Thanks to the one that made it all possible...

If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?

 

A phrase only ever said by believers.

 

Why wouldnt you have a(lot)choice?

 

Been a lot of foxholes taking fire have you?

 

Well - I think the syntax is up to the user.

Mine sounds a lot like - “ Oh God , oh shit, oh no...”

EDIT - “oh please” usually in there too...

 

Oh shit = Something's about to happen to me
Oh no = Something happened to you I'm feigning interest in

Oh god...well now... thats for good things

 

Meh, we’re all human. I don’t think it’s an excuse as much as it’s just reality. And to honest, I haven’t experienced the pointing out the imperfections of others. Not saying it doesn’t happen. It’s just that I’ve rarely witnessed it. I try to do the best I can. I come up short a lot. If that in itself makes me a hypocrite, so be it.

 

They say you can last longer if you think about baseball.

 

I usually stick to "Awe fuck..." when it's about to get painful.

 

I assume by "be a Christian" you mean follow/worship your particular god, in an effort to go to the mythological heaven, correct?

I also assume you don't simply mean "be a good person with high morals", because the two are not one in the same, nor is one related to (or depend on) the other. I think I am already a good person. Not going to go on about what I will do, won't do, have done, etc. But nobody needs a god to be a good person.

As far as worshiping your preferred god so I can go to "heaven", the answer is "yes"...if it were true. And by true, I don't mean "Nobody has any proof of it, and it defies all logic, and science...but I still believe it to be true because I believe the stories written by men thousands of years ago". By "true", I mean REAL..as in tangible, factual, and backed by empirical evidence.

In other words, if "it" were just as real as when I met with a dude about my job, and he laid out their system design/components/etc, and told me if I help them achieve _____ and prevent _____ from happening, they will pay me _____ every month. I have, and they do. That was REAL. I saw the dude with my own eyes, shook his hand, signed his paperwork, and the money is deposited in my account. Every aspect of that can easily be proven.

If what you are referring to was exactly the same. Meaning god walked up to me, in real life, laid out a contract and said if I meet these terms, I will spend eternity in a great place...and that place is REAL. Meaning he showed me brochures, pictures, I could see footage of it, etc...then yeah. Why not do certain shit for a few years here, so I can spend eternity living the dream?

 

I have always found it interesting that if someone claimed to be seeing, hearing, and talking to some mythical creature, they would be considered insane, or on some serious drugs.

...unless it applies to god. THEN it is perfectly ok, even considered good by some.

There is no more proof for any god than there is for Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo or any of them. You can take any assumption/comment/statement by someone about god, replace "god" with Zeus, and the statement will have the same credibility, and the same (lack of) facts behind it. But yet if someone said they saw Zeus and Zeus spoke to them, people would think they are either being ridiculous, or clinically insane. But substitute god, and suddenly it's fine.

Hell, there is more evidence for Bigfoot or the Lock Ness Monster, than there is for any god. But let someone say they saw Bigfoot, and people think they are an idiot. But if someone says they saw god....

 

I would not hold my breath waiting for any deity to walk up and start talking to you. If they do then you better hold onto your wallet. It’s just not the way it works. You said you can’t have both ways as you believe science, require science to prove a deity. If you believe science then just ask yourself what started the big bang. Where did these atoms that gathered in this cosmic gas come from? Where did the gas come from? There has to be some mass as gravity does not work without mass. So if you believe science, all this happened. Well you say, the big bang is just a theory, true but we now have laws based on the theory. While the laws do not prove the theory, the theory provides background for the laws. So here is science providing the explanation of possibility of the creation of the universe and some consider the possibility of evidence of a deity/sky daddy/creator/etc.

Nothing wrong, weak, or crazy about believing in the possibility of science and a creator.

 

I can believe in a supreme being capable of creating a sandbox that has multiple dimensions, spits new universes out the other side of black holes and embraces the beauty of ordered chaos and evolution of all forms of life/matter within it. I can't buy one who is personally interested in every living being and insecure enough to require your acknowledgement of him to escape eternal death after a life he gave to you forced upon you.

 

Reading this thread, the common theme is this....”why do folks have to go on and on about their faith, God did this and God did they, etc”. Then we say it’s ok for a simple acknowledgement to what they believe in as long as they don’t write a disertation about it. I seem Cam and Gerloff mentioned by several as well.

Yet I can’t find one post citing someone that actually went on and on and on about their faith.

99.9% is a simple public acknowledgement to the one they want to give credit to beyond themselves. Sure seems to me like they spend 99% of their time talking about the race, sponsors, team, etc and 1% talking about their faith.

Seems to me that the fairy tale is actually the cases where someone actually goes “one and one and on” about their faith when many folks claim to be getting annoyed by it. Take your Tim Tebow’s out of the equation, I’m curious as to ACTUALLY who we are referring to here?

 

"Science" is a lot of different things. You don't have to believe that the Big Bang is the absolute truth to believe that radiation therapy can kill cancer. It's not all or nothing.

 

Oh for fucks sake. I reckon because nobody posted an actual quote, that means nobody has ever went on and on about their faith on TV, right?

Surely you have watched TV, post-game interviews, post-race interviews, so on and so forth. Throwing out a "thank god things went our way" isn't a big deal; most of the time those type comments wont stand out. Going on about "I have to thank the one that made this all possible, my lord and savior, jesus Christ, through him I was able to achieve all of this..." so on and so forth is something else.

I personally think it is too much, too preachy, and all that shit could/should be said in their head. Fans tune in to hear about the actual race...not hear about your personal beliefs.

 

While it is true that you do not require religion
to have good morals and live a moral life, you
have to realize that those morals were learned
because of the Christian values inherent in our
social fabric in this country.
Those common values are based on Christian values,
you didn't choose those on your own.

 

When it comes to science, saying the big bang is "just a theory" is doing it a disservice. A theory is generally accepted as being fact, as it is backed by empirical evidence and has repeatedly stood up to the scientific method. It steps can be retraced to 14 million years ago (IIRC), when the universe began out of something the size of an electron.

But then of course, one could say "where did the electron come from"? It is something that we can never TRULY know, because we weren't there to see it.

However, one can make the same argument about god. Where did he get the materials from to build an entire universe? Did he just so happen to have a metric shitload of water, gases, rocks, trees, tons of parts needed to make animals, etc in his back pocket? If that's the case, then where did his pockets come from? Hell, for that matter where did HE come from? Who made god? I know the typical response is "he has always been"...that is a cop out, and a very weak one.

People that say that can't accept that the universe expanded from a single atom (even though the principles have been proven), but yet they can believe that some dude nobody has ever seen, heard from, and hasn't a single shred of evidence been provided for...just waved his arms and suddenly everything magically "came to be"...out of nothing.