They believe that over the course of history each successive religion has been an evolution and revelation of the previous; an evolution which they believe runs parallel with the evolution and ultimate future liberation of human consciousness. Sounds pretty crazy, but I have to sheepishly admit that subscribe to this very same concept.

1. Why do you love your children? Because they're your children. Same reason God does.

2. I am happier off with religion. Without it, I would only be searching for it. Which is what all humans do, because of a gene which they have found that makes you believe in a God.

3. In the place besides this wretched planet, you get what you want for nothing, you also love and be loved, but unconditionally.

Yes, I hate when fellow Christians shove their beliefs down people's throats. It gives the rest of us a bad name. I also hate when atheists do it.

"Because they are your children" doesn't explain why "you" love them, logical though you may at first think this seems.

Wrong.

You know what heaven is like?

Is this what passes for logic around here these days? :(

I'm sorry, but this seems somewhat immature to me. Can't we love everyone for the simple reason that we all share existence, that we all suffer and have to rely on each other? Simply through recognizing that on some level we're all the same, regardless of how we respond to the pressures of life. I guess this entails for me recognizing that we all have the capacity for great evil, however desperately we try to externalize and demonize that evil. Unless you only save your love for saints, most of the things we look for in other people end up being somewhat arbitrary and superficial, and our relations are more about establishing individual identities and a collective picture of reality than about finding the best people on Earth and bestowing your love on them.

So basically, why be stingy with your love? The more you give, the more you get. Spread it around.

define "evil"?

yeah sure, but likewise, I won't love someone for being a prick to me.

You don't have to love everything because you decide not to hate it, there are many things in between, like tolerance.

I know it doesn't make a lot of sense. But don't poke fun of me for it.

Now if a doctor saves my life, I'm gonna give the doctor the credit. I don't believe god is some guy who has every event already planned out.

It depends on how you define god, I define god as just being everything, the basic and mathematical order of things, existance itself, the origin and complexities of life.

Yeah, I always tuned my Sunday school teachers out when I was younger. I'm sure they were trying to teach me how to read the bible when all I wanted to do was play Nintendo.

this makes a lot of sense to me, even if 99% of the bible is pure BS, you can always get something substantial & healthy out of it if the overall message is a positive one.

The more I try to understand Christianity a bit more the more I don't really think a hell truly exists. It's hard to really take anything too literally with the way things are worded and all the use of symbolism and such, but perhaps hell is an isolated and lonely existence without opening your mind and your heart to something more powerful then yourself. Not saying opening your heart to God is the answer, I think it can be anything or anyone that causes a person to live fully and not full of fear. People (as all animals) need other people in their lives for whatever reasons, love, hate, fear, greed, want, need, etc. are all embedded in us. Perhaps misusing these feelings so often can create our own little personal hell in which we suffer internally until the day we die.

free will, do what you want but realize your actions have consequences, not to say you will be sent to hell... like I said above, hell could be your unhappiness for living the way you do.

I hear ya and feel your pain on this one. A big part in which ANYTHING is taught is the teacher. I've been to masses where I walked out feeling on top of the world and ready for action and then I've been to masses where I want to choke the priest for being so obtuse and prehistoric with his views and teachings. I believe God is love and strength... no matter who or what it is, love transcends all differences. Homosexuals have both love and strength, they should be used as examples of God's love not the other way around. Thinking of Catholicism as a business I have to think deep down they are kicking themselves for not "opening their hearts" to homosexuals... think of all the money they are losing ;)

this doesn't make much sense. If I were born on an island with nobody around me to teach me a thing, I wouldn't be looking to the sky for God to help me off the island. I would just be looking for food, water and shelter after some trial and error. If you are told something from the day you are able to speak, you're going to believe it immensely. It's not a gene, it's a desire to fit in and be accepted. According to what Satchmo said (Unitarian faith), this desire is normal but to blindly accept without question and to blindly worship without true desire goes against the very thing Catholics praise Jesus for in the first place.

Sorry, for the very long post. Actually I am not sorry, but I just want to warn.

I cannot prove or disprove the existence of a god. Our actions define who we were at that moment. If I act as if I don't believe in a god, yet somewhere in the back of my mind I feel as though it might be possible, wouldn't I still "exist" as an atheist?

That is why I don't understand agnosticism if it is the "live life as if there is no god, but there might be a god."

1. Loving my children has to do with the fact that I make them who they are until they are at a period where they can question those certain areas of their essence. It isn't black an white, but it is the best I have. In other words, from birth children can choose certain aspects of their character. However, it isn't until later where they can completely define themselves for themselves.

Once they get to the period where they can define all of themselves, that is where I can love them or not. They have become independent.

2. A gene that makes you believe in a god? It wouldn't matter. There are genes to make one want to smoke Marijuana more and such. It doesn't matter if we say existence precedes essence. You create who you are, not your genes. That idea is poison. Why would someone want to believe that their life is out of control? Then all the enjoyment they experience isn't really theirs.

3. What? I get what I want for nothing? That takes away the journey and the pursuit of happiness in which one finds happiness. That which you speak of is the dream of materialist. Why do you think you feel better about a school project when you put all your effort into it instead of slacking off and doing just enough to get an A? It is the fact that you have shown yourself your own potential manifested in the creation. You begin to appreciate yourself. Only after you love yourself can you truly love others.

We don't have to all rely on each other. We can rely on those which we choose. In the end, we do have to rely on someone, but that is not everyone. We are not all the same. I treasure individualism because it gives me a uniqueness in the universe. It makes one happier as a person to know that he is his own creation and that he may be known amongst the billions of human beings living on the planet. It builds a healthy self-esteem.

After reading through you post a couple of times I see the difference. Do I have a likeness for all humans because they are humans? That is correct. Yes, we are all on the same level on some level and that is a factor in my appreciation for humanity. If I saw a man getting read to cross the street into traffic I would tug on his traffic because he is human.

However, that is because I am only viewing him as a human. I am not viewing him as who he is. I am not looking at his essence. I am not viewing him as an individual, but merely one blue marble amidst a jar of millions of the same. In that moment I appreciate him the same as the rest.

Let's say he wants to pay me back for what I did. Let's say he takes me to the local coffee shop (though I despise coffee shops) to buy me a cup. We talk a bit and I really think this guy is a great guy because he likes the things I like. He dislikes the things I like. It's the start of a beautiful friendship.

Now let's rewind a bit and start over. This time, the guy is a religious nut who just bought me coffee so he could attempt to save me with the gospel. I absolutely hate the guy because he bores me and annoys me. I genuinely hate the guy. If I was at a party and saw him, I would not go near the guy. If he went into traffic again, I probably would only save him so that I would not get wrapped up in the mess. (Forget the fact that it is shallow as hell to hate a guy after the first meeting.)

You are telling me, though, that I should give love to this guy because I will get it back. It might make sense in this instance, but what about a guy like Hitler? Am I to love him? If I were a Jew who went through Auschwitz am I supposed to try and bond with those who persecute me? No. I will bond with those who share my suffering and my values, which have been reduced to almost nothing by the likes of the Nazis.

In a pacifistic sense, yes, I could treat everyone with a certain level of respect no matter what they have done to me. However, I certainly would not call that "love."

Christianity
 

For the sake of the original thread, I am going to answer this as honestly as I can simply based on my observations, experiences, and limited reading...

How real is Christianity? It is a real religion. A couple billion "followers." That's as real as you can get. But how real is the religion's--therefore obviously the bible's--content, as the first thread's questions seam to ask? I'm not even going to begin to act like I know, as no one truly should. But perhaps instead we should open our minds a bit, and not take the bible, and therefore Christianity, or any particular religion, at face value.

Thousands of decades have brought with them as many beliefs, gods, myths, legends and lore. They have all had their heyday and most have been forgotten, replaced, or eradicated. Some have been erased by force, typically at the hand of a "superior" belief.

Christianity comes to mind in the West as a modern superior belief. How did it get here? It came with exploration into a new world, a world of local "savages" and their pagan gods, myths and legend. Because the settlers had such a strict social doctrin based on thousands of years of cultivation, they felt it ethical to scrub the locals' barbaric beliefs and dress them in Christianity, so to speak.

But what made this decision ethical? Who says the locals' beliefs were not superior? Therein lies the question--what makes one religion "right" and another "wrong"? It can't be the actual god or gods, or we would obviously all believe in the same one(s). It is the purveyor of the religion who makes such claims. It was and still is, simply, the will of the missionary. Without an equally contrived, polished, published, expounded and touted religion, the local "savage" populations' beliefs were a whisper against a well-rehearsed chorus.

Will Christianity be around forever? If history can provide any indication, no. Something bigger will replace it, one way or another.

What is my point? Particular religions, such as Christianity, are metaphysical. Perhaps it is best not to buy any religion at wholesale, but instead to merely sample all of the notions man has ever had, and draw one's own conclusions.

Christianity is real, but it is not real.