I’ve looked around the “World’s Last Chance” site, mentioned in the previous post, a bit more. Although the “next Pope is John Paul II, back from the dead” angle is certainly peculiar :), the rest of the site is mostly of the “apocalyptic Christian” kind; in other words, Jesus is almost here (any day now). A huge part of that site - indeed, it appears to be its most important message - is this: the Catholic Church has changed God’s day (the Sabbath) from Saturday to Sunday. According to that site, anyone who “gives” Sunday (instead of Saturday) to God, who rests on that day, and so on, is in fact, worshipping Satan instead of God, and is surely on the path to damnation.
Now, think about the universe. It’s something much bigger than you probably imagine. The stars you see aren’t just there to make the night look nice; they’re light years away, huge, and (literal interpretations of Genesis notwithstanding) very, very old. Most of them are older than the Earth. A lot of them don’t even exist anymore, due to the fact that the speed of light isn’t infinite; the light you see was “sent” millennia ago, but the source is long gone.
There’s much more out there. Nebulae, pulsars, quasars, black holes. Millions and millions of galaxies, each of them with millions of stars. Many are so far away that even our most powerful telescopes can’t see them.
In short, the universe is incredibly vast. Compared to it, the Earth is absolutely nothing - an infinitesimal speck of dust.
And yet, we believe that a divine creator, responsible for such an universe, capable of ever conceiving such vastness and variety… would worry about days of the week?
That’s as absurd as believing that, in all that infinite universe, the only place that matters is this insignificant little planet. Or that a cosmic creator would, somehow, choose a primitive tribe as his “chosen people”, a couple of millennia ago. That an infinitely supreme being would have human traits, like he does in the Bible. That he would choose to incarnate as a human being, in a primitive era, seen by just a few hundred people, and thus “save” us - as long as we believed that he did. That he would bother creating a “heaven” and a “hell” for our afterlives. That we would be his reason for creating the universe.
The Judeo/Christian/Muslim god is too human, and too small. He’s no different from, say, the Greek gods, who were obviously created with human personalities and character faults.
The fact that even in super-hero comics we see beings like Galactus or Eternity who are, and behave, much more “god-like” than the god worshipped by millions of us should tell us something. Namely, that our primitive ancestors created small gods because they couldn’t imagine anything bigger.
The God in the Christian Bible, or the Koran, isn’t really bigger than any of us. He isn’t wiser, more vast, more cosmic, like a god capable of creating the universe - or even of creating this world - would certainly be. He isn’t even better, as in “a better person” - in fact, he’s jealous, insecure, attention-craving, violent, sadistic, can be deceived, and often acts like a spoiled child. Even if he existed (which I doubt - such a being wouldn’t be capable of creating even a doll house, much less a universe), I don’t think he would deserve our worship.
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The seven-day week originated in ancient Mesopotamia and became part of the Roman calendar in 321AD. Prior to that time the Roman Republic used a “market week” of eight days. So when Jeebus was supposedly alive, there actually was no “Sunday” as we know it.
God is bullshit all of us with an IQ of 100+ should understand that. And pretty much I hate to be harsh but anyone who disagrees … well their opinion isn’t worth the hair on my balls. That said most of us understand that if god exists he is a little twat so please. Please post a thread about something other than god, threads on god produce more conflict and unreasoning with people turning their heads to others opinions. So post something else, something that all types of beliefs can discuss so we can show those stupid those war mongering fanatic worshipers that yes they are stupid. So stupid they believe a giant man like creature assembled them all out of clay. The world is more beautiful when we see how fragile everything is how amazing all this creator less glory is and how beautiful a place we fuck up.
And before you “god” followers attempt to bash me up take a good look around and realize that everything looks so shit due to your heads being lodged far up you anus.
Your no different than scientologists and no different that a cult with Jessica Simpson as your leader.
All that said yes it was a very good thread but just not a great discussion piece.
And while this religion this is still around (and I hope it won’t be for much longer) this is a good one.
What if the biblical story of Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden was just a metaphor which could be interpreted as “Ignorance is Bliss”?
For instance:
They were in paradise, but told not to eat from the “Tree of Knowledge”. When they did eat from the tree they were banished.
1. They were in paradise (Because they never stopped to think about reality)
2. They were told not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge (deep inside themselves, they knew that they didn’t want to know the real truth and face reality)
3. After eating from the Tree of Knowledge, they were banished from paradise (they merely opened their eyes, and rid themselves of ignorance which in turn made them realize that the world was not, in fact, a paradise).
Well, the Israelites already had a 7-day week (it’s in the OT, which is much older than Jesus) and I’m guessing that they used it in Israel, even when it was under Roman rule. More here.