BucsGuru and/or White Tiger

[mtnman]

Back to the subject, I can accept not talking religion in order to follow this council -"If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone."- Romans 12:18 (NIV)

But I will talk about the Bible.

As far as being a Christian, there are certain requirements and here is one of them:
"...... Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,"- 1 Peter 3:15 (NIV)

Why ? How else would the good news be spread as Jesus foretold at Matt 24:14 ? He also commanded his followers to make disciples at Matt 28:19-20. So, Christians preach, but more importantly, they teach. This requires Christian love (agape') and humility.

Yes, it takes action to be a Christian. 'Faith without works is dead' (James 2:14-17), yet you cannot earn everlasting live because it is a free gift. Many do not understand what this means. Sadly, too many who profess to be Christian lean on one scripture, claiming that all you have to do is believe and you'll be saved (John 3:16). Yet if we read John 3:36, we find that we must also obey the Son. You see, 'the demons believe, yet they shudder' (James 2:19) They shudder because they know they have been adversely judged. I like this version of James 2:19 & 20:
 "Do I hear you professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That's just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them? Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands?" -James 2:19 & 20 (The Message)

Faith is not credulity or blind faith. You cannot see electricity or gravity, but everyone accepts them as fact. Christian faith is based on hard evidence:
 "NOW FAITH is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses]."- Hebrews 11:1 (AB)

The point is, we must not only know what God's will is for us, but we must also do it:
 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."- Matthew 7:21 (NIV) See also James 1:22-25

It seems that religion has come between God and man even though Christ's ransom sacrifice makes a relationship with our Father possible. He died for our sins and then presented his sacrifice to his Father which enabled him to become our mediator. Further, religion adds philosophical thoughts along with their traditions. At Matt 15:1-9, Jesus stated so when he condemned the religious leaders of his day. Paul warned against this as well:
 "See that there be no one who shall lead *you* away as a prey through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the teaching of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ." -Col 2:8 (DT)

Religion supports killing in wars and nationalism. Jesus said to love your enemies and pray for them(Matt 5:43-48). Look at a picture of the earth. Do you see any national boundaries there ? Our Creator didn't put them there, Satan did. He was able to do that because he rules the world:
"For the second test he led him up and spread out all the kingdoms of the earth on display at once. Then the Devil said, "They're yours in all their splendor to serve your pleasure. I'm in charge of them all and can turn them over to whomever I wish. Worship me and they're yours, the whole works."" -Luke 4:5-7 (TM)
"We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one."- 1 John 5:19 (NIV) see also: John 12:31, 14:30, 16:7-11 & 2 Cor 4:3 & 4

There is nothing wrong with asking questions like why God allows suffering.... the Bible gives satisfying answers on this subject and others.

It's OK to not believe in God Jehovah. This is because he created us with free will which was motivated by love. But just as there are consequences to jumping off a high cliff with no parachute or safety apparatus of any kind, the Bible tells us there are consequences when we don't live our lives in accordance with the way we were designed.

This is going to be my only post because I don't want to get into any disagreements with anyone. But if you have any questions and really want to know the truth about what the Bible teaches us, please feel free to e-mail me.

[YoozaHo]

I would never speak for them youozaho - but what business it it of yours - the basis for their faith that is. It is theirs and private. Isn't it?

Absolutely it's none of my beeswax and of course they're more than welcome to tell me to mind my own friggin business, i'm just curious. In the UK we don't have near the amount of what i'd call fervent christians I just thought i'd ask, get a dialogue going if possible.

[YoozaHo]

Leaving argument, snide digs and government out of it can i ask why you believe what you do so vehemontly? I can only assume you've had some sort of experience in your life where you felt 'touched' (easy now you lot). Otherwise you'd basically be just doing and believing what you're told.

I'm not trying to wind you up. As with most things here, just trying to understand.

[Scholty]

I don't even understand the question?  Are you asking what the basis for their believe is?

Are you talking politically?  religiously? what?

[YoozaHo]

I don't even understand the question? Are you asking what the basis for their believe is?

Are you talking politically? religiously? what?

Religiously innit.

[dbucfan]

I would never speak for them youozaho - but what business it it of yours - the basis for their faith that is.  It is theirs and private.  Isn't it?

[dbucfan]

I would never speak for them youozaho - but what business it it of yours - the basis for their faith that is. It is theirs and private. Isn't it?

Absolutely it's none of my beeswax and of course they're more than welcome to tell me to mind my own friggin business, i'm just curious. In the UK we don't have near the amount of what i'd call fervent christians I just thought i'd ask, get a dialogue going if possible.

Why - to continue efforts to discredit their beliefs - to try to put them on the defensive vs your dismissive attitude towards anything & everything they believe in?  Before using the term dialogue you should decide if you want to hear what they have to say to learn something - or just use what they say in to disparage their beliefs. 

[YoozaHo]

I would never speak for them youozaho - but what business it it of yours - the basis for their faith that is. It is theirs and private. Isn't it?

Absolutely it's none of my beeswax and of course they're more than welcome to tell me to mind my own friggin business, i'm just curious. In the UK we don't have near the amount of what i'd call fervent christians I just thought i'd ask, get a dialogue going if possible.

Why - to continue efforts to discredit their beliefs - to try to put them on the defensive vs your dismissive attitude towards anything & everything they believe in? Before using the term dialogue you should decide if you want to hear what they have to say to learn something - or just use what they say in to disparage their beliefs.

By this post here it really seems like you're opposed to any conversation between two people with differing opinions, "What's the point?" seems to be your modus operandum. Personally a conversation between two people of opposing opinions make the most interesting.

I didn't start this thread to disparage anyone's beliefs but to understand why they hold them. Nowyou did have a point that their reasons are none of my business but to follow that thinking to it's logical conclusion...this question i posed was none of yours either.

[dbucfan]

You can continue to your logical conclusion at your own choosing.  When someone comes to the board apparently eager to begin conversations regarding religious beliefs - and to disparage the beliefs of others as you have - it becomes everyone's business imvho.  Because that is wrong.  As for the onset of the thread being disparging - no - which is the hook.  But having seen posts you have authored on the subject - it is the outcome as sure and the sun rising in the east.

So - in my logical evaluation of the matter - you are wrong.  Thanks for the convo.

[YoozaHo]

You can continue to your logical conclusion at your own choosing. When someone comes to the board apparently eager to begin conversations regarding religious beliefs - and to disparage the beliefs of others as you have - it becomes everyone's business imvho. Because that is wrong. As for the onset of the thread being disparging - no - which is the hook. But having seen posts you have authored on the subject - it is the outcome as sure and the sun rising in the east.

So - in my logical evaluation of the matter - you are wrong. Thanks for the convo.

You're welcome, but you don't know me or my intentions and you have it very twisted. Whether you believe me or not doesn't really matter. It seems both invitees saw it your way however, c'est la vie.

[The White Tiger]

Leaving argument, snide digs and government out of it can i ask why you believe what you do so vehemontly? I can only assume you've had some sort of experience in your life where you felt 'touched' (easy now you lot). Otherwise you'd basically be just doing and believing what you're told.

I'm not trying to wind you up. As with most things here, just trying to understand.

I think you will have to pardon some here Yoozaho, you see in the southern USA, this is not something you ask a person, especially one you know casually: There are, or used to be, three things you do NOT discuss with strangers - never ask someone about their religion, their politics, or their income.

I don't have a problem with it, as a matter of fact, I've made my convictions known, here.

I would like to know why you selected me and my belief, specifically?

My experience isn't reactionary, emotion was involved, but it was not emotional. Your question does interest me - because it is my belief that even if you ask with an intent other than honest inquiry - something caused you to ask that question.

It seems to me that it is easy to see the need for God, and that Gods handiwork is easy to see all around us.

The better question for me is - why do you look around and not see him?

Because if my belief is so outlandish as to cause you to assume that I must have had an emotional experience/touch in order to believe it - otherwise I would simply be doing what I was told - am I to equally assume that you've had an experience to cause you not to even consider God's existence?

Because following your logic - if you haven't had an experience - you must just be relying on what you've been told, right?

[dbucfan]

Leaving argument, snide digs and government out of it can i ask why you believe what you do so vehemontly? I can only assume you've had some sort of experience in your life where you felt 'touched' (easy now you lot). Otherwise you'd basically be just doing and believing what you're told.

I'm not trying to wind you up. As with most things here, just trying to understand.

I think you will have to pardon some here Yoozaho, you see in the southern USA,[/i] this is not something you ask a person, especially one you know casually: There are, or used to be, three things you do NOT discuss with strangers - never ask someone about their religion, their politics, or their income.

I don't have a problem with it, as a matter of fact, I've made my convictions known, here.

I would like to know why you selected me and my belief, specifically?

My experience isn't reactionary, emotion was involved, but it was not emotional. Your question does interest me - because it is my belief that even if you ask with an intent other than honest inquiry - something caused you to ask that question.

It seems to me that it is easy to see the need for God, and that Gods handiwork is easy to see all around us.

The better question for me is - why do you look around and not see him?

Because if my belief is so outlandish as to cause you to assume that I must have had an emotional experience/touch in order to believe it - otherwise I would simply be doing what I was told - am I to equally assume that you've had an experience to cause you not to even consider God's existence?

Because following your logic - if you haven't had an experience - you must just be relying on what you've been told, right?

I would simply change that to appropriate conversation - and having lived in the NE and Central US as well as the South - that is consistent - or at least that has been my experience

[BucsBullsBolts]

Leaving argument, snide digs and government out of it can i ask why you believe what you do so vehemontly? I can only assume you've had some sort of experience in your life where you felt 'touched' (easy now you lot). Otherwise you'd basically be just doing and believing what you're told.

I'm not trying to wind you up. As with most things here, just trying to understand.

I think you will have to pardon some here Yoozaho, you see in the southern USA, this is not something you ask a person, especially one you know casually: There are, or used to be, three things you do NOT discuss with strangers - never ask someone about their religion, their politics, or their income.

LOL .... What?? Those rules of etiquette, or whatever, pertain to asking someone that completely out of the blue. Yooza and you two have already been deeply involved in religious conversation/debate. There was absolutley nothing wrong with him asking what he did under the circumstances. This is like chastising someone for asking cyberdude about his political origins.

[The White Tiger]

Leaving argument, snide digs and government out of it can i ask why you believe what you do so vehemontly? I can only assume you've had some sort of experience in your life where you felt 'touched' (easy now you lot). Otherwise you'd basically be just doing and believing what you're told.

I'm not trying to wind you up. As with most things here, just trying to understand.

I think you will have to pardon some here Yoozaho, you see in the southern USA, this is not something you ask a person, especially one you know casually: There are, or used to be, three things you do NOT discuss with strangers - never ask someone about their religion, their politics, or their income.

LOL .... What?? Those rules of etiquette, or whatever, pertain to asking someone that completely out of the blue. Yooza and you two have already been deeply involved in religious conversation/debate. There was absolutley nothing wrong with him asking what he did under the circumstances. This is like chastising someone for asking cyberdude about his political origins.

OK my (polar-opposite, but fellow) rabble-rousing friend - I think you missed that this was in the form of an explanation for Yoozaho as to why he was catching so much flack before I got involved in this particular discussion (that's why I said the "you will have to pardon some here...")...

...and then you missed the fact that I said this...

I don't have a problem with it, as a matter of fact, I've made my convictions known, here.

I'm sure you just overlooked that part of my post...

[YoozaHo]

Leaving argument, snide digs and government out of it can i ask why you believe what you do so vehemontly? I can only assume you've had some sort of experience in your life where you felt 'touched' (easy now you lot). Otherwise you'd basically be just doing and believing what you're told.

I'm not trying to wind you up. As with most things here, just trying to understand.

I think you will have to pardon some here Yoozaho, you see in the southern USA, this is not something you ask a person, especially one you know casually: There are, or used to be, three things you do NOT discuss with strangers - never ask someone about their religion, their politics, or their income.

I don't have a problem with it, as a matter of fact, I've made my convictions known, here.

I would like to know why you selected me and my belief, specifically?

My experience isn't reactionary, emotion was involved, but it was not emotional. Your question does interest me - because it is my belief that even if you ask with an intent other than honest inquiry - something caused you to ask that question.

It seems to me that it is easy to see the need for God, and that Gods handiwork is easy to see all around us.

The better question for me is - why do you look around and not see him?

Because if my belief is so outlandish as to cause you to assume that I must have had an emotional experience/touch in order to believe it - otherwise I would simply be doing what I was told - am I to equally assume that you've had an experience to cause you not to even consider God's existence?

Because following your logic - if you haven't had an experience - you must just be relying on what you've been told, right?

Thanks, TWT, i appreciate you answering when you really didn't have to. I knew that religion was far more important to people in the US than here in the UK and in part that probably answers one of your riposte questions but i'll get to that in a sec.

The reason i asked you specifically is because of the very considered way you put your point across, thoroughly thought out and i felt you'd be most honest.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like i don't see the need for some people to see the need for god or a belief in something greater than what we can see/hear/prove and i suppose to a degree i share a 'faith' of sorts. The reason i look around and don't see god? Many reasons i suppose, although my grandad was catholic i never knew this until about 10 years after he died because it was never brought up. I think even if it had been then i had far too much of a Mathematical, logical, scientific brain to accept christianity in the way it was presented to us at school where it was literally taught is if it were all mystical and magical. Then there were my experiences growing up in deprived areas in the North of England, people left right and centre and what they were going through very often brought up the question "How can a loving, forgiving god allow these kinds of things to happen?", i'm talking about things like friends getting murdered, children being taken away through drug abuse of the parents, children dying for various reasons. The phrase "god works in mysterious ways" always used to really wind me up, given what i'd seen first hand and then what you saw people going through on TV in places like Ethiopia in the mid 80's. I suppose what i'm saying it would be easy to look around at someone giving birth, a bee pollinating a flower, tuna fleets jumping in the seas and see god in some way, but when you also look around and see things like the Boxing Day tsunami, Haiti Earthquake, Monserrat volcano, starvation, genocide it's just as easy to think either that there cannot be a god, or if there is he either doesn't care anymore or is not as powerful as is made out. Does that make any sense?

I suppose those would be the experiences you thought of but you have something massively wrong about me, I don't refuse to consider the existence of god. As a Mathematician and Statistician i must concede that until i can prove otherwise i may very well be wrong about it all. I wasn't there at the moment of creation so i don't know but my contention is that no-one else was there either so they don't know either and to profess to actually know 100% one way or another i would call blind faith (or blind lack of it).