On Wed, 2003-01-22 at 04:38, Paul Baker wrote: > On Tuesday, January 21, 2003, at 09:53 PM, Matthew Palmer wrote: > > You probably don't believe that a Catholic HS religion teacher could be > more concerned with loving the lord than any of the catholic doctrines > but it's true. <snip> I remember that my High school Teacher, a Mr. Wilmot, was very similar. His main point was that you couldn't take the bible literally but you also couldn't say that an all powerful God couldn't have done it that way if he had chose to do so. > > You really can't take anything in the bible literally. The bible was > passed entirely verbally for many hundreds or thousands of years before > it was written down. Things are bound to get changed as they are passed > from one generation to the next and even across languages. And of > course don't forget that when King James finally had pen put to ink I'm > sure a lot of politics went into it. It's a shame there are so many > Christians that take the bible so literally. And really you can pick > any point you want to prove and find one or more passages in the bible > that taken out of context will prove your point. Both sides of any > argument can do it. It really just comes down to who has more of the > bible memorized for the particular argument. Crap like this gives us > good sane Christians a bad name. It all depends in my opinion on a personal sense of fallibility. There are so many people, and I in no way limit this to Christians, who imagine that they are right about everything and responsible for nothing. In a next door neighbour, this can lead to arguments and sometimes violence. In a religious leader sense it leads to ordering thousands to their deaths for the 'glory' of God/s, or declaring punishments for individuals without any semblance of justice. I personaly no longer believe in God/s, I simply found that I could no longer convince myself that it was true, I didn't see any reason why I as an individual should be more important than my cat in the eyes of a creator. However I also see that I could be wrong, I might die and come face to face with the creator of the universe, and that is why I don't feel the need to push my opinions on others, if they want to believe then good for them, imho thats all that matters. <snip> > One thing I also came away with from his teaching was that the > existence of God will never be proven. This is by God's design. Yeah I > know it sounds like a bullshit theory. But seriously. God gave us free > will. Part of that free will is deciding whether or not we want to > believe if she actually exists. God left it up to us to decide for > ourselves--he didn't leave a bunch of sloppy proof laying around to > make the decision easy for us. If we some day found "proof" that God > existed, then we would all be forced to believe in God and any other > stupid rules that someone wants to attach to the existence of God, such > as abortion or pre-marital sex or even birth-control are sins. That's > just stupid and God knows better. She knew that if some stupid zealot > could make a bunch of rules claiming they came from God and then show > proof on top of it that we all would be forced to believe. Good bye > free will and then the world would be a pretty boring place more likely > than not. Have you watched the film Dogma? It very nearly saved my beliefs and echoes what you say, very closely indeed. > > Well anyway I've probably given enough reason for people to hate me now > so I'll stop. Anybody who hates you after reading that is simply either a bigot or a self important fool. > > -- > Paul Baker == a Catholic who doesn't care if you believe in a different > invisible man than he does > > "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary > safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." > -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 > > GPG Key: http://homepage.mac.com/pauljbaker/public.asc -- John Holroyd <valisk@softhome.net> Demos Technosis Ltd
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