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trisha Donating Member (32 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 06:00 AM
Original message
Top Ten Reasons For Not Being a Christian
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teach1st Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 06:04 AM
Response to Original message
1. Wow!
I'm saved! Thanks.

Oh, wait. It was just indigestion. Too much Hollywood morality last night.
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Memory Container Donating Member (108 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 06:10 AM
Response to Original message
2. ohferChrist'ssake...
Hal Lindsey?
The "Revelations" guy?

He just put up a whole bunch of strawmen to beat.
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DFW Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 06:11 AM
Response to Original message
3. I have seen this for years
It still bases itself on the premise that the bible is the truth,
something I don't take to be necessarily true.

My main reason for not being a Christian is that I wasn't born one,
and haven't yet been given a reason by any Christian why their religion
is so much better than mine that I should abandon my own beliefs in
favor of theirs.

My credo is that everyone should believe what they want to believe and
not force it upon others. I was once asked to contribute to an American
Christian for a trip to India. I asked what it was for. They said to convert
people in India to Christianity. I asked them if it was OK that I contribute
an equal amount for Indians to come to America and try to convert Americans
to Hinduism.

They said no. I didn't contribute.
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mrcheerful Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 06:16 AM
Response to Original message
4. This one gets me
Ephesians 5:25 commands husbands, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it."

According to everything written about christ he never loved any chruch, christ always said he loved his father, besides chruchs didn't come about until hundreds of years after his death and he never gave himself to the chruch, he died for the sins of man.
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pokercat999 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 06:16 AM
Response to Original message
5. Proof there is no god?
If there were a god, broccoli would taste like chocolate cake.....!
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dipsydoodle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 06:40 AM
Response to Reply #5
8. Nice one
When I was kid my parents made me eat Brussels sprouts. I discovered that if you put enough pepper on anything like that you can make it taste like cockles. Yes - chocolate cake would be better.

Usual one is "If there were a God wasps wouldn't even exist"
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Random_Australian Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 06:24 AM
Response to Original message
6. meh. No food for thought, just another idiot.
Edited on Sun Apr-23-06 06:25 AM by Random_Australian
:shrug:

No-one has seen the wind huh? f*cking idiot.

If there is someone who takes offense to that, I'll elaborate why my position is reasonable, yes, I can, but I'm not going to the effort unless asked.


Edit: No worries, trish, just me raving ;). Take no offense, nor indeed heed.
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greyl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 07:25 AM
Response to Reply #6
11. Yeah, Hal is a tool. :)
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Memory Container Donating Member (108 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 07:31 AM
Response to Reply #6
14. I also like this one;
Myth- "Christians think they are better than non-Christians."

"By way of analogy, consider two skydivers. One has a working parachute; the other does not. That doesn't make the skydiver with a working parachute a better skydiver. But he is certainly wiser than the other guy."

YES IT DOES make him a better skydiver!

Hal Lindsey's brand of born-again Christianity, along with Falwell and Robertson, is the epitome of arrogance. They don false humility all while believing that they are 'the only ones saved' and all others are 'inferior' in the eyes of God.

And the convoluted ways they go about justifying their arrogance while simultaneously feigning humility is damn near psychotic.
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Rude Horner Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 06:27 AM
Response to Original message
7. I'm someone who is struggling with what I believe
I grew up with a very Catholic mother who insisted I go to church and sunday school, but as a man in my 40's now, I don't ever attend church anymore. I highly suspect I'm an athiest because I question everything and I just don't get the answers I want from any religion.

A couple weeks ago I watch part of the movie "The Ten Commandments" on tv, and they're showing Moses as someone who was completely unconvinced of the existence of God, but then he goes up on a mountain and sees a burning bush and that changes everything for him. I've also heard stories about the time of Jesus and about how he gained his "flock". He would perform these miracles in front of people and then they would believe. His disciples came on board when they would see him do things like make a blind man see, or whatever.

So my question is this: If people like Moses and the disciples didn't believe until they had these miracle events flash before their eyes, where is MY miracle to flash before my eyes so I believe? Am I to believe that there was a time when God and Jesus performed all these miracles in front of people to gain a following, and then just STOPPED with the miracle game and expected the next few thousand years worth of faith to go by on word of mouth alone? One of the ten commandments is to not obey other false gods. How am I supposed to know what a false god is and what the real one is? So God wants you to believe in him, and put no other god's before him, but I'm supposed to know which one is the real one? Makes no sense!
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ClintonTyree Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 06:59 AM
Response to Reply #7
9. Very good point.........
one that I wrestled with for many years as well. If there is a god that demands to be loved, obeyed, exalted etc. why doesn't he manifest himself (her/itself) to remove all doubt from people's minds about who's the boss? Why take such a hands off approach to his creation? The believers will say, "faith", but faith is nothing more than self delusion. That the entire basis of christianity took place two thousand years ago when a simple match would have been "a miracle" and there hasn't been a single manifestation of His holy presence since seems rather suspect.
It makes no sense, as you say. Science can measure the wind, gravity and myriad other natural phenomenon but there isn't a single measurement for god. Blind faith isn't my thing, I require some evidence. Until the time comes when there is some other evidence for "the god thing" other than stories I'll continue to eschew them. Belief in god is irrational and I think a great many people profess to believe just to cover their bets, so to speak.
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Epiphany4z Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 07:06 AM
Response to Original message
10. Number one reason
I simply do not believe and can't say I find any reason to believe in the Christian version of god any more than any other god myth.

That list is full of straw men and circular logic...you cant understand the bible because your not supposed to...Okay...if you say so ...I don't even argue these things with my christian friends anymore I just tell them my non belief is one area in my life I am very comfortable with and I am not convertible lets leave it at that.

I really do try to respect those who believe in a god whatever there religion is. I wish they would respect those of us who do not. Atheist and agnostics, deist are probably the reason they can still practice there religions in this country and yet it seems they are hell bent on believing we want to destroy them. Fundamentalism I have issues with but I can see how religion really helps many people get through lifes ups and downs.



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TomClash Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 07:25 AM
Response to Original message
12. Hal Lindsey needs to read the New Testament
Edited on Sun Apr-23-06 07:26 AM by TomClash
Note that there are NO quotes from the Gospels. Why is that? One would think a Christian would quote the words of Christ and his apostles.
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trisha Donating Member (32 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 07:28 AM
Response to Reply #12
13. Hal Lindsey needs to read the New Testament
I do agree with you.

He needs refresher course.
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hyphenate Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 07:36 AM
Response to Original message
15. Well....
The basic premise (other than the fact that he works on the notion that the bible is truth) is that all of his points must be correct and true. #6 has been disproven now, because of the find of Judas's bible, wherein Jesus asks Judas to betray him. So, no, Judas did not betray him, rather it was a planned action.

Another thing is the bible itself. How can ANYONE read it and believe half the stuff in it? Seriously. It was originally put together as "collected" tales of this guy, Jesus. Most of it was written many long years after Jesus's time, sometimes 500 years later or more. It was also a vocal "document" long before it was written down, and some parts of it were translated rather liberally. There are likely hundreds of contributors to it, and some are obviously better writers than others, but when a single entity re-translated it, they chose to apply their own style to it and corrupted many different passages.

I can't look at the bible any different than I look at any other work of fiction, except to say that it's "supposed" to give its readers moralistic lectures as well as to appeal to their sense of right and wrong, which to me it does poorly. It is never consistent, and often contradicts its own words in different sections--many people have gone through it and pulled out many passages that are then debunked by showing the opposite in another chapter.

Trying to literally interpret the bible is suspending all belief and all empirical evidence to the contrary. Someone asked one fundie I know about this, and how the old testament says one thing and the new testament says something entirely to the contrary, and the fundie replied that they don't pay much heed to the old testament. I love it! Selective adherence is just another way of saying that they're only taking from it what they want to hear, and ignoring all the rest. If you're supposed to believe in the "bible" and its literal interpretation, this is something which contradicts all fundies and really shows how hypocritical they are.

I personally don't have too much against a man called Jesus from 2000 years ago. By all the evidence that the bible renders, it appears the poor man was schizophrenic and yet charismatic enough to convince people that he was somehow "godly." Nowadays, he would have been sent to Bellevue Sanitarium and given a full psych evaluation, and sedated with Haldol, Thorazine or some other medication to wipe out the hallucinations and voices speaking to him. And, if he was able to avoid such a fate, he would likely have been a cult leader such as David Koresh at Waco, or Jim Jones. To me, personally, I don't see much difference between any of them, except for a sheer thrill at being able to manipulate people to do exactly what he wanted them to do.

However, when you have a religion which claims to be "peaceful" and then begin to wage war simultaneously based on that religion, you immediately show no regard for what you say you believe. True pacifists would never allow themselves to fake their faith in peace by waging war, period.

It is also contradictory to establish a religion and a church to go with it, and begin to selectively remove portions of the bible in order to keep your faithful from reading too much into the words on the page. Martin Luther removed whole segments from his version of the "collected works of christiandom (aka the bible) because he felt they weren't necessary.

So, while I have absolutely nothing against those who want to believe in this literalism of a religion based 90% on hearsay, I don't want them to try to convince me that I'm a sinner because I don't believe one word of it. Most of the ideas currently at work in the fundie and evangelical end of the faith are not those which were from Jesus's day, but inserted many years after by a wide variety of both dictators and other men who wanted to exact more control over their subjects. Eating fish on Friday was a ploy to help fishermen get more sales on fish; celibacy among priests was added to make the priests put church over family in a disaster; and not allowing women into the clergy was done to keep women from thinking too much and not allowing them to put the pieces together. By "allowing" them to be nuns, it restricted their contribution and made it subservient to the males.

If there was one word to describe my own total rendering of the bible and the man who supposedly was the protagonist of it, it would be cynical. One can't help but feel that we're allowing nutcases to try and rule the world, without applying logic of any sort to the goings on.
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graywarrior Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 07:47 AM
Response to Original message
16. Should be Top Ten Reasons For Not Being a Fundamentalist Christian
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kiteinthewind Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 08:42 AM
Response to Reply #16
20. Thanks for saying that! I am a Christian, and I don't consider these
Edited on Sun Apr-23-06 08:44 AM by kiteinthewind
fundamentalists 'real' Christians. I am a try to 'live like Jesus lived' Christian-You know, Love, Acceptance, Caring for ALL people, etc. These Repugs who claim to be Christians are full of GREED and HYPOCRISY and JUDGEMENT and SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS, all things that Christ taught were VILE! When they pray, they make an event out of it, they do not practice what they preach, they believe they are 'chosen' and superior, and if they have wealth, they believe it is because of 'God's blessings' for living the 'right' way. They thoroughly DISGUST me.
:grr:

edit: added 'try to'
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ladjf Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 07:49 AM
Response to Original message
17. Moronic ramblings.
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Goblinmonger Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 07:54 AM
Response to Original message
18. Idiot asshat
"Nobody has seen history." Oh, really? I thought I was seeing it right now. What a tool.
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kstewart33 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 08:04 AM
Response to Original message
19. As for #6, the same can be said for all religions.
Each religion thinks it's better than every other. That's the source of religious wars. And the major reason why I oppose organized religion. Millions have been killed in the interest of some god.
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trisha Donating Member (32 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 09:18 AM
Response to Reply #19
21. I am proud .
I am proud to say that I am christian,

I know my Lord Jesus lives in me.

Because He lives I can face tomorrow.
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maddezmom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-23-06 09:51 AM
Response to Original message
22. locking
OP is no longer with us
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