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[ECrownofFire]

Pantheism is better. Can't disprove THAT god now can you?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

St. Augustine -> Fundamental writing of the Catholic Church -> Still referenced today by the Pope when settling matters of doctrine -> Totally kills all of that dead with the resounding hammer of a long piece of paper pinned to a sanctified door

. . . BUT COME ON YOU GUYS

The vast majority of these Fundamentalists are Protestants, who do not consider the Pope to be a valid authority on anything. Some of them consider the Pope to be outright evil, or even Satan himself, depending on how extreme they are.

Before you say anything, these people also don't care that Protestantism broke off of the Catholic Church.

[Vector]

People have diferent things they can accept. Some people can accept the idea of a God and the rules of physics working as one and others cant. It does seem that the unified thinking is becoming more popular nowadays. So long as nobody is forced to accept another persons belief system everything is fine.

Yeah.  I just think it would be really cool if people were able to have both things at the same time, faith and science combined, rather continuing these debates that keep hurting so many people on both sides.  I don't really think they're opposites =/

But, ah well.  I'm not really raging.  Just shocked, because I've never seen anything like this before in my life, it lines up with my own ideas on faith (... I developed them in mid-high school, which is why I'm revisiting them now), and it was written 1700 years ago.

Before you say anything, these people also don't care that Protestantism broke off of the Catholic Church.

Wasn't the entire point of Protestantism to adopt a more personal faith based on one's own interpretations of the Bible, rather than relying on the words of a potentially corrupt clergyman's understanding of Greek and Latin?  To evade Indulgences, and so on, and make things simpler, less ritualistic?

Less, dare I say it, stratified?

*siiiiiiigh*

Oh, well.  People don't necessarily need to follow logic with the same sort of obsession that I do, either.  That's okay, too.

[Dsarker]

I prefer the God created the beginnings of the universe, then left it at that. Much like someone observing an experiment running it's course.

And what does that gain Him? If He has the knowledge and power to create the universe, what is there to gain from doing it?

[Duke 2.0]

 This really isnt the place to discutss that too much you know?

[Leafsnail]

Pantheism is better. Can't disprove THAT god now can you?

Somehow I feel obliged to mention invisible unicorns .  Although yeah, what Vector's describing is pretty close to pantheism.

I... dunno, the idea of God being the laws of the universe kindof works if you look at the very first story of Genesis, but seems to rapidly fall apart if you look at most other parts of the Bible.  The laws of the universe didn't give commandments, require prayer and worship and so on.  I mean, there's nothing wrong with it as a belief, but I can see why someone who thinks the Bible is substantially true would reject it.

Yeah.  I just think it would be really cool if people were able to have both things at the same time, faith and science combined, rather continuing these debates that keep hurting so many people on both sides.  I don't really think they're opposites =/

Well, they're clearly not opposites.  Science is an empirical process while faith is... believing in something in the absence of evidence?  They're obviously compatible, the discussion would be whether you need both.

[Dsarker]

Well, the thing is, they address different questions.

[ECrownofFire]

Pantheism is better. Can't disprove THAT god now can you?

Somehow I feel obliged to mention invisible unicorns .  Although yeah, what Vector's describing is pretty close to pantheism.

Nah, that's the "prime mover" or "Spinoza's God". Pantheism maintains that the universe IS a god/the gods (depending if it's mono- or polytheism). Basically, to "disprove" pantheism, you'd have to "disprove" that the universe exists

[Willfor]

This really isnt the place to discutss that too much you know?

^

I realize that any time Christianity is briefly mentioned there has to be a giant discussion on Young Earth Creationism, the finer points of the divide Catholic and Protestant faiths, and God's role within the physics of the universe. But come on guys.

[Dsarker]

Well, kind of. Depending on the pantheism you're looking at, it might also just all be an illusion created by that god, who is you.

[Angel Of Death]

My religion of invisible Pinky Pies is the only true one!

Anyway, I'm RAAAGIIING because of internet stupidity. It's so damn annoying to see people spell 1y|< dis bcoz thae thnk its c00l.

[Dsarker]

My religion of invisible Pinky Pies is the only true one!

Anyway, I'm RAAAGIIING because of internet stupidity. It's so damn annoying to see people spell 1y|< dis bcoz thae thnk its c00l.

Think of it like this: in twenty years, you could use a word as a password and no one will be able to guess it.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Before you say anything, these people also don't care that Protestantism broke off of the Catholic Church.

Wasn't the entire point of Protestantism to adopt a more personal faith based on one's own interpretations of the Bible, rather than relying on the words of a potentially corrupt clergyman's understanding of Greek and Latin?  To evade Indulgences, and so on, and make things simpler, less ritualistic?

Less, dare I say it, stratified?

*siiiiiiigh*

Oh, well.  People don't necessarily need to follow logic with the same sort of obsession that I do, either.  That's okay, too.

As I understand it there wasn't so much a point to Protestantism as it was predictable the result of the Catholic Church pushing the envelope too far and permanently shattering any chance of a unified church. The Indulgences were just the one money-making method that ended up turning Martin Luther against the Catholic Church, and from there things just spiraled out of control. There are plenty of Protestant groups that maintain a fair amount of rituals, with the Pentecostals foremost in my mind. Then again, my experience with Lutherans didn't have very much ritual in it outside of weekly hymns and prayer. I may not have seen all they do in the way of rituals before I got out, though.

[Akura]

You know, at this point I don't even understand the strict creationists who think God created everything in 7 days, or why there's any controversy to be taught.  The earth was created by a certain number of physical rules out in the universe, and then a bunch of stuff slowly started emerging.

Why can't we take God = physical laws of the universe, which have been pretty nice to us, and leave it at that?

Because that isn't what they think, or how they think about it. These fundamentalists literally think that 6000 years ago, their god, who to them is a real person who knows everything and can do anything, made Earth and the rest of the universe out of nothing in a week. They want the laws of whatever country they live in to reflect everything The Bible says, literally. That is their agenda, and they will not accept anything less.

And few people see this on a regular basis than I do.
And the parts of the Bible I don't accept is the stuff that they seem to be focused on. Just today, we had a lesson, the same verse having been used quite a few times in the past few weeks, about how God rewards those who serve him. Okay, so basically you're telling people to worship for gain or profit? Not so you would be a good person, or that it's the right thing to do, but because you get something out of it. And yes, they seemed to be presenting it in that way.

Huh, that stuff is giving me an idea to write a fiction about how God as we know him isn't really the creator of the universe, but rather trying to enslave the souls humanity through false promises of eternal reward, which is really just being eternal slaves to his will(which is more or less what real Christianity believes anyway), and that Satan isn't really ruler over Hell(God is, punishing those that don't submit to him), but is trying to free humanity from such single-minded servitude by giving us different ways of thinking, believing, and acting.

Could be interesting. My boss would completely freak out if he read it. It might piss off way to many people, though.

[Willfor]

Huh, that stuff is giving me an idea to write a fiction about how God as we know him isn't really the creator of the universe, but rather trying to enslave the souls humanity through false promises of eternal reward, which is really just being eternal slaves to his will(which is more or less what real Christianity believes anyway), and that Satan isn't really ruler over Hell(God is, punishing those that don't submit to him), but is trying to free humanity from such single-minded servitude by giving us different ways of thinking, believing, and acting.

Could be interesting. My boss would completely freak out if he read it. It might piss off way to many people, though.

It's been written a few times by now, actually, and it's almost a constant theme in fantasy novels that involve religion that are not written by devout members of a religion. And sometimes even by devout members of the religion, IIRC.

I happen to be part of a branch that doesn't believe satan is ruling Hell, but that it is a prison for him as well. CS Lewis actually wrote a good essay on why the dualism present in mainstream Christianity today is a dogma built up by cautionary tales over the last couple of millennia.