Post your tough questions in here regarding Christianity

If you want to compare it to Harry Potter, thats upto you. But here is the thing, i have never seen a Harry Potter movie, never read the book, not interested one bit in it, yet i know and hear people who are obsessed about it and talk about it. I just leave them alone, i never get into discussions with them about, let them do what they want, i aint interested one bit in it They arent harming me, getting in my way, continually interrupting me, so leave them alone. YET, for some reason you, Vaznack, System and co are continually in the thick of these religious discussion even after you have all stated you dont believe. 

Are these religious (Christians) people causing you physical harm? Are they causing u financial loss? Are they getting in your way? are they keeping you awake at night? So why are you always in the thick of these discussions? Maybe, just maybe, there is a part deep deep down in you that wants to seek and know the truth and put the final piece in the puzzle of your life. Maybe there is a part of your body that wants to seek God and are getting into these discussions to convince you. Just maybe.

Cause it is evident that your current beliefs are not satisfying you.

Its ok, cause different people find God at different stages of there life.

Remember, a thief runs away from a policeman like an atheist runs away from God.......

1. Why are you so concerned about other people , what they do and where they will end up? Why? Is it gonna make a difference to you? God will judge everyone rightly, thats all you need to know.

2. There is your problem, u keep on applying the standards and laws of this world to the afterlife. By stating ages, you are assuming there is a standard of time in the afterlife. How do you apply an age (time, years) in a realm that is eternal?

3. That is a question that contradicts itself. Have a good think about the question.

4. God is the owner of all souls (spirits), he sees fit which body, time, etc etc he puts them in. No one but him has control over this.

Again, your last comment contradicts itself. Its like calling someone a married bachelor....

Are these religious (Christians) people causing you physical harm?

YES.  If I am homosexual, or someone that could benefit from stem cell research, or one of the raped children of the church.

Are they causing u financial loss?

The whacko church that predicted the apocalypse today collected 104 million dollars.  Benny Hinn flies in a gulfstream.  I would say Christianity is the biggest waste of financial resources on the planet.

 Are they getting in your way?

YES.  See question #1 above.  They restrict my freedoms constantly and impede the intellectual quest for knowledge worldwide.  They are a constant anchor around the legs of scientists and knowledge seekers everywhere.

are they keeping you awake at night?

Im sure some of the altar boys sleep with their eyes open.

So why are you always in the thick of these discussions?

Because it is interesting.  Dont make yourself a victim.  You are here too.  You obviously like the banter too.  Nobody is attacking you, you are choosing to take place in a discussion - dont punish us for YOUR decision (although by your contributions to this thread, it is obvious you already have punished us).

Maybe, just maybe, there is a part deep deep down in you that wants to seek and know the truth and put the final piece in the puzzle of your life. Maybe there is a part of your body that wants to seek God and are getting into these discussions to convince you. Just maybe.

I dont need your medicine, for I do not have the disease.

Jesus spotted today right before the rapture.

Can you be a Christian and gamble?

if you arent putting your livelihood, ability to feed, cloth and shelter yourself and your family , then yes it is fine. If you are earning $1k a week and gamble $100 a week, then that is fine. If you are earning $500 a week and gamble $450 of it causing hunger and pain to family, then i think that it is a sin.

Maybe, just maybe, there is a part deep deep down in you that wants to seek and know the truth and put the final piece in the puzzle of your life. Maybe there is a part of your body that wants to seek God and are getting into these discussions to convince you. Just maybe.

I dont need your medicine, for I do not have the disease.

Disease huh? The last time i went to get a complete body check up, i was 100% fine (touch wood)......

Are you a priest?

So says Jesus.  I mean Rostos.  I mean Jesus.

Im so confused.

Interesting point of view on Mother Teresa:

"India, especially Calcutta, is seen as the main beneficiary of Mother Teresa's legendary 'good work' for the poor that made her the most famous Catholic of our times, a Nobel Peace Prize Winner and a living saint. Evaluating what she has actually done here, I think, India has no reason to be grateful to her", said Sanal Edamaruku, Secretary General of the Indian Rationalist Association and President of Rationalist International in a statement on the occasion of her beatification today. The statement continues:

Mother Teresa has given a bad name to Calcutta, painting the beautiful, interesting, lively and culturally rich Indian metropolis in the colors of dirt, misery, hopelessness and death. Styled into the big gutter, it became the famous backdrop for her very special charitable work. Her order is only one among more than 200 charitable organizations, which try to help the slum-dwellers of Calcutta to build a better future. It is locally not very visible or active. But tall claims like the absolutely baseless story of her slum school for 5000 children have brought enormous international publicity to her institutions. And enormous donations!

Mother Teresa has collected many, many millions (some say: billions) of Dollars in the name of India's paupers (and many, many more in the name of paupers in the other "gutters" of the world). Where did all this money go? It is surely not used to improve the lot of those, for whom it was meant. The nuns would hand out some bowls of soup to them and offer shelter and care to some of the sick and suffering. The richest order in the world is not very generous, as it wants to teach them the charm of poverty. "The suffering of the poor is something very beautiful and the world is being very much helped by the nobility of this example of misery and suffering," said Mother Teresa. Do we have to be grateful for this lecture of an eccentric billionaire?

The legend of her Homes for the Dying has moved the world to tears. Reality, however, is scandalous: In the overcrowded and primitive little homes, many patients have to share a bed with others. Though there are many suffering from tuberculosis, AIDS and other highly infectious illnesses, hygiene is no concern. The patients are treated with good words and insufficient (sometimes outdated) medicines, applied with old needles, washed in lukewarm water. One can hear the screams of people having maggots tweezered from their open wounds without pain relief. On principle, strong painkillers are even in hard cases not given. According to Mother Teresa's bizarre philosophy, it is "the most beautiful gift for a person that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ". Once she tried to comfort a screaming sufferer: "You are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you!" The man got furious and screamed back: "Then tell your Jesus to stop kissing."

When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Price, she used the opportunity of her worldwide telecast speech in Oslo to declare abortion the greatest evil in the world and to launch a fiery call against population control. Her charitable work, she admitted, was only part of her big fight against abortion and population control. This fundamentalist position is a slap in the face of India and other Third World Countries, where population control is one of the main keys for development and progress and social transformation. Do we have to be grateful to Mother Teresa for leading this worldwide propagandist fight against us with the money she collected in our name?

Mother Teresa did not serve the poor in Calcutta, she served the rich in the West. She helped them to overcome their bad conscience by taking billions of Dollars from them. Some of her donors were dictators and criminals, who tried to white wash their dirty vests. Mother Teresa revered them for a price. Most of her supporters, however, were honest people with good intentions and a warm heart, who fall for the illusion that the "Saint of the Gutter" was there to wipe away all tears and end all misery and undo all injustice in the world. Those in love with an illusion often refuse to see reality.

So wait.  Let me get this straight.

The same Jesus who said sell all your stuff and help the poor - is cool with you spending $100 dollars a week on gambling.  So if I have lots of money, Jesus doesnt give a shit that I spend $100 bucks on gambling instead of using that that 5K annually to help the poor.

5k a year would make a family in Africa rich.  But Jesus doesnt care.  As long as it doesnt affect YOUR family, then there is no problem.

See the narcissism of being Christian?  Everything is me me me.  I go to heaven.  God judges ME based on MY situation.  I can gamble if I have the money and ignore the poor.

It is laughable, Rostos my friend - you sound more and more ridiculous every post - and that is really quite a feat.

You judging again? How do you know what i contribute to the church / poor? DONT JUDGE

In Christianity, the ends do not justify the means. So, doing something evil, even if good comes from it, is completely unacceptable and soundly condemned. Christians are commanded to overcome evil with good.

KittyKatz, the recent Nature study popularized in the press regarding the nature of the universe has confirmed some of the original studies involving supernovae type 1. The supernovae results suggested that there was a "springiness" to space, an energy density often referred to as "dark energy" or the "cosmological constant," that causes the universe to expand at a faster rate the more it expands. Often described as an "anti-gravity" force, it doesn't really oppose matter, but only affects matter as it is associated with the fabric of space.

The balloon-borne microwave telescope (called "Boomerang") examined the cosmic background radiation left over from the big bang. The angular power spectrum showed a peak value at exactly the value predicted by the inflationary hot big bang model dominated by cold dark matter. This model predicts a smaller second peak, which seems to be there, but cannot be fully resolved with the initial measurements. The presence of the second peak would all but seal the reliability of the big bang model as the mechanism by which the universe came into existence.

This study impacts the Christian faith as the bible says that the universe was created in finite time from that which is not visible. In addition, the bible describes an expanding universe model. The bible describes the Creator being personally involved in the design of the universe, so that we would expect to see this kind of design in His creation.

This discovery impacts atheists, as those who favor naturalism had long sought to find the simplest explanation for the universe, hoping to avoid any evidence for design. A big bang model in which there was just enough matter to equal the critical density to account for a flat universe would have provided that. However, for many years, it has been evident that there is less than half of the amount of matter in the universe to account for a flat universe. A cosmological constant would provide an energy density to make up for the missing matter density, but would require an extreme amount of fine tuning. The supernovae studies demonstrated that there was an energy density to the universe (but did not define the size of this energy density), and the recent Boomerang study demonstrated that this energy density is exactly what one would expect to get a flat universe. How finely tuned must this energy density be to get a flat universe? One part in 10^120 which is: 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000

You see a conflict because this level of design is something that one would not expect by chance from a universe that began through a purely naturalistic mechanism. Common wisdom is common only to those who must exclude a supernatural explanation for the creation of the universe.

Another study confirms the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation, left over from the big bang. The standard inflationary model predicted that the background radiation should be polarized when it interacted with matter, nearly 14 billion years ago. John Carlstrom, Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Uni of Chicago, announced the discovery and made the following admission: "Polarization is predicted. It's been detected and it's in line with theoretical predictions. We're stuck with this preposterous universe."

You can prove God does not exist, right? that is required before you advise others how to word a sentence, or are you a skeptic in the reality with the vast number of skeptics who discredit Christianity on the basis of ignorance and misinformation. Your belief has to be consistant with your world view in that after all observational data, your own belief becomes faith based.

The laws of physics must have values very close to those observed or the universe does not work well enough to support life. When we vary the constants, the strong nuclear force (which holds atoms together) has a value such that when the two hydrogen atoms fuse, 0.7% of the mass is converted into energy. If the value were 0.6% then a proton could not bond to a neutron, and the universe would consist only of hydrogen. If the value were 0.8%, then fusion would happen so readily that no hydrogen would have survived from the big bang. When you look at other constants they are even more stringent with their degree. On the basis of fact, not someones understanding, perception or opinion should anyone filter their expressions. btw..... enjoy Roland Garros.

Rostos, originally, scientific evidence showed that animals appeared within the oceans (during the Ediacaran period of the late Precambrian, ~580 million years ago) before plants appeared on the land (~450 million years ago) which did not do the bible justice.

Beginning in 2009, scientists pushed back the probable development of complex photosynthetic plants on land to ~850 million years ago through the study of carbon isotope ratios in Precambrian rocks. However, the evidence was merely isotopic in nature, the data was not completely definitive. However, in 2011, a study was published that pushed back the date of the origin of photosynthetic eukaryotes on land to at least one billion years ago, including fossil evidence of their existence. These organisms were different from the photosynthetic cyanobacteria (procaryotes) that had inhabited the planet since at least 3.5 billion years ago. These were true multi-cellular eukaryotes. Although algae-like, these organisms were much more complex than their procaryotic counterparts.

Skeptics say that the bible is not testable, but then go on to say that it gets the creation account wrong. One of the main points of contention was the bible's claim that land plants (day 3) were created before animals (day 5). Look at the bible's account of the creation of plants:

Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning--the third day. Genisis 1:11-13.

The English word translated "vegetation" in the above passage comes from the Hebrew word deshe', which refers to small plants, such as grasses and herbs. The other word, 'eseb, translated "plants" is even more generic, referring to any kind of green plant. Although the passage refers to trees that bear fruit with seed, the term "seed" in Hebrew refers to any kind of offspring, and not just the seeds of angiosperms. The bible's claim that plants appeared on the land before animals has been mocked for decades, but now appears to be true in 2011. Though, if some of the atheists applied their own principles to football, they would not be attending the weekly ritual of watching it. Not due to a lockout, but because Michael Vick, Plaxico Burress were found guilty with the latter serving and the former having served a prison sentence, so the game therefore must be evil and hypocritical of the league mission statement.

Sure. what part of the inquisition was not evil ?

Nobody is judging you. thats the 3rd time you play that card in this thread.. and by watching you where trying to victimize christians earlier I think you are running out of arguments...

I just want to now the answer to Vanzack question..

Aerial - It is clear you are actually intelligent so you will likely understand what I am saying. Yes, the odds of the universe being able to sustain life are low. My main point is that stemming from that initial big bang wasn't out specific solar system immediately. The big bang occurred and afterwards, as the universe expanded, trillions upon trillions of other "bangs" occurred. This produces even more trillions upon trillions of planets. The odds of at least one having habitable conditions approaches 100%. Additionally, if the universe was created by god for humans to live in, why would he give us a planet (Earth) with a finite life. We know with 100% certainty that life cannot last on Earth forever. Eventually, our sun will grow so hot that it will wipe out life on Earth. Why would this even be a possibility? Logically, if I wanted to create an entire universe, very complex with specific laws that if tinkered with even slightly, would completely disrupt equilibrium and render all life imposible, I wouldn't make things such that I may have to do it again. Furthermore, as you agree, the Earth is not 6,000 years old and god didn't go "abra kadabra" and materialize the Earth and planets into existence. The big bang theory, which is almost 100% at this point, is a theory to replace the need for god as the creator. Only now that it is so certain are Christians trying to apply god to that theory as the initial starter. If god is so powerful, why wouldn't he just create everything rather than create one tiny molecule and start this billions of years process? I know you don't have the answers and I don't have them either. I'm not trying to say 100% there is no god, but with each question, the level of doubt rises beyond that level which I can accept as a realistic possibility. And yes, I am loving the tennis!