Hello everybody!
Wow i think i found this forum at excatly the right time! I am a member of another forum (homerecording.com) and also a Christian (I was saved about a year ago) Anyway I was on the homerecording forum and the topic of Christianity came up. There was a really good post there that had a lot of good questions and also a lot of misinterpretations about Christianity and I really want to answer as quickly as I can, so that people don't loose intrest and let the thread fade away. This post is kind of a beast (at least for me) to answer quickly. The faster I can post a good answer the more people will see the truth.
So here is the post.
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Originally posted by Cyrokk @ homerecording.com
In my opinion, Christianity is flawed because it fails to answer any question about mankind's existence. For one, it suggests that salvation began a little less than 2000 years ago. Where is any salvation before then? Are you telling me that any pre-Christian soul went to hell and stayed there? Christianity also fails completely in answering why millions of good people die in natural catastrophe. To whole-heartedly embrace Christianity is (again, my opinion here) to embrace a tunnel vision of the world that ignores other religions. When I went to church with my parents, I used to hear (what I thought was) the most arrogant ("We are born sinners", "Jews receive no salvation because they don't follow Christ"), ignorant ("God grants your wishes"), and illogical ("You are forgiven, but you will be judged before you enter heaven", "Jesus had to die so that God could accept you") statements that were the direct result of Christian thinking. I have never received any satisfactory answer to the questions that Christianity ignores, mainly because you cannot successfully answer them within the confines of Christian thought. As such, I really do not think man's existence can be answered in the Christian perspective without breaking philosophical rules or violating common sense.
Not only did I do research (my answer to your original post resulted in "no") but I still research. Currently I am trying to determine what Christianity was like in between the crucifixion and St. Paul's epistles (a narrow time frame of twenty years). I am currently reading the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas to get an idea of how some of the many splinter sects of the time congealed into the basis for which Paul took his religious convictions. I could never do this as a Christian, because Gnosticism is out of the context of Christian dogma, and reading alternative documents is deemed heretical.
But still, no matter how much historical research I conduct, it still doesn't really answer the question of man's existence does it? Interestingly, by attacking the questions I stated above questioning Christianity I have found a personal belief that although still evolves, makes much more sense. Currently, I think there is a God. I think that we are originally part of the perfection of God, but we do not have any individual free will in that state. So God spins us off onto Earth with complete and total free will to do and think whatever we want. We are here to learn how to harness this independence from God. God does not intervene (because that would be against free will). We have to tough it here until we die. And when we die, we return to the afterlife, enjoying ourselves as separate entities in the presence of God. And perhaps, in those cases where someone on Earth dies prematurely, then reincarnation kicks in so that their soul can continue to work on its independence.
My belief is that the true gift from God is free will.
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End of post
So that is the beast. Any help with this would be awesome.
Thanks,
Dustin
Wow i think i found this forum at excatly the right time! I am a member of another forum (homerecording.com) and also a Christian (I was saved about a year ago) Anyway I was on the homerecording forum and the topic of Christianity came up. There was a really good post there that had a lot of good questions and also a lot of misinterpretations about Christianity and I really want to answer as quickly as I can, so that people don't loose intrest and let the thread fade away. This post is kind of a beast (at least for me) to answer quickly. The faster I can post a good answer the more people will see the truth.
So here is the post.
-------------------------------------
Originally posted by Cyrokk @ homerecording.com
In my opinion, Christianity is flawed because it fails to answer any question about mankind's existence. For one, it suggests that salvation began a little less than 2000 years ago. Where is any salvation before then? Are you telling me that any pre-Christian soul went to hell and stayed there? Christianity also fails completely in answering why millions of good people die in natural catastrophe. To whole-heartedly embrace Christianity is (again, my opinion here) to embrace a tunnel vision of the world that ignores other religions. When I went to church with my parents, I used to hear (what I thought was) the most arrogant ("We are born sinners", "Jews receive no salvation because they don't follow Christ"), ignorant ("God grants your wishes"), and illogical ("You are forgiven, but you will be judged before you enter heaven", "Jesus had to die so that God could accept you") statements that were the direct result of Christian thinking. I have never received any satisfactory answer to the questions that Christianity ignores, mainly because you cannot successfully answer them within the confines of Christian thought. As such, I really do not think man's existence can be answered in the Christian perspective without breaking philosophical rules or violating common sense.
Not only did I do research (my answer to your original post resulted in "no") but I still research. Currently I am trying to determine what Christianity was like in between the crucifixion and St. Paul's epistles (a narrow time frame of twenty years). I am currently reading the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas to get an idea of how some of the many splinter sects of the time congealed into the basis for which Paul took his religious convictions. I could never do this as a Christian, because Gnosticism is out of the context of Christian dogma, and reading alternative documents is deemed heretical.
But still, no matter how much historical research I conduct, it still doesn't really answer the question of man's existence does it? Interestingly, by attacking the questions I stated above questioning Christianity I have found a personal belief that although still evolves, makes much more sense. Currently, I think there is a God. I think that we are originally part of the perfection of God, but we do not have any individual free will in that state. So God spins us off onto Earth with complete and total free will to do and think whatever we want. We are here to learn how to harness this independence from God. God does not intervene (because that would be against free will). We have to tough it here until we die. And when we die, we return to the afterlife, enjoying ourselves as separate entities in the presence of God. And perhaps, in those cases where someone on Earth dies prematurely, then reincarnation kicks in so that their soul can continue to work on its independence.
My belief is that the true gift from God is free will.
----------------------------------
End of post
So that is the beast. Any help with this would be awesome.
Thanks,
Dustin
