I love how people so anti Christianity seem to equate the Catholicism model with being all of Christianity. It's not. Not even close. Christianity existed before the Roman's usurped and twisted it and it still exists independent of the Catholic church's greedy attempts at control. In fact... True Christians tend to recognize Catholicism and it's many descendants as "the great and abominable church". It's anti-Christianity. It was started as an attempt to control and contain and it's been that ever since. Originally they were attempting to control and contain the Christians. In case you might have forgotten the very people who started the Catholic church were the very same people who imprisoned, tortured, and slaughtered thousands if not millions of the early Christians. The ones who refused to accede to the Catholic's twisting of the faith were all slaughtered to the very last woman and child, not just the men. At least. The ones they could get a hold of. There were some who managed to escape...
Modern Catholics aren't all "bad" people, but they've inherited a flawed system. Which makes it even harder to recognize the actual tenets of their faith from all the disgusting twisting done by the early Catholic leaders.
I try to think the best of the current Catholic leaders and I THINK they're trying to correct some of their flawed beliefs, but they've got too many years of believing the wrong things to do so easily...
Now... Bawb asked how I can "rationalize" my beliefs with who I am... I don't have to. There is no rationalizing involved. I am a spiritual daughter of my Father, who has been given a particularly difficult path to tread before I may return back to him.
He also didn't clearly state that woman would be subservient to man... A fairly nice overview of the situation is contained here:
http://www.christianbiblereference.org/f...rights.htm
And now, here's my own "Gospel According to Abi".
I believe one of the passages you refer to reads thus in the KJV: Genesis 3:16 "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."
Let's break this sentence down. First, he was speaking to woman, about HER, it has nothing to do with the man. When he said "greatly multiply" the words actually used in Hebrew meant "increase thy discomfort and thy size"... OK, that's talking about pregnancy. Bringing forth children in sorrow... Yep. Childbirth isn't fun. But the tricky part is "thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee"... This isn't about woman being REQUIRED to answer to man. This is about woman DESIRING to PLEASE man. And I don't care what her orientation is, I have not known a single female, myself included, who does not work very hard to keep the men in her life "pleased". Not sexually. Just... Not angry. And giving us positive attention. Make of that behavior trait what you will... My own ideas on the matter? We are physically weaker and it is a simple matter for most men to overpower most women. The gap is narrowing these days because men are no longer as fit as they once were while many women are actually getting more fit than ever before.
Another you might be thinking of is 1 Corinthians 11:3 "But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God."
If you're of a military background you might better recognize what this is really talking about. It's the chain of command. Notice that the children aren't even mentioned? That's because they aren't part of that chain at all. And in the further context of the rest of the surrounding scripture this isn't actually talking about anything but the structure of the church. An organization needs an organizational structure and that's ALL that passage is. Does it really matter that woman was placed after man in the chain of command? Not really... In my experience most of the time the men wind up doing what the women want anyways.
Another is 1 Corinthians 14:34... Again, ALL of 1 Corinthians was talking specifically about how the Church should be organized... Not about anything else. The verse reads: "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law." Wait. What's that little bit at the end? Oh. LAW. That's right. As an ORGANIZATION the church had to follow the laws of the governments they would organize themselves while living under... And the church in Corinth had to be subject to the laws of Corinth and the laws of Corinth at the time... you guessed it. Women weren't treated very well. And in public, they had to put on the show required by the law, but in private...
And the last one I'm going to give as an example with refutation is Ephesians 5:22: "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord." But if you read PAST that sentence, men are commanded "love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it" and "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself." Wait. So who's being subservient to whom here, really? That's right. NEITHER. This passage is actually a very wonderful example of the ACTUAL belief of Christianity that the marriage bond should be one of equal partners.
So now on to chrishoney...
Quote:All religions are the same: it's just guilt with different holidays.
No. My religion is one of striving towards betterment of self. It acknowledges that I am a flawed being, but it also recognizes that my potential is infinite. I am not guilty no matter what. In fact I'm only guilty if I don't do ANYTHING to try to improve myself.
Quote:You can't use logic to prove god exists. Period. If you think you can, you aren't being logical. At some point it all boils down to: well I just know God exists. Which, to put a really fine point on it, is not a logically based statement.
Proving the existence of God would eliminate one of the most basic elements of faith. If we can PROVE it then we aren't being required to have FAITH in it. Likewise, however, YOU can't DISPROVE it. And any attempts to do so results in logical fallacies. Either way we go, there's no way to prove EITHER position. And that's the way it's meant to be.
Quote:The Bible does not prove god exists. The bible was written by men. And if you think it does, then please tell us which of the THOUSANDS of TRANSLATIONS represents the supposed word of god. Have you EVER read ANY part of the bible in it's original language? You do realize it was NOT written in English, right?
My faith is that the men who originally wrote it were doing so under the inspiration of God. And no, and no, and yes. There isn't actually any single "right" translation. Some get closer than others, and the KJV is basically the best version in English. It's still not completely right though. You do have to go back to the original and reference and cross check and cross reference and... What I HAVE done is immense amounts of cross-checking and referencing and seeing how things were handled and checking on original meanings in what ways I can. There's a plethora of Jews and ex-Jews and others who have studied ancient Hebrew who have been more than willing to share the original source of the Old Testament, which is the equivalent of a significant portion of the Torah, with a more modern translation to English. Same with people who have studied ancient Greek. And Egyptian. Those are the three primary languages of the original text. And there are those who have made the attempts with the New Testament. Some of it was in other long forgotten languages and unfortunately, the translation to Greek or Hebrew or Egyptian has to suffice as "original".
I also have another tool, which the scriptures themselves tell us to check the passages against: personal revelation.
Now. I'm not really trying to convert anyone to my own beliefs here, I've resisted saying anything more in this thread before now because I know people are going to take what I'm saying entirely the wrong way... And that's fine. Can't say I didn't try though.
Oh, and Wishful... No. The atheist isn't condemned either. They'll be judged on their works according to what they had to work with same as the Christian. No Christian is getting to heaven just by DECLARING themselves a Christian. They still have to work for it.
And really... As I've said before, so far only Cain is condemned. And there's different levels of glory to "heaven" and anyone who doesn't do much bad or much good still get to make it to the middle level. Even murderers and thieves make it to the lowest. But to make it to the greatest... That takes hard work and lots of faith.
There's only ONE sin terrible enough to be condemned... And you have to have met God face to face and then deny him to his face for that to occur. As I said... So far only Cain has done that. Well. And Lucifer and a significant portion of the hosts of heaven before this life.
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Is it because the internet is so anonymous that you feel the freedom to toss asteroids at each other, thus so finely expressing your intolerance for other members of the human race that your "creator" surrounded you with? I haven't seen so much hypocrisy on display in a long time. Maybe a good name for this group would be " 'crits with tits". It's a good thing no-one was getting paid for the time spent composing all these "posts'.