I'm a confused atheist

[Orchanian]

creation.com/
www.AnswersInGenesis.org
Here are two great sites ,they have great information on finding the purpose and meaning in life.It is run by good christians who have strong rational and scientific reasons supporting The Biblical view of Creation and why atheism cannot be a rationally held belief.They are not Catholic sites but I believe there is a lot of truth being offered here,Gods’ existance is an universal one,open to all.I have a booklet in front of me called Answers to the BIG Questions,produced by the second web site.Here are the main four topics -
(!)Where did the races come from?
(2)Does God Exist?
(3)Who was Cain’s wife?
(4)What about evolution?
I just happened to be reading it at the moment,here is a short quotation from it on this thread -The Bible connects wrong thoughts about God-especially denying His existance-with corrupt morals.If there is no God,no Creator who sets the rules,then we are set adrift morally.When the children of Israel forgot that God was their Creator,Judge and King,"every man did what was right in his own eyes"Judges 21;25) and chaos reigned.(Quote)
You will find out more should you search the sites,I remember reading about a woman with no religion,I think it was near Switzertand who in her twenties decided she was called to be a nun.She wanted to go to confession ,so she entered a Catholic Church-she told the priest her sins,but he stopped her when on talking to her, found out that she was not a Catholic! She explained that she always wanted to be a nun in an enclosed convent,he explained that she will need to become a catholic first! She entered a local order but after a few years, they advised her to leave because of her poor health.She still had this yearning of a religious vocation,after a few frustrating years of searching she was received by a Franciscan Poor Clare Colletine community in Jerusalem.She started to get locutions(messages from Jesus)which He ordered her to write down.She died in 1942 and was called Sister Mary of The Holy Spirit (of Jerusalem).I know this story ,as I read this book after coming back to God, as a prodical son aged 22years.Her writings had a big influence in my life and spirituallity.So the story of an atheist on this thread ,who wants to be a nun does not confuse me at all! Our hearts are made for Thee Oh God and they cannot rest until they rest in Thee’ St.Augustine(Confessions)-so go for your dream “confused atheist”!

Answers in Genesis is not the best site for a scientific mind. It support the “Young Earth” position that the world was created 6000 years ago and uses faulty science to argue that position. Reasons to Believe is a better site to consider. (Reasons.org) It is founded by scientists who are able to explain what the scientific world is finding today and link it to the Bible. They are “Old Earth” creationists. The difference from Old to Young is that the Old earthers believe that God created everything, but challenge the idea that the word used for DAY means the same thing to us today as it did in Hebrew. There are many possible ways to translate the Hebrew word used.

 

[usemelord]

Permit me to chime in here with something to consider regarding time as it is chronicled in the Book of Genesis. I attend a weekly Bible study conducted by one of the best Bible teachers I’ve ever heard. The way he explains Genesis is that the first few chapters are what he calls “wavy line” history; that is to say, a day is not necessarily a day, or a year not necessarily a year as we would define it in today’s terms. Or, put another way, a day is not twenty-four hours, rather the first few chapters should be viewed LITERARILY instead of literally. After the first few chapters Genesis then can be read as “straight line” history" meaning a day is a day, and a year is a year–365 days. I like the idea of “wavy line” history to explain the story of Creation as it appeals and makes sense to my logical mind and allows me to see that creationists can sit side-by-side with evolutionists in a discussion of Genesis without having major divisions in their respective positions.

 

[lucy_fur]

Dear confused atheist
I looked through most of the replies and every one jumped at the opportunity to convert you!
In you they see easy prey, they tell great stories of there own supposedly divine relationship with god. It is all to similar to drug abusers offering the weak and unstable there toxic poison: “start slowly…” “don’t resist…” ect. If you are a science graduate and surrounded by atheists and still feel like you are missing something , then I predict a) you are still in your early twenties. b) You are going through some hard times. and c) you have probably been a deist till now.
I not sure which answers you are looking for but religion won’t be able to answer them. There is no point filling gaps with god, because you still don’t have an answer, instead you will create many more questions, run into hundreds of contradictions, your career in science( the empirical search for truths) will be on the line. No science doesn’t have all the answers, ignorance is what makes it so exciting! Ask yourself if there is anything the church has contributed to our understanding of the world… not really.
Compare religions ONE book with the libraries full of knowledge. Religion doesn’t seek answers, instead it claims to know them all already. Maybe you don’t like the fact that we humans are no different than any other animal, that we don’t have a purpose, that when you die it will be like before you were born, that bad people won’t go to hell and you won’t be going to heaven. There is a reason why modern society is becoming less and less religious and it’s not satan outwitting god, no it’s human intelligence, reason and rational thinking that has made so many people see what religion really is… a man made myth.
Every other field and area of knowledge has advanced beyond recognition since 2000 years, except for religion which grudgingly adapts to our changing zeitgeist, new scientific knowledge and ever more moral society, AND NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND. This shows blatantly where we are headed, for the better. Seeing as I’m the only one who is counter-balancing this thread, I would highly recommend you going to a clear thinking oasis like www.richarddawkins.net and posting your original post there, that way you will have heard both sides of the argument. I would hate to see you fall for religion just because it pampers to your wishful thinking. There are also numerous other religions which offer the same things really, compare first!
And my last point is this: watch “Deliver us from evil” and ask yourself if you really want to join, apologize for and back an institute where child abuse is rampant (100 000 cases in the USA alone), which burns witches in Africa (friendlyatheist.com/2009/04/19/burned-at-the-stake-after-being-accused-of-witchcraft/ (Yes it is the clergy who decide who is a witch).A pope who was in the Nazi Jugend and and and Well as you probably know already the list is huge!
I wish you a good day and an open mind.

 

[Erethorn]

Lucy, if you have indeed read the whole thread, you might have noticed that I’m pretty much in the same position as the OP.

What’s interesting is that after reading your post and thinking over the points you’ve raised, and most importantly the way you’ve raised them, my incipient and wavering faith has been somewhat restored and strengthened.

I not sure which answers you are looking for but religion won’t be able to answer them.

That line alone would have had the above mentioned effect on me, even if there was nothing else you said. Fortunately, there were many more

 

[Stjudeprayforus]

Dear confused atheist
I looked through most of the replies and every one jumped at the opportunity to convert you!
In you they see easy prey, they tell great stories of there own supposedly divine relationship with god. It is all to similar to drug abusers offering the weak and unstable there toxic poison: “start slowly…” “don’t resist…” ect. If you are a science graduate and surrounded by atheists and still feel like you are missing something , then I predict a) you are still in your early twenties. b) You are going through some hard times. and c) you have probably been a deist till now.
I not sure which answers you are looking for but religion won’t be able to answer them. There is no point filling gaps with god, because you still don’t have an answer, instead you will create many more questions, run into hundreds of contradictions, your career in science( the empirical search for truths) will be on the line. No science doesn’t have all the answers, ignorance is what makes it so exciting! Ask yourself if there is anything the church has contributed to our understanding of the world… not really.
Compare religions ONE book with the libraries full of knowledge. Religion doesn’t seek answers, instead it claims to know them all already. Maybe you don’t like the fact that we humans are no different than any other animal, that we don’t have a purpose, that when you die it will be like before you were born, that bad people won’t go to hell and you won’t be going to heaven. There is a reason why modern society is becoming less and less religious and it’s not satan outwitting god, no it’s human intelligence, reason and rational thinking that has made so many people see what religion really is… a man made myth.
Every other field and area of knowledge has advanced beyond recognition since 2000 years, except for religion which grudgingly adapts to our changing zeitgeist, new scientific knowledge and ever more moral society, AND NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND. This shows blatantly where we are headed, for the better. Seeing as I’m the only one who is counter-balancing this thread, I would highly recommend you going to a clear thinking oasis like www.richarddawkins.net and posting your original post there, that way you will have heard both sides of the argument. I would hate to see you fall for religion just because it pampers to your wishful thinking. There are also numerous other religions which offer the same things really, compare first!
And my last point is this: watch “Deliver us from evil” and ask yourself if you really want to join, apologize for and back an institute where child abuse is rampant (100 000 cases in the USA alone), which burns witches in Africa (friendlyatheist.com/2009/04/19/burned-at-the-stake-after-being-accused-of-witchcraft/ (Yes it is the clergy who decide who is a witch).A pope who was in the Nazi Jugend and and and Well as you probably know already the list is huge!
I wish you a good day and an open mind.

Well… heres the thing for me.
These athiest sites are full of lies. So… yes… go to them. and then DO SOME research on your own. They claim alot of people in history were athiests ect… NOT TRUE.

They have to lie. Once you do your own research into what they claim… ask yourself… Why do they have to lie?

What really makes these sites funny… once you use your God given brain… and check for yourself… you will find the smartest people, the most talented people in history are all Christian. Athiests always try to claim that scientists are athiests… yadda yadda…

Not true… Big bang theory… thats from a Catholic Priest. Einstien thought math was Gods language… Issac Newton… Christian.

burning people at the stake and the Pope being a Nazi… blah blah blah. blah blah blah.
Priest abuse… (my faith isnt in man… its in God… so evil as that was… didnt shake my faith in God)

Bottom line for me… If I am wrong… no harm done. If you are wrong… Big problem.

 

[Monica4316]

Lucy, to be honest I found it kind of amusing how you said we look at the Pie314 or Erethorn as “easy prey”. Really? apart from your own bias, what gives you that idea? People come to God because He draws them, and this thread started just to answer some questions and provide feedback on a person’s experiences. If the OP had gone to an atheist forum with the same question, and the people there would have described their experiences with atheism, etc, would you say the same thing about them?

the OP came with a question and people tried to answer it. That’s pretty normal for a forum. The reason people came with answers is not because they see the OP as another number in a long list of conversions, lol, but because they wanted to help out in another person’s search.

your whole post contradicts my own experience of faith… I used to be agnostic and then became a Christian… btw I’m a science student. I’ve found that God did fill that empty place in my heart and my relationship with Him has been fulfilling for me. (though that’s not what it’s about. I’m not a Christian because of what I get out of it, but because I believe it is the truth.)

As for Richard Dawkins, I once read a part of his book “the God Delusion”, and found no “clear thinking oasis”, but rather the personal opinions of a man who is really quite angry, it seems. Did you read the description of Christians near the end of his book? so many adjectives. lol.

however, reading authors like CS Lewis did resemble being in a “clear thinking oasis”. These authors were intelligent, respectful, patient with the reader, and yup happened to be Christian apologists!

I think you’ve been reading a lot of propaganda. In case the movie Zeitgeist is one of these things, it’s not as accurate as many think. zeitgeistresponse.info/ I also thought it was strange how they said to not believe anyone, except them, of course!

I see some people like Dawkins almost try to bully people into believing them, and they talk badly about others just to make them look ridiculous so people would buy the argument. Im glad we don’t have to defend our faith by putting others down and just focus on the facts.

 

[usemelord]

lucy fur’s self-serving rant is precisely what I love about this forum and these threads. We engage in civil discourse stating arguments supporting our positions and then wait for responses from other contributors. Well, I have a few observations regarding lucy fur’s post. First, was it just me or did anyone else sense nothing but negativity in the post? Like countless others before her, she would stand on the proposition that science is some sort of sacred cow; i.e. if something can’t be proven in the lab, it has no merit. However, life’s solutions cannot always be measured, weighed and calculated by obscure tests and mathematical formulae. Lucy fur tries to make the specious argument that we only have “ONE” book (presumably the Bible) which supposedly is pale in comparison to libraries oozing with scientific literature; that scientific knowledge is constantly growing compared to the “ONE” book which has essentially not changed since it was first written. Well, let me ask a simple question: What was the Bible suppose to do all these centuries—morph?? It is unchanging because perfection cannot be improved. Also, you have to take into consideration that the volumes of scientific knowledge catalogued in libraries cannot, as they say, hold a candle to the kazillion number of books written about the “ONE” book. The number of books written about the Bible speaks loud and clear as to its authenticity. The “empirical search for truths,” as lucy fur put it, sounds like something noble, but, in fact, it is superficial and does nothing but leave one’s soul empty and searching for REAL truth. I wonder if lucy fur’s daily vocabulary contains such words as “sin,” “salvation,” “glory,” or “grace” just to name a few. Doubtful. A the study of all the “–ologies” in the world will increase academic knowledge, but will serve no useful purpose when it comes to one’s ultimate destiny. No, we are not all “dumb sheep.” I applaud Erethorn for the reply to lucy fur’s post and trust that the one who initiated this thread, Pi314, feels similarly.

 

[Monica4316]

I’ve heard people say before that our motives are all wrong because we “try to convert people”. We actually don’t try to convert anyone cause it’s God who brings people to Himself. We just answer questions if they have any and pray for them. But there’s nothing wrong with wishing for a person to find God. We have experienced His love and the joy of knowing Him, so of course it’s quite natural that we’d want to share that with others, so they’d have that joy too. It would in fact be an unloving thing if we kept it all to ourselves. We don’t see people as numbers to convert, but as souls who God created and loves.

 

[lucy_fur]

In reply to Monica,usemelord and stjudeprayforus,

I never claimed to have read every post on this thread.
Atheist sites are not full of lies, simple disputes about if hitler was a believer or not or if Stalin was bad in the name of atheism are petty and merely historical debates. Atheist lie as much as anyone else I’m sure, but that doesn’t make people like Dawkins, Hithchens, Harris and Dennet
all liers. What they do is merely uncover all the faults in your reasoning.
Your claim that scientists are mostly christian, is simply pathetic, I can show : lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sci_relig.htm so either you are lying or uninformed, I believe the former. Only scientist will seek the truth without any wishful thinking and they won’t bend numbers and facts to pamper to their beliefs. I think it is blatantly obvious why the church fears science, and it does. So you have a choice, you can search for answers with god or science,
WHAT YOU CAN’T DO is mix the two, that would be ruin your argument for god and the bible.
So if you are curious about let’s say, fossils, then read the bible…not mentioned? ah… then ask some religious person. I bet they have an answer, from where? THE BIBLE! huh
Ever wondered about the atom, or germs, or the cosmos? look it up in the bible!! If your child is ill, maybe terminally ill, what to do? read the bible and it tell you that all your prayers will be answered, so go on and pray…harder, pray more, really believe, feel jesus and all that love…what happens? nothing…but don’t take the child to a medical scientist because that would be putting your faith in science.
So again I ask which questions do you have? Let me guess… what is our purpose? Where are we from? Why so much suffering and badness? Where did the universe come from? ect
Exactly the questions I also ask, we all ask.
Evolution has been accepted as truth by the pope "In a major statement of the Roman Catholic Church’s position on the theory of evolution, Pope John Paul II has proclaimed that the theory is ‘more than just a hypothesis’ and that evolution is compatible with Christian faith. In a written message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the pope said the theory of evolution has been buttressed by scientific studies and discoveries since Charles Darwin … “It is indeed remarkable that this theory has progressively taken root in the minds of researchers following a series of discoveries made in different spheres of knowledge’, the pope said in his message Wednesday. 'The convergence, neither sought nor provoked, of results of studies undertaken independently from each other constitutes, in itself, a significant argument in favor of this theory…”

“If taken literally, the Biblical view of the beginning of life and Darwin’s scientific view would seem irreconcilable. In Genesis, the creation of the world, and Adam, the first human, took six days. Evolution’s process of genetic mutation and natural selection-the survival and proliferation of the fittest new species-has taken billions of years, according to scientists …”

This is exactly what I mean and it has happened numerous times.
The Big Bang theory was indeed discovered by a christian, but his belief in a god and interpretation of the bible are vastly milder as yours here.
So we still have the purpose question… as far as science knows we have no purpose.
The bibles answer is to spend your life following rules, when to have sex, how to have sex, with whom you can have sex, if I can touch my penis (that god gave me along with millions of animals), when you are allowed to work, what to eat, what to where, who to believe in. To live in fear of some one who demands compulsory love and threatens you with eternal horror (the all loving god). A god who gives us free will and then punishes every bad choice like it’s some sadistic game, forever worried to displease god (and looking through the forums there are a lot of people worried about hell).If this sounds like North Korea, it’s because the concept is totalitarian, you are punishable for thought crimes! God committed genocide and flooded the earth (think of all those millions of women and babies drowning) to rid it of sin…didn’t work!! so he tried again…and Jesus died to rid the world of sin…didn’t work again!!
Some plan gone wrong! and he lacks the omnipotence to correct it. Yet he is omniscient so knew exactly how it would end!! So yes I prefer the no purpose reasoning, and wonder at the sheer impossibly tiny chance that I happen to be a form of life, I enjoy discovering our world, I appreciate it so much that I have no need for any supernatural.
Even if an intelligent being started the big bang, does not mean it’s the one you all believe in considering 80% of all humans don’t believe your book.
Why can’t you just admit to not knowing, instead of invoking the supernatural. It’s not a 50/50 situation, the scientific likelihood of god is infinitesimally small, but no respectable scientist will say there is 100% no god.
Finally “Evil”, …imagine no god, and ask the question “why evil?” the answer is simple, because we are animals, evolution has brought us here, pain and suffering is unfortunately a part of it. Now look in the bible, first testament god is a perfect example of god was made in man’s image, violent, petty, genocidal, unjust, misogynist ect. So he was evil himself. Let’s not forget that millions and millions have died fighting over their sky fairies.
So if you ask me I would say religion has been a cause of violence, and not a cause of peace and love (apart from within your own ranks…no , not even then (Ireland ect.))

 

[lucy_fur]

How Stjudeprayforus can be so indifferent to all those children scarred
for life is beyond me, although it represents the church’s attitude to playing down such
things. I wonder how you’d react if your children were sodomized, by the clergy who were telling you how to live a moral life as if you didn’t instinctively know?
“Bottom line for me… If I am wrong… no harm done. If you are wrong… Big problem”
refer to pascals wager: There are many problems with this statement. One, which does not constitute a logical fallacy in its own right, is the fact that there are an infinite number of hypothetical gods. If there was no possibility of more than one god’s existence, the statement would make logical sense, however, there is no evidence that the Christian god is more real than any of the Hindu gods or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Even in the limited world-view of Christian monotheism, various individual Christian sects disagree with one another about what is necessary for salvation.

This argument against Pascal’s wager is as such:

1. If you believe in a single God, you will have to choose one out of infinite possible varieties.
2. If any percent of the possible gods will punish you eternally, then there are an infinite number of hypothetical gods who, if they exist, would punish you for eternity.
3. If there is only one god, then your chance of worshipping it, and not a nonexistent entity instead, is one out of infinity.
4. Therefore you will almost surely fail to pick up the correct “One True God”.
5. So if a god does exist, the chance of you going to any variety of heaven is infinitesimal, regardless of whether you are religious or not. rationalwiki.com/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager

The comment about “easy prey” is not biased but comes from reading your replies.
Not one of you ask her to look at all religions, nor did you advise against believing.

Your comments about Dawkins are pathetic
C.S Lewis: English novelist, short story writer, nonfiction writer, essayist, children’s writer, critic, and poet and devote christian (guarantees unbiased thinking!) .
Dawkins: Dawkins has been recognized many times as a science writer. He was awarded a Doctor of Science by the University of Oxford in 1989. He holds honorary doctorates in science from the University of Huddersfield, University of Westminster, Durham University, the University of Hull, and the University of Antwerp, and honorary doctorates from the Open University, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the University of Valencia. He holds honorary doctorates of letters from the University of St Andrews and the Australian National University, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997 and the Royal Society in 2001. He is one of the patrons of the Oxford University Scientific Society. In 1987, Dawkins received a Royal Society of Literature award and a Los Angeles Times Literary Prize for his book, The Blind Watchmaker. In the same year, he received a Sci. Tech Prize for Best Television Documentary Science Programme of the Year, for the BBC Horizon episode entitled The Blind Watchmaker. Asteroid 8331 Dawkins is named after Dawkins. His other awards have included the Zoological Society of London Silver Medal (1989), Finlay innovation award (1990), the Michael Faraday Award (1990), the Nakayama Prize (1994), the American Humanist Association’s Humanist of the Year Award (1996), the fifth International Cosmos Prize (1997), the Kistler Prize (2001), the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic (2001), the Bicentennial Kelvin Medal of The Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow (2002) and the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest (2009). In 2005, the Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Foundation awarded him its Shakespeare Prize in recognition of his “concise and accessible presentation of scientific knowledge”. He won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science for 2006 and the Galaxy British Book Awards Author of the Year Award for 2007.[125] In the same year, he was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007, and was awarded the Deschner Award, named after German anti-clerical author Karlheinz Deschner.
Dawkins has been recognized as an intellectual. He topped Prospect magazine’s 2004 list of the top 100 public British intellectuals, as decided by the readers, receiving twice as many votes as the runner-up and placing high on the worldwide 2005 and 2008 listings of Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll. He has been short-listed as a candidate in their 2008 follow-up poll. Dawkins has been honored for his promotion of atheism. The Richard Dawkins Award has, since 2003, been awarded by the Atheist Alliance International during its annual conference, honouring an outstanding atheist whose work has done most to raise public awareness of atheism during that year.

“However, life’s solutions cannot always be measured, weighed and calculated by obscure tests and mathematical formulae.” You just do it with faith because that’s all that’s left after removing the above.Faith is not a virtue, it’s an eye closer, your question has been answered, no need to look further, curiosity has just been stumped.

Just because the bible is so open to interpretation, and so desperately in need of defense and hence many books are written on the subject, doesn’t imply that it’s true, what it does imply is that every tom dick and harry has his own “truth” which makes an absolute truth seem even further away.
The authenticity is not in question, only if any of it is true.(just like you look at the Koran)

“I wonder if lucy fur’s daily vocabulary contains such words as “sin,” “salvation,” “glory,” or “grace” just to name a few. Doubtful.”
You are so right!!, but it does contain: “love”,“respect”,“tolerance where due”( I don’t tolerate genital mutilation,or bull fighting), “transcendence”,“awe” “**** scared” and so on.

 

[lucy_fur]

By the way Mother Teresa wrote that she never felt jesus or god, she felt lonely read her diary. And she is a saint!!! Read “the missionary position” by Hitchens for all the facts or youtube.com/watch?v=9WQ0i3nCx60 for FACTS

So I wonder how it is that you feel jesus and why I can’t? It’s a bit silly saying I must just believe first, believe what exactly? something that won’t show itself in any form.
Why the silly test, it only proves your lack of reasoning not exactly a sensible test, so god will only show himself to those who believe something despite lack of evidence.
And which version of god should I just blindly believe in? if they all equally lack evidence?
Just because unrelated scripts(stories) where biasedly brought together to create a book long after christ, doesn’t mean anything, I could just as easily been done with ancient Egyptian scripts, nearly identical stories, which the christian religion plagiarized for it’s own use.
Which ever way you look at it, the vast majority of gods creations(plants, animals, humans) don’t believe or even care about his book. And in the short 2000 years since it’s conception has been loosing more and more followers, not exactly eternal wisdom!
Back when man pieced together the bible it surely was “of the times”, but know it looks so outdated.

 

[Stylteralmaldo]

By the way Mother Teresa wrote that she never felt jesus or god, she felt lonely read her diary.

Mother Teresa was a believer because she knew in her heart it was true. In case you missed Monica’s testimony above, I’ll restate her reasons for being Christian again for you:

Monica4316:

I’m not a Christian because of what I get out of it, but because I believe it is the truth.

God bless you one your journey Lucy!

 

[lucy_fur]

Mother Teresa was a believer because she knew in her heart it was true. In case you missed Monica’s testimony above, I’ll restate her reasons for being Christian again for you:

God bless you one your journey Lucy!

I never said she didn’t believe it as the truth.

And no Mother T never felt anything in her heart, she felt ignored, again READ HER DIARIES because I have.

 

[Stylteralmaldo]

I never said she didn’t believe it as the truth.

And no Mother T never felt anything in her heart, she felt ignored, again READ HER DIARIES because I have.

I define ‘believing Christianity to be true’ and ‘feeling Christianity is true in their heart’ as one and the same. Jesus Himself felt ignored as he hung on the cross and all his friends abandoning him as they did.

Something to keep in mind is that Christianity (at least Catholic Christianity) does not rely on feelings alone to come to it’s conclusions. I feel Christianity is true in my heart, not because it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but because it is reasonable and God has led me to understand the truth it holds.

 

[Erethorn]

The Big Bang theory was indeed discovered by a christian, but his belief in a god and interpretation of the bible are vastly milder as yours here.

You have got to be kidding me. Georges Lemaître was a catholic priest.

Lucy fur, you are doing a great disservice to your cause, just like those fundamentalist christians who scare little children with images of hellfire.

I don’t question your motives, but I strongly question your ways. Putting up remarks such as the one I quoted shows either ignorance or outright hypocrisy, I’m sorry to say. Neither is beneficial.

By the way, does the name Francis Collins ring a bell ? Look it up and tell me you sincerely believe faith is incompatible with science.

 

[lucy_fur]

“Jesus Himself felt ignored as he hung on the cross and all his friends abandoning him as they did.”
What? jesus is god! He hung himself effectively and certainly knew what was coming, and that his friends couldn’t help him, although I’m sure they prayed, is simple: God sent jesus to die! It was a plan (didn’t stop any sin though). So much love, sounds all sick to me, pagan and twisted

 

[Stylteralmaldo]

“Jesus Himself felt ignored as he hung on the cross and all his friends abandoning him as they did.”
What? jesus is god! He hung himself effectively and certainly knew what was coming, and that his friends couldn’t help him, although I’m sure they prayed, is simple: God sent jesus to die! It was a plan (didn’t stop any sin though). So much love, sounds all sick to me, pagan and twisted

Jesus is also man. He identifies with our struggles - even the struggle of feeling ignored by God. It’s truly a blessing if you really think about it, that God sent His only Son for us. I pray for God’s blessings upon you. Peace.

 

[lucy_fur]

“Jesus Himself felt ignored as he hung on the cross and all his friends abandoning him as they did.”
What? jesus is god! He hung himself effectively and certainly knew what was coming, and that his friends couldn’t help him, although I’m sure they prayed, is simple: God sent jesus to die! It was a plan (didn’t stop any sin though). So much love, sounds all sick to me, pagan and twisted

Come to think of it, if you were god, and you’d watched the earth for thousands of years and then decide to do something about the sinners, would you honestly, not forgetting that by definition you can do anything, impregnate some unknow MARRIED wife of someones, have a jesus grow up and wander around drawing a small crowd in his area, totally unheard of in the far east were civilization was much further on, and then have him hung on a cross and suffer immense pain thinking that would solve the problem, although as god you already know it won’t!! Sounds like a dismal plan, not very god like, more MAN like.
You see how ridiculous this all looks.
And you wonder why so few rational people believe your bronze age scriptures, we have moved on in every field.

 

[Erethorn]

“Jesus Himself felt ignored as he hung on the cross and all his friends abandoning him as they did.”
What? jesus is god! He hung himself effectively and certainly knew what was coming, and that his friends couldn’t help him, although I’m sure they prayed, is simple: God sent jesus to die! It was a plan (didn’t stop any sin though). So much love, sounds all sick to me, pagan and twisted

See, this post proves my point about your posts doing more harm than good to your cause.

You are supposed to be, above all, polite. Especially when you are on other people’s turf, as it were. You are in a catholic forum, an most of the people here are catholics.
Ergo, the name and the person of the Lord is of great importance to them. Ergo, you are supposed to treat it with some respect. Spelling it deliberately with a lower case j is nothing but respect.

I mean, dude, come on, even if you don’t believe He was God, you still have to admit that He was a human person, and a pretty decent one, based on what was written about Him, a person who got killed for what He believed in. Isn’t that reason enough to at least spell His name right ?!

As for the whole question of whether faith and science can work hand in hand. There is scientific proof for that. The amount of important scientists that were also religious people is a fact. Their scientific discoveries are fact. Dawkins’ rants about religion are not fact, nor are they science. Dawkins is a brilliant biologist, but he admits himself to be ignorant in matters of theology. Other great scientists, who are also educated in theology, have proven beyond doubt that a religious mind and a scientific mind can indeed inhabit the same head and produce real results, both scientific and religious.

 

[Stjudeprayforus]

There you go…

The church hates science… Mother Teresa didnt believe… yadda yadda yadda…
Because my faith in God is not shaken by the priest abuse is somehow bad… yadda yadda yadda.
The bible is outdated… yadda yadda yadda…as if the life of Jesus will ever be outdated…

More Athiest lies. On and on and on…

It does get rather humorous… athiests grabbing on to a few words from Mother Teresa as if that is proof we should all give up… follow Dawkins and be as miserable as they are. Instead of looking at her whole life… blah blah blah.
What really gets me confused… athiest claim science on thier side when they ignore everything that doesnt prove thier point. They are a fraud.

Everyone should go to thier websites and then start checking things out for themselves. My brother (once an athiest) and I did it for a couple weeks… it was amazing how duped these poor souls are.

But, when you put your faith in man… you are bound to be duped.

Lucy, you should be well advised to do the same… dont be so gullable. Its only your soul.

I am sure all this will make you mad but then again… athiests are always mad so I guess no harm done.