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automan
blasted chipmunk


Registered: 09/18/03
Posts: 8,272
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when did you first question...
#1963132 - 09/29/03 03:14 PM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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christianity?
i was 8 when i first saw the movie, "Gandhi". i was raised a christian. i said "he must have a huge place in heaven." i was told that no matter what a person does in his life, INCLUDING GANDHI, that if he doesnt believe that jesus was God, he cant go to heaven. it didnt make any sense to me when i was 8, and it doesnt make any sense to me decades later. if gandhi cant go to heaven, i dont want to go there either!
-------------------- No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical. ~ Niels Bohr
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Anonymous
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: automan]
#1963200 - 09/29/03 03:33 PM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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i was brought up to decide what i believe in myself. i dont know if its because of that or just because of me, but ive always found myself questioning pretty much anything that is presented as fact, especially (but not exclusively) if its presented in an authoritative manner. that said, i have no idea when the first time i questioned christianity was. probably the first time i gave it any thought i suppose.
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero


Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: ]
#1963284 - 09/29/03 03:57 PM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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Before I was six, when I went to church with the neighbors and the baptist preacher pulled me up in front of the entire assembly and preached for "hours on end" (at least to a child) about how I was going to burn in hell for all eternity because I wasn't baptised.
(irony... I had been baptised, but he didn't know that, nor did I... too young. It took more than twenty years before I even went into a Christian church after that...)
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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fireworks_god
Sexy.Butt.McDanger


Registered: 03/12/02
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: Seuss]
#1964978 - 09/30/03 02:03 AM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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Why all the posts about Christianity lately? Is some sort of say.. oh, I don't know.. oncoming evolution starting to make people look around, question, and realize?  Peace.
--------------------
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
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Spokesman
The HighPhilosopher

Registered: 08/05/03
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: fireworks_god]
#1965061 - 09/30/03 02:40 AM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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Good question. I was around 9 when i just stoped begging god for forgiveness and said to myself "Wait a minute, i dont remember being given the choice to be born, follow Jesus, and go to heaven. Why would god create me if he knows im going to hell to burn for all eternity?" At this point i began reading the bible OUTSIDE of church and began noticing all these flaws in it that people bend to fit there interpretation. My mind went through an expansion process until i was 16 at wich point i no longer viewed the Christian Bible as a HOLY BOOK but one of many History books that got incredibly missinterperted. I saw how i was blinded of the existance of any other religion and how 40% the people who folowed Christianity follow it out of fear. Another 40% follow it for the simple fact that it just happened to be the religion this country was founded on. And only 20% follow it because of Spirituality. Im 19 now and i feel as if i have escaped The Matrix. I live out of Happiness and the enjoyment of love and not out of fear of going to hell.
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fireworks_god
Sexy.Butt.McDanger


Registered: 03/12/02
Posts: 24,855
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: Spokesman]
#1965080 - 09/30/03 02:55 AM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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The view is quite different from outside the system, looking over it and seeing it all for what it really is, isn't it, Spokesman?  Peace.
--------------------
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
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DankBluntZ
We know little
Registered: 01/29/03
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: fireworks_god]
#1965095 - 09/30/03 03:11 AM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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I almost died in a car crash. Until that point i considered myself a believer in the christian faith. After the accident, I am no longer what you would call a "christian believer". However, its not because my life is worse off. In fact , my life has improved 10 fold since the accident. Was it because I realized god exists and he let me stay on this planet? or Was it because once i realized god does not exist, I woke up and started REALLY living my life?
still tryin to figure it out myself.
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MAIA
World-BridgerKartikeya (DftS)


Registered: 04/27/01
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: DankBluntZ]
#1965167 - 09/30/03 04:41 AM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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When you figure out that things work differently than your beliefs tells you, then you begin to question all those "truths", to me, most of them seemed absolutely pathetic and outdated after some reflection, i was 12. It's then time to move on and learn your own truth.
MAIA
-------------------- Spiritual being, living a human experience ... The Shroomery Mandala

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
Voltaire
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero


Registered: 04/27/01
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: MAIA]
#1965302 - 09/30/03 07:29 AM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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> Why all the posts about Christianity lately?
Post topics always seem to come in groups. Donno why... guess people like to dive into specific areas of some broad issue that somebody else brings up.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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LOBO
Vagabond

Registered: 03/19/01
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: automan]
#1965334 - 09/30/03 07:59 AM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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I question Dogma when as a kid the priest in my catholic school was teaching us about baptism, and if you are not baptize you will go to hell if you die, so I asked him what about all the millions of Chinese kids who never heard of Christianity? Is not there fault to be borne in China? (remember I was just a kid) He answered that is how things are. Well from that moment on I knew that it was a mean , illogical not loving god and wanted nothing to do with it. On the other hand I found Christ on my first shroom tripp, well understood for the first time what he was trying to teach, also Buda etc. Is all about Love and compassion. But I agree is time to brake away from all silly rules and regulations and laws, try to live and experience God on your own.
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kaiowas
lest we baguette


Registered: 07/14/03
Posts: 5,501
Loc: oz
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: automan]
#1965494 - 09/30/03 09:20 AM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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when I was real young I went to church a lot. After a while I heard enough of the priest because he kept saying, "I think what god meant to say was..." I think I was between 8-10, dunno exactly. anyway I laughed after a while because if god was so big as they made him out to be, then how could this priest know what god meant to say.
-------------------- Annnnnnd I had a light saber and my friend was there and I said "you look like an indian" and he said "you look like satan" and he found a stick and a rock and he named the rock ooga booga and he named the stick Stick and we both thought that was pretty funny. We got eaten alive by mosquitos but didn't notice til the next day. I stepped on some glass while wading in the swamp and cut my foot open, didn't bother me til the next day either....yeah it was a good time, ended the night by buying some liquor for minors and drinking nips and going to he diner and eating chicken fingers, and then I went home and went to bed.
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Amnesiac
Re-memberingcosmic wisdom

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Re: when did you first question... [Re: kaiowas]
#1965997 - 09/30/03 12:36 PM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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Like many others, when I was in the vicinity of 10-12 years old, I realized that it was unfair and cruel that because I was not baptized or didn't go to church that I would burn in hell, regardless of how I lived the rest of my life. It was silly to me then, and is silly now.
I doubt that an almighty, all-knowing, unconditionally loving god would care if you were baptized, as long as you were a good person.
-------------------- Here we are, in these bodies, on this planet in an endless universe. This is not the extent of who we are... merely an extension of who we really are.
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Spokesman
The HighPhilosopher

Registered: 08/05/03
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: fireworks_god]
#1966006 - 09/30/03 12:41 PM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
fireworks_god said: The view is quite different from outside the system, looking over it and seeing it all for what it really is, isn't it, Spokesman?  Peace.
Sure does, i asked a question to a Christian the other day and got the same arguement i have gotten a million times "God said in the bible not to question things you dont understand" I was like "man, i can't belive i lived under that totalitarian dictatorship my whole childhood."
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fireworks_god
Sexy.Butt.McDanger


Registered: 03/12/02
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: Spokesman]
#1966047 - 09/30/03 12:57 PM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
Spokesman said: Sure does, i asked a question to a Christian the other day and got the same arguement i have gotten a million times "God said in the bible not to question things you dont understand" I was like "man, i can't belive i lived under that totalitarian dictatorship my whole childhood."
You tell them that Fireworks_God wrote the Bible and that all of that wasn't me that put that in there, it was Satan, who tampered with The Bible and made it unpure.  Peace.
--------------------
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
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Zero7a1
Leaving YourWasteland

Registered: 10/23/02
Posts: 3,594
Loc: Passing Cloud
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: automan]
#1966138 - 09/30/03 01:20 PM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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when my dad died.
-------------------- What?
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Anonymous
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: Spokesman]
#1966229 - 09/30/03 01:45 PM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
Spokesman said:
At this point i began reading the bible OUTSIDE of church and began noticing all these flaws in it that people bend to fit there interpretation. My mind went through an expansion process until i was 16 at wich point i no longer viewed the Christian Bible as a HOLY BOOK but one of many History books that got incredibly missinterperted.
apparently the oldest parts of the new testament were originally written in greek, not aramaic (sp?) which is the language jesus supposedly spoke. no aramaic versions of these texts have been found to date, which implies that jc's words were interpreted. even in modern times, meaning is often lost in translation, so some of these flaws that you notice are most likely missinterpretations of a missinterpretations.
Edited by iamhimheisme (09/30/03 01:47 PM)
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Alan Stone
Corpus

Registered: 11/23/02
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: ]
#1966416 - 09/30/03 02:41 PM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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I think I was twelve when I asked my religion teacher: "Isn't it possible the Divine is a state humans are slowly evolving towards?" She nodded her head, probably trying to keep me 'on track' or something.
At fourteen I had some spontaneous visions (non plant-induced) which could be and have been interpreted on so many different levels by my own mind.
Then at age 19 I started tripping and have tripped 12 times so far, on various doses. And what the sacred fungus has shown me is that perhaps I was right all along.
Antropomorphous deities are fine to begin your spiritual journey with, but once you transcend that idea and think of all Gods as faces of the one cosmic soul, you're closer to what it's about.
-------------------- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
- Aristotle
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gnrm23
Carpal Tunnel
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: automan]
#1966557 - 09/30/03 03:27 PM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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well, it must have been around the time i first read heinlein's _stranger in a strange land_ (say, maybe 1962 or '63 --- i was about 10 or 11...)(i had already read all the heinlein "juvenile" books at the local library & my dad's college philosophy textbook... twisted, huh?) ~ i am god thou art god all that groks is god ~ may you never thirst... ~ ~ so... i may not have all the answers, but i do have a rather nice collection of questions ...) ~ ~ ~
-------------------- old enough to know better
not old enough to care
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adrug

Registered: 02/04/03
Posts: 15,800
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: gnrm23]
#1966760 - 09/30/03 04:39 PM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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I attended a Lutheran church from the time I was born until just shortly after I was confirmed, interestingly enough. I went through my confirmation classes around age 12 and by the time I was done, I was convinced that organized religion was a complete waste of time and started to question everything. I asked the pastor so many questions that he could not answer to my satisfaction, he ended up calling my parents about it.
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silversoul7
Chill the FuckOut!


Registered: 10/10/02
Posts: 27,301
Loc: mndfreeze's puppet army
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Re: when did you first question... [Re: automan]
#1966793 - 09/30/03 04:50 PM (21 years, 8 months ago) |
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Even as a little kid, whenever my parents read a Bible story to me(which was pretty rare, since they weren't all that religious, and only went to church on Christmas Eve), I thought of it as just that: a story, and not necessarily true. I put Bible stories in the same category as Aesop's Fables--fictional stories meant to convey a greater truth. I believed in God, and in Jesus being his son, but beyond that, I wasn't really a strong believer in Christianity. I remember even questioning reality as a kid. As early as age 8, I remember thinking about how reality could all just be a dream. Looking back on it, I think an observer could've predicted back then that I would grow up to become a psychedelic user.
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"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."--Voltaire
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