Jeremy T

ollowing the incident, the disillusioned child rejects all religion for the rest of his life

The priest, recognizing his sin, repents, confesses and spends the rest of his life praying.

According to the Bible, the priest is forgiven and gets eternal life in heaven.

The child, having rejected Jesus, is condemned to hell for an eternity of unimaginable suffering.

Can this god really be described as 'just'?

Please only answer if you consider yourself to follow the Bible.

NON BELIEVERS: I am aware of the apparent atrocity, hypocrisy and injustice...it is self-evident so I do not need people backing me up. I am just genuinely curious about believers' attempts to reconcile scripture with common sense when they disagree.

BELIEVERS: being considerate and generous, for the benefit of the rest of us please try if you can to use arguments that do not presume Biblical infallibility.

i am wondering:

bioethically speaking, is more wrong to perform experiments on

a) a normally functioning non-human great ape

b) a coma victim with no chance of waking and no family

I instinctively think b), but am not sure whether this is from cultural upbringing.

Please try to suspend ideas of god-given sanctity of human life.

Does it all come down to speciesism?

Hugs and Kisses,

Jez

I am teaching myself MATLAB from scratch with a view to be able to do signal processing with it in 6 weeks time.

Does anyone know the best 'teach yourself MATLAB' book?

In dinosaurs?

In hominids like homo erectus and neanderthals?

In the Dodo?

In the Tasmanian Tiger?

Are the evidence of these all just conspiracies by Satan or what?

Give perfectly sensible, unbiased answers last night and get negative votes from Americans? Should I bother with this forum?

I'm thinking maybe I should change my name/profile pic/description to that of an attractive white female to see what difference that makes.

I just watched the latest 'dispatches' and found it very interesting.

http://www.channel4.com/video/dispatches-in-gods-n...

Can I get some opinions from all sides?

He gives a bad name to Christians everywhere and persistently spams perfectly decent R&S debates with logically-flawed extreme-right rants.

Fundamentalist Christians are entitled to their say. Their input is often appreciated but this guy makes them look stupid by ranting, insulting, being generally arrogant and obnoxious and NEVER making sense. He is obviously un-Christian in his values. He worhips a man called Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) who is a anti-female rights white supremacist, who abuses the Bible to promote his neo-nazi views. He is also a video game nerd who is in MENSA, but Luke...most video game nerds could get into MENSA if they wanted to, just most have better things to do. MENSA is not a qualification, it is a pompous throne of arrogance its members use to look down on others from. Luke Weiss...is this yet another pseudonym of Beale? Weiss, after all, is German for 'white'.

http://atheism.about.com/b/a/257570.htm

http://www.martinirevolution.com/2006/05

He was by all standards a good man, some would argue the best to have ever walked the Earth. Why is he suffering unbearable torture for eternity?

Think about eternity for a while.

I can see no reason why I deserve eternal torture, let alone Gandhi. Please explain.

The rules:

-No Bible quotations.

-Must be a reasoned answer. This means with reason, not dogma e.g. 'Because he did not accept Jesus' is not an acceptable answer, since it presupposes that accepting Jesus is the only way to avoid hell.

Basically answer with ONLY the assumption that God is real and that the prophet Jesus was the Messiah, without referring to what was in the Bible or told to you in Church. The only references to their words are in the Bible so these are included on the 'no' list.

I look forward to a logical philosophical/ethical answer. If you have a theological answer without Biblical assumptions those are of welcome too.

I know its a classic but I am curious as to how you smart people answer it. Christians here is your chance to speak up!

I thought it was widely known that the 'virgin birth' was a result of misinterpretation of the hebrew word 'almah' which means 'young woman'. Interpreted accidentally (or deliberately to make it more of a miracle) by Biblical authors and translators it has given many Chritians the impression of a Mary giving birth without having had sex.

To clear up any confusion, Pope Pius XII declared it a basic tenet of Catholicism that one must believe in the integrity of Mary's hymen. Misinterpretations are justifiable (by looking at the word, one might believe that Catholicism is an addiction to cats) but declaring one as a tenet of faith just seems wrong.

Catholics, please explain rationally why you believe she was a virgin. If possible I would like to understand your church's obsession with a poor young woman's hymen.

From my wanderings of this forum I see a minority of free thinkers who get negative responses to their views simply because they disagree with whatever dogmatic beliefs are being discussed.

The majority of people on this forum seem to be Christians, some who are intelligent and articulate, but most appear to be fundamentalist and narrow minded. The number of answers which are plain ignorant or quote from a single ancient book (making the assumption that it is the only truth) is quite staggering.

It worries me how many people here are obsessed by the notion that all those who do not hold the same beliefs will be subjected to eternal suffering. Are these not the same people who claim that God is kind and just?

Is this forum, like American politics, swamped with the votes and views of ignorant narrow-minded fundamentalist conservatives?

Intelligent people: I implore you to respond and be heard, whatever your theology might be.

Others: please flame and prove my point

I do not mean to offend anyone, I just want to know the views of various Christian denominations.

At what point did God decide that Christianity was the one true faith and change the heavenly admission from (presumably) Judaism? Did the disciples get let off from eternal damnation? I really need to know it is bothering me.