No Im 8 and a half

iM 8 AND A HALF

No, I'M 8 and a half!

Then Lets have some BuTTsexx! Since we have similarities

Confirmation is a practice used in Catholicism. To my knowledge it has nothing to do with jesus or being one with christ, it is simply a passed along trend. catholicism is bugged in many ways and I would advise seeking god through jesus if you wish for him to save you.

But you're only 8.5, you probably haven't even hit puberty yet...



Confirmation isn't a "trend", it's a sacrament of initiation that other churches don't partake in...and it's ironic that you say it has nothing to do with jesus or being one with christ when being confirmed used to make a person a "soldier of christ".

Do what my brother did; get married in a beerhall.

Since we've got a religious debate here, let me get some of my beliefs out on the table.

The Catholic church destroyed Christianity and the true message of the Christian movement by using the Roman Empire to execute its censorship.

Before the Christian Bible, there were just Gospels (Gospel means "good news") that were told by word of mouth. Since Christianity was frowned upon and even illegal in a lot of places, very few people actually spent the money to have these written down. Having a Christian document could've meant execution for not only the person paying for it to be written, but the scribe doing the...scribing.

These stories, or "Gospels," were told primarily by word of mouth for over three hundred years. Over the course of those three hundred years, quite a few of these stories had been written down by the wealthy and powerful and stored away. When it was time to make the Bible, what would become the Catholic church decided to pick-and-choose through the stories and only select the ones they liked. That's fine, really. I mean, you can't have a Bible that weighs 900 pounds. Some things had to go -- I accept that.

What I don't accept, however, is that they actually outlawed the vast majority of the Gospels that spoke of self-salvation. Zomg. Why would they do that? Think about it. If you're an organization in charge of creating a religious document that your shambled government is going to spoon-feed to the people, wouldn't you want to outlaw anything that would empower people? Wouldn't you want to give them only the stories that made them entirely reliant on the organization that you're leading? Absolutely.

Religion has always been meant to control people. That's all that it boils down to. It can be a very wonderful thing, and it can be one of the most terrible things in existence. While nobody alive in our day and age will ever know what the real message in Christianity is, I can be sure that it's not the skewed, hand-selected bit of the story that a few Bishops from Rome and Alexandria wanted people to know.

What's in the books that were banned? The most frequently appearing theme several of the recently discovered (with the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Nag Hammadi Library) Gospels have in common is Gnosis. Not to be confused with agnosis (or agnostic), Gnosis is the Greek word for knowledge. Gnosis is similar to Buddhism in a way. It teaches that you are the master of your own world. It teaches that you live for the sole purpose of making yourself a better person through knowledge and understanding your own psyche.

One of my favorite quotes from one of the Gnostic Gospels I've read (I believe it's the Apocryphon of James) is something along the following lines:

Jesus to James and Seth: Woe to you who lack an advocate. Woe to you who stand in need of grace. Blessed will be those who have stepped out and obtained grace for themselves.

The interesting thing about this is if you step out obtain grace for yourself, you lack an advocate... because you're obtaining grace for yourself. The (slightly) hidden message is that you are your own advocate. You don't need a Church. You don't need a Pope. You don't need to go to a building with high ceilings, uncomfortable chairs, and stained glass windows to achieve heaven/immortality. All you need to do is reach into yourself and find your own heaven/immortality.

There we go. That's my rant against the Catholic church and my rant for Gnosticism.

If I had to fill out a form that asked me what my religion was, I'd write "Asectic Gnostic."

I feel you on this one Gman, but people believe what they want to believe.

I think guilt plays a big part in religion.
The basic principle is to keep a positive state of mind.

But when it comes to sin (for example), where do you draw the line? who makes the rules?

you and I can probably both agree, about the differences between right and wrong....but what about the rest of the world?

to a certain extent people need to be controlled.


Oh, and this is a reply to Pinoy: if you need to know these things you should ask a priest not make a post on n00bfest.... what kind of answers do you think your going to get LOL!!!

Believing in heaven or hell is man's way of immortalizing them selves, believing they have a life after death.

I’m agnostic my self here are some things to think about ... sure there are dead sea scrolls and gospels but what it really comes down to is some one's interpretation of someone’s message, who knows how accurate it may or may not be.
Just like the game telephone u play with your elementary class. You start with a message and end with something else. No doubt we see that in the bible or any other 'divine message'

Gman: I agree with you though... you are your own universe and ultimately your choices motivated by the bible or by inner desire for good or bad is what makes you who you are.

You dont have to read and follow the bible and attend church every sunday (or every day)to be a good person...,
Just like living in your parent's garage wont make you a car.

+10 points

None of this matters since we're all just gonna rot in the ground when we die anyways.

I plan to be sitting in an urn personally, or decaying at the bottom of the ocean. Yellow_Flash_Colorz_PDT_02

Point is you'll cease to be so arguing about who's god is best really amounts to nothing for you personally.

man, i love the conversations you guys have in your forums.

i agree with g-man as well. it really seems that you've studied the history behind the bible and religion, which a is HUGE step beyond what most people do. people just take what someone tells them for fact rather than researching information themselves and making their own educated decisions.

to pyrokid: which case would be worse - spening $100 on a fire extinguisher that never gets used, or not being able to put out a fire because you have no extinguisher? the same could be said about faith and religion. while believing in God, heaven, and/or hell might not get you anywhere besides the ground where you are buried, what happens if you don't believe and everything in the bible is true? you had the chance to go to heaven, and instead you are stuck in the ground.....

faith is an interesting subject, because no matter how much anyone argues, at this point in time nothing can be proven for any theory/opinion.

My god demands no worship, for my god has no ego.

My beliefs:

There is a God, and there was a man named "Jesus". The gospels are credible in my opinion, but as Gman pointed out, we're not getting the whole story.

I don't buy into the telephone game theory behind the gospels, because I've done some reading in addition to the Bible that offers support through archaeological findings, ancient (non-religious) historians, and other real "data" that can be used as evidence.

There's some differences in the gospels because they branched off and developed on different pathways. This actually falls in line with the different viewpoints of the disciples and maybe just a hint of the "telephone game" effect. The fact that they bear any similarity to each other at all is impressive and really helps to validate the contents to a degree.

Then again.... where are the parts that were deemed "blasphemy" and destroyed? Where are the parts that encouraged us to NOT build churches and organize a business out of it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_hammadi_library
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_judas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_sea_scrolls

There. If you're interested, I've got some books you can borrow.

The way I see it, either we have a heaven and hell, are reincarnated/join with a greater lifeforce, or just cease to be when we die.

They say heaven is something like eternal bliss, but I don't want eternal bliss. I want to feel, I don't want to be happy all the time. Sadness and anger have their own good qualities and I don't want to give them up. Hell on the other hand is eternal pain and suffering. But then again, I'd rather exist in hell for eternity than just stop being.

Reincarnation ends with you forgetting who you are as an individual. If I don't know myself anymore then I cease to be myself. I don't want that.

Joining a greater force in the universe ends up the same where I lose my individual mind. I don't want to become "one" with some great spirit. I want to think for myself.

Ceasing to be is just F*CKING out of the question. One of my greatest fears is death and this is why. It's impossible to even concieve the thought of non-existence. I want to think and be.

Overall it looks to me like hell is the best place to go, which kinda gives me a shitty view on the world. I've actually been stuck on this subject for the past month or two now, and I gotta say it's really depressing. Most people can ignore it, but it's been a big issue most of my life.

Every part of me keeps telling me that I'm just a pile of atoms that coincidentally formed a living being. I look at things around me like statues and chairs and inanimate objects and it's really trippy if you think about it. Alot of what we have around us used to be alive at one point, and now it's dead. The food we eat used to be alive and it's dead. Where is the heaven for dogs and cats and deer? Where's the heaven for trees and bushes? There isn't one because life in general is a fluke if not an element in the universe. It confuses me how people think religion existed before mankind could even think. If anything it rules out the heaven and hell idea. Life as a flaw also explains why it's so rare. I actually think matter in general is a flaw in the universe, but that's a different subject.

Overall, just thinking about it has pushed me to the point of tears a few times, and I know I need to somehow forget about it or else it's gonna drive me insane.

i hear where you're coming from, and it seems i've pondered many of the same things you have. to me, it seems quite impossible that we exist just because we exist. even if you buy into "the big bang" and evolution, there still has to be some outside force that created the big bang or created all the matter that created the big bang. our scientists have come up with ideas like "matter cannot be created nor destroyed", which means that someone or something had to create all this somehow, even if it was just some type of scientific experiment done by a being. there just has to be some outside force that aided in our creation in one way or another. call it a fluke, call it luck, call it God, call it whatever you want, but i can't believe that all these molecules manifested from nothing.