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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Egan_BW]

Whatever, I just like to come up with interpretations of christianity that are consistent with my own worldview.

[origamiscienceguy]

There are actually only a few verses that talk about the soul in the bible:

Spoiler: list (click to show/hide)

But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Deuteronomy 4:29

What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
Matthew 16:26

This is what the Lord says:
Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
Jeremiah 6:16

Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
Psalm 42:11

Praise the Lord, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Psalm 103:1

Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
Matthew 22:37

But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you: to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to keep his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Joshua 22:5

From these, it seems to me that sould is analogous to "being" Or whatever makes you different from everybody else. No verses about your soul going to heaven. I think that God just remakes your body in the afterlife and gives you the same soul or being as before.

[Loud Whispers]

Nah m8 it's fractals all the way down and up and beyond

Oddly enough, this matches my beliefs more than Quartz's comments.
And about the "made in God's image" thing, I think that evolution happens and God created a universe with the proper conditions for it but he also directs things along the way. And I believe that people are physically (not just mentally/spiritually) made in God's  image (although my ideas about the nature of God differ from most Christians, since I believe that there are three separate beings rather than a trinity and that the Father and Son have physical bodies, with the Spirit still a spirit).

I've always found something amazing by the endless nature of crystals composing crystals, from the quanta to the cosmos

[Egan_BW]

Father is Satan, Son is Jesus, Spirit is the Darksoul humans in general. They all hate each other individually, but communally agree on  everything.
I don't know if anyone actually believes that, but I can interpit things I don't believe however I want.

[Quartz_Mace]

sin was a concept that people came up with from back when dualism was still the generally accepted explanation for consciousness and you know it buddy, can't really theologically say that it's a flaw of this mortal flesh when souls are supposed to exist

Regarding sin, what exactly is supposed to constitute as a sin and why? Is it just anything that is wrong? I know of course there's the Ten Commandments, but those were written for a very different time and you must read between the lines to find things applicable to modern life in some cases. Ex. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's* wife". Interpreted literally, I, as a male, could covet the wife of a man who is not my neighbor. A woman can covet any man she wants, but she cannot covet another man's wife... Doesn't make much sense. One of the reasons I hate when people try to treat the Bible as the one infallible truth(word for word), especially when reading a translation of it. *Neighbor likely = your fellow person, but it's not written as such.

Going off of the spirit of the word, I would read more as "Do not desire the spouse of any other person." As this applies universally, or at least over a much broader scope, instead of to a select situation.

What do you(pl.) think about sin?

[MonkeyHead]

Sin strikes me as a label used by early Christianity as a useful way of describing some kind of undesirable immorality possibly damaging to a bronze age society that contravened their framework of behaviour/ethics, which as the faith developed ended up this "beast" all of its own which dictates to people rather than some kind of socially beneficial prop, turning from a label to describe something into a manifested "thing" to be pandered to in some way. Certain acts/behaviours are now associated with the concept of sin as representative of it rather than the other way around - if that makes any kind of sense... this really is a hard thing for me to describe but it makes sense in my head.

Though, as with anything rooted in faith based postulations, as a non-tangible/unfalsifiable concept that can not be objectively shown, it is not something that I take seriously at all.

[Orange Wizard]

how your soul would end up in heaven

Oh, that's easy. Christ promised the resurrection of the body. That phrase is repeated through the NT. We will be given new bodies to live in the new heavens and the new Earth.
The whole "souls going up to heaven" thing is a popular misconception that the Bible doesn't support at all.

[origamiscienceguy]

how your soul would end up in heaven

Oh, that's easy. Christ promised the resurrection of the body. That phrase is repeated through the NT. We will be given new bodies to live in the new heavens and the new Earth.
The whole "souls going up to heaven" thing is a popular misconception that the Bible doesn't support at all.

Exactly. I cited every verse that mentions soul in the above post, and none of them have anything to do with heaven.

[TheDarkStar]

sin was a concept that people came up with from back when dualism was still the generally accepted explanation for consciousness and you know it buddy, can't really theologically say that it's a flaw of this mortal flesh when souls are supposed to exist

Regarding sin, what exactly is supposed to constitute as a sin and why? Is it just anything that is wrong? I know of course there's the Ten Commandments, but those were written for a very different time and you must read between the lines to find things applicable to modern life in some cases. Ex. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's* wife". Interpreted literally, I, as a male, could covet the wife of a man who is not my neighbor. A woman can covet any man she wants, but she cannot covet another man's wife... Doesn't make much sense. One of the reasons I hate when people try to treat the Bible as the one infallible truth(word for word), especially when reading a translation of it. *Neighbor likely = your fellow person, but it's not written as such.

Going off of the spirit of the word, I would read more as "Do not desire the spouse of any other person." As this applies universally, or at least over a much broader scope, instead of to a select situation.

You're confusing two commandments - "Thou shalt not commit adultary" and "Thou shalt not covet", neither of which specifies a gender.

[penguinofhonor]

Those are easy commandments to confuse. "Coveting thy neighbor's wife" sounds a lot like adultery. Also that part does specify gender.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

[Teneb]

Those are easy commandments to confuse. "Coveting thy neighbor's wife" sounds a lot like adultery. Also that part does specify gender.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

What if you covet thy neighbour's husband? Or the neighbour himself/herself?

Since I shitposted in the past, I would like to point out this is an honest question. (though perhaps I should note that it is my religious duty to occasionally shitpost)

[Quartz_Mace]

I would like to apologize. I think my Catholic educators gave me a modified/trimmed version of the Commandments that I was remembering. I should have double checked the original wording, and that is my fault. Still, my point about the Commandments does stand. In that day, I think the literal words corresponded closely enough to everyday life that you get the general idea, but today they are woefully outdated and you need to read between the lines to get more use out of them.

[origamiscienceguy]

No need to apologize. Nobody here actually knows everything, so misunderstandings are nothing to worry about. 

[penguinofhonor]

I don't know why you're apologizing. Your point wasn't about which commandment it was, you were talking about the wording. And what you quoted is actually part of the commandments, pulled almost letter for letter from the KJV. I'd say your whole point still stands.

[Egan_BW]

Hmm. So if your body is destroyed on earth, and then god remakes it in heaven as it was, isn't that the good old Star Trek teleporter thing?