monkeyseemonkeydo

Depends on the monkey...

A much underused word these days. "It's a blatant clue, innit, blatant!"

Man you are so dumb and ignorant I can't even begin to explain it.

Why do you believe that? When in your life did you decide that the way of Christianity was for you?

But it does have an edge. There's no fence of course but our Universe could be likened to a balloon, which is continually inflating. Kinda.

Why? In the absence of matter (in the region beyond our Universe) what can you possibly be left with?

Americans are so messed up.

Man he must've been bored in the infinite time he was around before he decided to create the Universe. Wonder if he had a hobby...

Hallelujah!

To quote the rather little known philosopher Landroverus "One life. Live it."

Yeah, I was thinking he's a bit pants too. And him regularly finishing in the top 3 in the American rally series just supports that idea too. He's crap.

Only if a certain family of Giraffes were subjected to (and survived) very regular tsunamis and so were able to reproduce and pass on the genetic knowledge required to evolve such things. I can't put my finger on it but it seems like this thread is going very slightly off course... not necessarily a bad thing of course, particularly if you're a rather forward looking philosophical Giraffe...

And because no genes can subsequently be passed on for the genetic modification required for the said obliterated giraffes to grow gills or meteor proof exoskeletons!

Technically speaking we can make water by combining hydrogen and oxygen and we also have UV lamps and the ability to recreate the temperatures on the surface of the sun so I guess that makes us all powerful, nae gods. Must. Not. Post. Facepalm.

I pooped a cornish gay man.

Not sure about the bringing life to millions... are we talking ? Would you like to tell that to the 300,000 people who lost their lives in the 2004 Tsunami or shall I? Oh, wait...

Why not? To go off topic, on the reincarnation front I've never quite got the route back up... If you're bad you come back as a newt or a dung beatle or whatever. How, precisely do you lead a prosperous and positive life as a dung beatle in order to work your way up to being a dog and eventually back to a human again? Am I missing something?!

Ah, fair enough. It was inevitable really that that would be the case. Sarcasm/Irony noted. It's not as simple as that though, as has been shown in this thread. For some people, faith is the be all and end all of everything and no amount of facts, evidence, proof or sense will make them question that faith. It's kind of the ultimate trump card, which in their minds is the only answer needed for any non believers. To the logical fact>faith but to someone with faith, faith=faith.

Exactly, what if the heretics had never had the chance to investigate the world in which we live in? If the church (sorry to go back there) had its way we'd still believe the Earth was the centre of the solar system, was flat and who knows what else? Thankfully we haven't burried our heads in the sand of an ancient text and never updated our beliefs and instead have made it our goal to further our own understanding independent of any kind of superior being. No comment. But do you contest that 'the church' of medieval times was Christianity in an organisational sense? Or do you think that 'the church' of old was a corrupt organisation (almost mafia like in its structure) who simply saw the weakness in those who followed the Christian belief system and used that to impart power over the masses and 'work them over' for massive personal gain? Also, respect for the last section of your post which although I don't know the ins and outs of your beliefs I can see that it must be kind of difficult to find acceptance in any of the 'camps'.

All points taken on board . Absolutely. I can't think of a single war started in the name of Buddhism, any extremist terrorist groups using Buddhism as an excuse to murder innocent people or any Buddhists claiming that 9/11 was the work of any kind of god. In fact the only slightly questionable side to Buddhism is the reincarnation thing which, although the cause of quite a lot of road deaths if I understand correctly, is a fairly nice way of thinking about things which doesn't use any threats of violence or pain to try and point followers to do good acts and lead a worthwhile life. Christianity on the other hand... Edit: No animosity intended at all Ben. Your posts often go over my head but it's very refreshing to hear from someone like yourself who can question both sides from most angles, rather than the blind faith shown by Christians and blind trust in proof, understanding and science which I'm afflicted by.

Please don't bother on my account, I'll just ignore it completely and continue to blindly follow my new god, FeS. Ignoring the Crusades, for a very obvious example if you look at medieval england: "In Medieval England, the Church dominated everybody's life. All Medieval people - be they village peasants or towns people - believed that God, Heaven and Hell all existed. From the very earliest of ages, the people were taught that the only way they could get to Heaven was if the Roman Catholic Church let them. Everybody would have been terrified of Hell and the people would have been told of the sheer horrors awaiting for them in Hell in the weekly services they attended. The control the Church had over the people was total. Peasants worked for free on Church land. This proved difficult for peasants as the time they spent working on Church land, could have been better spent working on their own plots of land producing food for their families. They paid 10% of what they earned in a year to the Church (this tax was called tithes). Tithes could be paid in either money or in goods produced by the peasant farmers. As peasants had little money, they almost always had to pay in seeds, harvested grain, animals etc. This usually caused a peasant a lot of hardship as seeds, for example, would be needed to feed a family the following year. What the Church got in tithes was kept in huge tithe barns; a lot of the stored grain would have been eaten by rats or poisoned by their urine. A failure to pay tithes, so the peasants were told by the Church, would lead to their souls going to Hell after they had died." Stuff like that. The Church itself required control over the masses and got it through instilling fear into them of eternal damnation etc. For the people back then, in their uneducated status struggling to just survive, their belief in what they were told was complete and the lived in true fear of the consequences of not obeying the church and its teachings. That's just bullying on a massive scale to gain control and ensure some form of stability. But if I'm reading your points correctly, the aspects which you accept are still acceptable today are things which are simply down to common sense and morals, which are basically part of our genetic makeup. Don't kill people or be nasty for no reason? Don't rape? Don't steal? Don't get jiggy with your mates missus? I'd like to think that in the absence of religion the human race would still realise that those things aren't really acceptable and we know and are taught from an early age (with no link to god, religion or whatever) that these things are wrong and to be nice to each other.

Sorry, that wasn't meant as a serious comment about your (or anyones) beliefs, just a sarcastic comment that popped into my head when I read your post . † Praise FeS †

Don't forget that the book and it's teachings were created in a time when only a very tiny proportion of people (particularly the masses whom I imagine the book was aimed at preaching towards) could actually read or write and so I very much doubt it was intended as a deep philosophical journey to enable them to understand. It would've been written to instil fear in the people and ensure a placid and controlable society while giving them something good to look forward to if they behave themselves in life. Looking back on it with our knowledge today and looking for the 'hidden meaning' of the stories seems pointless as that would never have been the intention.

Give it time. Maybe in 1000 years someone will write a book about how he healed everyone he touched and turned seawater into Gin and Tonics before sacrificing his life for the salvation of us all. Unfortunately the book will mistake his father for Spot the Dog, resulting in two thousand years of people reciting the teachings of Spot and how he got lost and Sally had to find him, before he went to school and eventually visited Sally's grandparents. Many wars will be faught and lives lost over those who believed that Spot was chasing the butterfly in the Gospel 'Spot Goes for a Walk' or whether he was attempting to eat it, thus indicating that the butterfly is in fact the embodiment of pure evil.