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Todays thing: Freedom.
Why discussing about it? (besides that it was in one of the religion classes), because my teacher claimed the opposite of sin is freedom (he literaly said that), yet Satan is still to blame for all this (but wait, didn't he have freedom after all?)

God did not create evil, God created only the good things of the universe (oh wow, a lot of times I heard everything was made by God and the only thing that did "make" itself was God himself). One of the most important things God created was freedom. It gave freedom to all of his creatures, humans and angels included, yet one angel, Lucifer, didn't have any respect for his creator nor for the concept of freedom and thus tried to take the leadership, but God punished this crime. In that moment, the evil was created, but God didn't stop it, instead it allowed it to show how good himself and his creations are, compared to those of the traitors. The only was to counter the sins we do under the influence of the evil is freedom, we must proove that we don't depend on them and that we are free to choose the way of God.

After that we discussed about something from Eden's garden, didn't sound too weird, so perhaps not worth to mention. But, hey freedom is the opposite of sin? Didn't Lucifer have the freedom to do whatever he wanted? (including creating evil, getting out of God's word, etc). We as individuals, aren't free to choose not necesarry the way of God, but any other way that is convinient for us? Something doesn't fit at all here. Also on the same note, he added something about "free-thinkers":

The free-thinkers are probably worse than atheist and satanist (oh, really?). While an atheist, a pagan or a satanist can be easily dragged on the good way, a free thinker is harder to be touched. Free thinking is something that lead to the creations of various sects that are spreading fake doctrines like a plague in our society. If you don't understand something, please don't interpret it, ask a priest instead, we can clarify it better for you.

In other words: "Don't use your brain, let us think for you"?

Welcome to the trait that most strong Christians share - arrogance.

NanTheDark wrote:That's not really what I thought of... Maybe just stop dissing other doctrines and accept that we're not that different, and maybe have a barbecue every now and then. :3

Oh, heh. Yeah, I would love to see that some day. Unfortunately there's always going to be one ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in the world.

When you force a thought upon someone, it's just... not the same.

Also, I hate the fact that this world wants progress, yet keeps people as down as possible. I guess they need mindless worker ants... And I mean this not just Religion-wise. But it also applies.

As a Christian, I personally think it's best to not shove religion down someone's throat. You can show it to them, and tell them what it's about. It should be up to them to choose whether or not they wanna join.

And that way, it's actually more likely that they might become happy christians, if they do. When you force religion down someone's throat, they end up hating it.

Like it seems to be happening with Bogdan.



Also, Harmless, we should totally have a Super Duper Christian Barbecue someday. It will be like a regular barbecue, but we'll have a giant sign with a cross somewhere.

If you don't understand something, please don't interpret it, ask a priest instead, we can clarify it better for you.

But then aren't you just asking the priests to interpret it for you? No matter what, someone has to interpret it to get some sort of meaning out of it, even if the interpretation is literal. It sounds to me like they're basically saying "Interpretation is bad, so don't do that. Instead, just ask us. We'll interpret it for you."

(By the way, I am agnostic but leaning towards Christianity, raised in a very open-minded Catholic family)

(Huh, I'm agnostic as well. I'm pretty certain my family was neutral on religion as well, but I've seen some pretty nasty Catholics out there.)

NanTheDark wrote:As a Christian, I personally think it's best to not shove religion down someone's throat. You can show it to them, and tell them what it's about. It should be up to them to choose whether or not they wanna join.

And that way, it's actually more likely that they might become happy christians, if they do. When you force religion down someone's throat, they end up hating it.

Like it seems to be happening with Bogdan.

Definitely agreeing with you there. Personally, I hate the concept of Hell though. There should be no reason for someone to go to Hell just because of their viewpoint, especially if they have a strong reason for that viewpoint. I personally lean towards reasoning and logic, but hey. God COULD exist. We just need more substantial proof that he does (no, the Bible does not count).

Also, Harmless, we should totally have a Super Duper Christian Barbecue someday. It will be like a regular barbecue, but we'll have a giant sign with a cross somewhere.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH

NanTheDark wrote:And that way, it's actually more likely that they might become happy christians, if they do. When you force religion down someone's throat, they end up hating it.

Like it seems to be happening with Bogdan.

2 years or so ago (you can check posts for that), I was one of the people to parrot things and then force people to swallow them, a lot lot of people disagreed with me (more on the internet than irl btw) that forced me to do some research "I'll show them who is right" and then it started with a question and "Hm, something doesn't fit" then further questions "Hey, that doesn't make sense" in final ending to the conclusion that "I got it wrong". I didn't turn agnostic-atheist just to impress people (I'm no r/atheist), but the fact that all this wasn't coming from me, but someone else and I just recorded the message and played when triggered. For instance the don't-eat-meat-on-wednestdays-and-fridays wasn't a thing I agreed with nor I did it easily, but I was doing that too just because so I was taught at religion classes (and church). I'm a meat eater, I hate most vegetables and hardly tolerate fruits and I was simply starving this days just because of this. Furthermore, I don't know how in english the period in which christians don't eat meat, milk-based stuff and eggs is called, but here we call it "post", in which we are allowed to eat only fruits and vegetables (not even fish). That's the nice "post", but there is also the "black post". It means you don't eat or drink anything (not even water) for 24 hours and a teacher (who happens to be the wife of a priest) recommended to do so during the exams. I mean seriously? Starving and expecting "God" to do the exams for us? I don't eat much myself, but hell I ain't starving nor relying on simply "faith" during my exams.
Nor going every sunday on church was something that got me easy. I wake up quite hard in the morning, and after a week full of school and a lot of things, I think I deserve to sleep a bit more on weekend. Plus, I just had to stay 3 hours or more to listen to prayers, which made me sleep rather than being "touched" (not to mention being tired aswell).
There were also the "don'ts". Don't read that book, is made by evil, don't play video games, they distract you from God, films are horribily made, don't watch them, jada-jada. Hell the same guy we talk about (my religion class teacher) told us some time ago to ignore everything we learned in physics about the universe. He claimed that Earth is still the centre of universe (Didn't Galileo prove the opposite some time ago?), the universe isn't infinite, but round sphere and that's why we cannot touch the edge and all the stars and planets and galaxies are alligned perfectly to form a cross with Jesus hanged on it. Oh wow, seriously? How can you tell that? We were constantly told that nobody saw God, nor the heaven, nor hell nor the whole universe and then we are told that the universe is a sphere, the heaven is wonderful and 10/10 better than Earth?

I personally read Egyptian mythology, it was a hobby of mine since I was little, and I loved it, but cannot say the same thing about Bible, tried to read the Apocalypse, with sounded like the most "entertaining" one but it bored me. That's why (personally) I cannot call myself a christian, because I didn't even read the Bible, all those years, all my relationship with religion was a huge EULA and I just clicked "I agree" without reading it. And I'm not the only case, most people I met that claimed themselves christians didn't read the Bible and I (and some classmates that are also agnostic-atheists) are not taken seriosly, not even by the teachers, claiming "You're too blind to see God's work" and kept being told that once we were baptized we are stuck being christians for our whole life (interesting enough, they reject Hitler being a christian). Personally I share the view of some protestants here, baptism should probably be made at an older age so people can actually mean it, not just throw your kids in water and "Hooray now they are God protected".

Note: oh yeah the point of the topic. No, it's not a topic where I want to complain about all things that happen, nor for your own amusement. I don't know what religion class in your country means, but I do believe (countries having diversity, here more than 80% are orthodox, quite a few jews and muslims (almost none) and if you see a black-skinned individual on the street it's something odd) that people don't force you swallow only a single religion/confession, but teach you about all of those. Here doesn't happen, protestants are blamed and teased (note: Our teacher actually told how wrong being protestant is to a protestant classmate), catholics are meh, but blamed for anything bad that did the christians (no matter if they weren't catholic), muslims and jews are evil and so on. People (unfortunatelly quite a few) asked for a change, but the others either don't care, either think it's good as it is (which is not).

Yeah, I recall Protestantism being more lenient on the whole thing regarding God and how 'whether or not you believe in him' doesn't affect your case as much when you die and stuff.

I'm honestly not surprised that Catholicism has had two splits before (Eastern Orthodox and Protestantism), they're reaching a bit with their teachings and the community in general is not so great.

The not eating thing, I think it's called fasting... and it does take a toll on your health. I don't recommend it unless you're hardcore or something. Also, the whole getting up on sunday thing is probably the reason my mom and I only go to church on Easter. xD

Also, forbidding things is dumb, especially if the reasons given for that make no sense. Playing videogames doesn't make you a mass murderer, no matter how much the media wants to push that idea.

Earth being the centre of the universe... As far as I'm aware there's no evidence of the contrary (pls show it to me if it's available), but I know that we're not in the centre of the Solar System. Since we don't really... know the full shape and extent of the universe, we can't really know our relative position in it. But I guess that it's easier on the mind to just assume that the universe revolves around us.

Also, all the stars and planets and galaxies being aligned... That would be a cool idea if it weren't for the fact stuff is constantly moving around in the universe. Also, I haven't read the whole Bible, but I can assure you 100% that it doesn't contain anything like this. Seriously. Your religion teacher can't just go ahead, and disregard all of physics, then produce something like this out of freaking nowhere.

I absolutely hate the fact that people think science opposes religion. Science is about trying to understand the world around us via experimentation and hyphoteses and whatnot. Science isn't trying to disprove God or religion by any means, I don't know why people keep saying that. Also, people don't know what the word "theory" means. The Big Bang Theory and the Evolution Theory are, well, theories. Possible scenarios for which we don't have definitive proof. But 1) There's people do take these as absolute proof, and 2) There's religious people who think that they're saying that's what's true and that religion is false. And that sucks.

The more I learn about the science, and the more I learn about how everything in the universe is so well connected and works so nicely, the more I believe it was created by some Great Engineer In The Sky. Seriously, it does make sense.

And for those who didn't know, during the Middle Ages there were many catholic monks who worked copying texts from the greek, philosophy, math, physics, and a lot of other knowledge. The catholics wanted to preserve this knowledge, and thanks in great part to them we have access to it. Let that sink in for a sec.

There were actually a good number of catholic monks who were involved in science stuff. Roger Bacon, for example, was a franciscan friar, and one of the earliest advocates of the scientific method.

Not to mention, there was a Pope (I forget which one) who said the Big Bang Theory and the Evolution Theory were plausible. LET THAT SINK IN FOR A FREAKING SECOND.

And being teased for your religion just isn't cool.

NanTheDark wrote:And being teased for your religion just isn't cool.

Funny you should mention that, I've met one teacher who literally thought that if I don't write anything about what I've learned about religion means that I'm an atheist etc. I did rage about that one day here, and this is the person I trully hate, but I digress.

Bogdan... WOW! I've never heared such pile of crap my entire life. I really would hate to be in your school.

Harmless wrote:Yeah, I recall Protestantism being more lenient on the whole thing regarding God and how 'whether or not you believe in him' doesn't affect your case as much when you die and stuff.

According to southern baptist lifestyle, if you are an atheist or a nonbeliever, have never heard of Jesus, or do not believe in Jesus, you are going to hell. Unless you are a Jew...

I do agree with the spherical theory of the universe, though. When you think about it, it's the only possible shape. When the first atom combusted, it had nothing preventing it from spreading outward. Thus, it could only expand outward before it's own inner force began to pull it back in.