Christianity Debate (spliced from Scientology debate)
Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 4:40 am
constantino wrote:ill gladly debate you my first ? to you is were you a member of the holy roman catholic church before you lost your faith in it .
I've moved this here to because it is a different debate and unfair to hijack the other topic.
I started out as a catholic indeed. I grew up thinking that God watched over me with everything I did (not that it stopped me disobeying my parents). I cant put a date or a real time on when I realised my faith was gone. I stopped going to mass because the priest who told the best homilies(think that's the plural for homily) departed for another parish and the one who remained was an alcoholic who gave mass drunk a few times(even falling on a few occasions because he couldn't handle 3 steps to the altar.) You could say I was about 16-17 when I really started to question things I was raised with. Evolution for a start, we have pretty much conclusively proven that we evolved, not just put onto the earth by God moulded from the earth, yes someone could say that if you go far enough back that we did indeed start as the earth on the long trek to here but that is in my view not what the bible meant so those words are being twisted to suit. My girlfriend has put to me that God isn't an entity but in fact the spark of life itself...the chance that something happened to kick-start evolution. I hate that so much was lost back in medieval times because of sheer ignorance on the side of the church who suppressed everything that was not doctrine.
I was raised that God forgives everyone no matter what. This seems like a clean slate regardless of what you do in life, mother Theresa and Gandhi are due the same consideration in God's eyes as Adolf Hitler and Stalin? Don't think there are many people too impressed with that idea.
Throughout history, religion has been used as another excuse for war. I really don't want like the association that gives me and using religion as a tool for drumming up support is still finding its way into war. You hear of the terrorists in the Middle-east using jihad's to increase support for their campaign and in turn, the US using Christian values to defeat the Islamic extremists that are generated. This is in response to the religious overtones to the attacks made on the US. Religion can bond people together greater than nationhood. How long before the age-old policy of plantations come back. Subdue completely and put in large numbers of friendly people to control the area, it was how the English pretty successfully quietened down Ireland during the various uprisings.
Thats long enough for now.
