Choosing a faith

Hi C2
The problem is that you are doing just that yourself. You have a burning desire to show that your anachronistic understanding of Genesis is literally true. How things were meant to be understood then is not how we understand things now.I would add that many, like myself have no problem with evolutionary theory and are committed Christians. For that matter I look at evolution and marvel at the incredible mind responsaible for it.I suggest that maybe it is you that has tunnel vision.I would add that I don't see you as lying but simply badly mistaken.

My point though is that it isn't the religion that we choose. Within Christianity we can choose a deity that is cruel and vindictive or one that loves and cares for all of creation. The same thing can be said for people of all faiths. As I have pointed out, all faiths have in their holy books the "Golden Rule".We can all choose to be be sheep or goats as per Matthew 25.I do believe that the call on our lives is clearest in the Christian faith, largely but not exclusively because of the life and teaching of Jesus. I suggest that we, as Christians, should understand the Bible through the lens of Jesus and the "Golden Rule". Hopefully we will leave this world a better place for the fact that it is a better place because we were here.

Why do you guys worry so much about who goes to hell whatever that looks like.
I'd suggest that what we should focus on is what God wants us to be and do in the life that we have been given now. Personally I am quite happy to let God worry about what happens to me in the next life and focus on things like what you see in my signature no matter how imperfectly I do that. Luke in his Gospel says "“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven."Jesus said that the greatest command was all about loving our neighbour as ourselves. In the parable in Matthew 25 with the sheep and the goats it was all about who loved their neighbour and said nothing about who had the correct doctrine.
I think that just maybe you guys focus on all the wrong stuff.

I guess this comes back to the reason I started this thread. It isn't the name that we assign to our deity but the nature of the deity we worship and the call on lour lives.You and I both worship the diety named God but believe me, we worship very different deities.Your god is a god that demands that you believe and follow a rigid set of laws, (not unlike the Pharisees of Jesus' time), and that if you don't your off to hell. Your deity is hateful. If you consider yourself Christian why don't you follow Jesus Christ. You choose to follow your twisted understanding of the Bible and neglect the life and teaching of Jesus.It is really interesting that you have decided that because he doesn't accept some man-made belief of yours that God will send him to hell.You have turned God into a Christian terrorist.

The effect is not the point. A mistake or error is not the same thing as making a claim you know to be false. It is just that you are wrong. The post you just made is a mistake but you believe it. It is not a lie it is just that you're wrong.

I was simply referring to his understanding of what makes a statement a lie.

I humbly suggest that you are misunderstanding Paul on pretty much all of Scripture with your understanding of what it means to be saved.You and many others seem to believe that it refers to salvation. In other words we are saved to be with Christ in the life to come.I would disagree. The Scriptural message as that we are saved for "vocation". We are saved so that we can serve Him in this life by spreading His love into the world by what we do with the life we have been given.God isn't concerned about what we believe, or what we do, but is concerned with "how we love" and how that love plays out in our lives.As far as the next life is concerned and the human role in it, I'm happy to leave to God and His perfect loving justice and wisdom.​

I’m very much afraid that I’m a long way away from being a humanist. Firstly I have lived long enough to know a world where people didn’t lock their doors; would as often as not leave their keys in the car; in which as a 6 year old come roam on my bike to wherever I wanted as long as I was home for dinner; I would catch the bus downtown; a world where where there were no people living on the street. That isn’t to say that there aren’t some things that are better now, but overall they are far worse. I never heard of anyone I knew committing suicide. I graduated high school at 5ft 2 inches and 100 lbs. I didn’t play on the football team but I wasn’t bullied either. It was a world that was culturally Christian.
I have now lived in a world for several decades that is fundamentally based on secular humanism. You can argue otherwise but IMHO life was far better for nearly everyone then, than it is now.
As far as being a Christian is concerned I am convinced of the resurrection being an historical event. I believe that In Jesus we can see the nature of the one He called father and understand His call on our lives which can be quite neatly summed up in the Golden Rule.One place I differ from people like ICANT is the amount of focus they appear to have on the life to come and who is in and who is out. Jesus said in both Matthew and Luke that the great command is the command to love others as we love ourselves and that we are called to even love sacrificially which is why I say that God is not particularly concerned with what we believe, or with what we do but in how we exercise the gift of love given to us.
I believe however that ultimately the next life will be impacted by how we love in this life and trust in God to be the exercise perfect judgement in with compassion and love. Firstly I would suggest that you hold these views because you have grown up in a culture that has a Judeo Christian heritage. I see evolution without God as one of “nature, red in tooth and claw” and espousing “survival of the fittest’. I believe that it is that “still small voice” of the Spirit of God that pushes us to rise above that. We both have our unprovable beliefs Actually, I was a fan of Hitchens as he forcibly attacked the fundamentalist view that understands that Yahweh in the OT actually did command genocide and public stoning. He was actually siding with Jesus on that.
In the end it sounds by your post that you too espouse the call that is seen in my signature so it seems to me that you are close to quietly slipping across the short bridge to the Christian faith.

Ya right. It was true of all parents. There were hundreds of 6- 8 year olds that would take buses into downtown Calgary to "Eaton's Good Deed Radio Club". It was a club started up by Eaton's department store and ran in numerous cities across Canada.I'd note that you are clearly typical of parents today who can't even imagine a world where kids are safe in society and people looked after each other.BTW, I was blessed with great parents.

It was simply an observation of the difference between living in a culture where one is culturally Christian and in the same culture years later when it is culturally secular.

I hardly walk in the shadow of priests. I come to my own conclusions having read people like Hitchens, Dawkins and Sagan. Or we can wait and discuss it in the life to come.

Well I grew up earlier than that, before the internet and just before drugs started being a problem I feel sorry for kids growing up today who are being robbed of that age of innocence.The biggest problem in the society then was alcoholism which was very largely a result of the PSTD that reulted from WW2.

Sure

There are too many changes to mention but overall people then looked out more for others than what they do now. I don't have statics to prove it and it is simply an observation. As kid it was pretty much accepted that we would give up our seat on the bus to someone older than ourselves. There was simply far more courtesy and respect in our society.

As I said before some things are better but racism is still evil and still around although but not as institutional as it was then. In my case I never observed racism growing up but that was on the prairies in Canada and wasn't obvious to me. I'm so sorry for what your family endured.I certainly don't suggest that there wasn't evil that existed and sometimes in the name of corrupted Christianity.