Original Sin?

Quote: Nareed

Imagine if the youngster took a photo of the starfish and posted it on Facebook for all 50 of his friends to see. Then he walks away convinced he's done good for the starfish, without picking up even one of them.

That's the kind of empty, symbolic gesture I'm talking about.

Ok, I'd agree that seems kind of an empty gesture. It's better than doing nothing but not by much.

By the way I went to a big state school and it just so happened that one of the excellent intermural teams was run by an organization called, "The Campus Crusade for Christ". It was not a fanatical school at all unless you were talking about sports.

Quote: FrGamble

Ok, I'd agree that seems kind of an empty gesture.

Exactly.

Quote:

It's better than doing nothing but not by much.

Actually it's worse than doing nothing. When you do nothing, you're aware of it and can consider "what if I'd done something." When you do something meaningless and useless but think you've done something, then the problem festers and grows worse.

Quote:

By the way I went to a big state school and it just so happened that one of the excellent intermural teams was run by an organization called, "The Campus Crusade for Christ". It was not a fanatical school at all unless you were talking about sports.

See, this is why we need a wall of separation between church and state. You could have perhaps been saved.

Quote: Nareed

See, this is why we need a wall of separation between church and state. You could have perhaps been saved.

Permission to return fire. Granted.

Even with such a wall, as a thinking person I would have still come to believe in God and be saved.

A thinking person?

There is no evidence for God. Period. It is a matter of faith. Most scientists (Christian included) believe that the grand unified theory will be found and that as time goes on, EVERYTHING will be explained through science, including the start of the universe, the mysteries in the human brain, and so on.

If you think about the existence of God, what a thinking person comes up is that God explains the mystical and spiritual. The mystical is simply things that cannot be explained, and science is well on the way to solve these mystical things. And spiritual can't be measured.

And be saved? For that to happen, you would have to pick up and understand the Bible? Tell me, would you have come up with Jesus Christ without access to a bible or a Christian to tell it to you? The story of Jesus is not intuitive at all. And to believe and be saved means that you have to exercise faith, which is something that a rational person normally doesn't do.

And as for sin, is there an innate sense of right and wrong that people just have when born? I'm going to go with no --- that behaviour and knowing the difference between right and wrong is a learned behaviour. A person who grows up in a society where a type of sin is acceptable (like abortion), will not call that sin. Of course the bible defines what sin is (if gives plenty of attention) and the actions of sin has been expanded to action, word, thought, or deed.

Oh my God, please save me from the ridiculousness.

Please remember the limitations of science. Science is knowledge about the things that can be tested and verified and observed. What is there to observe before the beginning of the universe? Nothing so science is speechless as it should be in the face of such awesome things. It is the same with the mystical and spiritual.

I appreciate your faith in science that it will eventually figure everything out, even those things it has nothing to test or observe, because it reminds you that faith is what rational people do all the time! We live our lives in faith and trust. We have experiences, we gain evidence, we have knowledge of things, and we act on the convergence of these things to make a decision. We don't need or have 100% certainty in just about all the actions we treat as if we did. This is how rational people act and it is how we make an act of faith. We have experiences, we gain evidence (from science, philosophy, logic, history, witnesses, etc.), we have knowledge and we make a reasonable thinking decision to believe in God. I don't know how someone can honestly make the rational decision to not believe there is a God, unless they mistakenly think you need some scientific proof of God to believe, which would be silly and impossible.

If God truly loved us the idea that He would save us somehow is intuitive. The story of Jesus is shocking in the depth and lengths that God will go to save us, but this is partly why Christianity is a missionary religion. "Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And behold I will be with you always."

Quote: FrGamble

If God truly loved us the idea that He would save us somehow is intuitive.

Only if there were a god, and something to save
us from. First you have to sin, padre. You're putting
the horse before the cart. First you have to create
a need for god, that's how this works. You have to
convince us sin exists, which is impossible. The
universe is not a giant Parker Bros board game,
much as you would like it to be.

You have already admitted you feel remorse for your actions or inactions. That is sin, and we all do that. None of us are perfect yet we long to always be better, we hold ourselves to standards that we fall short of. This gap between who we are and who we want to be is another consequence of sin. You might not like the word sin because of its religious connotations, but it is a fact that you make mistakes and do and say things you wish you wouldn't. You and I and all of us are also plagued and puzzled by our mortality. We know it looms over us with nothing we can do about it. Yes there is definitely a need for a savior - you just don't want to admit it.

As far as the crude board game analogy goes. I think you in another thread were just telling us how the shitheads get more shit and the good people receive good things in their lives. How I wish that were true in reality, but nevertheless this is your version of the board game of life. The rules are that good people live a good life and bad people live a bad life, unfortunately not everyone plays by your rules. If there is no second round, I gotta tell ya your board game of life sucks.

If something cannot be observed, then how can it exist? And science certainly is not speechless about the beginning of the universe? Your predicatable response "God was there" is only a placeholder under science figures it out. And it may be a long time coming, but I have a pretty good confidence that the problem will be solved.

Who is we? Many people do not live lives in faith and trust. We are simply acting in ways that were taught to us so that we can conform to a society. Parents care for their children because it's the right thing to do and it ensures the survival of the species. We live in social bonds because it betters our chance of survival and reasoning dictates that certain kinds of societies and relationships work better than others through experience and reason. The reasonable thinking decisions do not require God. All they require is a modicum of reason and morals and ethics passed to us from generation to generation as a result of the evolution of our society.

This has been proven in animal relationships. Look at dogs and their unique ability to live with and care for other species. Look at monkeys, apes, dolphins, elephants, bees, ants, and all of those other beings that live in a structured society. Do the bees have a "god" because they learn through experience? What about apes? Do they show empathy because they believe in some deity? No. The idea of God is a human construct designed to explain the unexplained, to place rewards and blames on the unknown, and to explain the mystical and the spiritual. When we realized that our consciousness would go away at death, we invented these different versions of an afterlife in order to have our lives have a greater purpose.

But the fact of the matter is that 100 years after I die, no one is going to remember Boymimbo. All of my software code that I have written will be done, and my great-grandchildren will have never met me. I will be a grave marker somewhere, very much decomposed. So we compose a God that will remember me, and I wil be heaven, where I will be remembered and loved. This gives me comfort to live my life "knowing" that it has some greater purpose.

Certainly, it seems to make sense in our consciousness to think that a God exists. It's comforting, feels good, and explains away the unexplainable. But that doesn't make it real.

Quote: FrGamble

Even with such a wall, as a thinking person I would have still come to believe in God and be saved.

I know I used "saved" as in kept away from a danger or burden. I've never understood what Christians means by "saved."

Saved?

Your belief and faith that Jesus Christ is your Saviour is what saves you from eternal damnation. Your sins are forgiven through the sacrifice and blood of Jesus Christ. Believing that is so gives you a ticket to heaven. Of course, there is the arguments that not everyone is treated the same in heaven, and that you can build up rewards here on earth through deeds, following the laws, and so on and so forth, but certainly a solid and firm belief in Jesus Christ gets you there. The alternative to being saved is eternal damnation into hell after you're dead.

Now do I actually believe that the 5 or so billion non-Christians out there and the portion of other "Christians" who don't believe but claim to be Christian anyway are all going to hell? No. But of course my view (and anyone else's, is subject to criticism).