who is worthy of our respect and service. Some day we will be changed and be like God but we won't be God. And God considers those who have put there trust in Christ to be His sons and daughters, and that will mean that god will share with us all that He has made and maybe will continue to make.

The other thing I wanted to address was the parable of the wheat and the tares. God is sowing in the world His word and as a result christians are raised up. An enemy is also sowing tares in this same world and false, never truly accepted Christ are claiming to be wheat when they are not.. Tares and wheat look the same until harvest. The wheat will bring forth fruit and the tares will not. Christians and people posing as christians are mixed together. God said He will seperate them, so until then you can't call all the wheat tares. True christians are out here. And we long for you to come and join us for eternity with God and all He has prepared.

Some people didn't see the tsunami coming and thousands were wiped out and died. They needed a person to warn them of the coming disaster.

Christians are the warners of what's coming. We can't make you be saved, we can tell you what it means and how to do it but we can't save you. Only God can save an individual. His spirit convicts a person of their sin, and show them the need of a Savior so that this I alone carry can be given to Christ for God's wrath to deal with it. He can place a desire in you to read the Bible and talk to other real christians. But you have to accept Christ and mean it and then you can come to God the Father at anytime of day and talk to Him and He does talk back.

Originally posted by dbrandt
A true christian will still retain the ability to sin. We must still live in these corruptible bodies and face temptation by the world and satan, and we still sin

Fine...but then stop preaching to others to stop sinning, as in homosexuality and those of different faiths....until you do not sin yourself

Christians and people posing as christians are mixed together. . True christians are out here. Christians are the warners of what's coming.

I'm sorry...and perhaps you are a good one, but most of us of other faiths, don't want Christians constantly trying to convert us...it chases people off and pushes them in the opposite direction...the constant, "there is only one god..."my" god" thing is very annoying also! I believe in my faith, just as strongly as you do yours. I have the right to my faith as much as you do yours....I don't want anyone else's god constantly shoved down my throat any more than you would want me constantly trying to convert you and telling you my beliefs are the only true beliefs!

Originally posted by dbrandt
True christians put there trust in the Savior who is worthy of our respect and service.

Put your trust in your fellow man.

The other thing I wanted to address was the parable of the wheat and the tares.

What makes you think you're wheat?

quote: Originally posted by dbrandt
A true christian will still retain the ability to sin. We must still live in these corruptible bodies and face temptation by the world and satan, and we still sin

as i recall it was Jesus that said " let he who is without sin cast the first stone"
right? so put the rocks down.

Burning things like Alexandria's library is bad

and confiscating / stealing others for their own use.

I have a few of them in my own family!

Me too! we bet bible readings every day from one.

Hmm.. Why do people hate Christians?

For that matter, why do people hate Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc.? Why do people hate, period?

Maybe it's because we've evolved that way over millions of years. If you hate people different than you, you have a better chance of survival historically. If you were to go around loving everyone, you wouldn't be a very good animal.

Read the book The Moral Animal, by Robert Wright. The book is an excellent disection of habit, instinct, feelings, emotions, lying, dislike, sexual provlivity, and more. The truth is that humans are animals, and like animals, we are an imperfect, constantly evolving organism. That a simple enough answer?

personally I don't hate christians. I went to christian schools from the first school day to the last.. but I don't like religion.
I don't like christianity , islam, katholics, well hack I don't like any religion which wants me to believe in a single ruling god or many gods in ways they do today. personally I see it more as believing in it but I see it this way and I do it for quit a while and that is that facts get mixed up and get up in to wrongly ficitons. I know for sure that ET's visited in the past. and that is why I say that theb bible , koran ect is wrong.. its wrongly interpreted. but if people want to believe in god(s) that is there bussiness and I let them be. I don't hate them I only dislike the leaders of those faiths because of the will and power to control all people with wrongly interpreted or mixed facts for there might. they want control and they use relegion as there base. and they did it from the beginning. from the point that the ones we saw as god(s) went from earth in to the skies ( ' they which came from the skies ' was original name of god) they went back into space. but they will come back as stated and well as I have seen one year come back it might be 2012 and there for I hope that that we than wil see that the gods were really aliens from space and that we wrongly have followed those religions. The Idea of them coming back and seeing the faces of the pope (think then there will be new one) and people like osama full of unbelieve that all were they stand for is wrong makes me smile big time and It makes me happy and willing to life 2012
I would like to see the faces of those hard time believers of all religions based on a god or several gods which made us and said that they didn't came from space....

I think hate is a pretty strong word but I do get really frustrated some times. I have no faith unless some thing is demonstrated to me I am going to be skeptical about its reality.

I'm sorry but I am not going to believe something just because you tell me so and you have an ancient book to back it up. Some Christians might say I am hypocritical because I accept the word of scientists and textbooks. In reply all I can say in reply is that scientists actually explain things they dont say to take their word for it. If you step by step follow the procedures laid out by science you will wind up with the same quantifiable results as the scientists do. The same can not be said of religion, philosophy, and in my opinion psychology and economic theory. All four are valid schools of thought and have their uses but all four need to be taken with a grain of salt

The main problem I have with "Christianity" is that it seems to be anti-science and rational thought. I really think there is a hidden current in the evangelical movement to do away with science and rational thought and replace it with faith. I can respect having problems with evolution because you have an alternative valid theory that you have found supporting scientific evidence of. I cannot respect antievolutionary activities based on religious thought and the is the problem I have with most antievolutionists. Sooner or later they all start talking about religion and using their Bible as a quotable source.

let me get one thing straight, that i think is obvious didn't show up in the original thread that i meant to have show up in there. I am not a christian who believes you will go to hell for your beliefs. I think that is ridiculous and completely unfair, and a loving god would accept you no matter what you truly believe. Now, what my main point here is, why do people, usually athiests and i am just being honest, not attacking athiests, tend to soley pick on Christianity? Not, Judaism, not Islam, not budhism, not hindi, but just Christianity. If you can't find an example of this on this board, open up any thread directed towards christianity or about christianity. Now i never said an individual on this board except for Amadeus, because of the fact that he is spreading lies and showing mixed truths, that im sure he even knows he was doing, was doing this. So stop with this your picking on me crap, that is where our society has gotten Political Correctness from. Its more than a little annoying and childish. I get your point about the circular thinking though.

Ryanp5555, I understand what you're saying. I haven't been very active on the board these days, but when I was people would attack me personally for believing in Christ. Some with a vengance. I haven't read through the thread, I actually just showed up on ATS looking for a previous post I had for another debate I was having on a different website. Can't let myself get addicted to this ATS-crack again

I have a few theories as to why this happens. It isn't only on ATS, it's everywhere. The Bible states, in essense, that people will persecute and hate you just for believing in Christ, and I believe this to be very true.

One possibility is that we are an evangelical religion. We were given the Great Commission by Christ to go out and spread the Truth. As a result, a lot of people get upset with that. I would ask, however, for you to look at it this way. If you found the cure to cancer, and all it took was to hold your hand with two fingers up, one down, your thumb out and pulling your pinky back for about 10 minutes, wouldn't you want to share that? Especially with loved ones who have cancer. However, many people wouldn't believe you. They'd be irritated with you for trying to show them how easy it could be to be cured. Christianity is very similar, but the whole world has this cancer. We want to share with people just how easy it is to live forever. A gift has been given us, we just need to reach out and take it.

People are also put off by how sure we are that we're right. We call our message the Truth. Capitalized. It is, in fact THE Truth, we believe this, and share it with authority. Many people don't have anything in their lives in which they are so sure about. Especially this community. They question everything, and when you find someone who knows beyond a shadow of doubt about something, it makes you dismiss their opinion as being uneducated and uninformed. After all, if they knew what the world was really like, they would know that what they know couldn't be THE truth.

Finally, it scares a lot of people. When you come to Christ, truely come, there WILL be a change in your life. Old things you thought which were so much fun start you start to lose interest in and become interested in other things. Becoming a full blown, born again Christian will shatter your old world and build you a new one, far better.

There are also people who have had bad experiences with Christians, and attribute it to all of us. There was someone on here a while ago who is(was, maybe) a practicing witch. She would come at me like a bat outta heck whenever I'd be posting in any forum. I finally got her to start talking to me via U2U, and she had had many run ins with Christians who didn't follow Christ's example and love. Agree, disagree, Christ is Love, and we should model ourselves after Him. Many do not, and it gives the rest of us a bad name.

Originally posted by boogyman
The main problem I have with "Christianity" is that it seems to be anti-science and rational thought. ...

I can understand where you're coming from, and many Christians see science contradicting religion. I have an aunt who believes most scientific things she can't work out through the Bible are simply tests of our faith from God. That doesn't fly with me. Before I became a Christian, I was an evangelical athiest whose religion was science. I would target Christians and try to convince them they were wrong.

Personally, I find science in all it's fascets enforcing my faith, rather than detracting from it. That's one of the main reasons I love quantum physics so much. It's just so well designed! God, the great physicist, the fellah who created all these rules we live by. I've talked about this on a lot of my older posts addressing this subject, so I'm not going to go into a ton of detail. I will say, however, that I have noticed a large movement in the Church towards incorporating science and religion. There is a small group I'm going to be going to soon which meets specifically to discuss science and religion and how they reinforce eachother. Just to throw another monkey wrench into your prejudices, I'm in the process of reading On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life . We already ate from the Tree of Knowlege, may as well live it up!

Personally, I find science in all it's fascets enforcing my faith, rather than detracting from it.

Well done, I think you've just proved the point: if all Christians (indeed all religious folks, better yet everybody!) were that open-minded, we wouldn't need to keep going on about it.

I feel a Way Above coming on...

Ryanp, your post may have been in good faith except for one little bit, which really made me laugh.

Originally posted by Ryanp5555
You dont focus in on Islam, the religion that has parts that could be interpretted as preaching terrorism, instead you attack christianity, and some people even try to say its God's fault that man went on the crusades, when that is obviously a lie.

Excuse me, but this sounded very much like a little child screaming "It wasn't me mommy! He did it! He did it!". How can you complain about people attacking Christianity when you do the same with Islam. Wouldn't you call it "attacking" Christianity if someone said that it could be "interpretted as preaching terrorism"?
Now to answer your question, I don't really think that Christianity is solely targetted. A while back some fellow said that "Allah is Satan". Another fellow said something along the lines of "Wicca is funded by Satan".
The people who make it their mission solely to put down or attack another religion should just be ignored. Obviously they are not searching for knowledge or the denial of ignorance, they just want to further their cause.
Aside from that, the reason that many people feel the need to "question" Christianity is because they are from a place that is predominantly Christian- they know some stuff about it. Only a fool would be ignorant enough to question a religion he knows nothing about.

Can any one truly say that, faith aside, the way Jesus says to live in the Bible is not a ture way to become a good person and to acheive happiness?

But you can't emulate Jesus anyways. According to Christians he is God. The theory is that if you lived life as Jesus did, it would be an exemplary life. I would like to see any human fast for 40 days and 40 nights.

I'm not talking about that I'm talking about the teachings.