[Athena]

=Chimera;448801]You act as though Christians don't know this. As if the similarities to other religions is some forbidden fruit. Religions usually come about to teach morals, and explain things.

There was nothing said about knowledge of other religions being some kind of forbidden fruit, however, Christians who do know of the past religions are extremely few, and many seem to think anything they are not taught comes from the devil, so they fear learning of other beliefs. This failure to know of other believes leads to many errors, such as Christians claiming what was of others as their own. They often seem to hold false beliefs about non Christians, such as "they don't have a god and don't know morals". How about, "they didn't believe in an after life". On and on the falsehoods go, because so few Christians do know of other religions.

That is not to say that Christianity isn't true, just that it's very possible that God used familiar images usually associated with gods to show his power....Seems likely

. If God involved Himself at all, surely he did communicate with all people. Jung and Joseph Campbell studied shared myths and symbology, that seems to have sprung spontaneously around the world. There is the mystey of the Hundredth Monkey, where monkeys in a completely different location began washing their food in the ocean, when this practice reached critical mass with a troop of monkeys far away. There was no way for the second troop of monkeys to learn from the first, so something unusual happened, and I believe this something was spiritual in nature.

Accepting God has shared information with everyone, makes the bible extremely problematic, because the bible declares this God has chosen people, and indeed has a relationship with these people that is different from all others. I mean, the biblical explanations of things can not be true if God was sharing information with everyone. The old testament god is a tribal god, not a universal god. Not until Hellenism and Rome, does this god because a universal god, and that is why Christianity had to break from Judaism.

So in summary, you make the presumption that you're smarter than the average Christian, and that you're saying something unknown.

When many Christians prove to be well informed, the problem will not exist, but so far we haven't had any well informed religious people posting. I am extremely frustrated in my efforts to have intelligent discussions with Christians, and it would be great if you prove Christians can be different from our experience of them.

By the way, we all know about Christmas not being Christ's birthday...... I just wanted to quote this to show how you contradict yourself.... oops. I personally do not believe that a good person goes to hell if he does not believe in God. I know a lot of people that agree with me, but I have met some that don't. You have a big God-given brain.

That was an insulting statement, as we use our brains and come to different conclusions. Personally, I believe in reincarnation, and think the Christians are wrong to believe anything will make them better than they are, unless they chose to become enlightened and better people. I mean sinners on earth will be sinners in heaven, because there is nothing that will take their free will away and change them into better beings. Please, the Christians I have known, expecting heaven, have been as faulted as any other human being, while believing heaven is perfection. You can't fill heaven with imperfect people and have perfection, and nothing outside a person, makes a person perfect.

[quote]Decide to do what you want to do. No Christian NEEDS to defend the Bible's capability to convert you. [QUOTE/] then they will stop trying to convert people? :)

[quote] It's scientifically wrong because, in a mutually exclusive sense, science doesn't believe in gods.....[/QUOTE/] How does the logic of that sentence work? Are you saying the universe revolves around the earth? How about the soul is in the blood? And speaking of blood, why were those sacrifices necessary and why do we no longer have to follow God's comments? And how about Satan and the demons? Have you counted many demons flying out of people's bodies lately? All this stuff is true, but it isn't scientific because science doesn't believe in gods? Whose science is that? There are scientist who do believe in God, and Cicero and Jefferson thought knowledge was essential, and that this knowledge comes from studying nature not religions. To clarify, there is a belief that, to know God we must study nature. Sorry, but you are speaking like a Christian who doesn't know about beliefs, not like one who is well informed.

don't necessarily think the Bible's contradicting just confusing.Neither can Christians.You somehow make the assumption that someone that deviates from the morals of the religion, represents the religion.....Wow

Ah, I think someone who claims to be Christian represents Christianity. Someone who claims to be Jewish, represents Judaism, and someone who claims to be Muslim represents Islam. I think, they all think they are better than the rest of humanity, because they believe their religion makes them better, and everyone who is not one of these religions, does not believe the religion makes anyone of religion a better person. I see the problem as, what these religious people believe, not that the rest of us don't believe their religion makes them better than everyone else.