RevBogovac

I - personally - would say any form of genocide is bad.

And again you choose to misrepresent historic facts; yes, the books themselves might have been written before the council, but at the council it was determined which books were to be included (and which excluded) in (from) the New Testament. These choices were arbitrary and included a lot of books that were written a long time after the facts and excluded books that were actually written at the time the facts happened. The political choices that were made are clear and well documented (like - for instance - the diminishing of the significance of women, the sanctification of Jesus et cetera).

Boy, do you lack social, political and historic perspective; "promoting" and "promis[ing] everlasting life, where no pain or sorrow exist" is only possible because there is a contrast with damnation, eternal hell and all that. Classical example of power-hungry power-play... creating a non-existent problem (damnation) to offer a non-existent solution. A very old (and obviously - you being the perfect example) and quite effective strategy. If you do not know how Constantine (having selected which books to add to the bible, which to have rewritten, and which to scrap to serve his own [and his political elite's] purpose) comes into the picture... well, that actually is history (well documented, researched, and published for peer review).

You seem to forget that we come form an age where distancing oneself from "the church" was a very dangerous activity. These Atheists and Agnostics do not take that lightly, au contraire; they - on average - put in a lot of very complicated research and thought into that (quite a lot more than most "believers" most of the time...). Very often putting hteir own lives indanger (even nowadays in some part of the world) because of religious fanatics. You insult the whole group by just brushing that of as "not complicated"... but I am not surprised you do not see that.

Sure, you're absolutely right (no use arguing with you). But for the rest: a lot more activities involve piercing hands and feet and gambling is a lot older than 2.000 years... It means I find you quite a belittling person; saying there is nothing "complicated" about those groups of people. But you just keep on believing terrorist propaganda written out of context serving a bunch of power hungry individuals (read up on Constantin with regards to the bible).

Wow, just wow. You must be a genuine brain surgeon who does rocket science for a hobby...

And again you're cherrypicking.... piercing of any body parts for that matter has been done for as long as people are using "tools", no crucifixion in there whatsoever. Not to mention the splitting of "profits" and "gambling"... no prophecy whatsoever.

Yes, there is... the quotes are (by far!) not specific enough to be viewed as "fulfilled prophecies"; someone getting a death penalt for his political and/or religious believes?!? That's not a prophecy, that's a certainty (unfortunately)... I, personally, believe there actually lived a philosopher named Jesus from Nazareth some 2.000 years ago who preached a philosophy of equality and pacifism (enough "evidence" of that). What I certainly do not believe are those made-up stories that were written centuries after his death which were only meant to "sanctualize" him and serve a couple of power hungry individuals of that time. And to "drive this home" I, personally, can not take anyone very serious that nowadays still believes these (latter) stories... (except that I take it very serious when these "believers" take their believes too far and start pushing them onto other people; religion is like a penis, great to have one, OK to be proud of it, but keep it away from public and children!).

There is a distinction to be made here: there is the evidence from multiple sources on a philosopher named Jesus from a place called Nazareth who preached equality (and never said only he was the son of God) and got the death sentence for it (I would compare him to some ancient pacifistic Che Guevara, and "believe" in his existence as much as I do in - for instance - Socrat or Confusius...); and, some made up story to "sanctify" him about two centuries after his death (sentence) by a group of power-hungry individuals at the death bed of (one of) the last (Eastern) Roman emperor... these last stories (about the zombies and such) do not do the Christian philosophy (that was the basis for our current day Western society) a lot of good, nowadays...

So, first "we" (this forum) spends years right on (top of) the home page of the ULC so "we" can now get the boot? Feels strange...

Hmkay, nice new home page. Seems to have been also some kind of "merger" (or at least consolidation of some sort) with the ULC Seminary... if you go to Communities -> ULC Social Communities you'll see two lists of references; the left for ULC Online and the right for ULC Seminary... and if you scroll way down to the bottom of that page it says: "The ULC Online Forum is the original gathering place of ULC Ministers around the world. Join us at: forum.ulc.net". 1. that is not the link for this (http://ulc.net/forum) forum; and, 2. if I click the link it fails to open a page.

Indeed, both in mind as well as in prayers...

I don't know if you have followed the news a bit in the 1990's... but I am from (former) Yugoslavia. I consider myself to be (part of the social structure, that identifies itself as) Orthodox Christian. Unfortunately my family has lived in (the former Yugoslav republic of) Croatia for the previous 600 years (prior to the 1990's). Croatia is considered to be (part of the social structure, that identifies itself as) Catholic. The war that raged in the 1990's many consider to be "religious". "We" (Orthodox Christians) have been persecuted in Croatia into "extinction" (literally, the village my ancestors founded now has 2 - very old - inhabitants). But up to today I still do not consider the persecution to be religion based. It was power based. A bunch of power-hungry individuals who grasped their moment in history and used religion as an convenient opportunity...

I found the video's from Amy of the ULC Seminary that you can find on youtube quite interesting and a nice "primer" for introduction...

Hey, another doomsday prophecy! Not like "we" (mankind) haven't heard that before... Further more some of the "North American VERY TANNED previous land owners" had no problems whatsoever butchering one another (Mayan child sacrifices; and, Iroquois vs. Mohawk genocidal wars come to mind). They "just" didn't have the means (lacking a pack animal large enough to carry a human; and, the ability to make steel) to do so as effectively as "Europeans" do... Bubble burst, move on... please try to stay positive in the mean time.

Hmkay... As I already said:

Right. And: But you forgot: And than he can repent our free choices... right.

You exactly emphasise my point. Do you think we don't have culture and social pressure in the Netherlands? Believe me, we have. But we (at least a lot more of us) take the trouble of thinking a couple of steps further; remember what is important and focus on our friends and family... instead of "just" following the leader... That blackface discussion further shows the point; nobody takes that serious over here... (except for a few exceptions on both ends of the extreme). For the fast majority we like the "Aristotelian golden mean" over here... as a Dutch saying says: "act normally, and that's already strange enough". I don't know if you saw the video of our Prime Minister bumping over his cup of coffee...?

Nope, for a (hu-)man that makes perfectly sense. For a so called omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient God however... Major contradictions...

You think its that small a percent? Christmas is a massive economic driver here. No company can really avoid thinking about how it effects their bottom line. And the yearly media blitz extolling the virtues of "Finding The Perfect Gift" highlights the replacement of Christ with Consumerism as the centerpiece of the holiday in the collective consciousness... My emphasis was on "thinking", the rest are just consumers following the crowd... hence: lazy...

It totally isn't that. I mean, it does contain some philosophy and some metaphors, but they don't even comprise the majority of the book. Its full of everything from folk history and legal records to geneologies and dream diary entries... Its a very complicated collection of disparate texts... True, those too...

Not to bother you all with the (Very long) list of contradictions the bible is full of (and that is "normal" as people wrote the bible, and people are fallible.) You can find one of those lists at: Bible Inconsistencies - Bible Contradictions? as compiled by Donald Morgan. As people who find themselves defending these contradictions bending over backwards, will also say that: Adam lived 930 years (GE 5:5); and, Terah was 205 years old when he died, making Abram 135 at the time (GE 11:32); As far as the God "not repenting [...] himself, [...] creation, [...] anything He had done" but he "repented of what man had done, the wickedness of man", well: God decides who will be dumb, deaf, blind, etc (EX 4:11 ). One of my - personal - favourite (recurring) contradictions in the bible is the dichotomy: 2SA 24:1 The Lord inspired David to take the census. 1CH 21:1 Satan inspired the census. Ah well. c'mon people; the bible is a nice philosophical book full of metaphors one can choose to learn from (or not). But taking the bible literally in this day and age, IMHO, does Christianity a huge disfavour.

Contradiction. <- period

It has more to do with Americans trying to more efficiently exploit profit opportunities. Economies of scale, and all that. Piggy-backing the Santa myth on the Christmas holiday created more opportunities for "kid-friendly" merchandising while simultaneously cementing in the popular consciousness the notion that Christmas is primarily about gift-giving (and, therefore, gift-buying).[...] True... for the 0,1% thinking and acting like that. For the 99,9 other %... well... maybe...

Sorry, but you do not get to "philosophise" this away... God does not get to "repent", remember: NU 23:19-20, 1SA 15:29, JA 1:17. Major contradictions going on by now...