I believe in God, I believe in all spiritual gods across the board.

I'm not a big fan of religion though. The organization of guilt is something I find unnecessary within the walls of church. I don't take all stories in the Bible as truth, as it is simply a book written by men where as someone stated earlier "in the absence of truth" filled in the blanks with their opinions and interpretations.

I'm very spiritual. I believe angels walk among us and guide us when we lose sight of our spiritual lines. I believe God is within everyone. I like to think "God is in our hands" more than "we are in Gods hands".

Yeah.

This was a good topic.

I was also raised in a church.As I grew up I quickly realized that there is far to much evil in this world to buy into the god thing.Where the heck is he???Ive seen far to much........

My ideas
 

I didn't post on my own thread... how could this be??

I'll just briefly explain my ideas and such. I don't believe in god/higher power/divine creator. However, I don't consider myself an atheist. The term atheist makes me think of a group people who get together to discuss the non-existence of god. To me, this is exactly what a religion....getting together to discuss the existence or non-existence of a higher power. So I just consider myself to be a free thinker/non-believer.

I support the ideas of science, meaning, I understand the concepts and accept the ideas of evolution. Meaning, life evolved slowly over billions of years. Please note this does not mean people evolved FROM monkeys. No, think of it as you and your cousin. Did you come from your cousin? No, but you do have a common ancestor, and that's what is meant by chimps and humans evolving from a common ancestor. Also , through evolution, each Creator, plant, living thing had to find it's niche, or it's "job" in nature. For example, woodpeckers evolved into what we know as woodpeckers, and developed a harden skull because those select few who had harder skulls were able to eat and to survive and therefore those traits for ah ard skull were passed on. For humans, people don't have claws, aren't terribly fast or have some other external defense weapon. So logical thinking was the niche we found to fill. Those who maybe had advance logical thinking, were able to pass those traits on.

I believe the bible is fiction and someone who resembled Jesus did actually live, but he wasn't the savior many people know him to be; he was actually the ultimate con man who tricked everyone into believing the son of god, and people believed him because they didn't know any better. The bible was written from the word of god, and is entirely fiction. It contradicts itself on every other page, and goes as far as telling bold face lies such as, the world is flat and the world is only 6,000 years old. Yet, we know through carbon dating, half lives and other dating methods that the world is actually billions of years old. I will give it its credit that teaches basic moral concepts, that are good guidelines to live by, however, anyone with half a brain could reason themselves that "killing thy neighbor" isn't exactly a good thing to do. So really, the bible is unneeded as a teaching tool.

Lastly, I don't support organized religions. On one hand, I see the value of religion: community support, people who share the same beliefs and understand you, something to do during the week, etc. However, I don't support the manipulation of ideas, the controlling ways, the rules and regulations, etc. You can all you want your church is different, it's understanding, but it really isn't...what if you were gay? Would your church approve? What if you just didn't want to go for a month...would your church be cool with it? What if you question the existence of god, your church leader would do everything they could to convince you otherwise.

So...that's a brief explanation of my ideas.

What is a day time atheist?

Excellent points

:D Funny story PRIMM! That is so typical of us isn't it? As people, not only Christians, we know right from wrong and yet we lean to the "wrong' side often. I found myself doing something similar to this a few weeks back. I was at the store to purchase some food for our church pantry, there is a big need in our area now, anyway I had a "budget" for the trip (don't think for one minute I could not have afforded a little more $$ either for the cause) anyway I was set to buy 10 cans of soup/spaghetti -hamburger helper-mac & cheese (things requested)....well I saw that the spaghetti/raviolis were only .88 a can vs. $2....I bought the "crappier" stuff and saved a few bucks...I could have at least bought 20 cans! Felt like a jerk after I left the store....I did go back and buy more later...but it was my first action that I messed up...but I am a work in progress! :)

There is a lot of evil in the world! There is also a lot of good too. God allows us a wonderful gift of free will ~ without it we would just be robots/puppets...men make mistakes...God does not...He is there with you always. I will tell you though (and I am not intending to be preachy...just as a3FC friend) You cannot understand what you posted in your head...but if you have a personal relationship with Him you can understand it in your heart. I pray you find your answers ~ Gary

I think there is a forum under Faith-Based groups for prosthelytizing...
Kira

Hey thanks KIRA! I think I've seen it.

Off to church now!

I'm not a Christian, but really, from a literary/historical perspective I have to disagree with this. But all records - those in the canonised Bible and elsewhere - very few people subscribed to the teachings of the historical Jesus/Jeshua (I think it's almost certain that such a person did exist). He was a dissident in an extremely powerful empire, and executed as a criminal along with countless others. In his own time he can hardly be called a large-scale conman, whatever you think the intent behind his words was, simply because he didn't have that much of an impact. After he was dead, ethicists like Paul of Tarsus and the gospel writers built the reputation he has today.
On another note - yes, the Bible contains a great deal of fiction and is extremely self-contradictory. Don't you believe in the value of fiction/myth? So does the Illiad, so do the surviving plays of Aeschylus, so does the entire canon of Shakespeare. That doesn't stop them being beautiful, valuable, honest, passionate, searching creations and thus morally instructive in themselves.

No problem, Mr. EZ!
Just trying to be appropriate and respectful to all, which I'm sure you appreciate...
Kira

glitterducky, i agree with you, but i have to correct one teeny point.

we did not evolve from monkeys.


Homo sapiens and species like marmosets evolved from a common ancestor millions of years ago. saying that we evolved from monkeys implies that monkeys stopped evolving and we kept going. evolution has no ending point or goal in mind. meaning, humans are a certain way right now, but in a million years, the species could be quite different. monkeys are also continuing to evolve to adapt to their environments. (i have an anthropology degree and get a little obsessive about this stuff. :D yay evolution!)

it's probably obvious from what i wrote above, but i am a staunch evolutionist. i do not say that i "believe" in evolution because that is like saying you can choose to NOT believe in it. it exists and there is no denying it. there is physical proof. i do not say i "believe" in the existence of libraries or schools or churches because i can see those things and know they exist. for my birthday, my boyfriend got me an "Evolve" fish for our car and i'm really excited to put it on! i also want to get a car emblem of a T. rex eating a Jesus fish.

...I'll have to reread my post because I may have made a typo. My intent was to say that we did NOT evolve from monkeys, that we have a common ancestor. I used the cousin example to explain. You have a cousin, but you did not come from your cousin, however, you do have a common relative with that cousin. And this is what I mean as far as evolution. We did not come from monkeys...more so have a common link between us, which caused both monkeys, and humans, as well as other primates to evolve into their own seperate species.

I thought I made this point, but I could have made a typo and left out an important word of NOT evolving from monkeys.

Painted lady... yup, I left out the all important "not", when I used the phrase "We did not evolve from monkeys.".

Funny how one word left out totally changes the meaning of what you meant.

nevertheless, we are in agreement!

evolution = the truth.
monkeys = adorable, yet frightening, kind of.

I would highly recommend the movie Religulous to all believers and non-believers as well.Very insightful and pretty much sums up why I dont believe.