I grew up my whole life Pentacostal, or "Holy Roller" as my friends so lovingly called me. I have since strayed from this and I have some questions that I would like some light to be shed on. I do not mean this to offend anyone, however it might...if it does, let me apologize now.

1. I was taught that God was all loving, all knowing supreme being. That's all fine and good, but it seems to me, from the Bible... Be good and do exactly what he says and don't sin...don't even think of sinning or this all loving God is going to throw me into the pit of hell. God is supposed to be like our father, if this is true, it is my OPINION that he is saying, "I love you unconditionally, now behave or I'm throwing you into the furnace... So much for love....

2. In the Bible, incest is wrong. I think its wrong anyways, but here's my question..
A. When God created this world...it was Adam And Eve. They had to populate the WHOLE world. Someone had to have been doing something.
B. Noah and the Ark. Noah and his family again were left to populate the whole planet...Now how do you think they did this?

3. If God is all knowing, which he may be. Why would he created a planet with such wicked people just to destroy it...then to rebuild it again? Didn't he see this comming?

4. It also says not to be vain, pompus, etc... Lucifer was supposedly the best Angel in Heaven and then he thought he was better than God so God kicked him out.. Maybe God didn't like the competition.

~Sorry guys I have grown up in a church and see so many hypocrites...I could tell you so many stories...
Like the time a church elder danced up front and said God cured him of smoking...only the next week he sat in his van and smoked.
Like the time I was young and stupid and got wasted and my mom took me to the pastor's house "to get the demon out," they prayed and nothing happened.
Like the time my older cousin was messed up on drugs and talking funny, my mom called our preacher to perform an excersom...
Like instead of parenting me and dealing with me like a person..God was the answer for everything.
~~~I guess I am a little cynical and a little miserable...forgive me. Don't me to church bash.

And they left out the part about the dinosaurs.

Good for you for asking such thought provoking questions and for being so brave in doing so! I have a lot of the same doubts. I havce a huge problem with organized religion, priests who molest, pastors who want the biggest, best church, and on it goes....
I choose to pray in private, keep my beliefs of a higher being to myself and I know I'm a good person in my heart and soul. I'm going to keep an eye on this thread, but I don't think there are any answers, just follow your heart.

I've been asking those same questions and many more for years... and I never do get a solid answer... outside of "have faith in what you don't understand"

Isn't it interesting, over 70 views and only 3 posts!! Religion and politics......taboo!!!

Chickens

I believe Lucifer must have been from New York.

Of course he was lol

I totally agree with what you are saying. While growing up I did the whole church thing and tried to obey all the rules and not sin. Okay, first of all it is absolutely impossible not to sin in some way. Like you said the bible says dont even think about it or else your going to hell. Its human nature to be curious about some things but according that book written by man thats not aloud....whatever...and what really ruined it for me is when my youth pastor had an affair with the piano player...and he had another baby on the way with his wife. What I have learned from everything is that you just have to believe in what you want and hope for the best I guess.

First, salvation doesn't come through works, but rather faith in Jesus. The unjustified cannot make themselves justified, just as a hand cannot be made clean by washing it in filth.

Hebrews 12:29


Isaiah 33:14


Everyone knows that sin cannot be in God's presence, but people don't seem to realized that part of God's nature is that his presence destroys sin. Even the angels must use their wings to protect themselves from God's Glory. After the end of the earth, a new earth will be made, which will be where heaven is located. God will dwell on earth with humanity. Sinners would be completely destroyed by God's holy nature, but those who are clothed in righteousness (faith in Jesus) will be safe from the devouring fire.

Hell is described three ways in the Bible: Eaten by worms (death), consumed by fire (destruction) and Darkness (nothingness). If you put those three together, there is only one possibility that I can think of. The "Lake of Fire" from Revelation is, I believe, an analogy to what God's presence will be like. Everyone who is brought into God's presence will either be destroyed forever or protected by their faith in Jesus.

The truth is, there there will be nowhere else to go. You will either be in God's presence, which is described as a "devouring fire" or you won't exist. The universe will be gone, we are told that even the stars will flee from God's presence.



God established a prohibition against incest in Leviticus 18:6-18. Prior to that time, human genes were pure enough to allow close relatives to have children without passing deformities to the children.



God knows everything, right? What is "everything"? Everything God knows is what has, is or will happen. God couldn't know how the universe would turn out until the universe had a chance to exist. Add to this the fact that the majority of the suffering in the world is caused by humans. How is God responsible for your actions? Aren't you making the decisions? It's the same with everyone else. And what if God removed all of the sinners? I guess animals would inherit the earth because there would be no people.



The Bible never calls satan Lucifer. The Bible never says why Satan and his demons rebelled. That belief comes from a misinterpretation of Isaiah 14, which was written about a Babylonian king. God cannot be vain, vanity is "false pride". God created the universe. God has the power over life and death. There is nothing which can be done, which cannot be done by God. It is absolutely impossible for God to be vain.

It is my firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs.

Dont worry about it. What is happening to you has happened to a lot of very wise people.

They have looked at their religious structures and questioned them.

When the answers made no sense and were illogical, they rejected them.

Ask your questions here and you will get a million sets of answers.

Because to be honest there is no right answer.

As a non-believer, Im happy that there is no right answer. Its an answer that is personal to you.

This is what a belief system should be. Not thrust upon you and the people around you, but developed and examined every day.

Check out Humanism, its a pretty cool place to be.

I don't believe in reason, objective reality or collective farming.

Just do what all the other Christians do:

Blind Faith.

Works like a charm.

In order to believe in the Bible the very first thing you must accept is that God is stupid. There's no doubt about that one at all. Everything the biblical God does is about as stupid as it can be.



Religion is a cop-out for people. When they say, "It's in God's hands", what they really mean is that they refuse to take responsibility for it.



That's the never-ending guilt trip that religious people try to shove onto everyone. If they can make you believe that you're a pathetic worthless sinner they've already dehumanized you and made you much easier to brainwash.

It is utterly disgusting and quite negative to be telling everyone that they are sinners no matter whether they choose to be or not. They use perfectly natural urges to claim that you are a sinner. It's utterly absurd.

In the Bible God tells the people to be fruitful and multiple, then later he has women giving atonements and being spiritually 'cleansed' for their "sin" of having given birth. So it's even a sin to obey the biblical God. It's lose-lose situation. You can't win no matter what you do.

It's a story of the most hateful deceiving deity that mankind has ever dreamed up. It can't possibly be true because it's chock full of blatant contradictions. A supposedly all-powerful God who's at war with a mere fallen angel. That's an oxymoron right there. A supposedly never-changing God who drowns out all of civilization one time, and then sends his only begotten Son to save it the next. Clearly this God can't make up his mind what the hell he wants to do.

And the whole blood sacrifice to appease God for disobedience (sin) is a total sham. Just like you stated, the biblical God is suppose to be an all-wise Fatherly Figure. So why is he asking for blood sacrifices to pay for disobedience of his rules? How wise is it to tell your children that as long as they are willing to slaughter a lamb it's ok to disobey. Imagine if your own parents told you that. As long as you slaughter an animal after having done something bad they'll forgive you for your misconduct. That's not even close to being a wise parent, and what lesson does it teach the children? Clearly that whole thing was a sick perverted superstition of men.

Then later we have God sending his only begotten Son to have men slaughter him to appease God so he can forgive men for being disobedient. Again what sense does that make? What message does that send? God is saying, "Look I may be all-powerful, but I can't forgive disobedience unless I see someone butchered because I'm a sadist who loves to see blood flow. Now I know that I told you people not to kill, but if you'll just take my son here and brutally nail him to a pole then I can forgive you for all your disobedience."

I thought God was supposed to be able to do anything. Yet the book says that he can't even forgive sins until someone butchers a living being. Sounds like a pretty inept deity to me. This was also a God who had supposedly planned all of this from the very beginning. He planned to drown out all of mankind at one point and then to later send his only begotten son to be slaughtered as a sacrificial lamb so that he could forgive mankind later.

IMHO the story is as absurd as a story can possibly be. The biblical God is portray in the Bible to be as unintelligent and undependable as a deity can possibly be. It flies in the very face of what it claims God is supposed to be like.

There's no defending it as having been written by any supreme deity because there is nothing supreme about it. It's totally male-chauvinistic, ignorant, and unwise. It's necessarily a totally manmade myth.

That's my firm conviction based on my own life's experience living in a society that has been plagued by this myth. I have never seen anything positive come from the religion itself. There are some religious people who do good things, but then there are a lot of atheists who do good things too. This religion as a whole simply doesn't instill positive attitude in a society as a whole. On the contrary it just seems to make everyone feel hopelessly guilty and pathetic. It's a religion that claims that it's impossible not to fail our creator. It dooms mankind to be a failure no matter what. The religion proclaims that it's impossible to satisfy God. Impossible. Period. It's a totally hopeless religion. It has completely removed any hope of pleasing God. Even if everyone were to convert to Christianity all the world would be is a bunch of pathetically miserable failures begging for God's forgiveness for having failed him. It's a religion that demands that mankind is a pathetic failure. That's so utterly negative it's nothing short of thoroughly disgusting.

Besides, we already know that Christians love to hate each other more than anything. Just look at how the Catholics and Protestants throw stones at each other, and all the other denominations of Protestantism are constantly arguing with each other. If the entire world were indeed converted to Christianity that would only be the beginning of the real Holy Wars. If anyone has any doubt about that at all, they simply aren't paying much attention.

From my own point of view (and historically) the religion has been the cause of more harm than good. And viewed in it's totality (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) which all arose from the very same mythology the Mediterranean myth not only continues to cause world violence and unrest, but it even threatens to incite people into creating a horrific war that will culminate as a fight over the city of Jerusalem. It's negativity has far outweighed any positive contributions that it can even remotely be associated with it. The sooner mankind moves beyond that medieval superstition and myth the better off all of humanity will be.

So I'm in total agreement with you Shortiemix, the religion is a total failure and a total contradiction in terms of what it claims God is supposed to be like. The very biblical stories themselves fly in the face of the biblical premises of what the God is supposed to be like. There's no indication that the biblical God has any wisdom or parenting skills whatsoever.

its all blind faith...you either believe in what is said or you then become enlightened...
thats me

I know spider was trying to help you but after I read all this I wanted to run as far as I could to get from the tyranny of it all.

So if you feel this way too, it is okay. There are those of us who understand completely.

Don't look now, but the man in the moon is laughing at you.

Sounds like a solid belief to me...lol