lots and lots of good points by everyone

as far as my opinions, i feel that religion indeed was made by men long ago to explain things which they could not explain. it was then seized and manipulated by other men who were using it to increase their power. down through the centuries, it has been modified to fit the times, and the circumstances, and what was known about the modern world at that time. i also find it hard to believe the world is 6,000 years old. there is geologic proof all over of the world being at least millions if not billions of years old. for those that think that is a scientific fallacy, you have got to have your blinders on. take a college level class on geology. science has proven thousands of times over that the world is much older than that. as far as the pyramids being built, there is no evidence to suggest that the egyptians were not capable of doing that. They were an extremely advanced society and civilization. It has been said that had the Greek civilation survived they'd be living on the moon by now. Nobody alive today knows what these people were capable of. Most of their knowlege and ways were lost 2,000 and some years ago.
ive gone to church every sunday since i was born, i am a roman catholic and will probably always be a roman catholic. i was an alter boy for probably 200 masses when i was in grade school. whether or not i believe in God, I don't know. I have never read from the bible or studyed it. I do know that religion, when used properly, makes you a better person. I do also feel, however, that religion is often not an important part of my life. I am old enough and mature enough to think for myself and make my own decisions. I don't need somebody forcing their ways and ideals on me. I am here to live my own life and live it how i choose. not by how some book tells me to live it or some brainwashed priest tells me to live it. to hell with the notion that i will be rewarded or punished when i die. that idea was created by people who were afraid of what was going to happen to them when they died. dispute that fact all you want, its a pretty straightfoward assumption. and whatever happend to all the people that existed before christ and christianity? where was their afterlife if heaven and hell is the only real afterlife. the answer is dust and bones, that's all we are and that's all we will ever be.

only fact i can possibly point out after all that has been said is something that was brought up but isn't even important. hitler did borrow the swastika design from the catholic church. there is a well known picture of him singing in his church choir as a boy, he went to a christian church, and right above him is a 3 pronged, hooked cross. this was later modified and used as the swatstika by the NSDAP. if your in college or gonna go, take a history class on nazism, its the only class ive ever had that ive actually enjoyed going to.

theres so much to say, im just happy im alive and well and i thank my friends family and self for that. maybe somebody's watching over me, who knows. certainly nobody here.

chris

 

I just wish that if there is a god that he would show up in court on trial one day and when the lawyers or judge tell him to shut up or he will be held in contempt, that he would really let them have it. It's funny how the freedom of speech is denied you when you need it the most!

 

"Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain."

"Most people are bothered by those passages in Scripture which they cannot understand; but for me, I always noticed the passages in Scripture which trouble me most are those I do understand."

"If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be- a Christian"

"The Church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself by way of example."

"We have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only when we set out to discover the secrets of God that our difficulties disappear."

"A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and is turned out for what he knows."

"Church ain't shucks to a circus."

A few thoughts on religion from the esteemed Mark Twain.

 

I beleive in God, Jesus Christ and the Bible. I pray you will too before its all over.

 

hitler did borrow the swastika design from the
>catholic church.

I do not believe this. You're gonna have to back this up.

there is a well known picture of him
>singing in his church choir as a boy, he went to a christian
>church, and right above him is a 3 pronged, hooked cross.

As a military historian, who has read extensively on the life of Adolph Hitler, I know of no picture of him singing in any choir in any church. It is believed his mother was Jewish, though never proved.

>this was later modified and used as the swatstika by the
>NSDAP.

The Swastika is an American Indian symbol. It was worn on some American Indian only outfits in our Army. It was also the national symbol of the Finnish air force during the first part of WWII. So it's not a ****-only thing. They didn't modify it as it appears in those two forms pre-dating the **** party.

if your in college or gonna go, take a history class
>on nazism, its the only class ive ever had that ive actually
>enjoyed going to.

No college professor or the school is above rewriting history to make it say what they'd like it to say. Very sad. The Soviets did this for so many years, even they don't remember how accurate their own history books are. I believe we're moving in that direction. As culture shifts back and forth from left to right society likes to rewrite things to fit the culture to make their own viewpoints more applicable. I regularly have to "re-educate" my children from what the teacher at school tells them regarding our country's Civil War.What a load of mis-information. Yet, children that don't have the benefit of concerned parents are subject to whatever load of rubbish comes down the pike.

Chuck

 

For the love of CHRIST let this thread die.

 

Na it's too much fun!!

As to the origins of the swastika, never heard of it being a variation of a cross. I have heard that it was a weapon of war in some form of mythology -- not sure if Greek, Roman, or other.

 

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 20-Nov-02 AT 04:41 PM (EST)]76: I am with you. What else could prompt me to dig up a number of famous Mark Twain "ditties". I get a kick out of this stuff. Everyone taking themselves so seriously, and all...... I can't resist the temptation of another: "Humor must be one of the chief attributes of God. Plants and animals that are distincly humorous in form and characteristics are God's jokes." MT

 

Man this thread is like a ping-pong ball thrown into an elevator shaft, wow.

I believe, always have, in God. Raised a Catholic, I read the Bible in my teens and now have a strong faith of my own. The argument here often reminds me of some of the discussions back in the late 60's and early 70's, "God is dead" stuff. Frankly, I never heard an argument that was near compelling enough to make me doubt my faith.

J.L. Mackie and Friedrich Nietzsche, arguably the two most influential atheists ever had trouble with the implications of a "godless world"; as Cliff Clavin might say, "look it up". Before you become a 100% secular humanist type, look over some of Richard Feynman or Stephen Hawking's books. Too much of what is known about our physical world just cannot be put together seamlessly, if those guys are willing to consider a "higher power" maybe all of us should.

Thought that it might be interesting to some to see what a few of the "intellectual types" had to say on the subject:


"Every created thing is finite because all things are from Jehovah God through the sun of the spiritual world, which most nearly encompasses Him; and that sun is composed of the substance that has gone forth from Him, the essence of which is love."--- Emanuel Swedenborg

"... The God of Christians is a God who makes the soul perceive that He is her only good that her only rest is in Him, her only joy in loving Him ---Blaise Pascal

"He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio only, sees himself only."---William Blake

If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent Him. But all nature cries aloud that He does exist; that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence upon it.--- VOLTAIRE

and my old personal standby:

"The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker." VOLTAIRE

While I respect the rights of Americans to have, (or not have) whatever belief they choose, I fully expect the same in return. Separation of church and state, not elimination of church and state.

In God we Trust, Baby!http://community.the-underdogs.org/smiley/misc/usa.gif Don

 

Ooh, physics, nature, and religion. Richard Feynman had, in my opinion, a very interesting way of looking at things. I dug up this quote from a book of mine, which I think is as worth typing out:

"We have a way of discussing the world, when we talk of it at various hierarchies, or levels. Now I do not mean to be very precise, dividing the world into definite levels, but I will indicate, by describing a set of ideas, what I mean by hierarchies of ideas.
For example, at one end we have the fundamental laws of physics. Then we invent other terms for concepts which are approximate, which have, we believe, their ultimate explanation in terms of fundamental laws. For instance, 'heat'. Heat is supposed to be jiggling, and the word for a hot thing is just the word for a mass of atoms which are jiggling. But for a while, if we are talking about heat, we sometimes forget about the atoms jiggling -- just as when we talk about the glacier we do not always think of the hexagonal ice and the snowflakes which originally fell. Another example of the same thing is a salt crystal. Looked at fundamentally it is a lot of protons, neutrons, and electrons; but we have this concept 'salt crystal', which carries a whole pattern already of fundamental interactions. An idea like pressure is the same.
Now if we go up higher from this, in another level we have properties of substances -- like 'refractive index', how light is bent when it goes through something; or 'surface tension', the fact that water tends to pull itself together, both of which are described by numbers. I remind you that we have to go through several laws down to find out that it is the pull of the atoms, and so on. But we still say 'surface tension', and do not always worry, when discussing surface tension, about the inner workings.
On, up in the hierarchy. With the water we have waves, and we have a thing like a storm, the word 'storm' which represents an emormous mass of phenomena, or a 'sun spot' or 'star'. which is an accumulation of things. And it is not worth while always to think it of way back. In fact we cannot, because the higher up we go the more steps we have in between, each one of which is a little weak. We have not thought them all through yet.
As we go up in this hierarchy of complexity, we get to things like muscle twitch, or nerve impulse, which is an enormously complicated thing in the physical world, involving an organization of matter in a very elaborate complexity. Then come things like 'frog'.
And then we go on, and we come to words and concepts like 'man' and 'history', or 'political expediency', and so forth, a series of concepts which we use to understand things at an even higher level.
And going on, we come to things like evil, and beauty, and hope...
Which end is nearer to God; if I may use a religious metaphor. Beauty and hope, or the fundamental laws? I think that the right way, of course, is to say that what we ahve to look at is the whole structural interconnection of the thing; and that all the sciences, and not just the sciences but all the efforts of intellectual kinds, are an endeavour to see the connections of the hierarchies, to connect beauty to history, to connect history to man's psychology, man's psychology to the working of the brain, the brain to the neural impulse, the neural impulse to the chemistry, and so forth, up and down, both ways. And today we cannot, and it is no use making believe that we can, draw carefully a line all the way from one end of this thing to the other, because we have only just begun to see that there is this relative hierarchy.
And I do not think either end is nearer to God."

-Richard Feynman

***Everything past this is my OPINION***

This is why I like physics. There are truly infinite possibilities and some of the things we study are fascinating. It seems the more you learn, the more you realize you can never know everything. As far as my views, I don't know if there is a God, and nobody else does either, regardless of what they say. I was raised in a Catholic household, my parents made me go to Mass, confession, confirmation, etc. I hated it then and I hate it now. It is the antithesis of free thinking, I think. That doesn't work for me AT ALL. That's my biggest beef with organized religions. My personal belief is there is a higher driving force to the universe, I hesitate to call it "God" since I don't consider myself religious, the closest thing to my concept is Mother Nature, I guess. It's not something I can easily describe to someone else.

Albert Einstein was a religious man as well, one of his most famous quotes is "God does not play dice with the universe", refusing to accept the randomness inherent to the theory of quantum mechanics. The debate between he and Bohr concerning the validity of quantum mechanics, now there's some interesting reading

 

 

>>As a military historian, who has read extensively on the
>life of Adolph Hitler, I know of no picture of him singing
>in any choir in any church. It is believed his mother was
>Jewish, though never proved.

>
>The Swastika is an American Indian symbol.

You know I just watched the History channel and the belief through their eyes is that the Swastika is an ancient runes design...along with the SS symbol and other symbol **** Germany used.

I also think Hitler's mom was Jewish...

 

>>>As a military historian, who has read extensively on the
>>life of Adolph Hitler, I know of no picture of him singing
>>in any choir in any church. It is believed his mother was
>>Jewish, though never proved.
>
>>
>>The Swastika is an American Indian symbol.
>
>You know I just watched the History channel and the belief
>through their eyes is that the Swastika is an ancient runes
>design...along with the SS symbol and other symbol ****
>Germany used.
>
>I also think Hitler's mom was Jewish...

Absolutely. It appears in a number of places from Ancient America to the Ancient Isles of England as well as the Nordic peoples. It's been around literally thousands of years. It probably means different things to different peoples. I would bet it doesn't mean to them what it did (does) to the *****.

Coincidentally, anyone catch the "Front-line" program talking about Saddam Hussein's own private "SS"? These people are truly sub-human.

It is believed Hitlers mother was Jewish and his father was the postmaster in the little bavarian town where he was raised. It's also believed that he had tank drills conducted over the field in which his parents were buried. (unsubstantiated)

I love the History Channel!

Chuck

 

chuck, just to clarify
i never said that hitler came up with the swatstika idea. i realize it has been around for 1000s of years. but hitler modified the symbol by turning it so the points were north south east and west instead of on the corners. it gave it a more aggressive look. it is believed he got this idea from the symbol which i saw in that picture you don't believe i ever saw. it was basically a swatstika except triangular instead of square. maybe i am wrong about the idea which i stated in which he borrowed it from the catholic church. but i know what i saw in the picture. if you look at pictures of early **** rallies in the early 20s you will see alot of their flags have the swatskia sitting flat, and it looks different. this is the swatskia that had been around for ages and is the swatstika you can still find all over the world being used today.

and as far as professors bending the truth and covering up lies and you using the history channel as your source of information, ill take my college education, a guy with a PhD in history who does nothing but teach German history and Nazism, who has been to Germany and Europe many many times and talked with people who were actually a part of what happened, both with the evolution of the *****, the war, and the holocaust, and the writings which i have read of the men who were actually a part of what happened, as well as the brain which i was born with to use and to think freely and not to follow other people blindly- ill use those things to find what i believe is the truth any day of the week, before i believe anything i see on tv. i will also not blindly deny things that could possibly be true and completely discard them as false, just because they don't fall in line with my religious or personal beliefs. corlucci said it best when he said that religion is the antithesis of free thinking. i couldn't agree more.


chris

 

>For the love of CHRIST let this thread die.

It wouldn't work. It would rise again on the third day.