Charismatic Chaos

Phage0070 writes:I am not proposing a banning of religion, merely suggesting that it is poor behavior to perpetuate it and those duped deserve to be enlightened.

Rahvin writes:I honestly don't see an equitable way to allow people to believe as their conscience dictates while protecting children from brainwashing and indoctrination long before they're old enough to make their own decisions. The best I can offer is mandatory critical thinking skills education in public school, with strong encouragement to examine everything that one believes to be true (with no emphasis on religious beliefs vs anything else the children may believe to be true).

Stile writes:Knowing that nobody knows what happens when we die, yet irrationally believing that Jesus Christ will be there and everyone will be happy and peaceful in the afterlife is an irrational hopefulness of religion.

AZPaul3 writes:To me the whole edifice of institutionalized religious superstition has outlived its usefulness. But way back then it did perform a vital function.

Websters writes:superstition n 1 : beliefs or practices resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, or trust in magic or chance 2 : an unreasoning fear of nature, the unknown, or God resulting from superstition superstitious adj

Brian writes:Wouldn't it be logical to reject something that is illogical?

Perdition writes:I want there to be elves and fairies and a million dollars in my bank account, too, but I won't believe in them until I see some sort of evidence for their existence.

Perdition writes:I love going to the movies and getting lost in the worlds of Tolkien, ROddenberry, or Spielberg, but again, I don't leave the theater thinking they're true. That's the difference. In religion, people left the show believing the allegory rather than just appreciating it for what it is.

Rahvin writes:Is it good or bad to accept allegory and myth as objective fact without evidence, Phat? Do you believe that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is an historical account of the finding of the Holy Grail? Why, or why not?

Bailey writes:Alistair Begg ... is he that ol' Irish fella ?If so, I enjoy much of his commentary ...

Onifre writes:Faith is the hardest thing to overcome. I've never had it so I wouldn't know, but it does seem that "letting go" is quite a hard accomplishment.

Brian writes:But what he(Bishop Spong) is promoting Phat is NOT Christianity.If he was honest he would admit that he had been following a pile of crap for years, and now he would like to search for some other answers because Christianity is wrong.He wants to have his cake and eat it too.Why cant he just admit that Christianity is wrong?And yes, all religious people have something missing.

Iano writes:Spong a Christian? It's hard to know - given his view on the teaching of the Christan church. Whatever his exposure has been, it doesn't appear to have been to the gospel of grace.

Wiki writes:Twelve points for Reform1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.3. The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

Iano writes:Phat might be expected to believe as I believe on the matter of lost men being ruled by satan. If he believed that then my point might resonate with him. It can't be expected to resonate with you (unless of course you believe the Bible on the matter of Satans dominion over you - for the sake of discussion)

Phage0070 writes:Look, I don't care! Just because he believes as you do that unbelievers are on the side of Satan does not make your thought process logical. It can resonate all you want, but it is still poor thinking!

Phage0070 writes:I blame my opponents for taking stances that are unfalsifiable.

Phage0070 writes:I know you may not be a fan of the fact but reality *can* be distinguished from imagination. Illusions don't have to fool people forever.

Iano writes: Being born again doesn't mean you don't sin. Nor is it expected that you won't sin. Being born again is the beginning of a journey in which Gods desire and aim is that you move from away from your old ways and head down the narrow path towards Gods ways. Being narrow, it is very easy to wander off it that path.How you do is up to you, at the end of the day, and provision is made for dealing with the fact that many of the saved will end their lives not having traveled very far along the path set out for them. There is such a thing as greater and lesser in heaven and ones earthly work appears to be the way in which heavenly reward is assigned.

Iano writes:a found man eagerly telling the world the good news.