religion & marriage. does anyone see the connection??

[Headless Rat]

Hi ABers, I've been reading the recently posed questions on the "M" word and it has struck me that no reference has ever been made to the word "religion" when discussing the topic of marriage.

To me this is bizarre.

I just wonder if anybody else thesedays sees religion as wholly inter-twined with marriage, a commitment made to each other before God to stay together forever, a promise to bring one's children up ( if applicable) to follow the faith or is marriage just seen as a chance to further one's relationship, to take "the next step", and have a big party?

Should marriage not be valued as infinitely more sacred then just co-habiting with the next boy/girlfriend that comes along??

In my opinion it should be, but I'm interested to know what others think!

Good Irish Catholic girl here- if you haven't already guessed!

[Headless Rat]

but, margeB ,do you not see that this is all for a reason?that there is a bigger picture and a meaning to all this seemingly needless suffering?

Do you never find that if, for example, you split up with a boy/girlfriend that, yea, it hurts like hell for a good while, but then you learn from it, get over it and realise that the pain/experience may have actually done more good for you than anything else because it allows you to appreciate things more etc?

Also, most of the suffering in Africa IS manmade;corrupt government leaders, our unwillingness to care more for the environment, our unwillingness to donate more money to them or invest there, the list goes on.

Is it realistic to hope for a perfect world?no, because everyone has different priorities. the contention arises when peoples' priorities conflict.Therefore there will always be people who will lose out (not meant to sound flippantly or off the cuff) and who will bear more sadness and hardship than some of us can even imagine.But this is where God comes into it.He gave us all minds and consciences of our own to be able to make decisions be they good or bad.it is this free will that makes us into who/what kind of a person we decide to be. If everyone just decided to do more for other people than perhaps the problem in Africa would be a lot smaller or wouldn't exist at all.

[Headless Rat]

This free will that we have lets us do what we want;make sacrifices to help others or live the life of Reilly and never spare a thought or a shilling for anyone who is worse off than ourselves.
OK, maybe you don't believe that God gave us this free will, but you must confess that we all do have this free will regardless of where we got it from.
Anyway, the point i try to make is that those people might be lucky to suffer for a (relatively speaking) short time (yea a lifetime is a longtime to suffer, but not compared to eternity) because perhaps their reward will be in the next life.
If God fed all his children for us, then when would people have the chance to make a differnce in someone else's life?it would already have been done.The room for growth as humans would be gone.

[MargeB]

Your answer is utterly obscene. These are children, millions of them, being born to live a very short life with horrendous illness, to starved to even eat, in unimaginable pain, and then to die an agonizing death, and you can even begin to suggest that this is 'a god given opportunity for others to grow'?????? Are you out of your mind?

[MargeB]

Does anyone else see how this is not that far away from the mentality that leads to jihad?

[Headless Rat]

The eyes only see what the mind is prepared oto comprehend.

Aw you're a lost cause MargeB!I give up!

God Bless!!haha!

[MargeB]

I think you're underestimating the seriousness of believing something that is not true.

[Headless Rat]

Oh go on, indulge both of us,hit me with all the concrete, indisputable evidence that you have that says there is, never was and never will be a God.

Honestly, i'm eager to be made aware of it.Maybe you would be so kind as to enlighten the other millions of Catholics that are living in some sort of bubble.

And, sure while you're at it,perhaps you could also tell us the meaning of life aswell!something else i never really understood; relativity!

Anyway, how does my being a Catholic affect you?

You obviously live in London, im from the Emerald Isle......

More to the point, i ain't taking the seriousness of my beliefs lightly.quite the contrary in fact as is proved the active part i've played in this discussion!

Id like you to bear in mind though that if you think my beliefs are flimsy or ridiculous, then yours equally are.Granted, neither of us, lets be honest, have insurmountable proof of a caring loving God's existence.however, the difference is, i have faith.faith that death isn't "the end"; faith that how we live our lives here will determine what sort of afterlife will be doled out to us; faith that my deceased relatives aren't just buried in the ground, a mere carcass that amounts to nothing-that there IS something more and that all will be answered when we meet our maker.(Big-Bang theory...just aint buying it!)

[MargeB]

It is anathema in the Catholic church to believe that you cannot reach knowledge of the existence of God without faith.

[MargeB]

You can see the Big Bang.

[Headless Rat]

O, i see now, it's all becoming clear....thanks for enlightening me MargeB; basically what you're saying is that trying your best to be a nice person and believing in something greater than humankind is preposterous.grand job.

by the way, what made the big bang happen in the first place?another bang?and what made that bang happen?the last bang's cousin??

[mfewell]

Yes, all, a good thread. I'm not sure I'm too fond of being called brainwashed. I am one of those people Marge has such a problem with. I am (trying to be) a thinking person with Christian beliefs. I'll go dead childish on you now. How about when God had created the universe and the earth, he got lonely ? (If you don't like me attributing human emotions to god then all I will say is we are apparently created in his image, so it might work). Lonely God therefore created man so he could be loved by man, but in order for that to work, he had to give man complete freewill. He could have ordered man to love him, but the only love worth having is that which is freely offered. It all went wrong so God came down in person to have a try. We murdered him. What on earth do we deserve ?  God isn't going to go intervening all over the place, he wants us to do it in the way we've been shown. These thoughts I have instilled in my own mind by my own efforts and research. I am reasonably well educated, loads and loads of O levels and the rest etc ! I am not RC, but I use the New Jerome commentary because it is so good. Scores please, new balls, change ends.

[Headless Rat]

mfewell, glad to see there's at least ONE person who agrees with me!phew!plus, you make really good points!

[mfewell]

What is so noticeable is what Clanad has pointed out, the sheer bitterness of some anti-Christians. I recently read The Hiram Key, one of those modern scientifically evidenced piles of errata that have recently come out. I regularly read such stuff because it helps keep my beliefs in line. (Like the Priory of Sion has been debunked as a complete hoax). The overwhelming feeling I got from this book was the venom of the authors towards the RC church. It greatly helped in my reading of it, because I felt they were preaching at me, not a good move when they're trying to persuade me stuff along the typical lines that Jesus had 36 children and settled in the south of France, or India, or somewhere, that he was never crucified, or if he was, he got pulled down and revived, all that sort of thing. Whenever did a bleeding limping bandaged wreck inspire people to go off and die for him ? What did really happen to Saul on the road to Damascus ?  I just say lucky lucky sod ! I wish it could happen to me.

[MargeB]

Big Bang...Headless, we don't know. But because we don't know, we say "We don't know", instead of saying "A person, a loving creator," since we do not have evidence of this. Your foreforeforefathers did not know where the world, or intelligence, or people had come from, said "God". Now we know they were jumping to conclusions about some things, and plain wrong about others. We come from an ape. Our intelligence is in our brain, not in a 'magical soul'. Get with the program.

Mfewell, you have been brainwashed, you just have no way of knowing it. Unlucky.

[mfewell]

Marge you have exceeded yourself this time, because you have lost the plot and resorted to sitting at the back throwing ink pellets. One of the reasons God put me on the planet was to be an irritating sod. I cannot believe what you put - I have "been brainwashed but have no way of knowing it" - very scientific indeed coming from you ! But, why oh why is it so darned difficult to accept the resurrection of JC while you will happily believe any other old tosh provided it bible-bashes. If God had enough savvy to create the universe (yes I actually do believe this, the from day 1 bit. I do not go the whole hog and subscribe to Bishop Ussher's dating at 4004 BC, but I do have a Scofield bible. I've got about 20 bibles, all different translations, I need certifying I expect), then he certainly had enough clout to raise his son from the dead.

As to being 'unlucky' it is you who is unlucky, not me. I have been fortunate enough to research out (I've read the Koran for example) and decide by my own efforts that the NT has the right message. You have loads of anger and indignation which must be awful. It does however make for very interesting and lively threads away from CB, so let's keep it going, although the usual finale is an internet 2-fingers (not from me) and triumphant (?) silence.

p.s. you never rose to an earlier challenge - where is your hard scientific evidence that the NT was 'made up'.  I'd like the actual scientific references please. Was it in Nature ? Scientific American ?

Best wishes, Mike.

[delilahcat]

So Headless Rat, if all the problems in Africa are man-made, what was the tsunami in Asia - God's Christmas present to the world?

It just amazes me that people continue to support a patently corrupt and evil organisation like the Catholic church - sorry but I have to agree with Marge, it's all down to brainwashing.

But thanks for giving me such great entertainment - I've actually laughed out loud at many of your postings on this thread!

[mfewell]

Dear delilahcat,

I expect I shall get shot down in flames, serve me bloody right for having a belief in God, but I really now want actual references to your evidence. I believe in God and JC, I can cope with that whereas your inner anger angainst me can't. I would also like actual evidence and references as to how the RC church is "patently corrupt and evil". If you can't supply these explicit references, please take your pan off the cooker.

 

Best wishes, Mike.

[Clanad]

So, MargeB, which way is it?  Is there no God or are you mad at Him because He doesn't run the world the way you want?

The usual contention is that Christians are mind numbed robots and really don't have enough grey matter to understand the reality of things like you atheists do.  However, no one has ever offered an explanation for all of the thousands upon ten thousands of credentialed, reputable and respected professors, researchers, teachers and the like that believe Jesus the Christ lived, died and rose again on the third day.  They have no conflicts with their beliefs and their knowledge of facts.  Many of them in all scientific persuasions began projects to debunk Christianity and wound up believing! What are to make of them? 

You fail to understand the real implications of the Big Bang... to the point that you've missed your own Steven Hawking's statement to the effect that by understanding the universe he would then "know the mind of God".  Especially in the field of astrophysics, many of the scientists reach the inescapable conclusion that a supernatural being had to been involved in the Beginning... even those who are not believers in the Judaeo/Christian Yahweh. It's also important to understand that this has all come about in a relatively short period of time... say the last 10 to no more than 20 years.  This is concurrent with the literal abandonement in many scientific quarters, of classical Darwinism as any kind of answer to where we, or anything else came from.

Contd.

[Clanad]

Contd.

I will say the Young Earth Creationists haven't helped the cause of enlightenment, no more than those that insist a completely naturalistic expanation as the only solution.  Evidence abounds, including, and especially the Cambrian Explosion for sudden creation at many stages, including Homo sapiens sapiens...

The evidence, my angry antagonist, is running away from you over yonder hill.  Have a discussion with your own Professor Antony Flew and then come back and we'll talk some more... Have a day of your choice...

 

[MargeB]

Can someone else take over, I'm getting bored trying to show people stuff.