The greatest conspiracies in religion are ...

Originally posted by etherical waterwave
Jesus is the word of God and is god.

....if you say to this mountain, `Be taken up and cast into the sea,' it will happen. "And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive." (Matthew 21:21-22)

And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it. (John 14:13-14)

Dear Jesus.

Since you are the one true omnipotent (all powerful) God, I ask that you demonstrate the above statements and prove to heathens and anti-Christians such as myself, how wrong we are.

I ask in Jesus name that you remove Mount Everest and cast it into the sea, and further that you remove all Christians from the earth, and that you grant these requests by midnght tonight.

Further could you please deliver "etherical waterwave (the previous poster)" two large cheeze pizzas with anchovies and a side salad, and immediately miraculously cure all leprosy and blindness throughout the world. I ask all this in Jesus name, "so that the Father may be glorified in the Son."

Please let me know if the cheese pizzas arrive, but if the other events happen, I will expect to hear about in on the news.

Lux

You're doing great Lucifer777.

One must believe in order for these things to happen. Open your mind they say. With the Father in the heavens everything is possible. Get to know the Father.

Dear Father, let us know thyself as thou art for us to believe:

LOL!!! Priceless.

You have zero understanding of the literary devices of the Hebrews. "Mountain" is a metaphor for a kingdom/nation.

reply to post by etherical waterwave


Profound poster is profound.
Profound poster still gets no cookie.
Because being profound on the internet
Is like losing the special olympics

I will never understand why atheists rage sooo hard, even amongst themselves. I have a friend who was once Mormon, and every chance he gets he's mocking and bashing the Mormon Church...Reminds me of my two boys. The younger is really good at baiting the older one, and the older is inevitably pissed and angry and grumbling long after the offense. I ask him, why do you let your brother control your emotions like that? You control your emotions, not him. You can rise above his taunting, if you choose.

So it goes with atheists, at least in my experience. For whatever reasons, offenses or injustices you may have suffered, you unwittingly allow religion to cast a very long shadow in your lives. I don't get it. Live and let live, voice your opinions in a reasonable and logical manner when the topic arises. But the venom and childish mocking and empty ranting does nothing to convince others that you are right, or that religion is evil.

I think that your anger should more properly be focused at humanity, and it's inherent faults. It is people who twist and turn the concepts they profess to uphold. IMO the basic concepts behind most religion is pretty simple, really: Love, Compassion, Charity, Patience, Humility...Believe in God or not, those are some pretty worthy goals to seek. Rewarded or not in the afterlife, you can sit in hell (or blink out of existence completely) knowing you lived a life that bettered humanity, through your deeds and example.

Originally posted by blamethegreys
I will never understand why atheists rage sooo hard, even amongst themselves. I have a friend who was once Mormon, and every chance he gets he's mocking and bashing the Mormon Church...Reminds me of my two boys. The younger is really good at baiting the older one, and the older is inevitably pissed and angry and grumbling long after the offense. I ask him, why do you let your brother control your emotions like that? You control your emotions, not him. You can rise above his taunting, if you choose.

Imagine you're surrounded by people who believe that each dewdrop on every leaf is put there in the wee hours of the morning, by a team of magical elves who live in the U-bend of all your plumbing. These elves eat cobwebs, and occasionally will whisper prophecy in your ear as you dream. These magical elves are usually invisible, but are known to occasionally leave lipstick smears on bagels, rice cakes, and occasionally windows. Your neighborhood has an official elf-watching organization, with an elite group of "witnesses" who interpret the dreams that the elves give them and tell the rest of the community what's what.

Sll of the people around you take this completely serious. The elves, according to them, are every bit a part of the natural order, and each of them insists that YOU are the outsider, the weirdo, the misfit, because you've never seen an elf, never had an elf-dream, and never find elf-lips smeared on your breakfast dishes.

When you turn on the TV, you see your nation's leaders discussing what the elves told them, and basing national policy on this. People are insisting that the things that elves whisper into their heads at night should be the basis of our culture and law. Wars are fought between people who believe in the U-bend elves, and people who believe elves actually live in the water heater. Last week, a man walked into a preschool full of U-Bend elf believers' children, and proclaiming the might of the freezer pixies, detonated a bomb belt. What followed was a "debate" in the media between the Witnesses, believers of the U-Bend elves, the Water Heater Elves, and hte Dog Dish elves roundly condemning people who believe in the freezer pixies, whom everyone knows are total fiction.

If you lived in this world, surrounded by these people, you might get a little angry, too.

Originally posted by TheWalkingFox

Imagine you're surrounded by people who believe that each dewdrop on every leaf is put there in the wee hours of the morning, by a team of magical elves who live in the U-bend of all your plumbing. These elves eat cobwebs, and occasionally will whisper prophecy in your ear as you dream. These magical elves are usually invisible, but are known to occasionally leave lipstick smears on bagels, rice cakes, and occasionally windows. Your neighborhood has an official elf-watching organization, with an elite group of "witnesses" who interpret the dreams that the elves give them and tell the rest of the community what's what.

Sll of the people around you take this completely serious. The elves, according to them, are every bit a part of the natural order, and each of them insists that YOU are the outsider, the weirdo, the misfit, because you've never seen an elf, never had an elf-dream, and never find elf-lips smeared on your breakfast dishes.

When you turn on the TV, you see your nation's leaders discussing what the elves told them, and basing national policy on this. People are insisting that the things that elves whisper into their heads at night should be the basis of our culture and law. Wars are fought between people who believe in the U-bend elves, and people who believe elves actually live in the water heater. Last week, a man walked into a preschool full of U-Bend elf believers' children, and proclaiming the might of the freezer pixies, detonated a bomb belt. What followed was a "debate" in the media between the Witnesses, believers of the U-Bend elves, the Water Heater Elves, and hte Dog Dish elves roundly condemning people who believe in the freezer pixies, whom everyone knows are total fiction.

If you lived in this world, surrounded by these people, you might get a little angry, too.

I think that is a very good analogy for the world of religion. Part of the problem is that religious indoctrination and hypnosis often begins in eary childhood and that children are susceptible to believing almost anything irrational. I still remember being a young child and I overheard another child talking about how Santa Claus does not exist, and up until that time, I had never questioned Santa's existence.The problem with organised religion is that instead of telling children at a certain point that their religious myths are all a lot of nonsense, this often never happens and thus the child grows up to take perfectly irrational myths totally seriously.

In the world's most powerful military nation, America, the majority of the population claim to be Christians and a poll has indicated that 40% of American adults believe that Jesus will return soon. For a person with humanist values, living in certain "Bible Belt" states, it must be rather like living in an insane asylum; but the problem with the insane asylum which is called "America" is that the insane people don't know that they are insane; in fact those who model themselves after the religiously insane are the in the "majority," and they look up to models of religious schitzophrenics such as Jesus or the numerous evangelists of the multi billion dollar Jesus business as models of "goodness" and "normality."

I often think of the Matrix movie as also a good analogy of the problem of religious psychosis; in nations where the majority of the population are suffering from religous psychosis due to hypnosis and indoctrination, a person who is not suffering from religious psychosis is rather like the Neo and Morpheus of the Matrix movie.

This problem is compounded by the fact that those suffering from religious psychosis not only think that they are sane, but that those who are unnafected by religious hypnosis are deluded and can only be cured by subjecting them also to religious hypnosis and indoctrination and inducing religious psychosis in them also.
Thus religion spreads like a memetic virus; another useful analogy is the Hollywood archetypal Zombie movie, where the Zombies are not merely content to be Zombies, but they want to turn everyone else into Zombies also.
Unfortunately some people simply cannot be woken up; they are just too far gone.

This is no laughing matter really, since the major forms of religious fanaticism are also militant and potentially genocidal and have a long track record of genocidal militancy, which in a nuclear age is a very serious matter.

Lux

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


I gotta admit, your analogy made me laugh this morning, thanks!

I'm coming from a position of passive believer in the elves, I guess, but I see what you're saying. I guess it's all about perspective. I still wish everyone could just chill and take it down a few notches, for their own health and happiness. Believers need to stop judging and condemning, atheists need to stop judging and condemning.

I think the biggest evil in our society is the divisions we create for ourselves. What if you had a mindset of "I will judge every person solely on that person's actions"; what if every believer thought the same? Think about how much nicer our world might be...Change starts with individuals (See the recent thread "Love In An Elevator, Livin It Up Til I Hit The Ground"). One person choosing to be different changed an entire company.

Try it...Start today to set aside your preconceptions and view each person as an individual, intrinsically valuable to the world irregardless of their views and beliefs. If they show you otherwise, so be it, but you might be surprised at how many folks who aren't anything like you turn out to be great human beings!

(Disclaimer: This POV and challenge isn't aimed at any one group...It's for anyone who reads it. If you shun people cause you think they are part of group X, or might be scary, or from another country, this challenge is for you!)

"There is a god."

...without providing any evidence supporting that claim

Religious indoctrination can't be that bad. When it is religious there seems to be no wrong in it, It could only be enlightening. The way it is indoctrinated ...

well, yeah , indoctrination. Still, it can be a good thing.

Would it be right starting with God put us here on earth and we need to live with eachother in harmony. That would be a great indoctrination.

Could it be one knows God without himself realising it because he just is the child he is, making him confused about the matter but being the greatest christian ever?

Originally posted by Lucifer777

Further many of the claims by Christianity's alleged founder are scientific claims, just like the scientific claims for Scientology's founder to be able to cure cancer and radiation burns (by joining his cult); if Christians could really cure leprosy, blindess, raise the dead, miraculously cure all illnesses and move mountains into the sea, they would have demonstrated this by now with their deads, rather than with their incessant ramblings

When did christians ever claim this? They claimed Jesus could do it, not them


Further with regards to "Jesus returning" he stated that he would return before his contemporary followers had travelled through all the towns of ancient Israel. If he did return 2000 years ago, you have missed it.

He was born 2000 years ago, why would he be returning then, when its his first time?


If such a genocidal theocratic dictator (i.e., a king of kings, a monarchist) as depicted in the New Testament every "returns," he will have to deal with millions of armed American republicans who are not exactly in favour of monarchy (dictatorship), especially theocratic monarchies; if you really want to live in a theocratic monarchy, might I suggest that you emigrate to Saudi Arabia?

And most of them republicans go to church so I think not mate.