Seriously, what a mess. This topic seems to be jumping around from "interesting and thoughtful" to "downright hateful and arogant." For every page I see that seems to be engaging in a friendly discussion, there's at least one
wonderful comment. Like this one:
So Greek mythology is true because they wrote them down?
The main reason people who believe in gods are dumb retarded idiots is the act of looking at the hundreds of religions of humanity and thinking one is true and the rest false. Newsflash: yours is just as retarded as all those others. You're just too blind to see it.
Seriously, this is really rude. I don't go around calling atheists and agnostics ignorant idiots - I have an uncle who's an agnostic, and I'm friends with him. If a Christian friend told me that they had become atheistic, I wouldn't yell in his face "YOU'RE A DUMB RETARTED IDIOT!" The main thing I get so ticked off with is that some atheists pass all religions and all their followers off as simpleminded, without any actual reason for it except "religion is stupid." If you want to personally view the idea of God as stupid, fine, but going around and dismissing all people who disagree with you as "idiots" only makes you sound like a jerk. Ever heard of Pascal? Newton? They were devout Christians, and yet without them, we wouldn't have some of the most defining mathematical and scientific principals of our time. Even Einstein, who is often called the greatest scientist ever, believed in an inteligent creator. Are you willing to call them "stupid ignorant idiots" as well?
As you can probably tell, I'm a Christian - but it seems that I differ from a lot of the other Christians on this board. I believe in a Bible that is 100% acurate, and that belief includes a literal interpretation of Genesis. Honestly, I feel that if a Christians starts to deny any part of the Bible, then they are opening a can of worms that could only lead to denying other parts - and so on, until they refuese to believe any of it. I'm not applying this to everyone - all I know is that if I did that, that would probably be the result. Still, I know that interpreting Genesis as a proverbial book doesn't even slighly deny someone's status as a Believer - what matters is whether you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your only savior. I'm perfectly willing to disagree on issues like the creation account - it's really not a whole different than disagreeing whether the "Sons of God" and "Daughters of Men" were only humans or a mixture of humans and angels. It doesn't affect whether we are saved or not.
On the issue of other religions, Christianity is very different from any other belief system. Basically all other belief systems were either made by people trying to explain the world around them, or started by people who wanted to be worshiped for some reason or another. There are exceptions - Bhudda was just a spiritual teacher who ended up being worshiped without his directive, for example - but generally all false religions fall into one of those two catergories. Christianity... not so much. The big thing to understand is that there WAS a man named Jesus who was a carpenter and taught people about God. You can not deny that he existed without also denying historical records that were made by the goverment and other sources at the time. Thus, it comes down to either that he was a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. If he was a liar, like most other religion starters are, then he would just have denied he was God during his trial. I suppose you could argue that he was a lunatic, but Jesus's general description is not one of lunacy. He is recorded as being gentle, thoughtful, inteligent, and one who is excellent with language and parables. If he was a lunatic, then how was he able to continually outwit the religious leaders, who were considered to be the smartest people at the time? Insanity and inteligence just doesn't go hand to hand - they're basically oxymorons. A lot of people come to the conclusion that the Bible and Christianity was made up by people - but those people were recorded to have died refusing to renounce their beliefs. If it was a lie concoted by some power-seeking "teachers," then they would have not willingly have gone to the grave.
My conclusion has basically been that Christianity makes far more sense than any other belief. It's not mindlessly believing what my parents have told me - I've struggled a lot with this issue myself. But I feel that I just don't have any other choice - because in my opinion, Christianity is the most logical belief system. And seriously, logic is my life - I don't really have faith as much as logic. I actually often don't trust that God is going to provide everything that I need - which is mainly because after reading about other Christian experiences, it sometimes just doesn't seem logical for me to assume that. It's a problem, but I just have to work through it. At least it's better than not having any solid sense of morality and truth.
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