I never said that death was a good thing, merely that it was a natural part of life. Death would certainly be punishment from an individual human perspective, but I was talking about a wider, anthropological perspective.

Oh yea?? Then what about this? >: )

It seems like according to christianity it is NOT a natural part of life, but a punishment given to Adam and Eve by god. Seems like god regards it as a bad thing, and humans suffer because of it, yet if he was omnipotent he could've prevented sin without punishing everyone. I know many christians say suffering is necessary for something "good", but hey, god is supposed to be outside logic, so he can get around that.

Uuuh

Death is sacred to christians, they regard it as the beginning of your eternal reward?

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3AEkLXkDgWI/0.jpg

YOUR ETERRRNAL REWAAARD

Which is weird, since the entire concept of death wasn't even part of god's original plan. Like Bart said, mortality was a punishment given by god to Adam and Eve. So where down the line did death become a reward?

When Heaven was invented.

When Jesus died, went to Hell, spent a day there and then opened all the doors so that everyone who had ever gone to Hell was free and nobody need ever go to Hell again. Jesus's sacrifice mitigates original sin.

I'm pretty sure the bible talks about it being invented at the same time as the earth. It's supposed to be a reward for people who do what god wants them to do, and everyone else is supposed to go to hell for all eternity. For one small action. No matter what it was, still smaller than infinity. And hell is supposed to be eternal torture, so no getting used to it, it'll just keep getting worse, btw this heaven place sounds a bit...lame? Sitting there worshipping all day and shtuff like that. I know it might be fun if I got there seeing as it's supposed to be eternal bliss, but wouldn't my entire personality have to be deleted for that to happen? Basically it's just god surrounded by a bunch of robots that all function the same way forever. I doubt god would want that, otherwise he wouldn't make different people that are able to go against his opinion.

Do you actually know what you're talking about or are you just hanging with the atheist crowd to look smart?

Also paragraphs are your friend.

When I realized that I'd have to be incredibly nice and truthful to go to heaven, lest I want everlasting torture in hell, I became atheist.

I find these sort of debates interesting, so I have a habit of getting into them occasionally, and I'm too lazy for paragraphs so don't be a grammar nazi.

Okay.

I'm too lazy to reply properly to walls of text.

Because atheists go to heaven regardless?

That's not really a good reason to become an atheist. To me it just sounds like you're mad at God and then you say to him: "Ha! I'm just gonna become an atheist to spite you!"

Then God becomes sad and mopes in his room... But it doesn't really matter, cos heaven is fun and he quickly finds something else to do... Like playing DDR =D ... or eating strawberries. GOOD strawberries. The kind that you eat and you go: Omg... strawberries can be this good?


Either way. You should become an atheist because you find the bible illogical, not cos you're mad at God.



Also, I'm not telling people to stop believing in God. However, they should stop believing in written scripts that have been edited by mankind for thousand of years. Even if the scripts were indeed the work of some lazy God, their message has totally been changed by now.

I'm gonna eat some strawberries, I suddenly got a crave.

The old testament text is exactly the same as it was 2000-odd years ago when the Dead Sea Scrolls were written.


On the other hand, if you want to talk about the various misleading translations of the New Testament, go ahead.

Well, that and I find an affair more likely than divine intervention when it comes to the causes of Jesus's birth.

That's because nobody ever gave a shit about the Old Testament.

Including Jesus.

*sniff*

Jews did.

They're extinct, right?

I hope so.

Erm... what?

To tell you the truth, I don't know.
I also take pride in the fact I confused you.

No, it was BM who confused me. I just figured you were making a half-arsed attempt at being objectionable.

in islam jesus, just like mohamed, is only a prophet, human and even when they show supernatural abilities like teleportation which is really rare it's actually gods abilities not theirs they are just as normal as any of us are, think of the differnce between normal ppl and prophets is like the differnce betweeen troops and their general.
and god does watch our every move, and so u might say "then why didn't he just make us worship all the time?" because that's how the universe works, it's simply a test.
and also we do bad stuff like "masturbating" (yeah i am a muslim my self and yet i masturbate alot) because that's how we are, humans aren't perfect, it's very normal for us to make wrong moves, and also it's because of the devils they make the image of something in our mind seem awesome and although we still know it's wrong but we do it.

summary:
1: god exists and his abilities are far more powerful than any of us can imagine so is his mercy, and he is one there is no other god, he was not born and he didn't/doesn't/won't give birth
2: that prophets are prophets, yeah we should u know think of them as great ppl but they shouldn't be worshiped that's the exact opposite of their message, there is no one who should be worshiped other than god

I would prefer that God was referred to as she.. <.<

You won't convert anyone that way.

God is nothing more than a giant, floating beard... it cannot be referred to as "she."

Some girls have beards.....

Especially Islamic ones.

I agree with Abe619, our religions are similar and I think we probably believe in the same God, know objections to Islam, the only objection I have is that I feel Jesus is the son of God and has the essence of God in him if you get what I mean

@Tnex post #106
BLASPHEMY! STONE HER!

Not in my books they don't.

CHAUVINISTIC PIG ALERT!!!!

But do you have any evidence this distinguishes this in any real sense from Thor or Zeus or Captain Marvel?

Well for starters a monotheistic God makes a lot more scientific sense than a pantheon.

Law of parsimony and all that.

According to the Bible, the world is thousands of years old. According to science, the world is billions of years old. One of these is not true.

Plus, why are there no dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible? If they're part of God's divine plan, how come they wandered the planet for millions of years eating and shitting out each other. That's not a God doing that.

Jesus turned them into oil so America could power cars.

No god fares well when William gets his Razor out. Which is hilariously ironic.

Actually the laws of thermodynamics say it's completely possible that the universe could have sprung into being ten minutes ago with all our memories and dinosaur bones and material possessions as well.

Oh, and it's far more likely than the universe actually being fifteen billion years old according to Boltzmann.

abe619: you base your arguments on moral absolutism. As far as I see, the majority's opinion is still an opinion. Any sort of idea of "right" or "wrong" is based on desires.

I asked this question during religious class once when I went to school in this super christian village. I was laughed at, and never got an answer to my question. It still confuses me to this day, seemed like a valid question.