Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

The sacrifices we make for our children. Or OF our children. Or something.

At least they're extremely devoted and faithful to their church, can't really say that about the rest of their neighbors.

Not too many people are willing to do this much for any church.

Even if they aren't the sanest people on the block.
 
Way to go church workers -- good for them for taking action on this. This definetely could have been something awful.
 
rickvanr said:
Agreed. I'm religious, but I'm not crazy...
Click to expand...
you do know alot of non-religious people look at religion as a form of delusion right? to them, you are most definitely crazy, maybe not at the sacrificial level, but believing in a guy in a cloud and the extra-dimensional realities of heaven and hell would classify you as not the most rational of people either.

you have to be a little crazy to believe in something that cannot be proven, even in the most mundane sense, you may take that offensively, but it's not meant to be, just citing other's viewpoints of religion.

look at it this way, there are over 1000 religions, everyone believes THEIR's is the right faith, everyone else is wrong, well you would all agree that another religion is wrong, but none of you would support another religion...so you can't all be right...which would mean you are all wrong.

*Crosses fingers for the rapture* c'mon, any day now!
 
I'm religious because I don't know... I don't go to church tho. and everyone is a little crazy. Hell, people in Toronto think the Maple Leafs are good.
 
Strange thing is, the church was "St. Mary's", which means these folks belonged to a regular Catholic or mainstream Protestant church, not some wacko cult.

And I'll leave the "non-belief" thing to others. All I'll say is, I just don't know how atheists can be sure there isn't a God. Purely aside from it being impossible to prove a negative, how do they explain all the eyewitness accounts in the Bible which, even if they don't match up perfectly, certainly indicate that something supernatural happened...not to mention similar experiences in other faith systems?
 
Of being human

I think religion is less of a "crazy" thing than it is the natural combo of humanity's strong sense of curiosity and strong skill for creativity and invention. That combo naturally leads to religion. (Unless everything begins to fall into place for them to lead some to science, as it has in the last couple of hundred years.)

I do have to tap into the thought (that was mentioned) that everyone's obligated to believe other religions are wrong. While this is clearly what people tend to believe, I have faith that it some day won't be. Ideally, we'd all be able to say:

"Whelp - there can only be one truth. And it has to be true no matter where on the planet you are. I don't know what it is, and neither does anyone else. But, this is the set of beliefs that makes ME the best person that I can be and that leads me to take the best care of those around me. Another person may be able to do more good under another set of beliefs. And, no matter what god or gods are around, it should matter more to him/her/them that I was good to my fellow humans than that I guessed right on his/her/their name(s), history, or personality traits. And if he/she/they would punish me for being a good person who didn't guess the right name(s), history, or personality traits, then he/she/they really isn't a god worthy of my worship, anyway."

Be good to your neighbors - and the rest will follow. :)

Oh, and killing your kids (or anyone else) doesn't count as being good to them.
 
Thomas Veil said:
All I'll say is, I just don't know how atheists can be sure there isn't a God. Purely aside from it being impossible to prove a negative, how do they explain all the eyewitness accounts in the Bible which, even if they don't match up perfectly, certainly indicate that something supernatural happened...not to mention similar experiences in other faith systems?
Click to expand...

Hey Thomas - do you believe everything you read? Well, you shouldn't! the world is full of people who's trying to shape it in their own picture. In fact everybody does that to some extent, even if it's subconsiously... and remeber, even if people mean to be truthfull and objective, they are always limited by their own (limited) knowledge.

So what you should always remember when you read something, is to use your critical sense to judge how trustworthy the authors are and which motifs they might have to tell the story their telling the way their telling it. You also must try and understand the context in which the text was written. This is very important and it counts when you read newspapers, watch television, read macrumors, see advertisements for free iPods, etc. etc...

I don't understand how anyone can think that what is written in the bible is the pure truth! It's written by old, powerful men, living in a society of nomadic goatherders several thousands of years ago!! c'mon...

The bible is a fine book, it should just be taken for what it is... and, yes, be good to your neighbours.


A
 
That is very sad that their religious beliefs would lead them down this path. Just happy to hear that the three children are OK. They are lucky that the alert workers were around.
 
Something doesn't seem right here....

How were they going to sacrifice the children? There was no talk of weapons or rope - in fact they even mentioned there wasn't any...

Weird.

And totally nuts - why did she think the sacrifice would cleanse her soul? What about the children's? This woman was obviously not right in the head....

D
 
Thomas Veil said:
Well, anybody who knows me from the Political Forum knows I can be plenty skeptical.
Click to expand...

he he, good to know... just wanted to make sure...

Thomas Veil said:
But the Apostles, well...they've never lied to me before.... ;)
Click to expand...

Their facts are hard to check up on, tho' :rolleyes:

A
 
Thomas Veil said:
Strange thing is, the church was "St. Mary's", which means these folks belonged to a regular Catholic or mainstream Protestant church, not some wacko cult.

And I'll leave the "non-belief" thing to others. All I'll say is, I just don't know how atheists can be sure there isn't a God. Purely aside from it being impossible to prove a negative, how do they explain all the eyewitness accounts in the Bible which, even if they don't match up perfectly, certainly indicate that something supernatural happened...not to mention similar experiences in other faith systems?
Click to expand...

There is no scientific evidence of anything supernatural, proven fact.

Reference: "The Demon Haunted World, Science As A Candle In The Dark", Carl Sagan

Biblical Monsters
Eyewitness accounts in the bible, a book of fiction? The bible says dragons, unicorns, serpents that can kill you by looking at you exist. :rolleyes:

Eyewitness accounts in the bible, you mean like the books of the Apostles?

"The book of Matthew continues its account (of the resurrection), and says (chap. xxviii., ver. I) that at the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary, the mother of James, and other women, that came to the sepulchre; and John states that Mary Magdalene came alone. So well do they agree about their first evidence! they all, however, appear to have known most about Mary Magdalene; . . .

"The book of Matthew goes on to say (ver. 2), And behold there was a great earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. But the other books say nothing about any earthquake, nor about the angel rolling back the stone and sitting upon it, and according to their account, there was no angel sitting there. Mark says the angel was within the sepulchre, sitting on the right side. Luke says there were two, and they were both standing up; and John says they were both sitting down, one at the head and the other at the feet.

"Matthew says that the angel that was sitting upon the stone on the outside of the sepulchre told the two Marys that Christ was risen, and that the women went away quickly. Mark says that the women, upon seeing the stone rolled away and wondering at it, went into the sepulchre, and that it was the angel that was sitting within on the right side that told them so. Luke says it was the two angels that were standing up; and John says that it was Jesus himself that told it to Mary Magdalene, and that she did not go into the sepulchre, but only stooped down and looked in.

"Now, if the writers of those four books had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means), and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropped for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration and as the unchangeable Word of God."

As already shown, Thomas Jefferson did not believe in the divine nature of Jesus as Pat Robertson and the religious right do. Neither did Thomas Paine, as the following quote regarding the myth of the ascension of Jesus into heaven, taken from The Age of Reason plainly illustrates:

"I come now to the last scene, that of the ascension into heaven. Here all fear of the Jews, and of everything else, must necessarily have been out of the question: it was that which, if true, was to seal the whole, and upon which the reality of the future mission of the disciples was to rest for proof.

"Words, whether declarations or promises, that passed in private, either in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or in a shut-up house in Jerusalem, even supposing them to have been spoken, could not be evidence in public; it was therefore necessary that this last scene should preclude the possibility of denial and dispute, and that it should be, as I have stated in the former part of "The Age of Reason," as public and as visible as the sun at noonday; at least it ought to have been as public as the crucifixion is reported to have been. But to come to the point.

"In the first place, the writer of the book of Matthew does not say a syllable about it; neither does the writer in the book of John. This being the case, is it possible to suppose that those writers, who affect to be even minute in other matters, would have been silent upon this, had it been true?

"The writer of the book of Mark passes it off in a careless, slovenly manner, with a single dash of the pen, as if he was tired of romancing or ashamed of the story. So also does the writer of Luke. And even between these two there is not an apparent agreement as to the place where his final parting is said to have been.

"The book of Mark says that Christ appeared to the eleven as they sat at meat, alluding to the meeting of the eleven at Jerusalem; he then states the conversation that he says passed at the meeting; and immediately after says (as a schoolboy would finish a dull story) So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven and sat on the right hand of God.

"But the writer of Luke says, that the ascension was from Bethany; that he [Christ] led them out as far as Bethany, and was parted from them, and was carried up into heaven. So also was Mahomet; and as to Moses, the apostle Jude says (ver. 9) that Michael and the devil disputed about his body. While we believe such fables as these, or either of them, we believe unworthily of the Almighty."

- "The Age Of Reason", Thomas Paine
Click to expand...

On the bright side, if you can prove the supernatural or paranormal James Randy will give you a million dollars!!!!!

To date, no one has ever passed the preliminary tests. :D

For the record, not an atheist; I am a secular humanist.
 
Well, apparently my little jest, meant to extricate us from a pointless "God-is-real/No-he's-not" argument, didn't work.... :rolleyes:

All of what's in that quote I've already acknowledged, in that it coincides with something we already know: eyewitness descriptions -- especially accounts written years later from memory -- usually differ. And sometimes descriptions aren't even eyewitness, they're second-hand.

More to the point, as I said, you can't really prove a negative. Prudence would seem to indicate that at least agnosticism is in order. I myself don't believe in ghosts and UFOs, but I'm not so bold as to say for an absolute fact that they don't exist.

But secular humanism is good. I always think of it as Christianity without the "Christ". It beats a lot of the evil that is done in His name.
 
Science isn't infallible either. Theories are constantly refined on the basis of new information. The lack of scientific proof does not negate the possibility of the existence of a thing, any more than the many errors and inconsistencies of the Bible have to be taken to mean that every last bit of it must be false.

There isn't any scientific basis for love, or hope, or idealism, or any other of the many things that separate man from the animals and give our lives humanity and meaning. The purpose of faith is not to make us right, it's to make us better.
 
Now that's a seriously messed up couple, there. It would take a giant Monty Python-style face appearing in the clouds and handing me a written declaration that there was a dang good reason I should be murdering my own kids (say, they were going to become the Hitler Trio later in life, but their souls could be saved by offing them now) before I'd even entertain the thought. Even then, I'd have my doubts about any God who would ask their own parents to do it instead of asking them directly or just throwing in a car accident or something.

Off topic:
BrianKonarsMac said:
look at it this way, there are over 1000 religions, everyone believes THEIR's is the right faith, everyone else is wrong, well you would all agree that another religion is wrong, but none of you would support another religion...so you can't all be right...which would mean you are all wrong.
Click to expand...
I always find that classic argument amusingly illogical; by that line of reasoning, any time there was a disagreement about anything, it would be proof that both opinions were wrong, which obviously isn't the case.

I'd much rather believe that most world religions (not all--some are obviously self-serving power plays from the begining, not just after a greedy leader gets his hands on it) are manifestations of some greater power that is interpreted different ways by different people. That, at least, would be one way of explaining why almost every culture has some religion, and most share several basic points.
 
rickvanr said:
and everyone is a little crazy. Hell, people in Toronto think the Maple Leafs are good.
Click to expand...
Hey watch it buddy! Just because you're a Sens fan doesn't mean you can get away with cracks like that! ;)


These people need help, but you can view this is typical modern thinking; i.e. that sacrificing others is the quick way to solve your own problems. :(


BTW everyone here debating over the existance of Jesus, or the historical reference of the Bible should read Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Raid said:
Hey watch it buddy! Just because you're a Sens fan doesn't mean you can get away with cracks like that! ;)
Click to expand...

haha... don't go calling me a sens fan! I used to be a leafs fan back when they had wendal, the cat and killer... not so much anymore... I started rooting for ottawa, but then they went a ruined that when they signed Hasek - quite possibly the most hated player by me, next to ulf samulson...

for the record, I'm a bruins fan...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back