My last attempt (2 Viewers)

[Cage1]

In 5,000,000,000 years, some crackpot is going to point up at the expanding sun and say, "See? I told you we were doomed!"

 

[Dago]

It's been a good while since the last one. These types of threads pop up every now and then, but fairly rare.

well that hardly sounds like a serious effort to me. If I was really serious about saving souls, I would start a thread every hour

 

[DaveXA]

well that hardly sounds like a serious effort to me. If I was really serious about saving souls, I would start a thread every hour

Lol, let's not give anyone ideas. Us mods and staff would like a little reprieve this offseason.

 

[Cage1]

"Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.“ (Matthew 16: 28)

This right here should shut down all talk of some sort of Biblical reckoning. Your boy was flat out wrong.

 

[Dago]

Lol, let's not give anyone ideas. Us mods and staff would like a little reprieve this offseason.

 

[Cage1]

I certainly can understand the compulsion to warn others of a danger you believe to exist. If I was on a trail and I believed there to be a hungry grizzly bear around the bend, I would warn others of that danger. I would feel a moral obligation to warn others.

If there’s actually no bear, I appear the fool - but my intentions, at least, remain unassailable.

So let's change the hypothetical just a hair. What if people who have never spotted a bear on the trail cautioned about a bear there, acting like it was a certainty even though no one had ever seen one or any evidence of one. And they had done that consistently for 2000 years. At some point their intentions are also suspect.

 

[Heathen Saint]

So let's change the hypothetical just a hair. What if people who have never spotted a bear on the trail cautioned about a bear there, acting like it was a certainty even though no one had ever seen one or any evidence of one. And they had done that consistently for 2000 years. At some point their intentions are also suspect.

And change Bear to the mythical ‘demon’ or ‘monster’ or something, because Bears are too relatable, even in the hypothetical that they had never been proven to exist

 

[Heathen Saint]

I’d also like to make the point that given another hypothetical, that the god of Christianity is in fact the only true god, in which case I’m on a fast lane to hell...

If one believes the accounts of the Bible and what the Christian god did, then I want no part of it/him even if they are the ultimate truth. There is a moral case to be made that god is more immoral than the devil he created. Slaughtering children, ordering archaic laws and bloodthirsty tribal conflicts..yeah, if he’s real, he’s a terrible, terrible entity not worth our time or all the accounts of his actions are completely fabricated in which case he has some explaining to do for not making his nature clear to the people he created.

And around and around we go....I don’t know that I’m right, but I know that I’m doing the best I can with the evidence (or lack thereof) I have to work with. Human nature should never be a death sentence by default. It’s asinine in my mind.

 

[superchuck500]

I’d also like to make the point that given another hypothetical, that the god of Christianity is in fact the only true god, in which case I’m on a fast lane to hell...

If one believes the accounts of the Bible and what the Christian god did, then I want no part of it/him even if they are the ultimate truth. There is a moral case to be made that god is more immoral than the devil he created. Slaughtering children, ordering archaic laws and bloodthirsty tribal conflicts..yeah, if he’s real, he’s a terrible, terrible entity not worth our time or all the accounts of his actions are completely fabricated in which case he has some explaining to do for not making his nature clear to the people he created.

And around and around we go....I don’t know that I’m right, but I know that I’m doing the best I can with the evidence (or lack thereof) I have to work with. Human nature should never be a death sentence by default. It’s asinine in my mind.

Dude. You’re gonna have your head cut off.

 

[Booker]

...If one believes the accounts of the Bible and what the Christian god did, then I want no part of it/him even if they are the ultimate truth. There is a moral case to be made that god is more immoral than the devil he created. Slaughtering children, ordering archaic laws and bloodthirsty tribal conflicts..yeah, if he’s real, he’s a terrible, terrible entity not worth our time or all the accounts of his actions are completely fabricated in which case he has some explaining to do for not making his nature clear to the people he created...

Reminds me of this meme...

 

[Heathen Saint]

Dude. You’re gonna have your head cut off.

 

[Dago]

Dude. You’re gonna have your head cut off.

which one?

 

[DaveXA]

I’d also like to make the point that given another hypothetical, that the god of Christianity is in fact the only true god, in which case I’m on a fast lane to hell...

If one believes the accounts of the Bible and what the Christian god did, then I want no part of it/him even if they are the ultimate truth. There is a moral case to be made that god is more immoral than the devil he created. Slaughtering children, ordering archaic laws and bloodthirsty tribal conflicts..yeah, if he’s real, he’s a terrible, terrible entity not worth our time or all the accounts of his actions are completely fabricated in which case he has some explaining to do for not making his nature clear to the people he created.

And around and around we go....I don’t know that I’m right, but I know that I’m doing the best I can with the evidence (or lack thereof) I have to work with. Human nature should never be a death sentence by default. It’s asinine in my mind.

Well, I'll just say it's certainly not "death by default" and of course, discussion of the nature and character of God is far more complex and deep than simply ticking off what he supposedly did in the Old Testament.

Regardless, that's for a different thread and different topic entirely.

 

[St. Geezy]

These are all cults and for-profit businesses, some are just significantly more accepted than others, and we refer to the accepted ones as “religions” or "church." I actually grew up in the Catholic Church, went to Catholic school and identified as Catholic in my youth. But in adulthood, its really what I see now.

Church offers people several things - moral guidance, a mechanism to cope with hardships such as death of loved ones, and lastly and perhaps subconsciously most importantly, a sense of self-importance and purpose in this grand universe. Understandably, hardly anyone wants to hear or accept that they're no different than animals in the wild, or microscopic parasites; humans just have the ability to think intelligently, just as a bird has the ability to fly or a fish has the ability to breathe underwater. So naturally, humans believe they're more important than anything in this universe, and that there is something much more grand-scale going on specifically for them, despite the fact that we're on one of several hundred billion planets in our tiny little galaxy, which is amongst a couple trillion galaxies, most of which with billions of planets of their own.

To each his own. Whatever helps you sleep better.

 

[DaveXA]

These are all cults and for-profit businesses, some are just significantly more accepted than others, and we refer to the accepted ones as “religions.”

It offers people several things - moral guidance, a mechanism to cope with hardships such as death of loved ones, and lastly and perhaps subconsciously most importantly, a sense of self-importance and purpose in this grand universe. Understandably, hardly anyone wants to hear or accept that they're no different than animals in the wild, or microscopic parasites; humans just have the ability to think intelligently, just as a bird has the ability to fly or a fish has the ability to breathe underwater. So naturally, humans believe they're more important than anything in this universe, and that there is something much more grand-scale going on specifically for them.

To each his own. Whatever helps you sleep better.

What you say is all nice sounding and convincing even, but, it's an incomplete picture of faith and religion. To categorize everything as a cult and/or business is lazy and I think unjustified. The several things you say it offers barely scratches the surface, and not particularly accurate.

But yeah, to each his own.