Do you believe in god?

[Unicorndreams24]

i have recently been thinking a lot about religion and wondering how many believe in god and also what made you come to the decision of believing?

But Christians don't do they? There are no Christian groups (other than maybe some tiny group of 5 you can drag up from somewhere) who advocate for this.

You have just perfectly illustrated the nonsense of worrying about what the bible says as opposed to what actual Christians in the real present world actually believe. You are aiming at imaginary windmills. Such a fruitless exercise.

Modern day slavery is still an issue in some muslim countries btw, with the arab states having the highest per capita modern slavery.

Slavery is disgusting. Its not a religion problem. But a moral problem. And if those people in dubai treat their maids and workers like garbage then thats on them. Nothing to do with the Lord.

Who is annoyed. It should be easy.

Here is a list of 6 moral lessons.

1. Slavery is bad, see. book x, chapter y, verse z..
2. Do not do genocide book x, chapter y, verse z..
3. etc

A bit like the UN charter on Human rights I suppose. Clear and unambiguous. And hopefully things that folk can't say, "Ahh, but this part of the Bible says the opposite".

:-)

Also worth saying that Christians acknowledge that the accounts of people in the Bible, other than Jesus, are not there to show what living morally looks like. Mostly the opposite. And in that sense, for Christians, we take those accounts of wicked people to point to other things: God’s overall purpose, God pointing to Jesus as saviour, for example.

Re: your question @RedTagAlan we are not looking at examples of incest or slavery and looking to emulate these. Or was there something else you were asking re: moral lessons?

Its wider than maids. The country is built on what is effectively slave labour from immigrant workers who have their passports taken from them and where the official temperature is inaccurately reported as being under 50, even when it is over, as once its over 50 the immigrant workers cannot be legally made to keep on working.

And Westerners choose to go on holiday there. Despite it being built on modern day slave labour to attract them. It is disgusting. I have no respect for anyone who holidays in such a place.

I agree. Slavery is wrong.

Exodus 21 in the Bible has the rules on owning people. Stuff like any slave children belong to the owner. The Bible is clear, slavery is OK.

Ah but Christians in the modern world are clear that slavery is not ok. So you can put down any plans you are formulating to campaign against Christian slavery advocates.

First of all, we need to discuss which texts we are using.

I recognise the Tanakh and the New Testament as authoritative in these matters.

Do you agree that these scriptures are authoritative? You seem to at times, including partial quotes and misquotes, and yet at other times you argue against them.

Only God the Father and not the even the Son knows when the world will end. We are told in the Bible that the Son will return from the clouds and it will be in a twinkling of an eye. We are told to not speculate when the Lord Jesus will return but to look for signs in the faith using Matthew 24 and the Book of Revelations for signs of the end time. There are signs like diverse wars, afflications and famine etc. Some people think that we are in the end times now. There is a thread on this in the Christian forum if want to want to read on it.
(Matthew 24:36) But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
Some people are wondering Trump if forging the way forward with the end times with stances on intervention.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/christian-mumsnetters/5439888-end-times-discussion
https://www.hiskingdomprophecy.com/could-trump-be-setting-up-the-end-time/

Moving On-
Somebody mentioned that Christianity endorses slavery-I think Galatians 3:28 sums this up that we are all equal before God and it is us how we hold ourselves. The Bible in the New Testatment that there is no slave before God. that we are free and equal before Jesus Christ. ""There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus"

The old society there was no benefit system to and people needed to be supported to live. It was a different society. God's views is clear how he supported that Hagar in the Book of Gensis who was Sarah bondswoman to be treated fairly by Hagar and called her to treat Hagar fairly.

Nope. Not all Christians are against Slavery.

You don't read Breitbart do you ?

So, when can we expect all the Bishops etc to issue a statement, we the undersigned declare all these parts of the Bible to be wrong ?

The Jefferson Bible sort of covered this in a way. His Bible only had the words of Christ. Sort of "red letter Christian" style. That's what I was. A red letter Christian.

Problem with that of course, is that Jesus and the Apostles all believed the OT to be true. So that complicates things.

Thanks for this; I was wondering the same!

I think we hold different views on this; Christians pray for this day often!

Wow, something i will look into and read as an ex Christian myself

Yeah, it's all very awful at a whole. I remember reading and learning more about this on a threads o7

Oh here we go. Finding the tiny minority of nutters rather than looking at the foundational belief of 99.99% of Christians that slavery is wrong. I predicted you'd do that, didn't I? See my posts above. People making cases like yours are nothing if not predictable.

When you have to a absurdist, extremist levels to make your case, you have no case.

Dubai, on the other hand, is a muslim country where the state that supports and enables modern day slavery. You might want to do your anti-slavery and religion campaigning there.

No. I was brought up in the church. I think when followed to the spirit rather than the outdated scripture, the teachings of all the major world religions have much to tell us about to lead a good , rewarding life
and how to support one another. But organised religion is also used as a primary means of abuse and control and I want nothing to do with it. Also, there is no god and we’d be better off marvelling at
the sheer unlikely coincidence that we’re here at all. Time is all we have and we waste it fighting over invented idols.

I ain't doing any campaign. We were discussing what is in the Bible. And the Bible condones slavery. As do some Christians.

Does modern slavery in Dubai not deserve it's own thread.

I beleive in certain areas of the bible that mirror my beliefs, my faith and verses from the quran.

I do not believe that the bible is wholly from God. Its been changed and adapted over the years with many different versions. We have no idea who Luke or Matthew or John is. Paul himself slept with prostitutes and never even met jesus yet claimed he had a vision or dream where he saw jesus and said its ok to eat pork as its pure what goes in. Ok great, then heroin is pure to go in too. Whatever God said in the old Testament to avoid, we will just scrap that because Paul knows better. No. Paul was also a murderer.

Thankfully there is only one Quran which has never changed. Anyone in the world can recite it from heart. The quran has never been changed or edited from.the moment prophet Muhammed recieved it from the Angel Gabriel/Jibreel and was able to relay it back to his 4 most trusted companions. Jesus even talked about the coming of prophet Muhammed coming in the bible. He will come after me and he will speak words and glorify me. And prophet muhammed actually spoke well of Jesus.

There are many contradictions in the bible sadly, when i learnt this as a Christian i switched off as i didnt want to be upset as i was brought up in an evangelical church which i loved ans then i moved to another church where the focus was entirety on jesus alone and didnt sit well with me. And I dont agree with Samuel 12 saying go to amalek and kill all children, men and women, breastfeeding baby, sheep, ox and donkey. This isnt what a loving God will order.

I also dont believe that God had to rest on the 7th day as he was tired. A powerful almighty God doesn't need respite.

I dont beleive jesus is God or son of God because even the bible says God has sons in turns and that Adam and David were also Sons of God. But then christianscsay jesus is son of God as well as God. I cannot be my mother and my mothers daughter.

Further more the bible says, which I agree that jesus said I cannot do anything on my own. Which goes to show he gets power from somewhere. GOD IS NOT 3 IN 1. GOD IS ONE.
Deuteronomy 6:4 ("Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one")

IN islam, its very simple. Belief in one lord, his prophets Adam, Noah, jonah, Jacob, Abraham, Jesus and prophet Muhammed peace be upon them all. They are all spoken well of on the quran. We believe in the angels, we believe in Psalms. We beleive in miracles of Jesus, that he was onlh table to perform by God. I.e the healing of the blind, riasing the dead and so on. We beleive in moses guiding the children, we beleive in Noahs ark. We beleive in Lut but we dont beleive that the bible says he bed his daughters. Or that his daughters got him drunk to have sex with him.and keep the family lineage strong. We beleive that he was a God fearing man. And that his daughters were too God fearing.
We just simply believe in the oneness of God. That he created us and we don't know what he looks like we follow the 2nd commandment as well in respect of thou shall have no images or statues made of me. Even when making stories and carro9ns about the prophets we respect them by using either a light or a shadow to represent them. We believing in covering ourselves our hair like mother Mary did and like the old testament said. Because women are a beautiful sight to behold and why should any outside man enjoy your hair and your beauty and your figure. We believe in an after life. We believe in heaven and hell.
But most importantly we only follow one God because after all he is the only one he made this world and made all of us. Jesus didn't assist by God's side in creating the ocean or sea creatures. It was simply God Allah all along. And jesus himself called God Allaha as he spoke aramaic and greeted his disciples with peace be upon you which is how every Muslim greets one another in this world. I love jesus with all my heart but I see him as a mighty prophet and a good religious man who will return on the end if days. I beleive in his teachings of worshipping one God and his miracles but I do not think he is God. Or son of God. The mighty lord does bot have wives or children or cousins and aunties. And Mary also is someone we love very much top as a guaranteed woman of high honour in heaven.

I hope that answers.

Best regards and all my love.

I know. I was mocking you.

And you know its dishonest to say 'some' christians support slavery when its a handful of nutters, compared to about 2.5 billion who do not, and who believe firmly slavery is against their beliefs.

No sensible person is going to buy your arguments and its a shame you were so damaged by your experience of christianity that you do this.

There are plenty of real things, that could be criticised about modern day christianity - personally I'd start with the ' progressive' churches - and their support for secular political beliefs that are causing real harm to real people in the real world, rather that trying (and failing) to resurrect arguments that were settled in the 1800s. ( In the UK at least).

Why - you’d no longer be a part of our world.

Funny that. I greatly prefer progressive Christians. Being set in stone and refusing change never served humanity well.

But just out of curiosity: which progressive bits do you object to?

It seems like you're after very specific details / codes. I don't think the bible is like that. It's a historical document, so will be time / context / people specific, and a lot of that doesn't apply to a) Christians (because the Jewish law was superceded by Christ) and b) now, because times change, and with the Holy Spirit, the scriptures become more of a living thing which can be interpreted and reinterpreted through time. However (and this is the 'living' bit which I mean), there are also in the bible, more universal things - which I quoted in my post, which we can say are more timeless, more unchanging.... also those things which you find in the creed and which make up the foundations of the Christian faith. Belief that Jesus is God's son and that he came to earth, lived and died and was raised again.... and how we treat people in the light of that.
The details about whether you should or shouldn't wear mixed fibres or eat animals with cloven hooves, or wear head coverings in church are largely extraneous, in my opinion. Those are time / context specific.

It's the same logic as someone reading letters written to me by my grandparents when I was a kid in which they encourage me to keep up my piano practice, and interpreting that as saying everyone should learn the piano. Not so. Those same letters from my grandparents do also say things like 'isn't nature wonderful, isn't God good' (they were keen gardeners and Christians) which are the 'bigger' universal truths and hold true regardless of who reads the letter and when the letter is read.

Ahh right. So you were mocking me.

Why is it to say some Christians support Christianity when some do ? Do you agree that some do ?

I never claimed to be damaged by Christianity.

If you are against "progressive churches" then state your case. All I do is state what the Bible says. Eg, the Bible is anti gay men. If believers choose to ignore this, as I used to, and that's up to them.

I have no idea what things were settled in the 1800's. Can you expand ?

The problem is that different groups of people have different ideas about which bits of the Bible may be subject to interpretation in context and which may not. All the way to Biblical literalists and young earth creationists.

If the Bible is not like that, then why do Christians claim it to the ultimate moral code, with many (some posters above), say that without it humanity would have no morals or ethics at all.

My challenge is easy, and to cut and paste a bit from a post I made above :

Here is a list of 6 moral lessons.

1. Slavery is bad, see. book x, chapter y, verse z..
2. Do not do genocide book x, chapter y, verse z..
3. etc

A bit like the UN charter on Human rights I suppose. Clear and unambiguous. And hopefully things that folk can't say, "Ahh, but this part of the Bible says the opposite". :-)